Heather ‘Razzlekhan’ Morgan Should Spend 18 Months in Prison, Prosecutors Tell Court

Prosecutors have requested that Heather Morgan — higher identified by her rap identify “Razzlekhan” — be sentenced to only 18 months behind bars for her function in laundering 120,000 bitcoins stolen from Bitfinex in a 2016 hack.

In August 2023, Morgan pleaded responsible to at least one depend of cash laundering and one depend of conspiracy to defraud america, every of which carries a most penalty of 5 years in jail.

Though it was initially believed that Morgan and her husband Ilya Lichtenstein had solely laundered the hack’s proceeds (value roughly $7.5 billion at at this time’s worth), Lichtenstein later admitted to being the unique hacker and pleaded responsible to at least one cost of conspiracy to commit cash laundering. which carries a most jail sentence of twenty years.

In line with court docket paperwork, Lichtenstein carried out the hack alone in 2016 and solely informed his spouse about serving to him launder the cash 4 years later in 2020, making her an confederate to the crime solely after it had already occurred.

“She was, in some respects, thrust into the center of a critical legal scheme with out her preliminary consent, and undoubtedly felt compelled to assist it out of a way of loyalty to her husband and a want to protect their life collectively,” prosecutors wrote. the memo. . “That negates the seriousness of her conduct, as she finally joined her husband’s conspiracy and used her personal abilities to help and amplify his legal efforts.”

Prosecutors have proposed a lenient sentence for Morgan in mild of her early acceptance of duty and obvious “substantial help to regulation enforcement,” in addition to the truth that she herself spent little or no of the legal proceeds.

Nevertheless, additionally they urged the decide to keep in mind that at a number of factors throughout the investigation Morgan tried to hinder justice by destroying proof – throwing a pc into the landfill, deleting information from gadgets and, throughout the execution of against the law by police, search warrant at her and Lichtenstein’s Manhattan house, pretended to seize her cat from underneath the mattress whereas secretly turning off her cellphone.

Along with looking for jail time for Morgan, prosecutors have requested the court docket to order her to “return the government-seized cryptocurrencies instantly from the Bitfinex Hack Pockets – together with roughly 94,643.29837084 BTC, 117,376.52651940 Bitcoin Money (BCH) , 117,376,58178024 Bitcoin Satoshi Imaginative and prescient ( BSV) and 118,102.03258447 in Bitcoin Gold (BTG) value over $6 billion at present costs – as in-kind restitution to Bitfinex.”

Morgan will likely be sentenced on November 15 at 2pm in Washington DC, sooner or later after Lichtenstein is sentenced.