WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th August, 2023) Dual US-Russian citizen Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan pleaded guilty to charges involving a $4.5 billion cryptocurrency scheme, the US Justice Department said on Thursday.
Last month, according to court documents, Lichtenstein and Morgan reached a plea deal with prosecutors to settle charges, but details of that deal were not publicly disclosed and attorneys involved in the case declined to provide comment to Sputnik about it.
"A married couple from New York City pleaded guilty today to money laundering conspiracies arising from the hack and theft of approximately 120,000 bitcoin from Bitfinex, a global cryptocurrency exchange," the Justice Department said in a press release.
The release said Lichtenstein pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Morgan pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, each of which carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, the release added.
The Justice Department did not provide a sentencing date for Lichtenstein and Morgan.
Lichtenstein was born in Russia and emigrated with his family to the United States as a child to avoid religious persecution. Russian Consul General Sergey Ovsyannikov told Sputnik that Lichtenstein has not attempted to contact the Russian Consulate for assistance.
