The Justice Department announced Tuesday it had seized more than $3.6 billion in bitcoin allegedly stolen as part of a 2016 hack of Bitfinex, saying authorities have also arrested a husband and wife in New York for allegedly trying to launder the cryptocurrency fortune, the Washington Post reported. Officials said tech entrepreneur Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his rapper wife, Heather Morgan, 31, were charged with conspiring to launder money. They are accused of trying to launder 119,754 bitcoin that were stolen after a hacker breached the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions. Prosecutors said the bitcoin was sent to a digital wallet controlled by Lichtenstein. At the time of the theft, that amount of bitcoin was worth about $71 million. But the cryptocurrency has appreciated so much in the years since that the total value is now around $4.5 billion. Federal officials said they were able to seize about 94,000 of the stolen bitcoin, with an estimated value of $3.6 billion.
