The Most Absurd True Crime of 2024 Just Landed

On a podcast, I discovered the sorry story of “Razzlekhan” and the strangest heist I ever hope to hear about. That meant I got to hear Razzlekhan’s abominable rapping and hear a verbal description of her videos — but now, thanks to Netflix’s new true-crime doc Biggest Heist Ever, I have those videos permanently seared into my brain.

Razzlekhan — the alter-ego of one Heather Morgan — is only one bizarre facet of this story: 4.6 billion dollars (billion!!!) of bitcoin stolen by a young couple who are the exact opposite of what you’d expect from sophisticated cybercriminals.

The story starts with $72 million stolen from Hong Kong-based virtual cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex back in 2016. Because cryptocurrency is an unregulated mess, all its lauded “transparency” amounted to was being able to see that money move on the blockchain, and the IRS watched it sit there and sit there as the case went cold. Until the money started moving again, and the IRS once again began following the money.

At the other end of that trail were: Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan and Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein. These two young white professionals made themselves at home as tech entrepreneur hustlers but behaved more like fifteen-year-olds with internet access. Heather posted now infamously bizarre videos — some simply talking into the camera, and many rapping as her alter-ego Razzlekhan. This rapping has to be heard to be believed. Ilya is quieter, shier, and makes himself much less visible than his partner … which turns out to be the far better play.

Shortly after the 2016 heist they quit their jobs and moved to New York, where they lived in a $6,500-a-month apartment and just … chilled. Until the IRS came knocking with a warrant and raided their electronics. Then … they just continued to chill, until the IRS came to slap on the handcuffs. By the time of their arrest, the stolen bitcoin was worth approximately $4.6 billion dollars.

Part of the farce — because this whole thing is undeniably a very destructive farce — is that these kids were terrible criminals. Everyone from the IRS to former hackers looks right into the camera and says, “You have a foreign passport; what you do, with that much money, is you disappear.” Instead, the lovebirds made countless videos and posted them publicly. They bought gift cards to launder some of the money (never buy gift cards!), bought Times Square billboards, and seemed generally oblivious to the potential consequences.

From the IRS investigator whose soul appears to wither behind his eyes as he recalls watching all of Razzlekhan’s videos by necessity to the absolutely bonkers amount of money spent on the couple’s designer cat, this documentary is the definition of a wild ride. I was not expecting to see cutscenes from Red Dead Redemption 2 as part of a psychological examination of a very real robbery, but boy was I wrong.

And, once again because cryptocurrency is an unregulated mess, Bitfinex is returning only the original 2016 value of the bitcoin to the actual victims of the heist and pocketing the appreciated difference. Truly, Robin Hood this story is not. This documentary only shows one of the victims of the heist — not a bank or a corporation but an individual whose life savings vanished into thin air. Those savings then went on to fund…Razzlekhan videos. And, while I would normally point out how making the woman in this story the foremost laughingstock doesn’t sit well with me…Honestly, I have no words for how thoroughly she forged her own role in all this.

I can only say: this thing needs to be seen to be believed. It also makes me even more terrified of techy hustle culture than I was before.

Biggest Heist Ever is now streaming on Netflix.