A married couple has been arrested and charged with laundering billions in Bitcoin stolen during the 2016 Bitfinex hack, as the Justice Department announced its largest financial seizure ever.
Ilya 'Dutch' Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, 31, who raps under the name Razzlekhan, were arrested on Tuesday in Manhattan on federal charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Federal law enforcement officials said they recovered roughly $3.6 billon in cryptocurrency linked to the hack of Bitfinex, darkmarket url a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached nearly six years ago.
Lichtenstein and darknet markets Morgan live on Wall Street in lower Manhattan. He is a citizen of both Russia and the United States and the co-founder of an online marketing firm.
Morgan, a rapper and former Forbes contributor, describes herself as 'an expert in persuasion, social engineering, and game theory' and in one of her songs, darknet market best darknet markets 2024 declared herself the 'Crocodile of Wall Street.'
Ilya 'Dutch' Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, 31, who raps under the name Razzlekhan, were arrested on Tuesday in Manhattan on money laundering charges
Morgan (seen in front of Federal Hall on Wall Street in a music video) declared herself the 'Crocodile of Wall Street' in one of her rap songs
In this courtroom sketch, attorney Sam Enzer, center, sits between Heather Morgan, left, and her husband, Ilya 'Dutch' Lichtenstein, in federal court on Tuesday
'I'm many things, a rapper, an economist, darknet market links a journalist, a writer, a CEO, and a dirty, dirty, dirty dirty h*,' she raps in her 2019 single, Versace Bedouin.
'When she's not reverse-engineering black darknet markets links to think of better ways to combat fraud and cybercrime, she enjoys rapping and designing streetwear fashion,' her reads.
The August 2016 Bitfinex hack itself was one of the largest crypto heists ever recorded - so massive that news of the theft knocked 20 percent off Bitcoin's value at the time.
Lichtenstein and Morgan are thus far not charged directly with perpetrating the hack, but rather with receiving and laundering the stolen funds. The case was filed in a federal court in Washington, D.C.
It was unclear who will be representing the couple in the criminal case and whether they had an attorney to speak on their behalf.
They were due to appear in federal court in Manhattan at 3 p.m. on Tuesday.
The couple is accused of conspiring to launder 119,754 bitcoin that was stolen, after a hacker attacked Bitfinex and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions.