If you already thought Bitcoin was confusing...well, it is. Who can make any sense of it? I think everyone's just kinda faking it, honestly.
But these two hip white-collar criminals in Manhattan thought that they understood it at least well enough to boost it (spoiler alert: they didn't!):
A married couple was busted in Manhattan on Tuesday for allegedly trying to launder roughly $4.5 billion in cryptocurrency stolen during a massive 2016 hack, federal prosecutors said.
Ilya "Dutch" Lichtenstein, 34, and his rapper wife, Heather Morgan, 31, are accused of conspiring to wash the proceeds of 119,754 bitcoin that were looted when a hacker breached the systems of virtual currency exchange Bitfinex.
The stolen cryptocurrency was allegedly transferred to a digital wallet controlled by Lichtenstein, who describes himself as a "Technology entrepreneur, coder and investor" on his LinkedIn account.
He and his wife — a self-professed "Serial Entrepreneur" and "surrealist rap" creator — then moved the funds to their accounts via "a complicated money laundering process," prosecutors said.
Wait wait wait...stop the tape, rewind, play it again. What now?
...a self-professed "Serial Entrepreneur" and "surrealist rap" creator...
Okay, yeah yeah sure, $4.5 billion, federal prosecution, major hacking scandal...but what's this about surrealist rap?? Let's take a look:
(language, crude sexual references and really, really bad rap warning)
Wait wait wait...so this is the great bitcoin thief??
I mean, look, to be fair, it's clear that these folks were clever enough to at least try and get away with a big-time crime:
As part of the scheme, the duo allegedly "employed numerous sophisticated laundering techniques" including setting up online accounts under bogus identities and moving the money through the darknet, prosecutors said.
Still though, it's a good thing Heather is such a hardcore rapper because she's gonna need that kind of street cred in the federal slammer!
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