- Heather Morgan, aka Razzlekhan, was sentenced Monday for her role in the 2016 Bitfinex hack.
- Her husband, the mastermind of the hack, was sentenced last week to five years in prison.
- The case involves what may be the most valuable hack of all time.
Heather Morgan, the aspiring rapper who helped her husband steal billions of dollars in Bitcoin from crypto exchange Bitfinex in 2016, will serve an 18-month prison sentence, according to media reports.
Better known by the pseudonym Razzlekhan, Morgan was sentenced Monday in a federal courthouse in Washington.
It wasn’t the outcome she was hoping for: Morgan had asked that she be sentenced to the time she had already served, according to court documents.
But it was much less than her husband, Ilya Lichtenstein. At a hearing last week, Lichtenstein was sentenced to five years in prison, according to media reports.
Hacking Tools
Lichtenstein used “advanced hacking tools and techniques” to fraudulently authorize the transfer of approximately 120,000 Bitcoins from Bitfinex to a wallet he controlled, according to prosecutors.
Lichtenstein then attempted to erase his digital footprints and eventually hired Morgan to launder the stolen tokens.
This Bitcoin would be worth $10.9 billion at Monday’s prices.
Authorities arrested the married couple and seized approximately 95,000 Bitcoins worth $3.6 billion in 2022.
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The story immediately went viral thanks to Morgan’s alter ego Razzlekhan, a self-described “unapologetically surreal rapper” who was all over YouTube.
Morgan didn’t know about the hack until 2020, according to prosecutors.
Initial consent
“She was, in some way, thrust into the middle of a serious criminal scheme without her initial consent,” prosecutors said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.
“(She) undoubtedly felt obliged to support him out of a sense of loyalty to her husband and a desire to preserve their life together.”
The couple used fictitious identities, accounts on darknet markets and exchanges, and chain hopping to anonymize and hide the stolen Bitcoin, prosecutors said.
The couple even converted Bitcoin into real gold. But their machinations weren’t enough to stop FBI cyber detectives from tracing the stolen crypto back to the New York couple.
“I am extremely sorry and deeply regret the choices I made,” Morgan said during Monday’s sentencing hearing, CoinDesk reported.
“I used my time and energy to do harm rather than good, and I am ashamed of it.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been gone for a while. For the past three years, I have been fighting a federal case.
— Heather Morgan
On Monday evening, Morgan posted to X for the first time in two years.
“I’m sorry I’ve been gone for a while. For the last three years, I was fighting a federal case and I like to listen to my lawyers,” she said in a brief video.
“Well, guess what. It’s over and I’m very excited to soon be able to tell my story, share my thoughts and tell you more about the creative and other projects I’ve been working on. Dazzle, dazzle.
The Bitfinex heist inspired Amazon MGM Studios to begin development on a film about Lichtenstein and Morgan.
Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi correspondent based in New York. Do you have any advice? Contact him at aleks@dlnews.com.
