U.Today – The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has found that cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex may be the only party eligible for the return of 119,754 BTC stolen in the infamous 2016 hack. The announcement follows the guilty pleas in 2022 of Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Rhiannon Morgan, who were charged in 2022 with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
For those who may not know, Lichtenstein and Morgan allegedly used advanced hacking tools to infiltrate Bitfinex and conduct over 2,000 transactions in order to transfer the stolen items to a personal wallet. They then laundered the funds in various ways, including converting some into gold coins, which Morgan buried.
Since their arrest in February 2022, the U.S. government has recovered approximately 95,000 stolen BTC, now worth $5.89 billion, and an additional $475 million in related assets. According to Arkham Intelligence, these coins are currently located at the FBI’s “bc1qazcm” address.
Despite the scale of the theft, the United States government today announced that it is not aware of any individuals other than Bitfinex who would qualify as victims under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA) or be subject to restitution under the Mandatory Victims Restitution Act (MVRA).
This is likely due to the fact that the US Department of Justice added that Bitfinex had previously compensated affected customers by issuing “BFX” tokens, all of which were redeemed through April 2017. This compensation suggests that no additional victims may be eligible for compensation, leaving Bitfinex as the only party entitled to recover the confiscated Bitcoin.
