Netflix is soon to produce a documentary series about the infamous Bitfinex hack — one of the biggest financial crimes of 2016 involving the theft of 119,756 Bitcoins (BTC) — worth $72 million at the time.
The Netflix documentary will focus on a New York-based couple who were involved in laundering nearly 120,000 Bitcoins tied to a crime. Netflix reports that the documentary will be directed by American filmmaker Chris Smith with Nick Bilton serving as executive producer. According to the announcement:
“Netflix has ordered a documentary series about a married couple’s alleged scheme to launder billions of dollars worth of stolen cryptocurrency in the biggest criminal financial crime case in history.”
The plot is based on two main characters — Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan — the NYC couple linked to the 120,000 BTC heist and their involvement in laundering the stolen funds.
BTC prices have soared over 7415% since the Bitfinex hack, according to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView.
As the value of the stolen Bitcoin soared from $71 million at the time of the hack to nearly $5 billion, Netflix notes that the couple tried to liquidate their digital money by creating fake identities and online accounts, then buying physical gold, NFTs, and more, all during a race to track the money’s movement.
The latest movement of the stolen funds can be traced back to Feb 1, 2022, according to Cointelegraph analysis.
⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ ⚠ 10,000 #BTC (383,540,711 USD) of stolen funds transferred from Bitfinex Hack 2016 to unknown wallethttps://t.co/kvvWQpZoq8
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) February 1, 2022
Cointelegraph recently interviewed an anonymous cyber vigilante who tracked down a group of decentralized finance (DeFi) scammers responsible for the $25 million StableMagnet rug pull and ultimately returned the stolen funds.
Check out the entire episode to learn how the vigilante coordinated with the Manchester Police to secure a single USB device containing roughly $9 million.