You can already see what the “storey most likely to be made into a competing original film on Apple TV and Hulu” will be in 2022, which is only February. On Tuesday, authorities arrested a husband and wife who were accused of trying to hide 119,754 stolen bitcoin worth $4.5 billion. That’s her above.
Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan were arrested, and the Justice Department said that it had seized more than 94,000 bitcoin worth $3.6 billion. This was the largest financial seizure in the agency’s history.
The bitcoin in question is linked to a 2016 hack of the Bitfinex crypto exchange, in which hackers exploited a security flaw and made more than 2,000 unauthorised transactions. They allegedly sent stolen crypto to a wallet controlled by Lichtenstein. At the time of the hack, the stolen cryptocurrency was worth $71 million, which shows how much the cryptocurrency has risen in value.
It took Lichtenstein and Morgan five years to try to get rid of the bitcoin they stole by depositing it into currency exchanges and darknet markets with fictitious identities, withdrawing some of the money from Bitcoin ATMs, and spending some on NFTs, gold, and Walmart gift cards with the money. In the DOJ’s report, they say that some of the money was put into their own bank account.
But this isn’t just a storey about how to hide money. This is a storey about young people stealing money.
Crime is just the side job.
You don’t see many married couples accused of laundering stolen crypto. Lichtenstein, 34, and Morgan, 31, aren’t that kind of couple. Both are very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very online. Lichtenstein’s name is on a Twitter account that talks a lot about Web3 and crypto.
Born in the late 1980s, Morgan has a YouTube channel called “Razzlekhan.” There, she talks about herself as “the Crocodile of Wall Street,” and she says that she is the worst rapper of all time. She also used to write for Forbes. In June 2020, she wrote an article about how businesses can protect themselves from cybercriminals.
The money laundering charges could lead to up to 20 years in prison for the two of them.