Married couple pulled off $4,500,000,000 Bitcoin scam dubbed 'biggest financial heist of all time'
A married couple who pulled off a $4.5 billion cryptocurrency heist are at the center of an upcoming Netflix documentary.
The wild story of Ilya 'Dutch' Lichtenstein and Heather 'Razzlekhan' Morgan - who were dubbed the Bitcoin Bonnie and Clyde for their part in the 2016 Bitfinex hack - is set to be explored in the Netflix documentary Biggest Heist Ever.
You can watch the trailer below.
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Based in New York, the pair seemingly had a lot going for them.
Lichtenstein had co-founded a sales business, while Morgan was a columnist and had even contributed to Forbes.
She also released rap videos on YouTube under the moniker Razzlekhan, garnering attention for her incredibly cringey moves.
Behind the scenes, though, the duo had been orchestrating one of one biggest cryptocurrency thefts ever seen.
The pair stole some 120,000 Bitcoin from the Hong Kong-based virtual currency exchange Bitfinex, causing the currency's value to plummet by 20 percent.
At the time of their arrest in 2022, their heist was valued at a staggering $4.5 billion.
How did Dutch and Razzlekhan pull off the heist?
Lichtenstein spent months preparing the hack, in what was described by IRS agents as 'the most complicated money-laundering techniques' ever encountered.
He used sophisticated tools to carry out more than 2,000 unauthorised transactions, totalling120,000 Bitcoin.
While Morgan was initially unaware of the hack, months later, she helped her husband devise a plan to disguise the origin of the stolen Bitcoin.
They used fake identities and funneled the currency through multiple accounts, breaking the transactions down into smaller amounts to dodge being caught.
Some of the funds were spent on gold, NFTs, Uber rides, and a PlayStation.
How did the pair get caught?
In early 2017, small amounts of the stolen Bitcoin began to be moved from the wallet it had been initially stored in to the Dark Web marketplace AlphaBay, with the intention of laundering it.
After AlphaBay was shuttered by international law enforcement led by the FBI, the money was rerouted to the Russian marketplace Hydra.
It is believed the shutting of AlphaBay allowed authorities to help trace the illegally-transacted bitcoins.
Eventually, officers were able to acquire a search warrant for a cloud storage service used by Lichtenstein and obtained a spreadsheet of wallet addresses linked to the hack, along with their passwords.
One of the wallets had around 94,000 Bitcoin. As the transactions were logged on the blockchain, law enforcement was able to track the money, and obtaining the passwords allowed it to seize it.
What happened to the couple?
The couples' life unraveled when they were charged by US federal authorities with conspiring to launder Bitcoin. They were arrested in Manhatten in February 2022.
Lichtenstein pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering, as well as carrying out the hack, in August 2023.
Morgan admitted to one count of money laundering conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
In November 2024, Lichtenstein was sentenced to five years behind bars, while Morgan was handed an 18 month sentence.
Biggest Heist Ever releases on Netflix on Friday, December 6.
Topics: Crime, Money, Netflix, True crime, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Documentaries
Ellie Kemp