Federal agents arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, a married couple, in Manhattan on Tuesday morning. They face federal charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States.A New York couple was arrested Tuesday on charges of conspiring to launder $4.5 billion in cryptocurrency that was stolen in a 2016 hack of a virtual currency exchange, the Justice Department said.
The stolen cryptocurrency, valued at $71 million at the time of the theft, is now valued at $4.5 billion, officials said. "Today, federal law enforcement demonstrates once again that we can follow money through the blockchain, and that we will not allow cryptocurrency to be a safe haven for money laundering or a zone of lawlessness within our financial system," said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. "The arrests today show that we will take a firm stand against those who allegedly try to use virtual currencies for criminal purposes.
The couple were not charged in the Bitfinex hack, which resulted in more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions.
Newsworthy in Chicago because...?