U.S. law enforcement agencies have recovered stolen bitcoin from a hack that occurred in 2016, giving back $110,000 worth of crypto to the Bitfinex exchange, according to a post made by the company said on Monday. This amount represents only a fraction of the total stolen but is one of the few instances when the police managed to recover any assets.
Bitfinex revealed in a statement that the U.S. government returned 27.7 of the stolen bitcoin in August 2016. The hack led to the loss of nearly 120,000 bitcoin, an amount worth $72 million at the time, making it one of the most prominent hacks in crypto history.
U.S. and European law enforcement agencies worked together to track down the hacker, according to a statement made by Bitfinex General Counsel Stuart Hoegner for Reuters. He did not provide any further details or name regarding the involved agencies.
Chief Financial Officer at Bitfinex, Giancarlo Devasini, made the following statement:
“Over two years following the hack of the Bitfinex platform, today we see the results of a clear and robust response strategy and the efforts of the U.S. government. It gives us great pleasure to be able to reimburse our traders that were loyal to us and believed in us at a very difficult time. We would like to thank U.S. federal law enforcement agencies for their ongoing efforts to investigate the security breach and their commitment to seizing and returning stolen assets.
We will continue to assist law enforcement with their inquiries, and also once again extend an open invitation to the hackers, or anyone harbouring information pertaining to the breach, to make contact in whichever medium they feel most secure with, to finally resolve the situation in a mutually beneficial manner.”
Bitfinex generalized all account losses by crediting BFX tokens to customers, giving one BFX for each dollar lost. Bitfinex stuck to its word and repaid all the losses.