US authorities arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, in 2022 for laundering Bitcoin connected to the Bitfinex exchange.
Ilya Lichtenstein, one of the individuals who admitted to being behind the 2016 hack of the crypto exchange Bitfinex, has been sentenced to five years in prison.
In a Nov. 14 hearing in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced Lichtenstein to five years in prison following his guilty plea to conspiracy to commit money laundering. Prosecutors had recommended the Bitfinex hacker serve five years for his role in the theft of Bitcoin (BTC) worth billions of dollars at the time of publication.
Sentencing guidelines allowed Judge Kollar-Kotelly to send Lichtenstein to prison for up to 20 years. However, prosecutors suggested leniency because the Bitfinex hacker had no prior criminal history and gave “substantial assistance” in other investigations.
