We’ve all heard of Bonnie and Clyde, the notorious American criminal couple that roamed the country in the early 1900s robbing restaurants, gas stations and small banks . They have been reborn as a renowned Tiktok couple accused of trying to launder about 120,000 bitcoin worth $4.5 billion from the BitFinex hack in 2016.
This week, Ilya Lichtenstein, a Russian-American known as “Dutch,” and his American-born wife Heather Morgan were detained in Manhattan. The US Department of Justice seized $3.6 billion in bitcoin, recouping the majority of the funds stolen in the cyberattack.
Morgan, dubbed the “Crocodile of Wall Street,” raps under the name Razzlekhan on TikTok and is a (now-former) Forbes contributor who formerly authored an essay on how organizations should protect themselves against cybercriminals.
Web3 and bitcoin are frequently mentioned on Lichtenstein’s assumed Twitter account, and his LinkedIn profile includes roles as a blockchain advisor and an investor in comparable initiatives.
Where are the couple accused of laundering money from?
In August 2016, Hong Kong-based Bitfinex said that hackers had stolen 120,000 bitcoins, valued at almost $70 million at the time.
The invader, according to US investigators, carried out over 2,000 fraudulent transactions before sending the bitcoin acquired to a wallet owned by Lichtenstein. The couple has not been charged with carrying out the cyberattack.
According to court documents, about 25,000 bitcoins were transferred out of Lichtenstein’s wallet, some to accounts maintained by him and his wife. The remaining 94,000 coins were kept in the wallet that had been used before the attack.
Discovery of alleged trail
Special agents who had search warrants for the couple’s online accounts obtained files from a Lichtenstein-controlled account that contained the original wallet’s private keys.
A vital step was locating the keys. It may have revealed the recipient’s wallet address, assisting detectives in their investigation of the money laundering scam. They were able to recover 94,000 bitcoins as a result of this.
The couple allegedly engaged in a variety of virtual-currency transactions, including NFT purchases, according to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). Their OpenSea accounts, on the other hand, appear to have been removed.
How did the duo allegedly launder bitcoin?
The authorities claim that Lichtenstein and Morgan utilized a variety of sophisticated approaches.
According to the DOJ’s accusations, the pair constructed bogus accounts and employed automated computer programs to carry out many transactions, placing the monies with several crypto exchanges to make them difficult to monitor. It was also claimed that they used accounts based in the United States to make their operations appear authentic.
According to a fresh 34-page court statement filed on Thursday, the pair attempted to disguise their role in bitcoin laundering by assuming new identities.
Prosecutors claimed Lichtenstein and Morgan spent a month in Ukraine in 2019, where their actions “at times looked to be plucked from the pages of a spy book.” Morgan is reported to have been learning the Russian language as they prepared for life in Russia.
The prosecutors further said a search of the couple’s New York apartment on January 5 turned up $40,000 in cash, more than 50 electronic gadgets, two hollowed-out books, and a bag labeled “burner phone.”
Lichtenstein’s cloud storage account is believed to have been accessed by the government. There’s a database of several accounts in the encrypted files, as well as extra wallets that the authorities haven’t been able to collect lawfully. “Several of these files have names that include versions of the word ‘dirty,’ such as ‘dirty wallet.dat,'” according to the lawsuit.
Another find was a file called “passport ideas,” which contained links to darknet vendor accounts selling passports and ID cards.
Lichtenstein and Morgan are accused of conspiring to launder money and defraud the United States government, accusations that carry a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. They [were] held in custody until their trial on February 14th.
The couple’s lawyers, Anirudh Bansal and Sam Enzer, did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.