Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein, a husband and wife duo involved in cyber-crime, have pleaded guilty to attempting to launder $4.5 billion (£3.5 billion) worth of Bitcoin, which

Lichtenstein had stolen in a hack back in 2016. The couple was arrested in New York last year when police traced the source of their substantial wealth back to the crypto heist.

While evading law enforcement, Heather Morgan adopted a persona as a rapper and tech entrepreneur. Under the name Razzlekhan, she posted numerous highly-produced rap music videos and songs that often contained expletives. In her lyrics, she portrayed herself as a "bad-ass money maker" and "the crocodile of Wall Street."

As part of their plea deal, Ilya Lichtenstein confessed to being responsible for the hack that led to the stolen Bitcoin. Both Morgan and Lichtenstein pleaded guilty to money laundering, while Morgan also admitted to an additional count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.

Heather Morgan had cultivated a public image of being a successful tech businesswoman, claiming to be an "economist, serial entrepreneur, software investor, and rapper" in articles published in Forbes. However, behind this façade, she and her computer programmer husband were secretly attempting to cash out their ill-gotten fortune acquired from the crypto firm Bitfinex.

The consequences of their criminal actions now loom large, with Ilya Lichtenstein facing a potential maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and Heather Morgan potentially facing 10 years. At the time of their arrest in February 2022, the stash of 119,000 Bitcoins they had accumulated was valued at approximately $4.5 billion, marking it as the largest single financial seizure in the history of the US Department of Justice. At the time of the hack in 2016, the stolen Bitcoins were worth around $71 million. Photo by AntanaCoins, Wikimedia commons.