Bitfinex hacker Ilya Lichtenstein thanks Trump for early release under First Step Act

Ilya Lichtenstein, who was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024 for hacking crypto exchange Bitfinex and stealing billions of dollars in Bitcoin (BTC), was released early thanks to Donald Trump’s First Step Act.

Lichtenstein got released after serving just over one year in prison following his guilty plea to a money laundering conspiracy arising from the hack and theft of approximately 120,000 bitcoin from a global cryptocurrency exchange, Bitfinex. The 119,754 stolen BTC were worth $72 million at the time of the theft but are valued at more than $10 billion today.

“Thanks to President Trump’s First Step Act, I have been released from prison early. I remain committed to making a positive impact in cybersecurity as soon as I can,” Lichtenstein said in a post on X. “To the supporters, thank you for everything. To the haters, I look forward to proving you wrong.”

His wife, Heather Morgan, who also pleaded guilty to helping launder the stolen funds, celebrated Lichtenstein’s release on X: “The best New Years present I could get was finally having my husband home after 4 years of being apart.”

Morgan also received a prison sentence, although a much lighter one – 18 months. She was released early in October, and gave “a shoutout to Papa Trump for making [her] 18-month sentence shorter” in a video she posted from her bathtub on X. A White House official told CoinDesk that it had nothing to do with a commutation of her sentence.

Under the First Step Act, a federal criminal justice reform that Trump signed in 2018 during his first term, inmates get more options for early transfer to home confinement or supervised release through earned time credits.

According to CNBC, a Trump administration official said that Lichtenstein “has served significant time on his sentence and is currently on home confinement consistent with statute and Bureau of Prisons policies.” The sentence reportedly included credit for the already served time in custody following his arrest in 2022.

A search on the website of The Federal Bureau of Prisons shows that Lichtenstein is currently scheduled to be released on February 9th.

Although it’s unclear whether Trump was personally in charge of Lichtenstein’s early prison release, he has been involved in some high-profile cybercrime-related pardons. As such, in October, he pardoned the founder of major crypto exchange Binance, Changpeng Zhao, who had pleaded guilty to violating US money laundering laws.

Similarly, Trump pardoned the founder of the illegal darknet market Silk Road Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life in prison for drug trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering in 2015.