Heather Morgan says she was “in complete shock” when she discovered her husband, Ilya Lichtenstein, had hacked the crypto exchange Bitfinex back in 2016.
In 2022, Lichtenstein and Morgan – known as the “crypto couple” – were arrested for conspiring to launder $4.5 billion worth of stolen crypto assets from the Bitfinex hack.
They pled guilty to the crime last year.
In a sentencing memo filed by her legal team this week, Morgan outlines her thought process behind helping Lichtenstein launder the stolen funds.
“In 2020, I learned that my husband Ilya Lichtenstein committed a serious crime in 2016. When he told me what he had done, I was in complete shock. I made the poor decision to get involved in Ilya’s crime. Our relationship was far from perfect, but I deeply love and care about my husband, and the truth is, I did not want him to go to prison because we were planning to start a family together.
He was there for me in so many ways others had not been in my life, and our relationship was the biggest part of my decision. I also felt like I was already involved because I had been accepting cryptocurrency from him and worked on businesses with him for years without knowing where the cryptocurrency came from. I felt like I was already in the offense whether I liked it or not. This is not an excuse, but I hope it gives you a sense of my thought process at that time.”
Last month, the US Attorney for the District of Columbia, citing Morgan’s “substantial assistance” to the prosecution, recommended she serve an 18-month prison sentence.
Morgan’s legal team has requested time served. She served a few weeks in jail in early 2022 and has spent nearly three years on home incarceration with location monitoring.
Lichtenstein, who also goes by the name “Dutch,” described himself on LinkedIn as a “technology entrepreneur, coder and investor.”
Morgan is a former Forbes columnist and chief executive of a copywriting firm. She’s also an idiosyncratic YouTube rapper known as “Razzlekhan.”
A feature film about the couple titled “Razzlekhan” is reportedly in development at Amazon MGM Studios, per a report from Deadline.
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