The self-proclaimed 'Crocodile of Wall Street' and her husband have been granted bail set at $3million and $5million respectively after being arrested for allegedly laundering $4.5billion in Bitcoin stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex exchange hack.
Ilya 'Dutch' Lichtenstein, 34, and darkmarket link 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 dark market 2024 web darknet market links conspiracy to defraud the United States.
At an initial court appearance, a magistrate judge ruled Lichtenstein could be released into home detention on a $5 million bond co-signed by his parents; the bond amount for Morgan was set at $3 million but they were to remain in custody until the bail conditions were met.
Prosecutors had argued defendants, who live on Wall Street in lower Manhattan, should be denied bail, calling them flight risks who still potentially have access to vast sums of money.
Federal law enforcement officials said they recovered roughly $3.6 billon in cryptocurrency - the Justice Department's largest ever financial seizure - linked to the hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached nearly six years ago.
Lichtenstein 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'.
WARNING: EXPLICIT LYRICS
Bail for Ilya 'Dutch' Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, 31, was set at $5million and $3million respectively after their arrest on Tuesday for allegedly laundering $4.5billion in Bitcoin stolen in the 2016 Bitfinex exchange hack
Morgan, darknet market markets onion address who raps under the name Razzlekhan, (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, darknet magazine 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, 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 markets 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.