What to know about the DOJ’s massive bitcoin seizure

Good morning! It's Wednesday February 9th. I'm Duarte Geraldino.

And I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news, and how the world's best journalists are covering them.

The highest ranking Republican in the senate is taking a swing at his own party. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the Republican National Committee. He did this because it censured Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for taking part in the House committee investigating the January 6th insurrection. McConnell's disapproval highlights a growing rift within the party.

The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different news from the majority. That's not the job of the RNC.

Cheney and Kinzinger are the only Republicans on the committee investigating the violent attack at the capitol. The RNC described the insurrection as "legitimate political discourse." McConnell seemed to take issue with that choice of words.

Well, let me give you my view of what happened January the 6th. And we all were here, we saw what happened. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately-certified election from one administration to the next. That's what it was.

McConnell's criticism of the RNC underscores what "USA Today" describes as a widening breach among Republicans. McConnell and some other Republicans are saying this is going to needlessly divide the party ahead of the Midterm elections.

Fears about Republicans disagreeing over their allegiance to Trump are particularly strong in closely-contested states like Ohio, Florida and North Carolina. Senator John Cornyn of Texas sided with McConnell. He said "I don't think you can kick out of the party everybody you disagree with or it's going to be a minority party."

It's the Justice Department's biggest seizure of money ever. Yesterday, officials at the DOJ announced they seized more than $3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin and arrested a husband and wife in New York who were allegedly trying to launder it.

In case you're wondering, that's around 120,000 Bitcoin, and it was stolen in 2016 by a hacker who breached the virtual currency exchange Bitfinex. At the time of the hack, the stolen coins were worth only about $70 million, but it's now worth billions of dollars. Federal officials say they were able to recover most of it.

The husband and wife named in this suit are Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan. They’re both in their 30s. The DOJ didn't say much about the pair, but journalists and the internet quickly got on the case. "BuzzFeed News" reports how the pair had various side hustles and alternate personas, some more bizarre than others.

Morgan wrote a few articles for "Forbes," and her bio on the website says she writes about combating fraud and cybercrime and enjoys designing streetwear and rapping. Yes, you heard that right, rapping. She performs under the name Razzlekhan. NBC News reporter Kevin Collier found some of her music videos, including this one where she raps about being many things: a CEO, an economist, and a "crocodile of Wall Street."

On to her husband, Lichtenstein. According to court documents, he went by the alias "Dutch." According to "BuzzFeed," Lichtenstein is credited with founding an advertising research start-up that raised more than $1.5 million from venture capitalists like Mark Cuban. Together, Lichtenstein and Morgan co-founded a venture capital fund and a cryptocurrency wallet.

The two have been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States, which carry maximum prison sentences of 20 years and five years respectively. They were not charged with actually hacking the currency exchange.

As "The Washington Post" reports, the DOJ's recently started going after cryptocurrency crimes more aggressively. This is their most high-profile prosecution of its kind to date.

"The Wall Street Journal" spoke with financial crime experts who say this case and others like it show that law enforcement is getting increasingly savvy when it comes to monitoring crimes in the cryptocurrency markets. After all, the blockchain leaves a digital trail.

It started as a demonstration by Canadian truckers who were angry about cross-border vaccine requirements, but now it's stretched into a second week of protests that's putting Ottawa at the epicenter of the far-right movement against vaccine mandates.

In protest, hundreds of truckers parked in the streets of the capital. As of yesterday, the convoy moved beyond Ottawa and onto the Ambassador Bridge. They're blocking a key trade route between the U.S. and Canada.

Beautiful!

Andy Blatchford is a reporter with "Politico" based in Ottawa.

The city of Ottawa is like any government town. In normal times, it's very quiet, but since the convoy rolled into town, it's been a whole different story. Blatchford told us local politicians are saying the situation is out of control.

Trucks clogging all the streets downtown around Parliament Hill and then stretching into neighborhoods, you know, big-rig trucks, lots of protestors as well, lots of banners being waved, people shouting, loud music, people chanting slogans. A city politician told NPR some of those banners had antisemitic messages and hate symbols. The mayor of Ottawa declared a state of emergency and asked federal authorities for more law enforcement.

The truckers who are protesting say they are staying until all public health mandates are lifted. NPR reports some of them want the whole government to be overturned. They're particularly angry with Prime Minister Trudeau.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has condemned them. He said he wouldn't meet with the organizers of these convoys. He's been a very strong advocate of strong public health measures since the beginning, and of course of vaccinations. He's also the person who put in these vaccine mandates on the truckers. NPR also points out the Canadian Trucking Alliance says the vast majority of the country's trucking industry is vaccinated.

The fact that this convoy is now blocking the Ambassador Bridge has real implications for the United States. This is the busiest border crossing between the U.S. and Canada. Traffic on this bridge makes up about a quarter of $400 billion in annual trade between the two countries.

But beyond trade, "Politico" wants us to consider the political implications here. These demonstrations have galvanized far-right movements worldwide. They've gotten praise from U.S. politicians like former President Trump and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Now similar convoys are reportedly being considered in the U.S. and in Europe.

The concerns about this sort of more far-right elements that are part of this convoy-- You know, authorities and other people have linked some of the organizers to these groups. This push to dissolve the government, to take some control over the government in Canada, has drawn comparisons to January 6th in the United States. It's raised a lot of concerns among authorities here in Canada about what the real intentions are of these are organizers.

He might have been a great writer, but Charles Dickens had terrible penmanship. Even he said it: his was "the devil's handwriting." Random lines, squiggles, I'm not exaggerating when I say it looks like hieroglyphics or something.

Yeah, you gotta click on this article to see the picture and you’re gonna be like "Dickens, come on." But it was so bad that thousands of people around the world responded to a cry for help from a university in the U.K. Researchers were looking for help deciphering Dicken's chicken scratch. They wanted to know what Dickens was trying to say in this mysterious letter that had been kept in an archive for more than a century, and this was all part of a competition called The Dickens Code.

Yeah, "The Guardian" explains what happened here. The tricky thing is that Dickens used a lot of symbols. He used a version of shorthand code and he had this notebook where he even explained some of his signs. For example, he would use the "at" symbol to mean "about," or a version of the letter T to mean "extraordinary."

Altogether, the code crackers were able to piece together about 70% of this letter. And the person who deciphered the most symbols was declared the winner. He's an I.T. worker and code enthusiast in California, and he says he used to get Cs in literature classes so he was pleasantly surprised to find himself contributing to the world's understanding of Charles Dickens.

You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News App. Plus, check out our Olympics coverage. The U.S. scored its first gold medal of the Games today, thanks to snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis. She's got a pretty amazing redemption story, 16 years in the making. You can read more in our Olympics hub throughout the day.

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We'll talk with you again tomorrow.