Morgan Lichtenstein- Exposed to the act of Money Laundering.
Morgan Lichtenstein, together with her husband Ilya Lichtenstein, “was an amateur rap artist, and even her rap lyrics show her technical proclivities, including at one point rapping, ‘Spear phish your password / All your funds transferred,’ referring to the hacking technique of spear phishing to obtain a user’s account password, and then transferring all of the user’s funds out of the account.”
About Morgan Lichtenstein?
Lichtenstein aged 34 and a partner of Morgan and one of the partners in Morgan Lichtenstein and also an American of Russian heritage who pretended to be Dutch, was delivering online computer and banking advice. Morgan Lichtenstein also has a YouTube channel where they performed as a magician and mentalist. Morgan aged 31-year-old Californian and one of the partners in Morgan Lichtenstein also known as “Razzlekhan” to her fans, regularly updated her own YouTube channel, where she appeared rapping through the streets of New York while dressed as a pimp or Little Red Riding Hood.
Morgan Lichtenstein were quite active on the internet. They were egotistical and frivolous, constantly talking about an ever-expanding lavish lifestyle with no obvious source of income. Their most popular Instagram profile was one dedicated to their Bengal cat. Despite this, Morgan Lichtenstein went unnoticed because persons with anything to hide are not supposed to be showy.
The highly specific type of criminal they were dealing with perplexed federal authorities. As Vanity Fair’s Nick Bilton argues, “Most massive cryptocurrency thefts go unpunished, because they are not committed by teenage hackers who spend hours in their parent’s garage, but by criminal syndicates sponsored by regimes like North Korea or Iran.” The proceeds of Morgan Lichtenstein’s wrongdoing are spent on “buying illegal weapons on the dark web or financing terrorist groups such as the Islamic State.”
Through sophisticated artificial intelligence systems, computer crime units can frequently track dirty money. But the criminals are almost always safe, in places that will never agree to extradite them. The unusual aspect of this case is that the suspects in one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in history were two young entrepreneurs living in the heart of New York City, laundering money by the handful with the same laptops used to defraud Bitfinex.
The New York Post’s Thomas Barrabi described Morgan Lichtenstein as “a couple of eccentric thirtysomethings with Peter Pan syndrome and criminal genius.” They were either overly clever or “turned out to be rather dumb.”
Morgan Lichtenstein considered the potential of vanishment from the map. Morgan Lichtenstein had phony passports and appeared to be thinking about staying in Russia or Ukraine, laundering money there, and never returning to the United States. Given the amount of ill-gotten gains they possessed, it would have been a prudent move. However, Morgan Lichtenstein changed their minds sometime in 2021. Morgan Lichtenstein decided to not only stay but also to marry in a spectacular ceremony. Morgan Lichtenstein married in Culver City, California, with hundreds of guests and groomsmen costumed as bananas.
Morgan Lichtenstein flaunted their opulent lifestyle on social media until the FBI showed up at their home.
Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, a rapper and a YouTuber, became the world’s wealthiest thieves, showcasing their wild lifestyles on social media while the FBI zeroed in on them.
Almost everything about this pair of digital buccaneers is alien. Vanity Fair recently published a detailed account of their exploits, demonstrating that the emergence of cryptocurrency has given rise to a new breed of white-collar criminal.
The Crime of the Century
Morgan Lichtenstein received a large sum of money that did not belong to them in August 2016. It’s difficult to say how much because the loot was in cryptocurrency, the value of which in hard currency has varied drastically over the last half-decade. However, given that the loot totaled 119,754 bitcoins, it could have been worth up to $70 million at one point.
These bitcoins were taken following a cyberattack on the online financial website Bitfinex. The four-hour concerted attack saw the hackers seize half of the available funds. It is unclear who committed the crime, however, the majority of the stolen cryptocurrency was transferred to a digital wallet controlled by Morgan Lichtenstein.
For years, the digital currency remained stationary as its price fluctuated wildly. It finally began to soar in 2021. Morgan Lichtenstein carried out a series of illegal operations in order to launder the monies and move them to accounts owned by Morgan Lichtenstein. 25,000 bitcoins were processed via a complicated automated money-laundering procedure, allowing them to be cleaned and spent out of sight of law authorities.
What do you know about Money Laundering?
Criminals are largely driven by the potential financial gain from unlawful activity, yet they have difficulty using this money covertly. Their method of making illicit riches appear legal is money laundering. It’s a significant instrument for many illicit operations, including cocaine trafficking and terrorism, assisting criminals in growing and upholding a façade of legitimacy.
Unchecked, it can undermine confidence in financial institutions and finance other illegal activities, such as violence and terrorism. Essentially, money laundering gives criminals a way to conceal their illicit profits, which poses a severe threat to both the banking system as well as society at large.
But the trail was never truly abandoned. As soon as the stolen bitcoins were discovered, the FBI’s cybercrime team got into action. A group of federal officers requested access to the roof of 75 Wall Street in Manhattan, an enormous 42-story building, in the summer of 2021.
Morgan Lichtenstein introduced themselves to the building’s doorman and informed him that they were investigating a probable instance of child pornography and that Morgan Lichtenstein needed to monitor all flats.
The doorman inquired if they were certain they were at the correct address: Number 95 on the same street was a gangster and cocaine trafficker hangout; the body of an escort had been discovered there just a few weeks before. 75 Wall Street, on the other hand, was a respectable structure with flats and lofts starting at $7 million. But the agents were certain. Morgan Lichtenstein
kept returning to the building under the guise of looking for child pornography until the end of 2021.
Morgan Lichtenstein vs. the FBI
Back in New York, Morgan Lichtenstein were in for a rude awakening. The FBI already had many pieces of evidence against Morgan Lichtenstein and broke into their flat with a search warrant in January 2022. A total of $40,000 in cash and 50 electronic gadgets were confiscated.
In the weeks following the hunt, Morgan Lichtenstein went about their daily lives, more visible than ever on social media. Morgan Lichtenstein didn’t seem concerned about the federal inquiry. Despite the fact that Morgan Lichtenstein still had Morgan Lichtenstein’s passports, Morgan Lichtenstein did not seek to depart. Either Morgan Lichtenstein were unaware of the situation, or Morgan Lichtenstein had given up hope and chose to enjoy their last days of freedom.
Morgan Lichtenstein were detained for money laundering in February of this year. Morgan Lichtenstein have been accused as an accomplice in the absence of a smoking gun linking them beyond a reasonable doubt to the 2016 Bitfinex theft.
Morgan has been released on bond. She’s reconnected with her pet, but she avoids social media and no longer raps. Lichtenstein has been imprisoned for several months. Both Morgan Lichtenstein are talking with the government in the hopes of reducing their sentences in exchange for disclosing the details of one of the most lucrative Bitcoin thefts in history.
Morgan Lichtenstein is discussing a plea bargain for the Bitcoin heist.
According to court records released this week, the bizarre crypto couple named Morgan Lichtenstein charged with attempting to launder billions of dollars in hacked bitcoin have begun talks with federal prosecutors about a possible plea offer.
The prosecution revealed the negotiations for the first time in a filing on Monday. According to federal officials, both legal teams agreed to postpone a status hearing scheduled for later this week “to facilitate the discovery process and plea discussions between the parties.” The hearing has been rescheduled for May 4.
Morgan Lichtenstein both were arrested in February at their Manhattan apartment. Federal authorities have charged Morgan Lichtenstein with attempting to launder 119,754 bitcoin, or $4.5 billion, that they allegedly stole after a hacker got into the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in 2016.
According to MarketWatch, prosecutors stated in a court filing later in February that they would seek a “resolution” rather than going to trial. Morgan Lichtenstein faces up to 25 years in federal prison on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Morgan Lichtenstein is released on $3 million bail prior to the end of negotiations. Lichtenstein has been kept in federal detention since his arrest since no bail was set.
According to Marketwatch, the attorneys for Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein did not reply to requests for comment.
According to court documents, federal agents stated that the defendants’ actions were “pulled from the pages of a spy novel” and indicated a high danger of escape. Morgan Lichtenstein originally requested that both defendants be imprisoned until their trials. Lichtenstein and Morgan Lichtenstein allegedly had “access to numerous fraudulent identities and documents purchased on the darknet, and the ability to easily acquire more.”
According to the federal administration, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Morgan Lichtenstein “had been preparing for a life in Ukraine and/or Russia.”
During the apartment raid that resulted in the pair’s arrest, law enforcement agents discovered many phones and SIM cards, as well as a bag labeled “Burner Phone.” Investigators uncovered “two hollowed-out books” as well as more than $40,000 in cash in Lichtenstein’s office. They also discovered “what appears to be a substantial amount of foreign currency” and discovered Lichtenstein acquired “over 70 one-ounce gold coins” using digital currency, but they were not discovered in his residence.
Ilya Lichtenstein and Morgan Lichtenstein have become well-known for their flamboyant internet identities since their imprisonment. Rapper “Razzlekhan” Morgan Lichtenstein previously wrote a Forbes blog cautioning readers about con artists during the pandemic.
Crypto’s Most Famous Couple’s Various Lives
Morgan Lichtenstein, one of many millennials in the middle of their careers, was a multihyphenate who worked as a CEO, investor, marketing, entrepreneur, and “persuasion expert.” The under-30 creator of a marketing start-up talked in front of a small audience in July 2019 at the NYC Salon talk series after meeting one of its founders on an international first-class trip. She was there to promote her style of “social engineering,” a term used in the cybersecurity business to describe duping customers into providing personal information that can be used to steal identities or access accounts. Morgan Lichtenstein was talking about something more personal: the ability to persuade others in real life to give you what you desire.
Morgan Lichtenstein had been doing that since 2018 when she relocated to New York with Ilya Lichtenstein, a different tech founder also known by the alias “Dutch.” After moving in, she joined the ranks of influencers and ‘creatives,’ producing constantly for social media and blogging for Forbes on cybersecurity and avoiding burnout in the workplace.
Morgan Lichtenstein used her position with Forbes to hang out with musicians like Cavier Coleman in the city, adding a few additional titles to her profile: writer, rapper, and streetwear designer. Coleman remembers how she would appear at events in the same lavish, self-modified costumes she’d wear in her music videos. “We just had fun and she got to be herself around us,” Coleman adds. “We’d make expressions like, Oh my God, she’s crazy,”
Morgan Lichtenstein’s computer background was rarely acknowledged at pop-up shows, and she didn’t appear “so passionate about crypto” that she spoke frequently about the trendy new trend sweeping the art world. She preferred starting to rap on the spur of the moment. When Coleman found out about his friend’s death on Tuesday, he thought to himself, “This is a joke, maybe we’re being punked right now, I don’t know.” At that point, he learned that Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein were participating in one of the largest crypto heists in history.
Federal officials seized Morgan Lichtenstein and Ilya Lichtenstein after authorities claimed to have discovered them sitting on $3.6 billion in stolen bitcoin. Furthermore, they allegedly planned to flee their home nation of Lichtenstein for either Russia or Ukraine. The Feds allegedly raided the couple’s rented Wall Street flat and discovered tens of thousands of dollars in cash, a hollowed-out book for carrying banknotes, and a bag labeled “burner phone.”
Morgan Lichtenstein’s lives started on opposite corners of the world. According to Lichtenstein’s attorney’s testimony in court, he was born in Russia in 1987 and emigrated to the United States as a child with his parents. He grew up in a wealthy Chicago suburb as the son of a mortgage broker, where he displayed the intellectual prowess – mathlete, intellectual Bowl captain – that might be expected of a future software entrepreneur. “You’re a good child. Smart. According to Steven Galanis, a former classmate who started the company, Cameo, it would be analogous to if McLovin from the film Superbad carried off the heist.
In California, he co-founded the sales firm MixRank, which received a $1.5 million investment the same year from Mark Cuban and other investors. Cuban stated he was unable to recollect Lichtenstein.
Morgan Lichtenstein grew up in Tehama, a 400-person community in Northern California, where “my dad trained me on how to hunt with a spear ‘in case a wild bore [sic] charged me’ as a kid,” she later recalled on Instagram. Morgan Lichtenstein was born near the Oregon-Idaho state line. She pursued graduate economics studies at the American University in Cairo after getting her bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Davis. She later said that was where she honed her skills in “penetrating black markets and shadow economies, but some of it was also just around corruption or other things like that.”
According to corporate filings, she leveraged her skills to create SalesFolk, a marketing company focused on cold pitches, in 2014 while living in San Francisco.
According to a former coworker who represented himself as an adviser to her company on LinkedIn in 2014, she met Lichtenstein about this time. However, it’s unclear when the two’s relationship became serious; a former friend described them as “on-again, off-again.” The fact that Lichtenstein seems uneasy with Morgan Lichtenstein’s social media-centric lifestyle could have played a role in this. If you want to hear what I have to say, please record my opening statement. He said in a TikTok video she posted late last year, “I’m not a tiny windup, dancing monkey who’s going to repeat the same thing a second time.
In any event, Lichtenstein proposed using a “weird, creative, multichannel marketing campaign” in November 2021, which included hanging posters of his girlfriend across Manhattan. According to their attorney, who testified in court last week, they were also made aware of the FBI investigation at the same time. During “The Final Countdown” at their Culver City wedding, her friends carried her down the aisle. During the reception, she sang a song called “Turkish Martha Stewart.”
Wrap UP
Morgan Lichtenstein rarely commits criminal acts together. Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan Lichtenstein and Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, on the other hand, are not your ordinary pair. Their shenanigans on social media hid an alleged conspiracy to depart with billions of dollars in stolen cryptocurrencies. Words cannot characterize the infamous crypto pair accused of laundering $4.5 billion. While he is in jail, she has put her raunchy rap videos on hold, but Hollywood is calling. As a result, Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan Lichtenstein and Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein are ranked jointly on CoinDesk’s list of the Most Influential People in 2022.
