In addition to finding two of the criminals, the DOJ managed to recover at least 96,000 BTC kept in the wallet of one of those captured, which data links to the funds stolen from Bitfinex six years ago.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed today that it has captured and arrested two people who got involved in the cyberattack against the Bitfinex exchange in 2016, one of the most prominent thefts that shook the entire crypto world and the network.
According to a report made by the DOJ, Ilia Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Morgan, 31, were accused of conspiring to legitimize cryptocurrency-linked funds that got extracted from Bitfinex in 2016.
The authorities executed a fairly meticulous job of tracking all the transactions and managed to seize at least USD 3.6 billion worth of crypto funds that got linked to the exchange.
The Massive Crime that Took Place in 2016
In 2016, Bitfinex suffered a cyber-attack in which a considerable amount of Bitcoin got illegally extracted from the exchange through a security flaw. This situation led the company to face a dark moment, but due to a series of strategies and a serious compensation program got applied by the company, and at least, they managed to get ahead and recover from this problem.
Lichtenstein and his wife got accused of playing a vital role in the extraction that 119,754 bitcoins suffered, currently valued at just over $5.115 million; they got stolen from Bitfinex.
The operations got monitored through the data the same Blockchain network reported to conduct the investigations; it discovered that the defendant received the funds in a wallet that belonged to him, in which 96,000 BTC got found.
A Hard Work to Find the Lost Funds
Subsequently, the authorities found various personal files that contained the private keys linked to the wallet in question; in there, they found the funds stolen from Bitfinex, which got seized and are currently in the custody of the judicial entity.
These funds should return to Bitfinex if there is no other allegation. The recovered BTC would remain in the hands of the government, which could well auction them as it has done with many funds that come from criminal acts.
After the attack that took place in 2016, Bitfinex created BFX tokens and provided the victims with them at the rate of one coin for each $1 lost. Within eight months of the security breach, Bitfinex’s parent company, iFinex, returned all the BFX tokens with dollars or by exchanging the cryptocurrency for shares of its capital stock.
Bitfinex also released an RRT token that aims at some BFX holders that turned BFX tokens into shares of iFinex.
By: Jenson Nuñez
