A married couple have been arrested for laundering billions of dollars of bitcoin which was stolen during the 2016 hack of Bitfinex.
The US seized about $US3.6 billion in bitcoin stolen during a 2016 hack of the Bitfinex currency exchange – the largest financial seizure ever – and arrested two people, the Justice Department said.
“In a futile effort to maintain digital anonymity, the defendants laundered stolen funds through a labyrinth of cryptocurrency transactions.” According to DOJ, the couple used sophisticated techniques, including “using fictitious identities to set up online accounts; utilising computer programs to automate transactions, a laundering technique that allows for many transactions to take place in a short period of time; depositing the stolen funds into accounts at a variety of virtual currency exchanges and darknet markets and then withdrawing the funds.