The husband and a wannabe rapper and social media star, who once identified himself as the Wall Street crocodile, both pleaded guilty to a money laundering scheme involving $4.5 billion in stolen cryptocurrency.
Russian-born Ilya Lichtenstein, who once called herself an angel investor in tech companies, filed a plea Thursday.
His wife, Heather Morgan, also pleaded guilty when the duo admitted they were involved in laundering about 120,000 Bitcoin stolen in the 2016 hack of crypto exchange Bitfinex.
Morgan attempted to develop a social media presence as “Razzlekhan,” a Wall Street rapper who wrote songs about investment strategies. She has called herself a profit magnet with an affinity for risk-taking that was “cunning as an alligator.”
At the hearing, Lichtenstein – in his mid-thirties – admitted to orchestrating the hack, and his wife later learned how he got the cryptocurrency. Lichtenstein now faces up to 20 years in prison, while Morgan faces up to 10 years behind bars.
Ilya Lichtenstein (left) and Heather Morgan (right) entered pleas on Thursday in the federal money laundering conspiracy for the 2016 theft of $4.5 billion in Bitcoin from crypto exchange Bitfinex
Lichtenstein pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, and Morgan pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
The pair were in the same courthouse on Thursday as former President Donald Trump, who is in DC for his third indictment.
The couple struck a deal with the government after the case was postponed several times. The pair were arrested in February 2022 and are facing a combined maximum sentence of 25 years behind bars.
Prosecutors alleged that the pair used fake identities to create online accounts and disguise their transaction trail by depositing and withdrawing the stolen funds from virtual exchanges and darknet markets.
Federal prosecutors say Lichtenstein “used a number of sophisticated hacking tools and techniques to gain access to Bitfinex’s network” and was able to fraudulently authorize more than 2,000 transactions, 120,000 of which were Bitcoin.
The pair used some of the money to buy NFTs, gold and Walmart gift cards.
When Bitfinex was hacked, Bitcoin was trading below $1,000.
In the time since the hack, Bitcoin’s value skyrocketed and the stolen coins were worth a combined $4.5 billion by the time the pair were arrested in early 2022 in what the Justice Department called the “biggest financial seizure ever.”
The government was able to recover $3.6 billion.
Lichtenstein remains in prison awaiting sentencing and Morgan remains under house arrest.
Heather Morgan leaves the E. Barrett Prettyman US Courthouse in Washington, DC, Thursday after entering a plea deal. Donald Trump was in the same courthouse to be arraigned
A sketch of the couple sitting on either side of their lawyer in federal court in 2022, shortly after their arrest
Before her life of crime caught up with her, Morgan was a wannabe rapper named Razzlekhan who rapped that she was the “crocodile of Wall Street.”
Morgan remains under house arrest until sentencing, while her Russian-born husband remains in prison. Prior to their arrests, the two were known for their strange and puzzling behavior, including walking their cat on a leash through the streets of Manhattan.
Before the arrest, Morgan posted a series of chilling videos to YouTube, in which she paraded through the financial district rapping that she was “many things, a rapper, an economist, a journalist, a writer, a CEO and a dirty, dirty, dirty dirty h*.’
Her YouTube page was made private after her arrest.
When she was arrested on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, a website suggested that “laundering billions in Bitcoin may not even be the worst crime of her life,” referring to the videos.
Morgan was once a Forbes contributor, where her biography states, “When she’s not reverse engineering black markets to come up with better ways to fight fraud and cybercrime, she loves to rap and design streetwear fashions. ‘
Her Twitter bio reads, “I make the weird kids feel at home. Tech entrepreneur, surrealist artist, rapper, prolific writer and fashion designer with synesthesia.’
Since the arrest of the eccentric couple, details of their lives have become public, including their habit of walking their Bengal cat, Clarissa, around Manhattan on a leash.