The couple behind the Bitfinex money laundering scheme have reached a plea agreement with US prosecutors. Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan are scheduled to appear on trial on August 3 as part of their plea deal with US prosecutors.
The couple agreed with the prosecutors about Bitfinex’s hack!
As you follow on Kriptokoin.com, billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin was stolen in the Bitfinex attack in 2016. In connection with this attack, the couple, who allegedly laundered money, reached a plea bargain with officials in the United States. Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan are scheduled to appear on trial on August 3 as part of a plea deal with prosecutors, according to records submitted to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on July 21.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Friday ordered prosecutors and defense attorneys to hand over the defense paperwork to her by Thursday. These documents include the “crime(s) charged and the legal verdict; the offense(s) and legal conviction in the defence; elements of the crime; copy of the plea agreement; penalties; and [federal penalty] guide calculations.
The couple was first charged in a criminal complaint when they were arrested in February 2022 and pleaded not guilty to the charges of money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to defraud the United States listed in this document. Morgan, known as “Razzlekhan”, was released on $3 million bail. Lichtenstein, nicknamed “Dutch”, has been held in jail without bail since February 2022 after a judge ruled that the Russian immigrant was at risk of escape.
US Department of Justice confiscated billions of dollars in Bitcoin
The US Attorney’s Office in Washington, which prosecuted the couple, declined to comment. Prosecutors said the couple held defense talks with them weeks after their arrest. The couple’s case has continued many times since their arrest. They were scheduled to appear for a status hearing on Monday, until new filings on Friday. Your court has canceled this hearing because the new indictment is on file.
Lichtenstein, 34, and Morgan, 32, are accused of trying to launder the proceeds of 119,754 Bitcoins stolen from Bitfinex’s platform in August 2016. The couple was not charged in the hacking of the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange. At the time of their arrest, the Ministry of Justice noted that authorities had seized more than 94,000 Bitcoins associated with the attack. He also said that this Bitcoin was worth about $3.6 billion at the time of its seizure. This was the largest financial takeover in the history of the Department of Justice. The Bitcoin stolen in the attack was only worth $70 million at the time of the theft. However, its value rose in the following years.
“Over the past five years, approximately 25,000 of the stolen Bitcoins have been transferred from Lichtenstein’s wallet through a complex money-laundering process that resulted in some of the stolen funds being deposited into financial accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan,” the DOJ said in a statement during the arrests.
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