Two people charged with laundering Bitcoins worth billions of dollars in 2016 hacking of the Bitfinex currency exchange were granted bail by a New York Judge.
Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein appeared before the lower Manhattan Courtroom on Tuesday after being arrested in New York at 7 a.m. According to the U.S. government, they recovered $3.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency from the couple. This was the largest ever financial seizure. After hacking it, the married couple had laundered 119,754 Bitcoin from the Bitfinex system. Bitcoin is currently valued at $4.5 billion.
The government prosecutor had requested the judge initially not to release the couple on bail as they faced a possible 20-year prison term sentence, and they had every motivation to run. The judge indicated that she could set a bond, and the Government set it at $100 million, an amount the defense lawyers called “laughable“.
The judge set bail for Heather Morgan at $3 million and asked their parents to put up their home as security. Lichtenstein’s bail was set at $5 million.
Lichtenstein, 34, who holds dual Russian and U.S. citizenship, appeared in the courtroom in gray shirts and jeans, sporting a paunch and brown hair that seemed messy. Morgan, 31, wore a hooded white sweatshirt with long hair down. Both wore masks as per the court requirement.
The couple looked at the magistrate when their right was being readout. They have retained counsels separately who did the talking in the court. At the same time, the couple also did not speak in their initial appearance in public.
According to the prosecutor, Morgan, who has foreign tie-ups, was born in Oregon and raised in California. According to Morgan’s social media account, she lives in Egypt and Hong Kong and studies Russian. She is an economist and journalist and travels internationally for work-related assignments as per the Government. Her mother works as a librarian while her father is a U.S. Government retired biologist.
When he was six years old, Lichtenstein moved to the U.S. to escape religious prosecution. He grew up in Chicago, where his father worked for Cook County, and his mother was a Biochemist at North-western University. His parents have agreed to put up their home as a bond.
According to the Government, Morgan, and Lichtenstein have been a couple since 2015. Both face trial in Washington, where the laundering charges were filed.
The lawyer of Lichtenstein said that his client did not flee despite the investigations going on for months after an Internet service provider informed him in November. His lawyer said there is no proof against Heather Morgan.
Prosecutors, however, argued that the couple should not be released as they had used false identities while committing the crime. Lichtenstein had a folder on his computer that contained a file named “Passport ideas” with links to fake identifications and passports. A search in their apartment revealed a plastic baggie labeled “burner phones“. Anirudh Bansal, a lawyer for the defendants, declined to comment on the case outside the courtroom in Manhattan.
