Recently, American police arrested a couple who were laundering bitcoins stolen from the Bitfinex exchange in 2016. Netflix plans to produce a documentary series on the case.
In 2016, hackers managed to steal 119,754 BTC from the Bitfinex exchange. At the time of the hack, they were worth about $71 million, but at the current rate, this is more than $5 billion. Earlier this month, US law enforcement arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan, who were trying to launder some of the stolen bitcoins.
More than 94,000 BTC worth $3.6 billion were seized from them, the largest asset seizure in the history of the US Department of Justice. Now the criminals are in custody, but the couple’s lawyers are trying to get approval for their release on bail. Liechtenstein’s bail is $5 million and his wife’s is $3 million.
Chris Smith of FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and Tiger King will direct and executive produce the new series, according to a statement on the Netflix website.
“As the value of the stolen bitcoins rose from $71 million at the time of the hack to $5 billion, the couple tried to transfer the funds into fiat currencies by creating fake identities and accounts. They bought gold, collectible tokens, and a host of other assets. And all this time, investigators tracked the movement of bitcoins in the blockchain,” the company said in a statement.
The interest of Hollywood producers in stories from the world of technology, especially about failures and frauds, is growing. So, in September last year, Netflix announced that it would release a film about the founder of the QuadrigaCX exchange, Gerald Cotten, whose death led to the loss of access to crypto assets by users of the site for $ 250 million.
Source: Bits
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