Monaco Financial News

The new national cryptocurrency enforcement team will be led by a prosecutor in charge of the case against Russian hackers, the U.S. Department of Justice said, also adding that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) will launch a unit for blockchain analysis and virtual asset seizure.

U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco has announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation will be increasing efforts to address enforcement in the digital asset space with the formation of a new team.

The FBI arrested a husband and wife on Tuesday morning, alleging they conspired to launder cryptocurrency stolen from the 2016 hack of virtual currency exchange Bitfinex, and said law enforcement has already seized over $3.6 billion (€3.1 billion) in cryptocurrency tied to the hack.

The hack saw more than 2000 unauthorised transactions which sent the stolen bitcoin to a digital wallet controlled by Lichtenstein, say authorities. According to the Department of Justice, over the last five years, about 25,000 of the bitcoin were move from the wallet via a "complicated money laundering process" that ended with some of the funds being deposited into financial accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan.Deputy Attorney General Lisa O Monaco says: “Today’s arrests, and the department’s largest financial seizure ever, show that cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals.“In a futile effort to maintain digital anonymity, the defendants laundered stolen funds through a labyrinth of cryptocurrency transactions.

Authorities in the United States have made arrests and announced the seizure of $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency more than five years after hackers stole 119,756 Bitcoin from the Bitfinex exchange.