FBI Arrests Couple That Laundered $3.15 Billion in Bitfinex Bitcoins

The US authorities have arrested a man and woman suspected of laundering bitcoins stolen from the Bitfinex platform in 2016. The FBI allegedly seized 3.15 billion euros in cryptocoins.

The 34-year-old man and 31-year-old woman will appear in federal court next week. The couple is suspected of trying to launder 119,754 bitcoins. These would come from the hack on Bitfinex in 2016. The FBI does not suspect the couple of the theft, but says that the stolen bitcoins were sent to a digital wallet that was linked to the man. The FBI followed the trail of the bitcoins. This brought the FBI, among other things, to a dark web marketplace.

The couple is suspected of laundering all 119,754 stolen bitcoins, but authorities have not seized the entire amount. About 25,000 bitcoins are said to have been taken out of the wallet in recent years. They went through ‘a complex money laundering procedure’. An undisclosed portion of those bitcoins was then paid into the suspects’ fiat accounts. The remaining 94,000 bitcoins remained in the wallet. The FBI managed to break into an online account of one of the suspects. There they found the private key to access the online wallet.

The bitcoins were worth around 58 million euros at the time of the hack, but since then the price of the digital currency has exploded. The 119,754 bitcoins have a current value of 3.9 billion euros and the 94,000 seized bitcoins add up to 3.15 billion euros.

If convicted of money laundering, the couple could face a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. They are also charged with fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. The prosecutor says the police action shows that cryptocurrencies are not always anonymous. “Today, the investigative service showed that we can track money through the blockchain and that we do not allow cryptocurrencies to be seen as a safe haven for money laundering.”