Scamfluencers - ENCORE: The Bitcoin Bamboozle

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

The ultimate cringey crypto couple has fessed up to their crimes and are now testifying against other con artists. We’re looking back on how Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather “Razzlekahn” Morgan hacked a major cryptocurrency exchange in the summer of 2016 and ran off with billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. The stolen crypto sat unspent for months, and the crime seemed all but impossible to trace… until two surprisingly savvy federal agents began investigating on the black market. As they followed the money, it led them to our wacky, and tacky, international cyber-criminals. Listen to Scamfluencers on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting wondery.com/links/scamfluencers/ now.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to scamfluencers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or Apple podcasts. Satya, have you figured out what Bitcoin is yet? I know you had a very life-changing conversation with the OC's Ben McKenzie about it, but I still refuse to learn what it actually is, and every time I do, I forget it. Like two hours later, it's out of my mind, you know? Yeah, I don't know. Someone has to tell me what it is every time it comes up.

It's like eternal sunshine of the spotless mind for Bitcoin. Well, we do have some updates on probably the cringiest scammers we've ever covered. The couple who got their hands on billions of dollars in stolen Bitcoin and made cheesy rap videos along the way. They've pleaded guilty and they've also admitted to hacking the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex. Ilya Lichtenstein faces up to 20 years in prison and Heather Morgan aka RazzleCon faces up to five years. But they're not

going quietly. Ilya has turned into a government witness. He's spilling the beans on how he was able to conceal the assets he stole and testifying in cases against other CryptoCon artists. And Heather just can't get away from crypto and has been spotted at Bitcoin events recently. Maybe she's just trying to bring back her rap alter ego RazzleCon. Maybe it's the moment. You should have to give me money every time you remind me about RazzleCon. We should both be getting money every time we remember RazzleCon. I think technically we are, upon further consideration.

True, true. And also, the best or maybe worst update I have for you is that this crypto couple's story could be heading to the big screen. Amazon MGM Studios has launched development on a new film. And of course, they're calling it RazzleCon. While we wait for that one, here's our encore of the Bitcoin bamboozle. And don't worry, new episodes of Scamfluencers are starting October 7th on Wondery Plus and October 14th wherever you get your podcasts. Sachi, if you suddenly came into a bunch of stolen money, and I'm talking like

If you suddenly came into a bunch of stolen money, and I'm talking like billions of dollars worth, would you act natural and play it cool, or would you like immediately go wild? I would not tell anybody that I came into possession of an amount of money that immediately renders somebody evil. I wouldn't say a word. Exact same. Well, I ask because the story I'm about to tell you

is about someone who allegedly comes into a bunch of stolen money and truly does not know how to play it cool. When she should be laying low, she's posting all over Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and her face is all over billboards and Times Square. It's a real cautionary tale, and I can't wait to tell you all about it because it will get you so mad. Let's go. Let's get mad. It's a cold gray morning in New York in January 2022. Agents from the FBI, IRS, and Homeland Security are gathered by the back entrance of a massive condo building on Wall Street. They use the freight elevator to get to the 33rd floor,

and they rush down the hall and burst into the unit of a married couple. What they find inside doesn't look like the headquarters of a crime syndicate. It doesn't even look like the home of functioning adults. The apartment's stuffed with crap. Furniture with loud, vaguely Islamic patterns, bedazzled animal skulls, LED strip lighting,

and plenty of customized swag. A purple neon sign on the wall reads, Razzle fucking dazzle. I actually have some photos of their apartments, Achi, and I need you to take a look. This is a weird apartment. It's like a weird fusion of like a very average looking like empty antiseptic condo, and then like the ugliest shit

I've ever seen in my life. Well, the condo belongs to Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein. They're both in their early 30s. Heather is a marketing entrepreneur slash tech investor slash rapper with long light brown hair. And Ilya's a crypto guru slash magician who looks like, what if Elijah Wood was less confident? The agents have a search warrant and Heather and Ilya agree to leave while they raid the place. Heather asks if she can grab her Bengal cat Clarissa first.

But when she leans down to get Clarissa out from under the bed, she grabs her phone off the nightstand and starts frantically trying to lock it. One of the agents rushes over and pries it out of her hands. After the agents start their search, it becomes pretty obvious why Heather was trying to cover her tracks. The agents find $40,000 in cash and 50 different tablets, phones and computers. And okay, that's fishy, but not unimaginable for two successful tech entrepreneurs. But then they find several books with the pages cut out to hide money and other contraband and a bag literally labeled burner phone.

Well, this sounds like real amateur hour. I do like that the cat's name is Clarissa. And the most damning evidence isn't even physically in the apartment. The agents also have a search warrant for Ilya's cloud storage account. Using the information in that account, the agents retrieve 94,000 bitcoins worth over $3.6 billion. The rate on the couple's apartment is the Justice Department's biggest asset seizure ever. And the brilliant masterminds behind it are two of the wackiest and tackiest

international criminals the world has ever known. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother. But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses and specific instructions for people's murders. This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time to warn those who lives were in danger.

And it turns out, convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy. Follow Kill List on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C True Crime shows like Morbid early and ad free right now by joining Wandery Plus. Check out exhibit C in the Wandery app for all your true crime listening. I'm Afua Hirsch. And I'm Peter Frankenpan. And in our podcast Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're exploring the life of Marilyn Monroe.

From a tough childhood growing up in foster homes, she became one of the most famous and photographed stars of the 20th century. But off camera, the real Marilyn was shrewd, vulnerable, and funny, and also full of surprises. Follow Legacy now wherever you get your podcasts. From Wandery, I'm Sarah Haggi and I'm Sachi Cole. And this is Scamfluencers. Sachi, there is truly something for everyone to feel secondhand embarrassed by in this

story. There are cheesy rap videos, a cringy Times Square proposal, a whole lot of crypto, and so, so many questionable startups. This is a story about a couple who would do anything to make it in Silicon Valley, and somehow wound up with billions in stolen Bitcoin. It took the feds years to track them down,

even though they were posting about their fabulous lives and freaky alter egos the whole time. This is the Bitcoin bamboozle. Okay, Sachi, before we get into this wild crypto story, we have to go back to a time before crypto even existed. This is a time I like to call the George W. Bush administration. Great, I'm really excited to go back there.

It's the early 2000s and Heather is in middle school. She's petite with braces and a high pitched voice. She lives in Tahama, a tiny Northern California town of just 400 people. About 80 of them are Heather's classmates, and many of them have the same hobby, bullying her. Heather uses a rolling suitcase for her books, and she's in speech therapy for her Lisp. She has braces, and she's also obsessed with rap music and dreams of one day traveling the world and becoming a rapper or a big-time tech entrepreneur.

But for now, she's just trying to get the hell out of Tahama. One afternoon, Heather arranges a meeting with her school principal. She wants to transfer to a larger school in Chico about 30 miles away. But he's not exactly encouraging. That really sticks with Heather. She talks about it years later in a YouTube video. He told me, listen, you're a big fish in a small pond. But if you go to the ocean, you might drown.

And I remember thinking, number one, this is not a pond. This is a mud puddle. And number two, okay, the ocean. Yeah, it's big, but I'm a shark. Okay, well, muddled ocean metaphor aside, it just sounds like she kind of needs to get out of Dodge and wants to try something new. Yeah, and she does.

After she transfers to the bigger school, Heather's motivated to prove her old principle wrong, to swim in the ocean and see the world. So while she's still in high school, she goes to Japan as an exchange student. And in college at UC Davis, she double majors in economics and international relations and studies abroad in South Korea and Turkey.

She graduates in just three years, and in 2011, moves to Hong Kong and then to Turkey. The following year, she gets into a master's program studying economic development at the American University of Cairo and Egypt. Heather is far from the mud puddle of Tahama now, and she sets out to become an exciting, worldly professional. Or at least to seem like one.

In blog posts, she describes herself as an economist and writer, though she's only got an undergrad degree in economics and doesn't have any published work outside of her blog. She wants to find a community that will welcome her, quirks and all. She gets involved in Cairo's queer scene, organizing parties of her blog. She wants to find a community that will welcome her, quirks and all. She gets involved in Cairo's queer scene, organizing parties during a time when it's definitely not safe to be openly LGBTQ in Egypt. She even buys a URL, comeoutcairo.com, but doesn't do anything with it. Heather also tells people that she's writing a book

about Cairo's LGBT community. Spoiler alert, Sachi, it never happens. But maybe most bizarre is the fact that Heather also tells her grad school friends that she's Turkish. She introduces herself as Heather Rehan. Her actual full name is Heather Rhiannon Morgan. There it is, right on schedule. You know what, Sachi, I will say we all know a Heather Rehan. Heather Rhiannon Morgan. There it is, right on schedule.

You know what, Sachi, I will say, we all know a Heather Rehan. I've met her, I know her, and this does not bode well. Well, ultimately, Heather decides grad school is just too small pond for her. After just one semester in Cairo, she bails. She's headed to San Francisco to make her childhood dream of being a tech entrepreneur come true.

She wants to make a boatload of money in a city flooded with venture capital and to prove once and for all that she really can swim with the sharks. In early 2013 when Heather arrives in San Francisco, Twitter has just gone public and Uber is in its heyday. It's the perfect time for Heather to break in. After a few weeks of couch surfing, Heather meets Hussam Hammo. Hussam's a young, clean-cut entrepreneur from Jordan, and he's just been accepted into 500 startups, a prestigious accelerator program. It's basically where a group of aspiring founders get mentored by tech industry leaders and then pitch their companies to potential investors.

Hussam is in the process of founding Tamatim Games, a startup that publishes mobile games in Arabic. Heather just so happens to speak Arabic from her time living in Cairo. Oh, and according to Forbes, she tells Hussam that she's a practicing Muslim who observes Ramadan. But it's unclear if she actually is.

Okay, I mean, I don't totally understand what her plan is. It seems like such a needlessly complicated and unnecessary lie. I think it's a way for her to get in with the people she wants to get in with the people she wants to be in with. Right. So, Hossam makes Heather an unpaid spokesperson

for Tamatum Games. She pitches the company in meetings with potential investors, and in return, she gets to network with some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley. Heather makes an immediate impact on the team, and I'm sure she did a lot of things, but I mostly care about her role in a video for 500 startups.

It's a very timely parody of Thrift Shop by Macklemore. No. And because I live to torture you, Sachi, no, let's give it a listen. I'm gonna raise the funds cause I got $20 in my pocket. I'm raising, looking for some millions to just just fuck it on myself. You know, I have thought about this a lot in the last 10 years. And I do think Macklemore should have to answer

for his crimes, like at the Hague. Uh, it's a lot. All right. Well, Heather's ready to leverage all her new connections to secure her place in the tech scene. And she's about to meet a man who can take her budding career to the next level. Ilya Lichtenstein's made a name for himself as a co-founder of a digital marketing startup

called MixRank. He's got dark curly hair and light eyes, and he's so successful, he's been asked to mentor up and coming founders at the 500 Startups Accelerator. During an event in New York, he gets on Heather's radar. She even live tweets his talk. Sachi, could you please read it for us? Oh, I'd love nothing more.

The first tweet says, listening to at Iliabot explain how to go from being world's worst SEO to 10 times your traction at at 500 startups hashtag 500 strong. There's another one that says, learn to be an Excel ninja for growth hacking. And then the third that says, don't build things from scratch glue existing tools together to be cost effective for automation. Jesus, it's truly like a robot wrote all of these. I know.

Well, about a month later, Ilya goes to a bar packed with 500 startup participants, even though he's one of the mentors in the program. It's giving me college professor going to an undergrad party vibes. And he starts chatting with Heather. They have a connection. They've both found a sense of belonging in the tech industry. It's where they want to make their mark and their fortune. Ilya was born in Russia, but grew up in a suburb outside Chicago.

He was an intense, nerdy kid, and after getting a psychology degree from the University of Madison, Wisconsin in 2010, Ilya moved to San Francisco. He's fascinated with hacking and seems to see himself as a kind of techno-libertarian. He's hell-bent on becoming a founder in Silicon Valley. And like so many aspiring entrepreneurs, Ilya doesn't seem to care what the business is. He just wants to be founding it. Okay. Well, that seems like a really terrible way to do business.

Like, shouldn't you want to care about what the business is? I feel like we're seeing this with like Elon. Like Elon bought a business that he didn't understand and didn't really respect and now he's just tanking it. Yes, exactly. And Ilya worked his way up in the world of affiliate marketing. Essentially, he made ads for all sorts of weird businesses, including dating websites.

In an interview with a website called Mixergy, he says that dating ads are his favorite. My job every day was to wake up and look for more creatives, more pictures of hot girls, or even not so hot girls, to put on my creatives, more pictures of hot girls or even not so hot girls. So put in my creatives to refresh them, to get attention, to get clicks. I mean... Imagine this guy being in charge of like, hot girl, not so hot girl. It's always like men with the ugliest insides who think that they're the arbiters of who's

hot and who isn't. Ugliest insides and let's face it, ugliest outsides. I was trying to be kind, but sure, yeah, that too. Well, according to Forbes, he also at one point ran a Ron Paul fan site and set up a brain optimization supplements business. Now he's a co-founder at MixRank, which helps businesses find and target potential customers.

Ilya is ambitious and driven, and he goes after what he wants in business and in his love life. And Heather's into it. One of her oldest friends later tells Forbes that Heather tended to be attracted to guys who were one step ahead of her professionally, guys who could give her a leg up. But Ilya's not Heather's only love interest, and it will take more than a one-time connection for this star-crossed couple to come together. By the end of the 500 Startups Accelerator program, Heather's taken up with another 500

Startups founder, Bruno Souza. Bruno's a dressed-down guy with a soft smile and black hair. And he's working on his own startup, Pin My Pet, which is supposed to help people find their lost pets. Heather's connection with him is immediate and intense. So she moves to Brazil with Bruno and marries him and leaves Ilya and Hussam behind. Wow, that came out of nowhere, it feels like. Isn't that just something else?

Yeah, I guess I'll marry this guy. I guess. I don't know, man. I knew my ex-husband for 11 years and then I married him, so... I didn't get it right either. Well, Sachi, just a few months later, the shine starts to fade on this impulsive relationship. I bet. By the fall of 2013, Heather's back in the Bay Area,

and she seems ready to jump into a new relationship and another chance to advance her career. Even before she finalizes her divorce from Bruno, Heather moves into Ilya's skyscraper apartment. He agrees to come on as an advisor to her new startup, an email marketing company called SalesFolk. He even publicly vouches for her on LinkedIn, where he writes some pretty unique compliments.

In an endorsement of Heather's marketing skills, Ilya writes that she quote, ''Crafts precisely targeted messaging that sticks in customers' brains like a finely sharpened meat hook. Meat hook. Yeah, it's a very positive image to be honest.

If I think meat hook, I think I want to hire this person. Yeah, well I want to meat hook in charge. Sure. Well, Heather and Ilja waste no time trying to establish themselves as a Silicon Valley power couple. They flaunt their wealth and success online, posting about first-class trips to Hong Kong, Panama, and Mexico. They've got their hooks in each other, and they're ready to take on the rest of the world.

I'm Ellis James. And I'm Colin Murray, and this is Everything to Play For, the show that takes you inside the best sports stories of all time. And in our next two-part series, we're talking about one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket, it's Kevin Peterson. KP, as he is more commonly known. And there's so much to cover in this story. The highs and lows of the ashes, the dead skunk Hurstang,

his on-again-off-again relationship with his teammates, and of course, Textgate. And I'll be using the phrase Ebb and Flow far more than is reasonable for anyone. You're using it in the trail to say you've used it too many times. I occasionally try to swap out Ebb and Flow

for Warp and Weft, but it never really works the same. The Warp and Weft of Test Cricket. Follow everything to play for on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge seasons early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Flotsam and Jetsam. I'm in Dravama and in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the file on Klaus Fuchs, the spy who started the Cold War.

It's the 1940s, and Britain hopes to beat the Nazis by making an atom bomb. But there's a traitor in the ranks. Klaus Fuchs, a German nuclear physicist and communist who's secretly working for the Soviet Union. Whilst helping Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, Fuchs stashes away atomic secrets for his Soviet spy masters. As he quickly becomes embroiled in a web of espionage, his double life threatens to unravel, leaving his true motives and final fate hanging in the balance. Follow the Spy Who on the Wondry app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who started the Cold War early and ad free with Wondry+. Hailey Hidalgo is petite with long blonde hair. And like Heather, Hailey's always marched to the beat of her own drum. She was homeschooled, and by the time she enrolled in college in North Texas, she'd already traveled to Tunisia, Morocco, Hungary, and Japan. She eventually enrolled in a master's program in Cairo, which is where she met Heather. Even after Heather left the program, she and Hailey stayed close.

And now, Hailey's watching as Heather becomes a rising star in the tech world. In September 2014, Heather offers Hailey a job as SalesFolks' first employee working remotely from Cairo. Hailey's excited, and she says yes. And for a while, things seem to be going pretty well. She's helping with email campaigns and organizing client meetings. But after about a year,

Hailey says Heather calls her up and tells her business is slow and that after consulting with Ilya, she's decided to fire Hailey, one of her closest friends. This seems like a bad idea. I mean, I think the thing about scam artists is like, you should keep your friends as close as possible. Because like when things go to hell, those are the people who then testify or like go to the FBI.

Well, it's a little hard for Hailey to swallow, especially since Heather presents herself as a rising star entrepreneur. She's writing columns for Inc. magazine and Forbes, claiming to be a marketing and startup guru. She writes pieces like Three Ways Being an Introvert Enhances Your Sales Career and How the Favorite DJ of Top Celebrities Became a Startup Investor. Did he become a startup investor by hanging out with famous people

who just told him where to put some money? I don't know, you're gonna have to go through the paywall to find out. All right. So a little more than a year and a half later, Ilya abruptly quits MixRank, the company he co-founded. It's a bizarre move because MixRank's doing really well, but Ilya's just donezo. Around this time, Hayley tells Forbes that she and many other friends cut off contact with Heather. Both Ilya and Heather are becoming more and more isolated. Their former friends and colleagues can't figure out what's going on with them.

And in the end, the truth is something no one could have guessed. In the end, the truth is something no one could have guessed. Zane Tackett wakes up in Amsterdam on August 2, 2016 with a raging hangover. Zane's in his 20s and he's lanky with dark hair and boyish features. Honestly, he looks like an extra in a 90s hacker movie. Which is fitting because he's the director of community and product development for Bitfinex, a major cryptocurrency exchange. So let's just lay out some crypto basics, Sachi. Yes, I had to learn about crypto for this episode. You are welcome. I've been avoiding it for years and it's finally freaking happened. How truly embarrassing for you.

Embarrassing. Okay, so cryptocurrency is digital money. Units of cryptocurrency are created by computers solving extremely complicated math problems. Yikes. There's all kinds of different cryptocurrencies, but one of the biggest is, as you know, Bitcoin. Okay.

Zane is a Bitcoin evangelist. When he first heard about crypto, he dropped out of college and moved to China to work in the industry. And business has been pretty good. But this morning, Zane has a rude awakening. He discovers that Bitfinex, the company where he works, has been hacked. At first he's not worried, and I'll tell you why, but I have to explain a little more first.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are stored in digital wallets, which are basically bank accounts that only exist online. And there's a degree of transparency because all transactions are public record stored on a digital ledger called the blockchain. Think of it as like making everyone's Venmo transactions public. I can't think of a worse thing. It's too intimate.

While the company Zane works for, Bitfinex is kind of like a bank for crypto. And like any bank, Bitfinex has taken security like a bank for crypto. And like any bank, Bitfinex has taken security measures in case of a hack. For example, they've put a global limit on the amount of coins that can be withdrawn on any given day, 2,500 coins. At the time, that's worth about $1.5 million.

So Zayn assumes the hack can't be any worse than that, and that his company will be able to trace it back to the blockchain. Problem solved. But that's not what happens. Somehow the hackers managed to steal nearly 120,000 bitcoins. That's almost 50 times Bitfinex's daily global trading limit. At the time, that's worth about 60 to 70 million dollars. The crypto world panics,

and the value of Bitcoin craters by around 20%. I mean, all of this just reads like an argument that perhaps money shouldn't be organized through like a computer figuring out math. Also, nothing's real. Yeah, like this is all made up. Well, real or not, Zane goes into hyperdrive. He says he spends the next 42 hours

calling clients who lost money, communicating to the public about what happened, and not sleeping a wink. He feels so bad for all of Bitfinex's clients, especially the average people who decided to invest in crypto and have now lost everything. In an interview he later gives to the podcast, The Breakdown, he describes the magnitude of the fallout. I got a lot of death threats, but you know, whatever. People are assholes. If you want to say you're going to kill me, be my guest. But the suicide notes were much harder to take because I did, you know, you could see

that their money was gone and, you know, it did really affect people. That is depressing, incredibly depressing. Well, Zayn and everyone at Bitfinex are trying to figure out who could have pulled this off. They think maybe it was hackers with ties to North Korea or Russia, so they watch the blockchain to see if the hackers spend the stolen bitcoin, which would give them a chance to trace the transaction. But they don't. The stolen bitcoin just sits there unspent for months.

Zane eventually gives up hope that they'll ever find the hacker. But a surprisingly savvy branch of the IRS has a big lead and they're preparing for a digital takedown. Chris Gdanski and Tigran Gambarian work for the IRS and they're a part of its new crypto tracking unit. They also look like actors playing mismatched partners on a CBS cop show. Chris has a midwestern Boy Scout look with short spiky hair, while Tigran has a beard, boxy glasses, and an intense analytic stare. Chris and Tigran have been following the Bitfinex hack closely,

and they noticed that some of the stolen Bitcoin has been traded through Alphabay, the internet's biggest black market. They realized the stolen Bitcoins have been mixed with legitimately traded coins, then deposited in a new wallet with all traces of the theft erased. Chris and Tigran tracked down Alphabay's server in Lithuania. Using that information, they were able to track down Alphabay's founder, a 25-year-old Canadian hacker named Alexander Kazz, who looks like a before photo of Elon Musk. Sachi, please check this out.

Oh, God. Look at this nerd. He's wearing a very shiny suit and very stupid sunglasses and standing in front of a Lambo looking just terrifically smug. Yeah, you know, it just kind of goes to show there's no way anyone can pose with a car and look normal. No. Especially when you truly look like a nerd who suddenly got money.

Yeah. Well, it's actually Chris and Tigran's work is pivotal in bringing down Alpha Bay. In July 2017, about a year after the hack, the FBI, the DEA, and the Royal Thai Police ambushed Alexandra's house. They literally ram a car into the front gate of his compound before rushing in to catch him. A week later, Alexandra apparently dies by suicide in a Thai prison. That means Chris and Tigran have lost their biggest potential source of intel. So they double down on their work to uncover AlphaBay's clients. Using the data from the raid, Chris and Tigran track the laundered bitcoins

to various accounts at different crypto exchanges. A bunch of the accounts are linked to email addresses that have the same internet service provider. And as he keeps digging, Chris is about to trace some of the coins to some very high profile suspects. Around the time of this massive crypto hack, Heather's email marketing company, Salesfolk, is doing amazingly great. Or at least that's what she's telling people.

In one presentation, she claims that Salesfolk generated nearly $65 million in revenue in 2016. It was the same year that someone hacked Bitfinex and made off with a bundle of Bitcoin worth about $66 million. Do you see where I'm going with this? I'm stressed and concerned. Okay, so there's no evidence that Ilya and Heather hacked Bitfinex or stole all that Bitcoin,

but according to the Department of Justice, they gained control of the stolen crypto sometime after the hack. We don't know how or exactly when. What we do know is that, after the crypto was stolen, Ilya and Heather start traveling all over the world, to Malaysia, Hong Kong, Egypt, Vietnam, and staying in five-star hotels. They move to New York, where they live in a luxury high-rise building on Wall Street. It's got a 24-hour doorman and a rooftop terrace with 360 degree views of downtown Manhattan. They live there with their Bengal cat, Clarissa. Remember her, we love her. Clarissa is the only

person I care about in this story. Where's Clarissa? We'll get there. Okay. So despite Ilja's track record of success, he doesn't seem eager to found another company. His LinkedIn from this time is full of somewhat vague titles like advisor, mentor, investor. And when Ilja does help found a new startup in early 2018, it's a firm called Endpass, which is a crypto startup. No one in the story is learning any lessons. No one's like absorbing past mistakes and thinking about how to adjust in the future.

Yeah, and Sachi, it's not just any crypto startup. You have to read this Medium post. Ilya wrote it explaining why he's starting the company. Okay. It says, The biggest threat to mass adoption is without a doubt security. We cannot expect mainstream users to be security experts

in a world where the most common password is still 123456. Security needs to be built into the product by design, not left up to the user. I guess that's true. Yeah, why not? Soon after, Ilya and Heather rebrand themselves as hotshot investors. They start taking meetings with all kinds of crypto startups

and they act as if they're deciding which ones to pump money into. But one of the CEOs they meet with later tells Vanity Fair that he notices something strange about Heather and Ilya during their meeting. Specifically, it's the questions they're asking. And Sachi, we don't know what Heather and Ilya's questions were, but can't you imagine these two walking into a boardroom and asking, could someone use your company's technology

to, I don't know, launder a shit ton of stolen bitcoins? I mean, it truly feels perfectly believable. Yeah, well, Heather and Ilya are gaining quite the reputation in the crypto scene, and they're about to become even more well-known all across the globe. And not in a good way. Hello, Matt and Alice here, the hosts of Wanderers podcast, British Scandal. Our latest series, Peru 2, begins on the sandy shores of Ibiza. Michaela McCollum should have been having

the summer of her dreams, but it all went wrong when she met the gorgeous Davy in a bar. Think less holiday romance, more recruitment for a drug cartel. She agreed to team up with another young Brit, fly to Spain to collect a drugs package, then head straight back. However, only at 30,000 feet does Michaela realize she's not on the way to Spain. She's heading for Peru.

And when they get there, they find out it's not a small drugs package, but 11 kilograms of cocaine. The summer holiday turns into a spell in a Peruvian prison and a story that becomes an international media sensation. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondry Plus form, surrealist rapper, Razzle Khan. Razzle Khan is, you know what, Sachi, I'll let her introduce herself. I'm Minnie Things, a rapper, an economist, a journalist, a writer, a CEO, and a dirty, dirty, dirty, dirty hoe.

Yeah, safe to say, this girl's got bars. That's the music I want to play anytime I enter a room. Yeah, this is absolutely sickening. It feels like a hate crime. Okay. All right, so this sucks. Well, you know what, Sachi? You know what's even worse?

RazzleCon is only one of several alter egos Heather is promoting online. She has multiple accounts on Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook, and she runs a whole Instagram for their cat, Clarissa, and for Ilya's alter ego, the cat monkey wizard. But the couple has more reason than ever to keep a low public profile,

because by the middle of 2019, the stolen Bitcoin they're holding has spiked in value. It is now worth around $1.3 billion. But at this point, Ilya has decided he's ready to commit to Heather. In June 2019, he proposes by pulling off a huge stunt. He puts posters of Heather all over Manhattan, leading her to Times Square. There, she finds a billboard that reads, Razzle Con, and has a blurb promoting her album. Could you read it for us, Sachi? It's a big billboard with her like pulling a face on the side, like to look intentionally

grotesque. And then there's a quote, I don't know whose quote it is, it just appears to be words in quotation marks that says, the most brutally honest rap album of the year. I don't know what that could possibly mean. It's sick. Yeah. Well, Saatchi, Heather says yes. And as you can tell, Ilya's a big planner.

So when he and Heather make a trip to Ukraine later that summer, he prepares by making dedicated folders on his cloud storage account. One's labeled Personas, and it includes documents and potential ID cards for several new identities. And there's another folder called Vendors that lists dark web sellers that can provide everything from fake passports to untraceable cash. While they're in Ukraine, Heather and Ilya order from some of these vendors. They have their packages shipped to hotels to protect their identities.

It looks a lot like Ilya's preparing to launder the rest of the stolen Bitcoin. He takes detailed notes about money laundering and everything they need to start a new life in Ukraine. But with the feds hot on their trail, that new life will never materialize. Chris and Tigran start watching Heather and Ilya and building their case.

Thanks to their work, the FBI starts monitoring Heather and Ilya's condo building. And I can only imagine their reaction when they dive into the social media presence of their key suspects. Imagine realizing the suspected international cyber criminal is also RazzleCon. Honestly, in the world of like crypto crime,

that the super villain is somebody called RazzleCon feels apt. Yeah. In any other crime, I'd be like, that's ridiculous. But here it's like, you know what? Sounds about right. Because it's the least cool kind of criminal. It's loser shit for sure. Well, they also watch as Ilya and Heather get married in California in November, 2021.

And this ceremony is anything but quiet. Heather is literally carried in on a palanquin surrounded by objects that have been spray painted gold. And later, she performs a song. You know, if I am ever at a wedding where the bride forces me to listen to her perform, I think it is legal for me to hit the bride. I fully agree. After the reception, they have a secret, smaller after party at a mansion where, shockingly, the guests are told not to post on social media.

This is out of character for Heather and Ilya, but maybe they're at least trying to hide some of their newfound wealth. Which would make sense because the month of their wedding, an internet service provider notifies them that the FBI has subpoenaed their data as a part of an ongoing investigation. So there's a chance they know they're about to get arrested, and this wedding is a sort of last hurrah. Two months later, in January 2022, the FBI raids Heather and Ilya's condo.

This is when Heather asks if she can grab Clarissa but tries to lock her phone instead. After the raid, the couple continues working on plans to flee the country, but time isn't on their side. In early February, 2022, the Department of Justice announces that they've seized more than $3.6 billion worth of stolen cryptocurrency, and they have arrested the two people they

believe conspired to launder it. In a video statement released on Twitter, United States Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco called it, The largest seizure of cryptocurrency ever by U.S. law enforcement. It is also the department's largest single financial seizure in its history. When the world learns who's been charged for the hack, the news blows up. Vice runs an article with the headline, woman who allegedly laundered $1 billion in Bitcoin was cringe YouTube rapper.

And the Daily Beast goes with hipster couple charge in $4.5 billion crypto heist is even weirder than you think. Twitter has a fuel day with RazzleCon's YouTube videos and her old TikToks reach a level of viral that Heather could have never imagined or honestly hoped for. Do you remember any of this, Sachi, when this was happening online?

No, I honestly don't. I have no recollection of this at all. I feel like I took the day off the internet. Yeah, I do remember seeing it and kind of being like, I don't want to pay attention to these people. And, well, here we are. Meanwhile, Heather and Ilya are facing up to 25 years behind bars. At first, the couple shares a legal strategy.

Their lawyer claims that they need to stay in New York because they're trying to have a family. They have frozen embryos at a legal strategy. Their lawyer claims that they need to stay in New York because they're trying to have a family. They have frozen embryos at a local hospital. The judge decides to cut Heather a break. He releases her on a $3 million bail and puts her on house arrest in New York. That's partly because her parents put up their house to secure bond. She spent her whole life running from Tahama, but now the Tahama house is the only thing

keeping her out of prison. Ilya doesn't get so lucky. He's deemed a flight risk and he's sent to a prison in Virginia to wait for the trial. And as of this recording, his and Heather's trial date is still not set. Then in March, 2022, Heather decides to get her own lawyer. And about six months later, she breaks her silence, posting to Twitter for the first time since the arrest.

Sachi, could you read it for me? It says, looking for remote B2B growth, marketing, sales, copywriting, demand, gen work can be contract or potentially full time. Have 10 years experience, including remotely managing distributed teams. DM me to discuss serious opportunities with B2B tech companies only. Thanks. Talk about a choosing beggar, serious opportunities with B2B companies only. Thanks. I'm sorry, girl. You do not get the right to be picky right now. Yeah, well, there's that delusion, that famous delusion. I mean, as we've learned, you can't keep Heather down for long.

She is always looking for the next rung of the ladder. Well, Sachi, we learned a lot about crypto in this episode, stuff we didn't really want to know. And there is something so gross about this from top to bottom of like, these two opportunistic people who don't have any real skills other than being leeches. And it really makes you think about the tech industry at large and how so much of it is like fake it till you make it and know the right words, you know? Yeah, I mean, as ever, it seems like a story where these scam artists are benefiting off of the fact that they're working in a currency that people don't understand.

I don't get it. Yeah, I mean, you could just start any sort of business and like have two words, put them together and be like, yeah, we're gonna be analyzing how passwords affect our psyche. Give us 500 million dollars or something. Well, by that token, everything's fake, money isn't real and nothing matters. Nothing matters. And I guess I'm wondering also, do you think that these two were always kind of setting out to steal Bitcoin? Like they wanted to get into crypto because it was hot and then they realized like, oh,

we should just steal some? I don't know. I feel like these are untrustworthy people who are not great at covering their tracks and the way they also talk is like not rooted in reality. So I feel like they could probably justify anything to themselves. I feel like they would have found something else if it wasn't this.

But it had to be something that was complex enough that most people don't understand it. And crypto is very much that thing right now. Yeah. And also, even having learned about it for the purpose of this episode, I'm like, oh, it's not that I was too dumb to understand it. It's that the rules just keep changing. Nothing is real when it comes to this stuff. Yeah. All of this is completely arbitrary. And these are people who want to

live in their own arbitrary rules. You know, for a lot of our episodes, I feel like there's a turning point where people become scammers. Yeah. But this was one of those episodes where these people were kind of destined to scam because of their industry. Do you agree. Yeah. But this was one of those episodes where these people were kind of destined to scam because of their industry. Do you agree? Yeah, and this woman is giving me real like Anna Delvey energy, you know? She's like judgmental and like she's not living in reality

and she was probably gonna do this to somebody. And now, you know, she's on Instagram gluing prosthetic eyeballs on brooches she bought on eBay. You know, what are you gonna say? You know, I think the lesson here is, Instagram gluing prosthetic eyeballs on brooches she bought on eBay, you know? What are you gonna say? You know, I think the lesson here is don't be cringed. You know, like, if you're cringed the way they are, that is the most guilty you can be, you know? Yeah.

Everyone wants to see you crash and burn if you're rasslecon. Yeah, the loudest lesson I absorbed from this is don't be a loser on Instagram. I know that wasn't really the main lesson, but it is the thing that I am taking away the most. Don't be a loser on Instagram. Just post your photos of your cat and go. If you like Scamfluencers, you can listen to every episode early and ad free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey.

This is the Bitcoin Bamboozle. I'm Sarah Hagy. And I'm Sachi Cole. If you have a tip for us on a story that you think we should cover, please email us at scamfluencers at wondery.com. We use many sources in our research. A few that were particularly helpful were the ballad of Heather Morgan and Ilya Liechtenstein, Bitcoin's Bonnie and Clyde, written by Nick Bilton in Vanity Fair, Razzlecon, the untold story of how a YouTube rapper became a suspect in a $4 billion Bitcoin fraud,

written by Cyrus Fardivar, David Jeans, and Thomas Brewster in Forbes. And did Razzlecon and Dutch pull off history's greatest crypto heist, written by Zeke Foe in Bloomberg? Eric Thurm wrote this episode. Additional writing by us, Sachie Cole and Sarah Hagge. Jen Swan is our senior producer. John Reed is our producer. Our associate producers are Charlotte Miller and Lexi Puri.

Sarah Enne is our story editor and producer. Our story editor is Alison Weintraub. Our senior story editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Back checking by Gabrielle Drolet. Our music supervisor is Scott Velazquez for Freesound Sync. Adrian Tapia provided audio assistance. Our sound design is by James Morgan. Our executive producers are Janine Cornelo, Stephanie Jens, and Marshall Louie for Wondery.

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