2016 Bitfinex Hack: Couple Charged over $4.5B in Stolen BTC Strikes Plea Deal

Bitfinex Recovers Stolen Cryptos – Report Reveals Exchange’s Role in Hack

Heather ‘Razzlekhan’ Morgan, an American rapper, and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein, a Russian businessman, have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges filed by US prosecutors. Bitfinex had 119,000 bitcoins, then worth $71 million, stolen by hackers in August of 2016.

Prosecutors attempted to make the couple surrender their entire fortune last year. But Bitfinex has kept making progress in retrieving some of the missing digital money. With the help of Poloniex, the exchange was able to recover 6.5 bitcoins worth $305,000 in 2021, and it received 28 bitcoins from the US government worth more than $107,000.

A recent investigation by the OCCRP indicates that Bitfinex never released a private analysis that blamed its security flaws for the 2016 incident.