A married couple has been arrested and charged with laundering billions in Bitcoin stolen during the 2016 Bitfinex hack, as the Justice Department announced its largest financial seizure ever. 
Ilya 'Dutch' Lichtenstein, 34, and his wife, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, 31, who raps under the name Razzlekhan, were arrested on Tuesday in Manhattan on federal charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Federal law enforcement officials said they recovered roughly $3.6 billon in cryptocurrency linked to the hack of Bitfinex, a virtual currency exchange whose systems were breached nearly six years ago.  
Lichtenstein and Morgan live on Wall Street in lower Manhattan. He is a citizen of both Russia and the United States and the co-founder of an online marketing firm.
Morgan, a rapper and former Forbes contributor, describes herself as 'an expert in persuasion, social engineering, and game theory' and in one of her songs, declared herself the 'Crocodile of Wall Street.' 





Morgan (seen in front of Federal Hall on Wall Street in a music video) declared herself the 'Crocodile of Wall Street' in one of her rap songs





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Morgan, a rapper and former Forbes contributor, describes herself as 'an expert in persuasion, social engineering, and game theory'






The August 2016 Bitfinex hack itself was one of the largest crypto heists ever recorded - so massive that news of the theft knocked 20 percent off Bitcoin's value






Morgan is seen rapping with the New York Stock Exchange behind her to the right

Cyber criminals who attack companies, municipalities and darkmarket individuals with ransomware often demand dark markets 2023 payment in the form of cryptocurrency.
In one high-profile example last year, hackers caused a widespread gas shortage on the U.S. East Coast when by using encryption software called DarkSide to launch a cyber attack on the Colonial Pipeline.
The Justice Department later recovered some $2.3 million in cryptocurrency ransom that Colonial paid to the hackers.
Cases like these demonstrate that the Justice Department 'can follow money across the blockchain, just as we have always followed it within the traditional financial system,' said Kenneth Polite, assistant attorney general of the department's Criminal Division. 
Justice Department officials say that though the proliferation of cryptocurrency and virtual currency exchanges represent innovation, the trend has also been accompanied by money laundering, ransomware and other crimes
'Today_s arrests, and the Department_s largest financial seizure ever, show that cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals,' Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement. 
'In a futile effort to maintain digital anonymity, the defendants laundered stolen funds through a labyrinth of cryptocurrency transactions. Thanks to the meticulous work of law enforcement, the department once again showed how it can and will follow the money, no matter the form it takes.'  






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[url=]Heather R Morgan - Heather's Forbes Site[/url]