A social-media rapper who dubbed himself the “Crocodile of Wall Avenue” and her husband have struck a plea cope with prosecutors in a case involving the laundering of billions of {dollars} in stolen bitcoin, in accordance with court docket filings and an individual acquainted with the matter.
Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein are scheduled to seem for a plea listening to on Aug. 3, greater than a yr after they have been charged, in accordance with a submitting Friday in federal court docket. Washington. The couple have been arrested in February 2022, however requested a delay of their case to facilitate plea discussions, suggesting they’re cooperating with authorities.
Whereas the court docket submitting didn’t present particulars concerning the anticipated pleas, The US District Decide Colin Coller-Cotelli ordered the events to offer paperwork for the listening to by July 27, together with a “copy of the plea settlement”.
Protection attorneys for Morgan and Lichtenstein didn’t reply to requests for remark, and neither did the U.S. Complainants at Division of Justice.
The federal government charged the couple with conspiring to launder 119,754 bitcoins stolen after the 2016 hack of cryptocurrency trade Bitfinex. They allegedly used faux identities to arrange on-line accounts and conceal a path of transactions by depositing after which withdrawing stolen funds from digital foreign money exchanges and darknet markets.
A number of the cash he cashed out of the Bitcoin ATM was used to purchase NFTs, gold, and Walmart present playing cards, amongst different issues. However prosecutors didn’t cost the couple with the precise hack.
Morgan, who additionally referred to as himself “Razlekhan”, appeared on social media rapping about funding methods and described himself as a risk-loving moneymaker who was “sly as a gator”. Lichtenstein, who used the pseudonym “Dutch,” marketed himself as an angel investor in know-how firms, in accordance with his LinkedIn profile.
On the time of the Bitfinex hack, Bitcoin was buying and selling beneath $1,000. It peaked at $44,000 once they have been arrested in February 2022, bringing the worth of the stolen belongings to just about $4.5 billion — $3.6 billion of which was recovered by authorities. Since then, Bitcoin has fallen to round $30,000.
Case US Vs. Lichtenstein, 23-cr-00239, is within the US District Court docket, District of Columbia (Washington, DC).
