Just days before beginning a prison sentence for her part in the most lucrative crypto heist ever, Heather Morgan — who, under the name Razzlekhan, went as viral for her rap videos as the outsized crime itself — is already determined to rewrite her story.
“People act like I’m some evil villain bitch or some dumb trophy wife,” Morgan, 34, told NYNext. “I can’t be both those things, but I can be neither.”
In an exclusive interview before she surrenders February 4 at a federal institute in Victorville, California, Morgan said she wanted to set the record straight about her involvement in the “Biggest Heist Ever” — as a recent Netflix documentary based on her and husband Ilya Lichtenstein’s story titles it.
“I’m not proud of the acts that led my husband and I to being arrested,” Morgan said. But she remains defiant in her choice not to rat him out for a better plea deal.
“I could have thrown him under the bus five different ways … I’d rather be a proud felon than a disloyal backstabbing wife … ,” she said. “As a dedicated wife, I didn’t want to do anything that would put him in a worse position.”
But her main message? “This was a media spectacle — but they were wrong about me.”
She has now launched a legal battle against Netflix, claiming the film is defamatory.
While it was Lichtenstein who hacked the Bitfinex exchange in 2016 and stole 119,754 Bitcoin (then worth $71 million), Morgan allowed her personal financial accounts to be used for laundering and helped set up numerous virtual currency exchange accounts to conceal the source of the money — something she believes any wife would do.
“What married couple doesn’t have intermingled finances?” she said of her involvement.
According to the criminal complaint, the couple — who rented a $1.5 million apartment in FiDi, reportedly decorated with animal pelts and a taxidermy alligator — spent the illegal proceeds on, among other things, gold and NFTs.
When the Bitcoin Bonnie and Clyde, as they’ve been dubbed, were arrested at their Manhattan home in 2022, prosecutors found a bag of burner phones and a file on Lichtenstein’s computer called “passport_ideas.”
They pleaded guilty to money laundering a year later. Morgan received 18 months. Lichtenstein was sentenced to five years and has already served over half of his time at a detention center.
Despite underscoring her loyalty to her husband and partner in crime, Morgan ironically wanted to make a new friend in prison: Caroline Ellison — the FTX executive who got a heavily shortened sentence for fraud thanks to ratting on her colleagues, including ex-boyfriend Sam Bankman-Fried.
“I asked for Danbury prison, hoping I might get to know Caroline Ellison, as I thought it would be a fun plot twist,” she said. “And I figured she probably had the resources to pick a bougie facility.”
Morgan didn’t exactly grow up bougie. She was raised in a rural town in Northern California where, she once wrote on Instagram, “my dad literally trained me on how to hunt with a spear ‘in case a wild bore [sic] charged me.’”
After bouncing around Japan, she studied at the University of California Davis and the American University in Cairo before, at age 23, founding a sales tech company called SalesFolk. That’s how she met Lichtenstein, a Russia-born entrepreneur and crypto investor who had secured a $1.5 million investment from Mark Cuban and other investors for his sales start-up MixRank in 2011.
“I spent most of my twenties working my ass off to build a bootstrapped business by myself, which I turned into a million-dollar business,” Morgan said. “In the end, all the money I made from my first company went to paying legal bills for my husband and me.”
Before that happened, though, the “business ultimately left me burnt out and feeling unfulfilled, which is why I decided to create Razzlekhan.”
Perhaps the only thing more surprising than the heist’s enormous monetary sum was Morgan’s second life as a rapper who, according to her website, was “taking on everyone from big software companies to health care to finance bros.”
In a now-viral video for her song “Versace Bedouin,” Morgan promoted herself as the “crocodile of Wall Street” while jumping around FiDi landmarks in a gold jacket and cap that reads “0 F–ks,” as unwitting tourists gawp from the sidewalk.
The feds even quoted some of her lyrics in the case against her: “Spear phish your password / All your funds transferred,” their court filing read, adding that it was a reference to a hacking technique.
Now, Morgan said she’s tired of being depicted as a woman who found a rich guy to support her artistic aspirations.
“The government somehow managed to weaponize Razzlekhan to undermine all of my professional business accomplishments as an entrepreneur,” she told NYNext.
“No money from the heist was ever spent on Razzlekhan … people hear this huge sum of money but we’re not lavish. We’re eccentric.”
When Morgan and Lichtenstein married, friends carried her down the aisle atop a Moroccan-style bridal throne as the 1986 hair-metal anthem “The Final Countdown” played; at the reception after, Morgan performed one of her own songs, “Turkish Martha Stewart.”
Last Friday, Morgan released a song and music video, “DIPLOMAT P–$¥” about a jet-setting life: “Moved to Cairo from Hong Kong/ Late Night partying with tech moguls/ Hella stalkers, marriage proposals/ Dated a motherf–king crazy rich Asian.”
While it’s based in part on her story, Morgan insisted, “There is a huge contradiction between me and Razzlekhan” — adding that in real life, she’s Type A, while her alter ego is a party girl. “Razzlekhan was the first time in my life I was truly doing something for myself.”
She’s not happy with the way her story has been told in Netflix’s “The Biggest Heist Ever” and said her attorney has sent cease-and-desist letters to the streamer, producer Library Films, filmmaker Chris Smith and journalist Nick Bilton, who wrote the film.
Morgan’s attorney Serena Wu told NYNext: “We are reviewing our legal options but starting with these cease and desist letters,” adding that the film is disseminating “defamatory statements against Ms. Morgan.”
Morgan said she speaks to her husband, whom she hasn’t seen in three years, every day and plans to reunite with him when they are both out. The couple will also be reuniting with their Bengal cat Clarissa, who Morgan allegedly used to distract federal agents when their apartment was raided. The cat will spend the coming months with Morgan’s close friends and stay active on Instagram, she added.
And, “when I come out of prison, I look forward to continuing to pursue creative endeavors as Razzlekhan,” Morgan said. “The [prison] is conveniently located not too far from Hollywood, so let’s see what happens next.
“This is not the last the world will be hearing from me.”
This story is part of NYNext, a new editorial series that highlights New York City innovation across industries, as well as the personalities leading the way.
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