US couple accused of laundering Bitfinex crypto reached plea deal

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NEW YORK, July 21 (Reuters) – A U.S. couple accused of laundering $4.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency stolen in the 2016 hack of virtual currency exchange Bitfinex has reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors in Washington, court records showed on Friday.

Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan, both of Manhattan, were originally arrested in February 2022. They are scheduled to appear for a plea hearing on August 3 before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, according to court records.

An attorney for Lichtenstein and Morgan and a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The couple have been accused of conspiring to launder over 100,000 bitcoins that were stolen, after a hacker attacked Bitfinex and initiated over 2,0000 unauthorized transactions.

This was valued at $71 million at the time of the hack, but had appreciated over $4.5 billion at the time of their arrest.

Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; edited by Jonathan Oatis and Marguerita Choy

Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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