It took Netflix three days to order a documentary about her, but a woman’s social media accounts have been telling a wild story for years.
Heather Morgan, 31, is half of a husband-and-wife duo charged last week with conspiring to launder 119,754 bitcoin, a cache worth about $4.5 billion, prompting the streaming service to enlist a “Tiger King” executive producer to direct an upcoming series about them. Morgan and Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein, 34, are accused of trying to launder the cryptocurrency stolen after a hacker breached the exchange Bitfinex in 2016 and initiated more than 2,000 unauthorized transactions. Prosecutors said the bitcoin was sent to a digital wallet controlled by Lichtenstein.
Morgan and Lichtenstein are in custody pending a hearing scheduled for this week. Their attorney did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
The investigation includes the largest single seizure of funds in Justice Department history, but what has drawn the most online attention is Morgan’s two somewhat-distinct personas: one as a successful, go-getting tech entrepreneur and the other as the self-proclaimed “Crocodile of Wall Street” rapping about investing in meme stocks, dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and getting high in a cemetery.
Lichtenstein has a lower online profile than his wife; he described himself as a “tech entrepreneur, explorer, and occasional magician” in a 2018 blog post. According to court documents, the dual Russian and American citizen grew up in Glenview, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. He studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-founded MixRank, a sales firm initially funded by Y Combinator and investors including Mark Cuban, according to the company’s website.
Lichtenstein’s public missives include the occasional tech tweets, but Morgan has a prolific social media presence, branding herself as a surrealist rapper who has “more pizzazz” than Genghis Khan in posts that coexist with her more staid image as a business influencer and marketing expert.
Before debuting Razzlekhan, her rap persona, Morgan grew up in Tehama, a town of about 400 people in Northern California, according to court documents.
