A couple in New York has been arrested and charged with laundering $ 4.5 billion in stolen cryptocurrency funds.

Law enforcement officials have seized $ 3.6 billion of those funds in what U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco called "the department's biggest financial seizure."

Ilya Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Morgan, 31, are accused of trying to launder the money received after they hacked the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange in 2016, Telegrafi reports.

Arrests and money laundering mark a victory for law enforcement in the United States amid a myriad of robberies from cryptocurrency platforms,

reports .

In recent years, hackers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in attacks on virtual currency exchanges, reports Telegrafi.

Lichtenstein and Morgan are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, which can be punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and conspiracy to commit a crime punishable by up to five years in prison.

Meanwhile the number of ransomware and other hacks has increased, where law enforcement agencies have tried to track and aggressively seize the cryptocurrency often used by criminal hackers.