Following six months of radio silence, alleged Bitcoin launderer Heather “Razzlekahn” Morgan has declared that she no longer has any involvement in cryptocurrencies or nonfungible tokens (NFTs).
In her first tweet since February 6 this year, Morgan stated with an unequivocal belief that “any crypto or NFT project bearing my name or likeness is a scam that I do not endorse.”
I am not involved in any crypto project. Any crypto or NFT project bearing my name or likeness is a scam that I do not endorse.
— Heather "Razzlekhan" Morgan (@HeatherReyhan) August 23, 2022
Prior to her run-in with the law, Morgan was also known for rapping under the pseudonym Razzlekahn, her work as a Forbes contributor, and in the cybersecurity field providing advisory services.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) charged Morgan and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein with conspiracy to commit multi-billion-dollar money laundering crimes in February 2022 in connection with the infamous 2016 Bitfinex hack.
119,756 Bitcoin (BTC), approximately $72 million, was drained from the exchange via a security breach, with the assets being methodically laundered through several marketplaces, including AlphaBay and Hydra, in the years that followed.
The hack was one of the industry’s largest at the time, second only to Mt. Gox.
Razzlekahn and the Bitfinex hack
An FBI investigation seized the funds in February 2022, by which time they were worth in excess of $4.5 billion.
The FBI alleged that Morgan and Lichtenstein “employed numerous sophisticated laundering techniques” to evade financial detection.
These include the registration of fake identities for online accounts, using computer programs to bulk-automate transactions, “breaking up the fund flow” by spreading deposits across multiple dark web exchanges, and “chain-hopping” by transferring Bitcoin into other digital assets, among other techniques.
According to a filing from the Department of Justice on February 8, money laundering charges to this extent hold a “maximum sentence of 20 years in prison,” while “conspiracy to defraud the United States [...] carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.”
Lichtenstein and Morgan were arrested and charged but subsequently released on bail by a federal judge after posting the $8 million fee.
The couple’s case is ongoing, and their fate will be determined by a federal district court judge at a yet-to-be-determined trial date.