The US Attorney’s Office has asked the court to sentence Heather Morgan, the wife of Ilya Lichtenstein, to 18 months in prison for laundering 120,000 bitcoins stolen from Bitfinex in a 2016 hack.

American police arrested New York couple Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein in 2022. More than 94,000 BTC were seized from them out of 120,000 BTC stolen from the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange.

According to court documents, rapper Heather Morgan, also known as Razzlekhan, initially did not know anything and did not provide any assistance to her husband in hacking the cryptocurrency platform.

According to the prosecutor’s office, the crime in Heather Morgan’s actions appeared four years later – in 2020 – when she began to help her husband launder stolen bitcoins.

“In some ways she was drawn into the criminal scheme without her initial consent and may have felt obliged to support it out of a sense of loyalty to her husband and a desire to preserve their life together. She ultimately joined her husband in his criminal activities and used her own skills to help him,” prosecutors said in a statement.

Prosecutors offered Morgan a lenient sentence due to her early guilty plea, entering into a plea deal, and providing “substantial assistance” to law enforcement.

Let us recall that in 2023, Ilya Lichtenstein fully admitted his guilt and stated that he organized the hacking of the Bitfinex exchange. He faces up to 20 years in prison.