The Lingering Mystery of the Rapper Who Allegedly Laundered $1B in Bitcoin

In 2016, someone hacked the crypto exchange Bitfinex and made off with 120,000 BTC. At the time, the bitcoins were worth $65 million. Now they’re worth around $5 billion.

On February 7, authorities in the U.S. arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, Heather Morgan. The charge? Allegedly the couple laundered around $1 billion in stolen Bitcoin. As news of the charges spread, journalists began to dig into the couple and discovered that Morgan was extremely online. A wannabe rapper, Morgan has posted dozens of YouTube videos, TikToks, and contributed to Forbes. 

Here to talk about the hack, the charges, and Morgan’s outsized personality we’ve got Motherboard senior staff writer Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Motherboard Senior Editor Jordan Perason.

Morgan’s output is embarrassing, but it’s also a distraction from the very real crimes her and her husband have been charged with. Pearson and Franceschi-Bicchierai unpack the central mysteries that still linger on the case. The feds have seized the Bitcoin but haven’t charged the couple in the hack and there’s still so many questions about what happened in 2016.

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