A married couple behind a $4,500,000,000 Bitcoin heist were busted after making one key mistake.
Ilya 'Dutch' Lichtenstein and Heather 'Razzlekhan' Morgan were dubbed 'the Bitcoin Bonnie and Clyde' for stealing billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin from Bitfinex.
Lichtenstein, an entrepreneur, used sophisticated tools to hack the virtual currency platform in 2016, making 2,000 unauthorized transactions totalling 120,000 Bitcoin.
It wasn't until three years later that his wife - columnist and aspiring rapper Morgan - found out about the hack.
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She went on to help launder the stolen Bitcoin, which was valued at $4.5 billion at the time of the pair's arrest in 2022.
Their insane story is set to be explored in the upcoming Netflix documentary, Biggest Heist Ever.
You can watch the trailer below:
In court, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said Litchenstien's theft was 'meticulously planned.'
Meanwhile Bitfinex's attorney said the stolen funds accounted for 36 percent of the company's assets at the time and had 'devastated' both its finances and its reputation.
How were Lichtenstein and Morgan caught?
The couple evaded detection by using fake identities and funnelling stolen funds through multiple accounts.
They spent some of the money on gold, NFTs, Uber rides and a PlayStation.
Then, in early 2017, small amounts of the stolen Bitcoin was moved to the Dark Web marketplace AlphaBay, which was then shuttered by authorities.
This is believed to have allowed law enforcement help trace the illegally-transacted Bitcoin.
But the couple majorly slipped up by transferring some of the stolen funds into Walmart vouchers and spending them.
Police were able to link the money on these gift cards back the Bitfinex hack.
As Cryptocurrency investigators Chainalysis, which was involved in the investigation, explained: "Agents discovered that the Walmart gift card specifically was redeemed through Walmart’s iPhone app under an account in Heather Morgan’s name.
"That enabled agents to get a search warrant for Lichtenstein and Morgan’s home and cloud storage accounts, where they found files containing details of the cryptocurrency addresses used to move the stolen funds - including their private keys - along with the false information used to open accounts at cryptocurrency exchanges and plans to acquire fake passports."
Investigators could then trace the flow of funds in its entirety.
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, knowing the passwords, seize it.
What happened to Lichtenstein and Morgan?
In August 2023, Lichtenstein pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and carrying out the hack.
Morgan admitted to one count of money laundering conspiracy and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States.
And last month, 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: Cryptocurrency, Crime, Bitcoin, Netflix, Film and TV
Ellie Kemp