The Latest York couple charged with attempting to launder $4.5 billion in bitcoin stolen in a 2016 hack of Bitfinex appear set to plead guilty within the case.
The couple, Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Rhiannon Morgan, have been newly charged within the case with a document often called an information, based on a recent Washington, D.C., federal court docket entry Friday.
related investing news
An information is a kind of charging document that federal prosecutors typically use when defendants have agreed to plead guilty.
One other docket entry shows that Lichtenstein and the aspiring rapper Morgan have been ordered to seem in court on Aug. 3 for separate arraignments and plea hearings on the knowledge.
The character of the charge or charges in the knowledge was not made public. It’s common for informations to have fewer charges than those originally lodged against defendants, or to have different ones.
Booking photos for Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein.
Courtesy: Alexandria Adult Detention Center.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Friday ordered prosecutors and defense lawyers to offer plea paperwork to her by Thursday, the docket shows.
That paperwork is to incorporate “charged offense(s) and statutory provision; charge(s) in plea and statutory provision; elements of the offense; copy of the plea agreement; penalties; and [federal sentencing] guideline calculations.”
The couple was originally charged in a criminal grievance once they were arrested in February 2022, and had pleaded not guilty to the costs listed in that document – money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to defraud the US.
Morgan, often called “Razzlekhan,” is free on a $3 million bond. Lichtenstein, whose nickname is “Dutch,” has been held in jail since February 2022 without bond after a judge ruled that the Russian emigre was a flight risk.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington, which is prosecuting the couple, declined to comment. Their defense lawyers didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment from CNBC.
Prosecutors had said weeks after the couple’s arrests that they were in plea negotiations with them.
The couple’s case has been repeatedly continued since their arrests. Until Friday’s recent docket entries, they’d been scheduled to seem at a standing hearing on Monday. That hearing was vacated consequently of the brand new charging document being filed.
Lichtenstein, 34, and the 32-year-old Morgan are accused of attempting to launder the proceeds of 119,754 bitcoin that were stolen from Bitfinex’s platform in August 2016. The couple was not charged within the hack of the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange.
On the time of their arrests, the Department of Justice said officials had been in a position to seize greater than 94,000 bitcoin involved within the hack, which at the moment of the seizure was value about $3.6 billion. That was the most important financial seizure in DOJ history.
The bitcoin stolen within the hack was value just $70 million on the time of the theft, but soared in value in the next years.
“During the last five years, roughly 25,000 of those stolen bitcoin were transferred out of Lichtenstein’s wallet via an advanced money laundering process that ended with a few of the stolen funds being deposited into financial accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan,” the DOJ said on the time of their arrests.
Netflix in early 2022 announced it had commissioned a series on the couple.
