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HACKER STOLE $4 BILLION.
On August 2, 2016, the morning of bitcoin owners around the world began with the news of the largest cryptocurrency theft in history. Breaking news. 120 thousand bitcoins were stolen from the Bitfinex crypto exchange. This is half of all the bitcoins stored on the exchange, and one percent of all the bitcoins in the world at that time. The theft occurred right before the rapid growth of bitcoin, and in dollars at some point reached 8 billion.
Clients logged into their accounts, which yesterday contained tens, and some thousands of bitcoins, and saw only zeros I had a panic attack The price of bitcoin fell by 20% Thousands of people around the planet were asking the same question Who committed the most daring robbery in the history of cryptocurrency? For six years, no one knew who did it. For six months, the stolen bitcoins lay dead weight and did not move anywhere. The problem with such crashes is that transactions can be tracked, but due to anonymity, it is impossible to find out who made them.
Who did it? North Korean or Russian hackers? Spies? In the end, investigators still managed to find the ends, which led to this couple. This is a Russian guy Ilya and his girlfriend Heather. And this couple looked the least like crypto robbers. Pulled out a penis made of a vagina. Rather, they looked like idiots or ordinary TikTok freaks, of which there are millions on the Internet.
Why are you filming me? What do you want me to do? Do you want me to shove something up my ass and dance a little? The couple posted thousands of cringe videos on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. And this is a very, very strange story. Who are these clowns who pulled off the most high-profile case in the history of crypto? And where did they come from? How did you find them? And who will get the stolen billions now?
So, this Ilya. By the way, his last name is Lichtenstein. He was born in Russia. His parents emigrated to Chicago when he was very young. At school, Ilya was a typical nerd, this is how his classmate describes him. His future wife, Heather Morgan, was born in the American analogue of Muhasransk, in the city of Tehama, California.
The population of the city is 423 people, and, of course, Heather really wanted to break out and become rich by any means necessary.
I grew up in a small town, and as a child, I had no friends at all.
In general, it is clear that the lady is extremely unusual, she studied, worked in Hong Kong, in Cairo, and then returned to California and got a job at a gaming startup. And very quickly, thanks to her peculiar charisma, here she is, for example, masturbating to an imaginary horse, here you go, she made connections with the founders of the largest startups on the planet from Airbnb to Dropbox. And these connections will change her life forever.
And here the girl from Zazhopinsk smelled the American dream, namely the smell of money. And when you communicate with such people, you begin to believe that you can do the same. Soon she meets Ilya Lichtenstein, they get closer and become a couple. By the way, at that time he was one of the founders of a successful startup, But suddenly, in 2016, he leaves his company, drops everything and runs away with Heather to New York And this happens just at the moment when someone steals 120 thousand bitcoins from the Bitfinex crypto exchange You are wrong if you think that hacker thefts look like this Remember the news when old people received sentences for setting fire to military registration and enlistment offices?
Well, the way they were convinced to do this is called social engineering These are methods of manipulating human behavior to gain benefits, for example, confidential information or if you need to convince a person to take certain actions.
You can influence people in many ways, you can flatter them, you can give them something valuable, you can bribe them, you can also influence them with fear.
In such hacker attacks, the victim is usually an employee of the company, who is convinced by phone, by mail or even by video call under various pretexts to open a malicious program on his computer. And when he does this, the hackers get full access to the device. And if there are security holes in the entire system, the hackers can get access to the entire network of computers of the company. In 2019, Heather gives lectures all over New York.
And this is her talk, which is called "How to use social engineering to achieve anything?" This is the talk we're most interested in I don't like the word manipulation, but social engineering is basically a way to get someone to share information they don't want to share, or do something they don't want to do It's funny how in this talk she's basically testifying against herself Often, if you don't have an advantage, you can create one
So Heather knows how to manipulate people, that's the first thing And second, she knows how to send cold emails Before the theft, Heather had a business, she designed templates for an advertising email newsletter Hmm, maybe, maybe, I'm not saying for sure But she could theoretically send a phishing email to, say, an employee of some crypto exchange Well, just off the top of my head At some point, either out of boredom or because she has billions of dollars under her ass,
Heather decides to turn into a freak Internet character and part-time rapper under the pseudonym Rezl Khan I'm the general CEO and a dirty, dirty, dirty whore And if Heather burns in hell, it won't be for stealing four and a half billion dollars, it'll be for her rap career Bitch, am I her, the Wall Street crocodile Wall Street?
And the court files also indicate that Heather often used specific hacker terms in her rap tracks, such as Spearfish, a social engineering method we talked about that involves sending out emails with malware. She also wrote articles for Forbes on the topic of, who would have thought, cybersecurity. In New York, this sweet couple lived here, a spacious apartment for 6 thousand dollars.
Actually, it’s expensive by New York standards, but it’s pennies, considering the 120 thousand bitcoins in the stash. And in general, they, of course, did not particularly flaunt their wealth. How much did it cost? I’ll be shocked if it cost more than four bucks. 7 DOLLARS! Sparrow skirts! Despite Heather’s vigorous activity on social networks, Ilya preferred to remain in the shadows, did not particularly shine on camera and if he did, then only as a secondary character. Do I look like a little dancing monkey?
Yeah, this guy is definitely not ready for jail. But the problem was that despite the crypto wealth, converting stolen bitcoins into currency was not that easy. Interestingly, bitcoins can be marked, similar to the paint that explodes in a bag of stolen cash, staining each bill, making them unusable. Only bitcoins are marked electronically, so hackers are forced to first clean the crypto in order to cash it out, or find intermediaries who don’t care about the bitcoin’s dirty origins.
And such an intermediary was the darknet marketplace Alpha Bay, where you could buy drugs, weapons, and fake documents. Our hackers sent bitcoins to this platform back in 2017, six months after the theft. What they didn't know was that the store was already under surveillance. And a few months later, the Royal Thai Police took the store owner by the ass in his mansion. The funny thing is that when you send money to Alpha Bay, it's like you're putting money in a big box.
And other customers put their bitcoins in it too, and all these bitcoins get mixed up there, and when you withdraw money from there, no one knows where they came from in the first place. But now the FBI had access to the box itself and they could track the transactions, but it would take them a couple more years to sort through all the files and find those that would point to Ilya and Heather's involvement in that very theft. After the news about the arrest of the owner of Alpha Bay, our couple packs their bags and flies to Ukraine. There, in a state of constant anal stress, they receive parcels with fake passports, bank cards, SIM cards for mobile phones and cash.
And they think very hard about what to do next. At some point, two brothers from Israel take responsibility for the theft. And Ilya and Heather relax and fly back to New York, where after some time they have a lavish wedding. And this wedding was as strange as it gets. Heather was carried to the wedding by eight people, like an empress, and then she rapped.
And you know, life seemed to be going well. Heather was filming her TikToks and cringe videos, and here you have to understand that even though the FBI got access to Alpha Bay files, studying and comparing all the transactions is not an easy task. But as soon as investigators found traces of our newlyweds in the files, they began to closely monitor Ilya and Heather, collecting convincing evidence to bring charges against them.
Investigators soon uncover a small purchase of a $500 Walmart gift card made in Heather's name using stolen, marked bitcoins. In early 2022, Elya and Heather are informed by their ISP that their internet traffic is being monitored by a court order, and their asshole is squeezed even tighter. And this warning could have jeopardized the entire intelligence operation, because the suspects could start destroying evidence and trying to escape.
All the FBI could do was urgently search their apartment. And that's what they did. On January 5, 2022, the FBI breaks into their New York apartment and begins a search. At first, they are not detained, there is not enough evidence yet. During the search, Heather wants to leave and take their Bengal cat Clarice with her. She leans over the bed, supposedly to pick her up. But in fact, she wants to grab her phone and lock it, but she does not succeed.
Investigators also found many phones, books with cut-out pages for storing these very phones. They also found evidence in the hacked cloud that the couple had fake documents ready and were apparently preparing to leave the country. At the end of the month, the FBI was finally able to hack one of the files on Ilya's computer, which stored all the passwords to the crypto wallets where the bitcoins were stolen. At that time, they were worth billions of dollars. And these two freaks who posted nonsense on TikTok turn out to be criminals of historic proportions who were laundering and, possibly, stole $ 4.5 billion in crypto.
Who will get the stolen bitcoins? Of course, the state will do everything to ensure that they remain in the budget. Bitfinex also claimed rights to hundreds of thousands of bitcoins. And imagine that you are an ordinary guy, say, from Poland, like this young man, from whom this couple stole bitcoins in 2016. He had 91 bitcoins in his account.
Their total value was $60,000 at the time. Just to give you an idea, at the beginning of 2021, one bitcoin was worth $60,000, meaning if he hadn't been robbed and hadn't sold them, he would have had $6 million in his account. The investigation is still ongoing and new details may emerge. And I don't know about you, but I don't believe at all that these two weird characters did it all alone. And you?
That's the world of crypto. People from villages of 400 people become billionaires at the snap of a finger and lose it all just as quickly. And they often lose even more. Did you know that when Steve Jobs presented the first iPhone, the iPhone didn't exist yet? You can read about how he and other great and not so great people achieved incredible success through manipulation, lies and deceit in another thread.
On August 2, 2016, the morning of bitcoin owners around the world began with the news of the largest cryptocurrency theft in history. Breaking news. 120 thousand bitcoins were stolen from the Bitfinex crypto exchange. This is half of all the bitcoins stored on the exchange, and one percent of all the bitcoins in the world at that time. The theft occurred right before the rapid growth of bitcoin, and in dollars at some point reached 8 billion.
Clients logged into their accounts, which yesterday contained tens, and some thousands of bitcoins, and saw only zeros I had a panic attack The price of bitcoin fell by 20% Thousands of people around the planet were asking the same question Who committed the most daring robbery in the history of cryptocurrency? For six years, no one knew who did it. For six months, the stolen bitcoins lay dead weight and did not move anywhere. The problem with such crashes is that transactions can be tracked, but due to anonymity, it is impossible to find out who made them.
Who did it? North Korean or Russian hackers? Spies? In the end, investigators still managed to find the ends, which led to this couple. This is a Russian guy Ilya and his girlfriend Heather. And this couple looked the least like crypto robbers. Pulled out a penis made of a vagina. Rather, they looked like idiots or ordinary TikTok freaks, of which there are millions on the Internet.
Why are you filming me? What do you want me to do? Do you want me to shove something up my ass and dance a little? The couple posted thousands of cringe videos on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. And this is a very, very strange story. Who are these clowns who pulled off the most high-profile case in the history of crypto? And where did they come from? How did you find them? And who will get the stolen billions now?
So, this Ilya. By the way, his last name is Lichtenstein. He was born in Russia. His parents emigrated to Chicago when he was very young. At school, Ilya was a typical nerd, this is how his classmate describes him. His future wife, Heather Morgan, was born in the American analogue of Muhasransk, in the city of Tehama, California.
The population of the city is 423 people, and, of course, Heather really wanted to break out and become rich by any means necessary.
I grew up in a small town, and as a child, I had no friends at all.
In general, it is clear that the lady is extremely unusual, she studied, worked in Hong Kong, in Cairo, and then returned to California and got a job at a gaming startup. And very quickly, thanks to her peculiar charisma, here she is, for example, masturbating to an imaginary horse, here you go, she made connections with the founders of the largest startups on the planet from Airbnb to Dropbox. And these connections will change her life forever.
And here the girl from Zazhopinsk smelled the American dream, namely the smell of money. And when you communicate with such people, you begin to believe that you can do the same. Soon she meets Ilya Lichtenstein, they get closer and become a couple. By the way, at that time he was one of the founders of a successful startup, But suddenly, in 2016, he leaves his company, drops everything and runs away with Heather to New York And this happens just at the moment when someone steals 120 thousand bitcoins from the Bitfinex crypto exchange You are wrong if you think that hacker thefts look like this Remember the news when old people received sentences for setting fire to military registration and enlistment offices?
Well, the way they were convinced to do this is called social engineering These are methods of manipulating human behavior to gain benefits, for example, confidential information or if you need to convince a person to take certain actions.
You can influence people in many ways, you can flatter them, you can give them something valuable, you can bribe them, you can also influence them with fear.
In such hacker attacks, the victim is usually an employee of the company, who is convinced by phone, by mail or even by video call under various pretexts to open a malicious program on his computer. And when he does this, the hackers get full access to the device. And if there are security holes in the entire system, the hackers can get access to the entire network of computers of the company. In 2019, Heather gives lectures all over New York.
And this is her talk, which is called "How to use social engineering to achieve anything?" This is the talk we're most interested in I don't like the word manipulation, but social engineering is basically a way to get someone to share information they don't want to share, or do something they don't want to do It's funny how in this talk she's basically testifying against herself Often, if you don't have an advantage, you can create one
So Heather knows how to manipulate people, that's the first thing And second, she knows how to send cold emails Before the theft, Heather had a business, she designed templates for an advertising email newsletter Hmm, maybe, maybe, I'm not saying for sure But she could theoretically send a phishing email to, say, an employee of some crypto exchange Well, just off the top of my head At some point, either out of boredom or because she has billions of dollars under her ass,
Heather decides to turn into a freak Internet character and part-time rapper under the pseudonym Rezl Khan I'm the general CEO and a dirty, dirty, dirty whore And if Heather burns in hell, it won't be for stealing four and a half billion dollars, it'll be for her rap career Bitch, am I her, the Wall Street crocodile Wall Street?
And the court files also indicate that Heather often used specific hacker terms in her rap tracks, such as Spearfish, a social engineering method we talked about that involves sending out emails with malware. She also wrote articles for Forbes on the topic of, who would have thought, cybersecurity. In New York, this sweet couple lived here, a spacious apartment for 6 thousand dollars.
Actually, it’s expensive by New York standards, but it’s pennies, considering the 120 thousand bitcoins in the stash. And in general, they, of course, did not particularly flaunt their wealth. How much did it cost? I’ll be shocked if it cost more than four bucks. 7 DOLLARS! Sparrow skirts! Despite Heather’s vigorous activity on social networks, Ilya preferred to remain in the shadows, did not particularly shine on camera and if he did, then only as a secondary character. Do I look like a little dancing monkey?
Yeah, this guy is definitely not ready for jail. But the problem was that despite the crypto wealth, converting stolen bitcoins into currency was not that easy. Interestingly, bitcoins can be marked, similar to the paint that explodes in a bag of stolen cash, staining each bill, making them unusable. Only bitcoins are marked electronically, so hackers are forced to first clean the crypto in order to cash it out, or find intermediaries who don’t care about the bitcoin’s dirty origins.
And such an intermediary was the darknet marketplace Alpha Bay, where you could buy drugs, weapons, and fake documents. Our hackers sent bitcoins to this platform back in 2017, six months after the theft. What they didn't know was that the store was already under surveillance. And a few months later, the Royal Thai Police took the store owner by the ass in his mansion. The funny thing is that when you send money to Alpha Bay, it's like you're putting money in a big box.
And other customers put their bitcoins in it too, and all these bitcoins get mixed up there, and when you withdraw money from there, no one knows where they came from in the first place. But now the FBI had access to the box itself and they could track the transactions, but it would take them a couple more years to sort through all the files and find those that would point to Ilya and Heather's involvement in that very theft. After the news about the arrest of the owner of Alpha Bay, our couple packs their bags and flies to Ukraine. There, in a state of constant anal stress, they receive parcels with fake passports, bank cards, SIM cards for mobile phones and cash.
And they think very hard about what to do next. At some point, two brothers from Israel take responsibility for the theft. And Ilya and Heather relax and fly back to New York, where after some time they have a lavish wedding. And this wedding was as strange as it gets. Heather was carried to the wedding by eight people, like an empress, and then she rapped.
And you know, life seemed to be going well. Heather was filming her TikToks and cringe videos, and here you have to understand that even though the FBI got access to Alpha Bay files, studying and comparing all the transactions is not an easy task. But as soon as investigators found traces of our newlyweds in the files, they began to closely monitor Ilya and Heather, collecting convincing evidence to bring charges against them.
Investigators soon uncover a small purchase of a $500 Walmart gift card made in Heather's name using stolen, marked bitcoins. In early 2022, Elya and Heather are informed by their ISP that their internet traffic is being monitored by a court order, and their asshole is squeezed even tighter. And this warning could have jeopardized the entire intelligence operation, because the suspects could start destroying evidence and trying to escape.
All the FBI could do was urgently search their apartment. And that's what they did. On January 5, 2022, the FBI breaks into their New York apartment and begins a search. At first, they are not detained, there is not enough evidence yet. During the search, Heather wants to leave and take their Bengal cat Clarice with her. She leans over the bed, supposedly to pick her up. But in fact, she wants to grab her phone and lock it, but she does not succeed.
Investigators also found many phones, books with cut-out pages for storing these very phones. They also found evidence in the hacked cloud that the couple had fake documents ready and were apparently preparing to leave the country. At the end of the month, the FBI was finally able to hack one of the files on Ilya's computer, which stored all the passwords to the crypto wallets where the bitcoins were stolen. At that time, they were worth billions of dollars. And these two freaks who posted nonsense on TikTok turn out to be criminals of historic proportions who were laundering and, possibly, stole $ 4.5 billion in crypto.
Who will get the stolen bitcoins? Of course, the state will do everything to ensure that they remain in the budget. Bitfinex also claimed rights to hundreds of thousands of bitcoins. And imagine that you are an ordinary guy, say, from Poland, like this young man, from whom this couple stole bitcoins in 2016. He had 91 bitcoins in his account.
Their total value was $60,000 at the time. Just to give you an idea, at the beginning of 2021, one bitcoin was worth $60,000, meaning if he hadn't been robbed and hadn't sold them, he would have had $6 million in his account. The investigation is still ongoing and new details may emerge. And I don't know about you, but I don't believe at all that these two weird characters did it all alone. And you?
That's the world of crypto. People from villages of 400 people become billionaires at the snap of a finger and lose it all just as quickly. And they often lose even more. Did you know that when Steve Jobs presented the first iPhone, the iPhone didn't exist yet? You can read about how he and other great and not so great people achieved incredible success through manipulation, lies and deceit in another thread.
