‘Sexy horror comedy’: Woman behind $4.5 billion bitcoin theft is also a busy rapper, World News

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A self-declared rap­per who describes her style as ‘sexy hor­rer com­e­dy’ is in trou­ble over alle­ga­tions of laun­der­ing bit­coin worth bil­lions of dol­lars. Both Heather Mor­gan (the ‘rap­per’) and her hus­band Ilya “Dutch” Licht­en­stein were arrest­ed in Man­hat­tan on Tuesday.

The head­line announced by the Jus­tice Depart­ment was the cou­ple’s alleged involve­ment in laun­der­ing bit­coin stolen in a 2016 hack of the vir­tu­al cur­ren­cy exchange Bitfinex.

But pub­lic atten­tion was swift­ly divert­ed when it emerged that Mor­gan had anoth­er life as an aspir­ing rap star, and had put out a video that became an inter­net sen­sa­tion for its sheer awfulness.

Dubbed “Bit­coin Bon­nie and Cryp­to Clyde” by finan­cial newslet­ter Morn­ing Brew, Licht­en­stein, 34, and Mor­gan, 31, are being held with­out bail until a hear­ing on Friday.

Mor­gan’s cringe­wor­thy rap videos in par­tic­u­lar were burn­ing up the inter­net before being tak­en offline.

On her web­site, Mor­gan calls her­self “Raz­zlekhan” or the “Ver­sace Bedouin” — “the raunchy rap­per with more piz­zazz that Genghis Khan.”

“I’m a real risk taker/pirate rid­ing the flood/I’m a badass mon­ey mak­er,” she raps in one video in which she refers to her­self as the “Croc­o­dile of Wall Street.”

“Come real far but don’t know where I’m headed/Blindly fol­low­ing rules is for fools,” she says, gyrat­ing on Wall Street wear­ing sun­glass­es, a leop­ard print scarf, and shiny gold jacket.

“Her art often resem­bles some­thing in between an acid trip and a delight­ful night­mare,” Mor­gan wrote about her­self on her web­site, Razzlekhan.com. “Def­i­nite­ly not for the faint of heart or eas­i­ly offended.

“Razz likes to push the lim­its of what peo­ple are com­fort­able with,” she said. “Her style has often been described as ‘sexy hor­ror comedy.’ ”

When not mak­ing rap videos or post­ing pic­tures of her art­work or Ben­gal cat on Face­book, Mor­gan was a con­trib­u­tor to the finan­cial pub­li­ca­tions Forbes and Inc.

A June 2020 arti­cle she wrote for Forbes was iron­i­cal­ly titled: “Experts Share Tips To Pro­tect Your Busi­ness From Cybercriminals.”

Licht­en­stein and Mor­gan alleged­ly sought to laun­der the pro­ceeds of 119,754 bit­coin — present­ly val­ued at $4.5 bil­lion — stolen in the 2016 hack of Bitfinex.

(With inputs from agencies)



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