‘Crocodile of Wall Street’ sentenced to 18 months for bitcoin laundering role

NEW YORK: Heather Rhiannon Morgan, infamously nicknamed the "Crocodile of Wall Street," received an 18-month prison sentence on Monday for assisting her husband in laundering part of the 120,000 bitcoins stolen from cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex in 2016.

The stolen bitcoin, now valued in the billions, was linked to one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in history, reported Xinhua.

Her husband, Ilya "Dutch" Lichtenstein, was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to launder money, a charge that carries a prison sentence of up to 20 years.

Morgan had pleaded guilty to charges of money laundering and conspiring to defraud the United States, with each carrying up to five-year prison terms.

"Although Lichtenstein said he was solely responsible for the theft, the case received unusual attention because of Morgan's dichotomous online presence as a businesswoman with an email marketing company and a rapper who described her work as 'horror-comedy with a splash of weird allure'," reported The Washington Post about the case.

Morgan's lawyer has said she developed her entertainer alter-ego to cope during a difficult time in her life. Her portrayal in the media, her attorney said, ruined her reputation, subjected her to an "avalanche" of hateful messages and made her seem like the central player of the scheme, even though she learned about the theft after the fact and became an accomplice only to protect her husband.

--BERNAMA-XINHUA

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