The United States Department of Justice has seized 94,000 bitcoin stolen from crypto exchange Bitfinix in 2016, currently valued at $3.6 billion.

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Two people were arrested in Manhattan yesterday on charges they laundered stolen crypto from the hack. Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, have already made their first appearance in federal court over the charges, the department announced.

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"Today, federal law enforcement demonstrates once again that we can follow money through the blockchain, and that we will not allow cryptocurrency to be a safe haven for money laundering or a zone of lawlessness within our financial system," Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department's Criminal Division said in the press release.

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The DOJ suspected the couple after they found “unauthorized transactions” sent the stolen bitcoin to a digital wallet owned by Lichtenstein. Not long after, special agents discovered the private keys required to access the wallet and recovered over 94,000 BTC.

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Since 2016, the remaining 25,000 BTC had been transferred out of Lichtenstein’s wallet “via a complicated money laundering process.”

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