Biggest crypto theft ever
Categories: Crypto News
The US Justice Department has arrested a married couple. Earlier last week, bitcoins worth about Rs 26,917 crore ($ 3.6 billion) were seized from them, whose value has increased to Rs 33,668 crore ($ 4.5 billion) in a week.The special thing is that when this couple, who specializes in hacking these bitcoins, stole it about 6 years ago, then their value was only 5311 crores ($ 71 million). The Justice Department has called it the biggest cryptocurrency theft to date.
According to the New York Times report, the Justice Department has reported that a criminal complaint was filed against the arrested Ilya Lichtenstein (34) and Heather Morgan (31) for laundering 119,754 bitcoins. These bitcoins were both stolen from Hong Kong crypto exchange Bitfinex 6 years ago in 2016. Bitfinex is one of the biggest virtual cash trades on the planet.
Nonetheless, Equity Division authorities have not remarked on whether Lichtenstein and Morgan did the hacking themselves or somebody else.The burglary through such huge hacking of computerized money in the year 2016 brought up issues about the security of digital currencies. The greatest burglary throughout the entire existence of the digital money market on the world's biggest cash trade has caused the worth of bitcoin to drop by almost 20%.
Lichtenstein and Morgan were delivered in government court in Manhattan later in the early evening, where the appointed authority delivered Lichtenstein on bail in return for an obligation of Rs 37.40 crore ($5 million) and Morgan's Rs 22.44 crore ($3 million).
Investigators caught via blockchain
- Despite adopting a puzzle-like system, this couple was caught by their own mistake.
- The couple deposited the funds received by selling bitcoins in their financial accounts.
- Gold, non-fungible tokens and Walmart gift cards were purchased with this fund
- Investigating officers found out the source of funds from their investigation of these transactions.
- Also the destination source was traced through the movement of bitcoins on the blockchain.
- A block chain is a permanent fixed electronic ledger that keeps records of bitcoins.
- Each time a bitcoin is moved to another computerized wallet, it is recorded on the blockchain.
- On January 31, specialists accessed Lichtenstein's distributed storage account by means of a court order
- On 1 February investigative officers seized 95,636 bitcoins that were in Lichtenstein's wallet.
- The price of these bitcoins this week according to the market price is Rs 33,668 crore.
- Known by his Dutch nickname, Lichtenstein holds citizenship in both the United States and Russia. He introduces himself as a Tech Entrepreneur.
- According to Heather Morgan's LinkedIn page, he is a serial entrepreneur and also a comedic rapper.