Major bitcoin hacker Lichtenstein gets five years in prison for crypto laundering scheme

A man whose 2016 hack of Bitfinex drained nearly 120,000 bitcoin from that cryptocurrency exchange was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison for a money laundering scheme he and his wife employed to hide the swiped crypto.

The value of that bitcoin stolen by Ilya Lichtenstein was just $70 million when he executed the cyberattack on Bitfinex and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions to siphon off the cryptocurrency.

"I want to take full responsibility for my actions and make amends any way I can," Lichtenstein reportedly told Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., before she sentenced him to the prison term and three years of supervised release that prosecutors had requested.

Lichtenstein, 35, and his wife, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy in August 2023, 18 months after their arrest in New York City, where they lived.

"The defendant perpetrated what was at the time one of the largest thefts from a virtual currency exchange," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. "He became one of the greatest money launderers that the government has encountered in the cryptocurrency space."

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