Married Couple Executes $4.5 Billion Bitcoin Scam, Dubbed Largest Financial Heist
A couple known as the Bitcoin Bonnie and Clyde recently made headlines for pulling off a massive $4.5 billion cryptocurrency heist. Ilya ‘Dutch’ Lichtenstein and Heather ‘Razzlekhan’ Morgan, based in New York, seemed to have a lot going on for them. Lichtenstein co-founded a sales business, while Morgan was a columnist and even contributed to Forbes. However, behind the scenes, they were orchestrating one of the biggest cryptocurrency thefts ever seen.
They stole 120,000 Bitcoin from the Hong Kong-based virtual currency exchange Bitfinex, causing the currency’s value to drop by 20 percent. At the time of their arrest in 2022, the heist was valued at a staggering $4.5 billion. Lichtenstein spent months preparing the hack, using sophisticated tools to carry out over 2,000 unauthorized transactions. Morgan, initially unaware of the hack, later helped her husband devise a plan to disguise the origin of the stolen Bitcoin.
The couple used fake identities and funneled the currency through multiple accounts, breaking transactions into smaller amounts to avoid being caught. Some of the funds were spent on gold, NFTs, Uber rides, and even a PlayStation. In early 2017, small amounts of the stolen Bitcoin started moving to the Dark Web marketplace AlphaBay for laundering.
After AlphaBay was shut down by international law enforcement led by the FBI, the money was rerouted to the Russian marketplace Hydra. Authorities were able to trace the illegally-transacted bitcoins and eventually obtained a search warrant for a cloud storage service used by Lichtenstein. They acquired a spreadsheet of wallet addresses linked to the hack, along with their passwords, leading to the couple’s arrest.
In February 2022, Lichtenstein and Morgan were charged by US federal authorities with conspiring to launder Bitcoin. Lichtenstein pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and carrying out the hack in August 2023. Morgan admitted to money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to defraud the United States. In November 2024, Lichtenstein was sentenced to five years in prison, while Morgan received an 18-month sentence.
Their story will be explored in the upcoming Netflix documentary “Biggest Heist Ever”, set to release on Friday, December 6. It’s a tale of crime, money, true crime, and the world of cryptocurrency that will surely captivate viewers.
