How Hipster Rapper and Alleged Bitcoin Hacker Heather Rhiannon Morgan Remade Herself in NYC

Cindy Weisgram hasn’t been checking the news much lately. Recently fired from her job, the Tehama, California native has used her new-found downtime to relax and think about what she’s going to do next.

So when Weisgram, 60, heard that her cousin, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, Has Been Arrested By Federal Agents In New York City For Laundering $4.5 Billion In Stolen Bitcoinshe was — to put it mildly — very surprised.

“It never seemed like she really had a normal day job,” Weisgram, who now lives in Ketchikan, Alaska, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “At one point, about three years ago… someone mentioned she was, like, a millionaire… I always wondered how she got that much money, but damn it.”

Morgan, 31, and her husband Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, 34, allegedly tried to launder 119,754 Bitcoins mined from cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in a 2016 hack. The virtual money was moved into a A digital wallet in the name of Lichtenstein, as well as accounts controlled by both, and investigators eventually traced the money to the couple’s two-bedroom apartment on Wall Street.

Bitcoin, worth about $71 million at the time of the hack, had grown in value to $4.5 billion by the time of the February 8 bankruptcy. Federalists were able to get 3. $6.6 billion of that, making it the largest financial forfeiture in U.S. history.

A criminal complaint filed in Manhattan federal court outlining the details of a surprisingly complex money transfer website and fake accounts, was eventually cleared by agents of the IRS, FBI and Department of Justice. Homeland Security troubleshooting.

Morgan, who performed as a rapper under the stage name “Razzlekhan“Experts share tips to protect your business from cybercrime. ”

According to the federalists, the alleged volume of Morgan and Lichtenstein is so large that they cannot filter all Bitcoin through the legal financial system to make it appear legitimate. However, lawsuit against the couple saying they tried to convert “About $2.9 million worth” of illicit Bitcoin to hard currency between 2017 and 2021 — enough to enjoy a very comfortable lifestyle.

“I have always been assigned to [the money she had] Weisgram, a former wife of the Coast Guard who served as a Ketchikan volunteer ambulance dispatcher, recalls. “She said she made a lot of money from cold emails and articles that she was writing for newspapers and magazines and things like that.”

In 2013, Morgan founded a company called SalesFolk, the company claims to be “the first to specialize in email copywriting.” The company seems to be in the process of growing and Morgan publishes videos online along with tips for those trying to break into the tech sector. But prosecutors allege that she and Lichtenstein used the company’s account to launder the stolen Bitcoins.

“My boyfriend (now husband) gave me crypto for several years (2014, 2015,), [sic] was appreciated,” she allegedly wrote in a 2019 email to an unnamed cryptocurrency exchange. “I kept them in cold storage.”

Like Razzlekhan, Morgan describes her personality as “same as Genghis Khan, but with more differences.”

Hers The lyrics include lines about “Up in the cemetery,” where, she boasts, “I love me some grave grass.”

“No one knows for sure where the rapper came from — be it the North African desert, the jungles of Vietnam, or another universe,” her website says. “All that matters is that she’s here to protect the bad guys and the underdogs everywhere. (However, we do know that she is descended from a nomadic tribe!)”

In fact, Morgan grew up in Tehama, just miles from Weisgram’s family. It’s a sleepy town of less than 500 people, most of whom Weisgram describes as “wonderful.”

Weisgram recalls that Morgan was once a very quiet child, although one who “could be a bit squishy” at times when she was playing with Weisgram’s children. However, when Morgan went to college at the University of California, Davis, Weisgram says she started to come out of her shell and wasn’t the “shy little girl I knew anymore.”

“Then she moved to New York and became ‘Gangsta Girl,'” says Weisgram. She fits very well. ”

While in NYC, Morgan also tried her hand at improv comedy.

“She was really my 101,” said Matt Dennie, former instructor at Upright Citizen’s Brigade, wrote on Twitter after learning that Morgan was arrested. “No matter how you imagine it, it is…”True story: She started a scene with “Welcome to the clinic, did you bring your own coat hanger?” When I stopped and asked if she was staging an abortion, she said yes and the abortion was funny.”

In one of her Forbes postsMorgan wrote of her insecurities over the obstacle of childhood saying that “prevented me from doing so many of the things I was passionate about and curious about in my youth, from movies and comedies to institutions.” leadership association”.

“But luckily, I was too eccentric and broke too many rules to have a normal job, so I decided to become an entrepreneur and start my own company when I was 23 years old,” she said. write.

For an alleged Bitcoin launderer, Morgan never seemed to mention any virtual currency, at least to Weisgram, who recalled her cousin talking about hunting with her father. she either travels the world, but has “absolutely nothing” about cryptocurrencies, she said.

On Wednesday, Lichtenstein posted a $5 million bond, Morgan placed a $3 million bond, and their passports were seized. However, a judge in Washington, DC, then intervened and ordered them to be jailed pending further review. If convicted, Lichtenstein and Morgan face a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. Their attorneys, Anirudh Bansal and Sam Enzer, did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment.

The latest turning point in Morgan’s life was “unlike what I knew about Heather,” Weisgram said. “It’s like a dream. I’ve watched too much Law & Order and now i just woke up? ”