A hacker has been sentenced to five years in a US prison for laundering the proceeds of one of the biggest ever cryptocurrency thefts.
Ilya Lichtenstein pleaded guilty last year to hacking into the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange in 2016 and stealing almost 120,000 bitcoin.
He laundered the stolen cryptocurrency with the help of his wife Heather Morgan, who used the alias Razzlekhan to promote her hip hop music.
At the time of the theft, the bitcoin was worth around $70m (£55.3m), but had risen in value to more than $4.5bn by the time of they were arrested.
The $3.6bn worth of assets recovered in the case was the biggest financial seizure in the DOJ’s history, deputy attorney General Lisa Monaco said at the time.
“It’s important to send a message that you can’t commit these crimes with impunity, that there are consequences to them,” district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said.
Lichtenstein, who has been in prison since his arrest…
