Ilya Lichtenstein is listed on Crunchbase as the co-founder of the startup MixRank, and on LinkedIn he calls himself a mentor at 500 Startups.
The FBI accuses Russian and US citizen Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan of conspiring with hackers who hacked the Bitfinex crypto exchange in 2016 and stole about $71 million. Now it is $4.5 billion.
According to the agency, the couple transferred 2,000 unauthorized transactions to the Liechtenstein wallet, and then withdrew the money to their accounts.
The FBI received a search warrant and checked the files in the couple’s Bitfinex accounts, in which they found private keys to access the digital wallet – it received the stolen money. Now the US Department of Justice has confiscated more than 94,000 stolen bitcoins worth $3.6 billion from the spouses. Bitfinex said it plans to work with the US authorities to return the money to the owners hackBitfinex.
A court in the United States wanted to release the spouses on bail, then the government demanded that it be set at $100 million. The couple’s lawyers called the amount “ridiculous”, and the court agreed to release Heather Morgan for $3 million and Ilya Lichtenstein for $5 million, Bloomberg reported hackBitfinex.
According to Crunchbase, Ilya Lichtenstein is the co-founder of MixRank, a startup that develops software for marketing companies. Heather Morgan founded SalesFolk , a copywriting service .
On his LinkedIn profile, Lichtenstein describes himself as a mentor at venture capital firm 500 Startups, while Morgan says he writes columns for Forbes and Inc, Techcrunch noted hackBitfinex.