The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has determined that cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex may be the only party entitled to restitution for the 119,754 BTC stolen in the notorious 2016 hack. This ruling follows the guilty pleas of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Rhiannon Morgan, charged in 2022 with conspiracy to launder money and defraud the United States.
Lichtenstein and Morgan allegedly employed sophisticated hacking techniques to breach Bitfinex, executing over 2,000 transactions to funnel the stolen Bitcoin into a personal wallet. They reportedly laundered the funds through various methods, including converting some into gold coins that Morgan buried.
Since their February 2022 arrest, the U.S. government has recovered approximately 95,000 of the stolen BTC, valued at around $5.89 billion, along with an additional $475 million in related assets. These assets are currently held in a wallet address associated with the FBI, as reported by Arkham Intelligence.
Despite the scale of the theft, the U.S. government has indicated that it is unaware of any individuals besides Bitfinex who qualify as victims under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA) or the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA). This conclusion is likely influenced by the fact that Bitfinex previously compensated affected customers with “BFX” tokens, all of which were redeemed by April 2017, suggesting no further victims are eligible for restitution.
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