Crypto theft was “the worst thing I had ever done.”

On Thursday, Ilya Lichtenstein, who was at the center of a massive 2016 crypto heist worth billions at the time, wrote online that he is now out of prison and has changed his ways.

“Ten years ago, I decided that I would hack the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world,” Lichtenstein wrote on LinkedIn, detailing a time when his startup was barely making money and he decided to steal some instead.

“This was a terrible idea. It was the worst thing I had ever done,” he added. “It upended my life, the lives of people close to me, and affected thousands of users of the exchange. I know I disappointed a lot of people who believed in me and grossly misused my talents.”

In 2023, Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan, pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy in a wild 2016 scheme to steal 120,000 bitcoins (worth over $10 billion today) from Bitfinex, a cryptocurrency exchange. The pair were arrested at their Manhattan home in 2022.

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