A New York technology entrepreneur who admitted last year to laundering money taken from Bitfinex, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, with his wife’s assistance was given a five-year prison sentence on Thursday.
TakeAway Points:
- A New York technology entrepreneur was sentenced to five years in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty last year to laundering funds stolen from Bitfinex, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, with the help of his wife.
- The bitcoin was worth $71 million at the time of the theft but had appreciated to more than $4.5 billion by the time of their arrests.
- ByteDance-owned TikTok on Thursday announced the global availability of its generative AI video creation platform, Symphony Creative Studios, to all advertisers, as the short-video app looks to boost its ad business.
- Ant Group reported a 192.9% rise in net profit to 7.59 billion yuan ($1.05 billion).
Lichtenstein sentenced to five years in prison
Ilya Lichtenstein, 35, hacked into Bitfinex’s network in 2016, using advanced hacking tools and techniques, and stole about 120,000 bitcoin, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.
He and his wife Heather Morgan, who used the hip-hop alias “Razzklekhan” to promote her music, were arrested in February 2022.
The bitcoin was worth $71 million at the time of the theft but had appreciated to more than $4.5 billion by the time of their arrests.
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said at the time that the $3.6 billion in assets that prosecutors recovered from the couple was the biggest financial seizure in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice.
Morgan had also pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. Morgan is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 18.
In addition to his term of imprisonment, Lichtenstein was ordered to serve three years of supervised release, the U.S. Justice Department said.
TikTok launches AI-powered video platform
ByteDance-owned TikTok on Thursday announced the global availability of its generative AI video creation platform, Symphony Creative Studios, to all advertisers, as the short-video app looks to boost its ad business.
Earlier this year at the TikTok World Product Summit, the social media platform unveiled a new creative content suite called ‘Symphony’ with an aim to help businesses, creators, and agencies customize high-quality and engaging content tailored to their brands.
The suite includes Symphony Creative Studios, Symphony Assistant, Symphony Digital Avatars, and TikToK ads manager.
Symphony Creative Studios, which also includes a virtual assistant, helps users automate tasks to create content on the platform.
It offers features such as turning text inputs into videos and generating previews that can be edited to finalize the content, remixing, digital avatar creation, translation and more on TikTok, the company said.
TikTok is the latest tech company to incorporate AI-generated features in its ad business as it looks to attract more brands and marketers.
Ant Group’s quarterly profit nearly triples
China’s Ant Group reported a 192.9% rise in net profit to 7.59 billion yuan ($1.05 billion) in the three months to March 31, according to Reuters calculations based on Alibaba Group Holdings’ earnings released on Friday.
The e-commerce giant reports profit from Ant one quarter in arrears.
The near tripling of Ant Group’s profit from a year earlier was largely due to a 7.07 billion yuan fine levied on the group a year earlier by the Chinese government for violating laws concerning consumer protection and corporate governance, ending a years-long regulatory overhaul of the fintech company.
Both groups were co-founded by Chinese billionaire Jack Ma and Alibaba holds a 33% stake in Ant.
