A US couple is facing a possible 25 years in prison, after being charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States. The charges come after US federal authorities implicated the two in a laundering investigation of $4.5 Billion dollars of Bitcoin which was related to the infamous 2016 Bitfinex hack and heist.

Illya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan were charged by the US Department of Justice, after the department allegedly accessed a cloud storage account that contained over 2,000 virtual wallets that were used to launder the money.

Heather Morgan is also known as Razzlekhan, a TikTok influencer and minor league YouTuber who went somewhat viral for a cringy rap, which has since been deleted from her YouTube channel for reasons you will likely understand after listening to this masterpiece. 

The two controlled nearly 120,000 stolen bitcoin according to court records, and had laundered 25,000 of those coins before being discovered by federal authorities. Authorities were able to seize 94,636 BTC valued at around $3.6 billion dollars, which Bitfinex has said it will seek to reclaim and restore to affected investors.

“Cryptocurrency and the virtual currency exchanges trading in it comprise an expanding part of the U.S. financial system, but digital currency heists executed through complex money laundering schemes could undermine confidence in cryptocurrency,” said U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves on Wednesday. “The Department of Justice and our office stand ready to confront these threats by using 21st century investigative techniques to recover the stolen funds and to hold the perpetrators accountable.”

The bitcoins in question were stolen during a 2016 security breach of the Bitfinex crypto currency exchange. Since that time, some BTC was recovered, but the amount recovered paled in comparison to the DOJ's most recent seizure. When the coins were stolen in 2016, they were worth 72 million, they are now worth 4.5 billion.