Ilya Lichtenstein says he worked alone on the 2016 Bitfinex hack, in his first public comments since entering prison

Confessed Bitfinex hacker Ilya Lichtenstein wants the world to know neither his wife, Heather Morgan, and father, Eugene Lichtenstein, were not directly tied to the 2016 theft of 120,000 bitcoin, he said in his first public comments since being sentenced. Lichtenstein, who is serving a five-year sentence, reiterated that he acted alone in a five-minute video recorded from his prison posted to X on Thursday. 

“I planned and executed the Bitfinex heist entirely by myself. And I am the one who bears full responsibility for everything that has happened,” Lichtenstein, who pleaded guilty last year to charges related to the crime, said.

“Any allegations that my elderly and not-at-all tech-savvy father had any involvement in any hacking activity ever are completely false and frankly absurd,” Lichtenstein said in the video, where it appears he sometimes is reading from prepared remarks. 

Yevgeniy “Eugene” Lichtenstein, a.k.a. Deuce, was first implicated in the Bitfinex hack in the 2024 documentary “Biggest Heist Ever,” which also accused the Russian emigre of hacking an Illinois bank in 2005. 

Morgan, perhaps better known by her stage name and rapper alias Razzlekhan, reposted Lichtenstein’s video, noting that he pushed back against some of the spurious allegations raised in the “unauthorized” documentary.

Although Lichtenstein notes Morgan pleaded guilty to laundering “a small amount of bitcoin,” he reiterates that she was unaware of the crime, which happened approximately two years after they met in San Francisco. Morgan will serve 18 months in federal prison for one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

“It’s true. I hacked Bitfinex. I stole and laundered thousands of bitcoin. And I am so sorry for everything,” Lichtenstein said. “I offer my sincere apologies to Bitfinex for all the stress I have caused them. For a long time I made one bad selfish decision after another.”

He added that, if anything, Morgan “is just another victim of my bad decisions.” 

“I look back now at the person I was then and I hate myself. I hate myself,” Lichtenstein said. “I can’t change the past but I can and will do everything I can to make amends.” 

Lichtenstein noted that for the past three years he has been assisting the government in recovering the stolen assets — worth about $70 million at the time and around $12 billion today. He said the forfeiture and restitution process is “expected to return more than $10 billion by the first quarter of next year.” In February, a restitution hearing will decide whether these assets will be distributed to Bitfinex or its customers.

For his part, Lichtenstein appears to want to parlay his hacking experience into a job in cybersecurity. In a seeming reference to the 2008 Liam Neeson film "Taken," he said he has “a particular set of skills” that can be put to use. “My days of malicious hacking are over, long years in federal prison are a powerful deterent.”

To that end, Lichtenstein has already assisted the government by testifying against the alleged operator of crypto mixer Bitcoin Fog, Roman Sterlingov, who was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 12.5 years. 

The government seizure of the stolen Bitfinex coins — worth approximately $4 billion at the time in February 2022 — remains the largest in U.S. history. Lichtenstein and Morgan’s sentencing dates were delayed while the couple cooperated with authorities. 

"I know the cyber threats that we face and I know how to stop them,” Lichtenstein said.