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Two people were arrested in New York on Tuesday for allegedly laundering cryptocurrencies.
The money was stolen in 2016 when Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange, was hacked and is currently worth $4.5 billion.
Law enforcement seized more than $3.6 billion of that total.
Suspects Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, will appear in federal court for the first time on Tuesday.
“Today’s arrests and the department’s largest financial seizure ever demonstrate that cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals,” Assistant Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said in a statement.
“In a futile effort to maintain digital anonymity, the defendants laundered stolen funds through a maze of cryptocurrency transactions. Thanks to the meticulous work of the law enforcement agency, he has once again shown how he can track and monitor money in any form.”
Kenneth A. Polite Jr., assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, added that the ministry “will not allow cryptocurrency to become a safe haven for money laundering or a zone of lawlessness in our financial system.”
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