They were a couple of Treintaños in New York like another.
He, Ilya Lichtenstein, entrepreneur with several startups behind the back.
She, Heather Morgan, part-time rapera, writer and investor in security and finance companies.
But behind that façade, those responsible for money laundering from the greatest theft of cryptomones of history were hidden.
According to the US Department of Justice, Lichtenstein and Morgan were at the forefront of the washing operation of the more than 119,000 Bitcoins that were stolen from the Bitfinex platform in 2016.
At the time of the robbery that amount of bitcoin was equivalent to about 75 million dollars but with the appreciation of the cryptomoned of recent years, the amount is now rached by 4.5 billion dollars.
From that figure, Lichtenstein and Morgan would have managed to bleach over the years almost 900 million dollars, about 25,000 bitcoins, which would have placed in several accounts in their name or with false identities created to confuse the authorities.
The remaining 94,000 Bitcoins, which are equivalent to 3,600 million dollars, have been recovered and suppose the greater funding of funds ever made by the Department of Justice.
“Cryptomoneds are not a safe shelter for criminals,” said Attrant Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said in a statement explaining that Lichtenstein and Morgan tried to wash bitcoin stolen “through a labyrinth of different transactions.
platforms and cryptomones “.
The authorities do not accuse them directly from the robbery of Bitfinex, which may have been a third party or a more numerous group of hackers, but from the banquet of the Bitcoin subtracted and to defraud the Government of the United States, crimes that can be supposed
Up to 25 years in prison.
The agents of the Department of Justice have managed to track the more than 2,000 transactions carried out from BitFinex during the theft to a digital portfolio controlled by Lichtenstein, where most bitcoin from the operation were still stored.
Of the two criminals, Heather Morgan was the one with a more public profile.
She has written for Forbes and Inc. publications and directed several workshops on “Social Engineering” (the art of manipulating someone to obtain confidential information).
She is also a rapera that acts in New York with the artistic name of Razzlekhan.
Ilya Lichtenstein, on the other hand, was one of the founders of the Startup MixRank, selected by the accelerator and combinator and in which the businessman Mark Cuban came to invest part of his fortune, although he abandoned the company in 2016. It was also a mentor in
The 500 Startups incubator.
