In summary
- The IRS MacBook Pro that tracked $3.6 billion in stolen Bitcoin was included in the Smithsonian’s National Numismatic Collection.
- Heather Morgan was sentenced to 18 months in prison for helping to launder BTC stolen from the 2016 Bitfinex hack.
- The IRS debunked the myth of Bitcoin anonymity by tracking stolen funds and capturing the perpetrators.
The 2019 MacBook Pro used by the IRS to track and seize $3.6 billion of Bitcoin stolen from the Bitfinex Cryptocurrency exchange is being placed in the Smithsonian’s National Numismatic Collection. At the time, a Department of Justice press release hailed the recovery of the stolen BTC as its “largest financial seizure ever.”
The National Numismatic Collection (NNC) aims to document historical developments related to the monetary system of the United States. Ellen Feingold, curator of the collection, said the laptop captures a “shift” in public knowledge about Bitcoin’s traceability.
As such, the laptop has been installed in the Smithsonian’s “Value of Money” gallery, along with seashells, tea, stones, silver and gold. Feingold readily admits that the MacBook Pro initially looks out of place, at least at first glance.
“To me, contextualized within the diversity of forms of money over the past four millennia, the laptop and the cryptocurrency it represents seem less like a radical departure from the past and more like a continuation of humans defining and redefining value. in relation to the world around them,” the curator wrote in Smithsonian Magazine.
On Monday, Heather Morgan—who is also known by her rap alias “Razzlekhan”—was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison in the US for her role in the Bitfinex hack in 2016. Prosecutors recommended that Morgan deserved a much lighter sentence compared to her husband Ilya Lichtenstein, who stole the 119,000 BTC in 2016 and years later asked Morgan to help him launder it.
Just last week, Lichtenstein was sentenced to serve five years in prison.
In 2016, there were many myths about cryptocurrency and Bitcoin entrenched in the public consciousness. One of them was that Bitcoin was untraceable and completely anonymous—but the IRS proved otherwise by seizing the stolen BTC.
IRS Criminal Investigation Special Agent Chris Janczewski used the aforementioned 2019 MacBook Pro to track the funds through the Blockchain. The agent was able to identify the perpetrators after the funds were transferred to several exchanges. This led to their homes being searched. It was there that investigators found the keys to the wallets that contained most of the stolen funds.
The amount of money stolen, aside, was staggering, but the case attracted widespread public attention due to the personalities of the perpetrators.
Primarily, this was due to Morgan’s surreal career as an internet rapper under the alias Razzlekhan. His songs were full of sensational lyrics like “spirit of a revolutionary, power of a dictator” and “do you really want to fight? I always play the blame game, since I was 15.”
Dubbed the “Bonnie and Clyde of Bitcoin,” several major streaming platforms have announced plans to tell their story in upcoming documentaries. But this is not a key detail for the Smithsonian.
“For me, the real story is how (this) case helps reshape our understanding of cryptocurrency from an anonymous to a pseudo-anonymous form of exchange,” Feingold explained. “Most people can still use cryptocurrencies to make transactions without sharing the details with their families and banks, but criminals cannot rely on cryptocurrencies to hide their crimes and protect themselves from prosecution.”
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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