Ilya Lichtenstein has gone from excessive-profile defendant to authorities study about, testifying against a mixing service that he archaic to veil laundered resources from the Bitfinex hack.
He told a jury that Bitcoin Fog – a darknet accepted – wasn’t as perfect as among the replacement mixers he archaic.
Ilya Lichtenstein, one in every of the crypto substitute’s most excessive-stakes criminals, is now serving to federal prosecutors of their case against Bitcoin Fog, one in every of the mixing services he talked about he’d archaic to veil resources.
Lichtenstein – known for the multi-billion Bitfinex hack of bitcoins payment $3.6 billion when he pleaded responsible to money laundering final 300 and sixty five days – regarded this week in a Washington, D.C., trial of the accused operator of the mixing service associated to darkweb illegal activity, per a dispute from Bloomberg News.
Lichtenstein, who had been charged and pleaded responsible alongside his wife, Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan, told the jury that he archaic diverse mixers together with Bitcoin Fog to “obfuscate” the funds from the Bitfinex hack, however it wasn’t his vital plan of laundering, per Bloomberg. He talked about he moved on from that particular person mixer as soon as he stumbled on other services “suited his applications higher.”
The U.S. Division of Justice’s seizure of the billions in crypto in the Bitfinex case changed into as soon as unprecedented.
Within the Bitcoin Fog case, U.S. authorities had arrested and charged Roman Sterlingov, a dual Russian-Swedish nationwide, with money laundering in his operation of the mixing service in 2021. He is now on trial if that’s the case.
