NEW YORK (Reuters) – An American couple accused of laundering $4.5 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from the 2016 hacking of virtual currency exchange Bitfinex have entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors in Washington, court records showed on Friday.
Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan, both of Manhattan, were initially arrested in February 2022. They are set to appear for a plea hearing on Aug. 3 before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, court records showed.
A lawyer 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 pair was accused of conspiring to launder more than 100,000 bitcoin that was stolen, after a hacker attacked Bitfinex and initiated more than 2,0000 unauthorized transactions.
That was valued at $71 million at the time of the hack, but had appreciated to more than $4.5 billion at the time of their arrest.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Marguerita Choy)
