NEW YORK (Reuters) – An American couple accused of embezzling $4.5 billion in stolen cryptocurrency in the 2016 hacking of Bitfinex have entered into a plea deal with federal prosecutors in Washington, court records showed on Friday.
Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan, both of Manhattan, were first arrested in February 2022. They will appear in a plea hearing on August 3 before US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, court records showed.
A lawyer for Lichtenstein and Morgan and a spokesman for the US Attorney’s office in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The couple is accused of creating more than 100,000 stolen bitcoins, after a hacker attacked Bitfinex and initiated more than 2,0000 unauthorized transactions.
That was worth $71 million at the time of the hack, but was worth 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)
Copyright 2023 Thomson Reuters.
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