Bitfinex is currently the only claimant for damages from the 2016 hack, when 119,754 BTC were stolen from the platform, according to court documents.
The U.S. government said in a statement that it was not aware of any other parties entitled to compensation. However, authorities will proceed carefully to ensure that no potential victims are overlooked.
After the hack, Bitfinex distributed the losses among its users, reducing their balances by approximately 36%. In exchange, they were credited with issued BFX tokens. Coin holders could sell them on the market, buy them back at a fixed rate of $1, or exchange them for shares in the exchange's parent company, iFinex.
All BFX were repaid within eight months.
The government acknowledged that despite Bitfinex’s efforts to compensate victims, there may still be “thousands of account holders” on the exchange who lost money as a result of the hack. To address the issue, the government proposed creating a website where potential victims can obtain information and file claims.
In 2022, US law enforcement arrested 34-year-old Ilya Lichtenstein and 31-year-old Heather Morgan, who were involved in the hack. They confiscated more than 94,000 BTC, worth $3.6 billion at the time. It later became known that the closure of the AlphaBay darknet market in 2017 helped to reach them.
The pair were charged with conspiring to launder the proceeds of 119,754 BTC stolen from Bitfinex. Lichtenstein and Morgan pleaded guilty on August 3, 2023. Sentencing is scheduled for November 14 and November 15, 2024, respectively.
Let us recall that in February 2022, the court released Morgan on bail of $3 million. Subsequently, she was noticed at several crypto conferences, and the community suspected the hacker of collecting information for the government.