This week a husband and wife duo were arrested in New York following accusations that they had attempted to launder close to 120,000 bitcoin (currently valued at more than $5 billion), which was stolen from an exchange called Bitfinex. According to Reuters, it was the U.S. Justice Department’s largest financial seizure ever.
The two parties facing charges are Ilya "Dutch" Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife Heather Morgan, 31, who are both New York residents. Back in 2016, Bitfinex, a popular Bitcoin exchange, was hacked and some users had their wallets emptied. Over the last five years since the digital heist, the Lichtensteins had supposedly laundered 25,000 bitcoin (just over $1 billion), while the remaining 94,000 bitcoin (around $3.6 billion) was recovered by the Justice Department, as mentioned previously.
