Inside Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein’s Confounding Bitcoin Case
“The couple would by no means flee from the nation on the danger of shedding entry to their capability to have kids,” the lawyer wrote.
On the listening to, a prosecutor, Margaret Lynaugh, mentioned in opposing bail for Mr. Lichtenstein, a twin citizen of the US and Russia, that he had an lively Russian passport and the means and intent to flee.
The decide ordered that the couple be freed on multi-million-dollar bonds, however on the authorities’s request, a federal decide in Washington blocked their launch and scheduled the listening to on Monday.
In courtroom papers, the federal government has referred to as Mr. Lichtenstein and Ms. Morgan “extremely subtle criminals.” Prosecutors mentioned they believed the couple had vital extra belongings, together with a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars} in digital foreign money stolen from the Bitfinex alternate that had not been recovered, in addition to entry to quite a few fraudulent identities purchased on the so-called darknet, a hidden portion of the web used for illicit transactions.
The federal government says the couple had additionally established monetary accounts in Russia and Ukraine, and appeared to have been organising a contingency plan for a life in a kind of international locations earlier than the pandemic.
As proof of what they depicted as a sophisticated money-laundering scheme, prosecutors say in a courtroom submitting that that they had traced stolen cryptocurrency to greater than a dozen accounts held within the true names of the couple or their companies.
The federal government says in courtroom submitting that when brokers executed a search warrant on the couple’s Decrease Manhattan house on Jan. 5, they recovered greater than 50 digital gadgets, together with a bag labeled “burner cellphone,” and greater than $ 40,000 in money. Lots of the gadgets have been partially or totally encrypted or in any other case password protected, the courtroom submitting says.