Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth Dutton.
Speaker 3: You come on over here, let me talk to you.
Speaker 2: Hey, what you got for me?
Speaker 3: Do you know what's ridiculous? Oh?
Speaker 2: Wait? Wait, hold up, I do. Oh yes, a nude magician.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Kazuhisa Oukusa. It's not me. I'm not the nude magician. Yeah. Sorry,
Speaker 2: I don't have a new job. No, he's a Japanese entertainer.
Speaker 2: You've probably seen how much shows like Britain's Got Talent
Speaker 2: or The Late Late Show with James Corden.
Speaker 3: Do I need to remind you I don't watch television.
Speaker 2: Oh well, he was on the Italian TV show Record
Speaker 2: It means in English the Record Show, The Record Show. Yeah. No, anyway,
Speaker 2: he was on there, impressing the judges and the audiences alike.
Speaker 2: Because this dude has the record for quote, the most
Speaker 2: matches lit with plungers attached to a person's body in
Speaker 2: one minute.
Speaker 3: Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait the most.
Speaker 2: He has the record for the most matches lit with
Speaker 2: plungers attached to a person's body in one minute. I
Speaker 2: don't even understand how the record bind you is seventy three.
Speaker 3: Well does anyone else like the runner up on that?
Speaker 3: What is this?
Speaker 2: Hey? Man?
Speaker 3: Plungers attached to the body and then matches lip like
Speaker 3: he uses.
Speaker 2: He uses the plungers. So imagine plungers suctioned over each nipple,
Speaker 2: and then he whips his torso back and forth to
Speaker 2: strike matches that are affixed to a table. And so
Speaker 2: the matches get hit by the plungers, and then they have,
Speaker 2: like I guess, a rough surface that causes them to expose,
Speaker 2: and then the phosphate phosphors strike anywhere. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 2: he did it for so long. One of the plungers
Speaker 2: caught fire. He's leaving like, oh, I'm squealing right, worried
Speaker 2: about his nipples. Right, But then later on he came
Speaker 2: back to the stage because he had another one. He
Speaker 2: comes out Elizabeth. He was wearing leopard print shorts. He
Speaker 2: then took a CD, put the CD between his butt
Speaker 2: cheeks right clenched it. The CD was attached to strings
Speaker 2: which were attached to pieces of paper which were between
Speaker 2: five glasses he had neatly arranged, and then with a
Speaker 2: quick swivel of his hips, he pulled the clenched CD
Speaker 2: and then the string, and then the papers and then
Speaker 2: the glasses were left standing.
Speaker 3: How would he come up?
Speaker 2: Yes? That was another record, So the other guy, this
Speaker 2: guy's got a lot of records, Elizabeth. Yeah, he has
Speaker 2: the records for, quote, having the most objects removed simultaneously
Speaker 2: from under glass bottles with a ruler no hands, used
Speaker 2: six of those. Oh no. He also has the tallest
Speaker 2: double Jenga tower cloth pull, like we need pull a
Speaker 2: cloth and it stays standing like you know, like on
Speaker 2: the on like a like a tablecloth. Hands he had, yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: head to use hands with that one, seventy eight centimeters.
Speaker 2: He has the fastest time to remove twenty casino chips
Speaker 2: from under a glass bottle no hands, So that's a
Speaker 2: butt cheat clench, nine point sixty three seconds, and the
Speaker 2: longest duration balancing a wine glass on the head with
Speaker 2: a rotating blower with twenty eight seconds. Yeah, exactly. So
Speaker 2: what are we doing with our time? They're not out
Speaker 2: here getting world records because apparently they're just giving them out.
Speaker 2: Well there you got ridiculous, Right.
Speaker 3: That's so ridiculous. I'm scarred.
Speaker 2: Why clenching?
Speaker 3: And uh, do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I do don't hear for it, crypto what.
Speaker 3: This is a ridiculous crime A podcast about absurd and
Speaker 3: outrageous capers, hets and cons. It's always ninety nine percent
Speaker 3: murder free in one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 2: I know you don't heard that.
Speaker 3: You know how when you drive into San Francisco from
Speaker 3: either like the East Bay or if you're coming up
Speaker 3: from the airport, there are tons of billboards for tech companies.
Speaker 3: Oh god, yeah, and like most of them they decide
Speaker 3: that vowels in the company name just aren't necessary, like.
Speaker 2: They're legal, they cost more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then the billboards they feel like they're in
Speaker 3: a different lay language because like I don't understand the term.
Speaker 2: Not a word.
Speaker 3: It's all your best source of l MS, CPN connectivity.
Speaker 3: I don't know what it's like.
Speaker 2: Oh, that sounds great.
Speaker 3: And there's no physical products, so it's always just text.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can't show a thing.
Speaker 3: No, it's just a big block of text B to
Speaker 3: B software solutions for international GLM with no broker fees.
Speaker 2: Is that real?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I just say that, I see.
Speaker 3: I believe like it though, it's it's like this whole
Speaker 3: other world, and so I'm going to be hitting you
Speaker 3: with some of that jargon and idiotic company name stuff today.
Speaker 2: Oh you know I love I know you love.
Speaker 3: That, and I'm going to talk about I wateringly large
Speaker 3: sums of money.
Speaker 2: Okay, yes, you do love that.
Speaker 3: But first I want to take you to to Hama, California.
Speaker 2: No, and take me down to ham A Turn.
Speaker 3: It's kind of between Reading and Chico, which will mean
Speaker 3: absolutely nothing to me to non northern California folks. But
Speaker 3: I'm talking to you today, Solati Da. So it's very
Speaker 3: pretty up there.
Speaker 2: And what's going down in the state of Jefferson.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lots of orchards. The Sacramento River runs through town.
Speaker 3: It's a sleepy hamlet, about like four hundred peoples. But
Speaker 3: it gave us someone who would go on to much
Speaker 3: larger things, someone as outsized as ta Haima is quaint.
Speaker 2: Oh Aaron Rodgers.
Speaker 3: No, her name Heather Morgan.
Speaker 2: He's from Chicos.
Speaker 3: He is from Chico's very close. So Heather Morgan. She
Speaker 3: had a speech impediment growing up and was kind of
Speaker 3: bullied for her voice, and she was self conscious about
Speaker 3: it and said, quote that insecurity prevented me from doing
Speaker 3: a lot of things I was passionate and curious about
Speaker 3: when I was younger, from film and comedy to leadership opportunities.
Speaker 2: So James Earl Jones and Joe Biden both.
Speaker 3: Starterers exactly, and you know what, film and leadership, and
Speaker 3: they're amazing. She may have felt stifled in her younger years,
Speaker 3: but she had her sights set on bigger things.
Speaker 2: Oh good for her.
Speaker 3: You're familiar with Davis, California.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, down familiar you.
Speaker 3: See, Davis is my alma mater.
Speaker 2: You we have also heard of it.
Speaker 3: Heather went to y C.
Speaker 2: Davis get out. She was what Aggie for Life. He's
Speaker 2: making fun of me.
Speaker 4: Because I am a member of the YUC Davis Alumni Association.
Speaker 4: And when you do, like when you're like tired of
Speaker 4: them coming at you every year for the money, and
Speaker 4: you say here's a lifetime one.
Speaker 3: They they like, you know, unsolicited. They send me this
Speaker 3: license plate frame thank you gift that says Aggie for Life,
Speaker 3: and it is so ugly and I'm trying to figure
Speaker 3: out who I can regive it to anyway, Well, I
Speaker 3: can give it to Heather. I can give it to
Speaker 3: Heather Morgan. She she had a full ride scholarship today.
Speaker 2: The Captain Morgan Scholarship.
Speaker 3: She studied economics and international relations. She did a semester
Speaker 3: abroad in Ankara, Turkey. Oh interesting and like someone who
Speaker 3: does this semester in Spain and forever wants to tell
Speaker 3: you about Barstonona Turkish culture. Maybe huge impact on Heather.
Speaker 2: I mad it did formative years.
Speaker 3: Man, that stuff will be it's a body, your bones
Speaker 3: exactly so, but more on that later, okay. She graduated
Speaker 3: in twenty eleven and was hired as a research assistant
Speaker 3: by a UC Davis economics professor. He said that she
Speaker 3: was a promising student who had an impressive understanding of
Speaker 3: the Middle East and that she'd quote earned a place
Speaker 3: as a co author on an academic book chapter they
Speaker 3: wrote together, which was forecasting economic trends in me E
Speaker 3: Na following the Arab.
Speaker 2: Spring ah the Middle East North Africa.
Speaker 3: There it is so we have, you know, like this
Speaker 3: very heady work. From there, she moved to Hong Kong
Speaker 3: and she got a job at the Hong Kong University
Speaker 3: of Science and Technology, where she ran seminars about American
Speaker 3: culture teaching English. It's not bad for a Galfrid Taheima
Speaker 3: and so she went on to attend American University of Cairo,
Speaker 3: and her LinkedIn profile makes it look like she received
Speaker 3: a master's in economics of International development there. According to
Speaker 3: Forbes magazine, she only attended one semester and she left
Speaker 3: without finishing her degree.
Speaker 2: Oh, ew, I know about that.
Speaker 3: That's no shame in that game. In twenty thirteen, she
Speaker 3: moved to San Francisco, and you know, I know about
Speaker 3: that too.
Speaker 2: She joined the.
Speaker 3: Tech scene, like so many others seeking their fortunes in
Speaker 3: this twenty first century gold rush.
Speaker 2: Go get it, people get it.
Speaker 3: So she got a job at an Arabic language gaming
Speaker 3: company called Tamatan okay I, which is that's fascinating gaming company. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that lasted a couple of months. Then she moved
Speaker 3: to Brazil, which is the next logical step.
Speaker 2: She's always picking the spots, Brazil, Hong Kong. You're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: what's next.
Speaker 3: She married a Brazilian entrepreneur that she met at a conference,
Speaker 3: Bruno Desuza. This is what Forbes had to say about
Speaker 3: this quote at a conference. Yeah, Desusa said he had
Speaker 3: a quote intense relationship with Morgan that began during their
Speaker 3: few days at a tech conference, but added that the
Speaker 3: marriage was made intended to secure a visa so she
Speaker 3: could stay in Brazil and work on his pet tracking startup.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, it's for her to get a visa.
Speaker 2: To get a visa into Brazil, she can work basically
Speaker 2: as his like you know, partner will say his pet
Speaker 2: track tracking. So he's chipping dogs and cats and he's like, baby,
Speaker 2: I'm about to make million off these. She's like, I'm
Speaker 2: chipping by the dozens. And she's like, okay, get me
Speaker 2: like a green card. He's like, I can do better
Speaker 2: than that. But you know what's sad, but you marry me.
Speaker 3: October twenty thirteen marriage had fallen apart, Oh because it
Speaker 3: started so honestly, so earnestly well, and so then what
Speaker 3: does the girl to do? She moved back to California, okay,
Speaker 3: And she said that she came back to the States
Speaker 3: with absolutely nothing. She couch served. She interviewed, as she
Speaker 3: put it, quote CEOs and salespeople. I wanted to know
Speaker 3: how I could solve their biggest problems like maintaining growth
Speaker 3: rates and increasing sales revenue.
Speaker 2: So she went to them and say, what do you need? People?
Speaker 3: Big problems that no one in any business ever talks about, yes,
Speaker 3: of course, increasing sales.
Speaker 2: Like I wish there was like conferences or maybe like
Speaker 2: seminars about increasing sales revenue. That would be amazing, so helpful.
Speaker 3: March twenty fourteen, no one ever. She launched Salesfolk, Ohlkay, Salesfolks.
Speaker 2: Was that supposed to be like a type of her salesforce?
Speaker 2: Like people? Who is an email? Yeah?
Speaker 3: It sounds like if you're trying to say salesforce and
Speaker 3: your throat gets caught and you need water. Salesfolk sales
Speaker 3: or it's an email marketing company, Sure it is. So
Speaker 3: she had just one employee email marketing. It's a spam company. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's like mail chip. But she made up a couple
Speaker 3: of fictitious employee profiles on LinkedIn to make it look
Speaker 3: like she had a bunch of folks working at salesbook.
Speaker 2: Wow. I like how tech fraud is always fun and
Speaker 2: like it's never like yeah, that's just scammy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's just silly. Like if I did that anyway,
Speaker 3: go yeah, Forbes said quote. Morgan claimed during a Salesfolk
Speaker 3: presentation in twenty seventeen that her company had generated sixty
Speaker 3: four point seven million in revenue during twenty sixteen, according
Speaker 3: to the slides of the presentation scene by Forbes, and
Speaker 3: that's sixty six million. That figure is going to pop
Speaker 3: up again later, yeah again from Forbes quote to former
Speaker 3: sales Folk employees who spoke to Forbes, such a figure
Speaker 3: wasn't credible for a company that seemed to have no
Speaker 3: more than five employees at any time and paid salaries
Speaker 3: between ten thousand dollars and thirty thousand dollars. One former
Speaker 3: intern told Forbes that they were terminated suddenly in twenty
Speaker 3: sixteen because the company couldn't pay them. We don't call
Speaker 3: that money over here in the tech industry in the
Speaker 3: Bay Area, like thirty.
Speaker 2: Thousand is like, this is like a boiler room operation
Speaker 2: where you're just cold calling people and then scamming old
Speaker 2: people out of email, calling it a tech company exactly.
Speaker 3: So this doesn't matter because pretty soon she was writing
Speaker 3: for Forbes and Ink and all these other ways.
Speaker 2: I can give you a little insight on that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you can write for Forbes for free and call yourself
Speaker 2: a contributor, and then they will publish it under Forbes
Speaker 2: and you can say I was published by Forbes. It's
Speaker 2: not the same Forbes magazine. It used to be well,
Speaker 2: there it is.
Speaker 3: So she did that, and then in twenty nineteen, she
Speaker 3: wrote a piece for Forbes called got Burnout. This tech
Speaker 3: ceo thinks you should try wrapping. I think we should
Speaker 3: give ourselves a moment to breathe through that one totally.
Speaker 2: Who's the Goldman Sacks A guy who's like a DJ.
Speaker 2: I think it's the Goldman Sacks, one of the big
Speaker 2: finance guys. He spends his weekends like DJ. It's like
Speaker 2: date Jamie Diamond. It's not him.
Speaker 3: I don't tech ceo things you should try rapping.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I write it was him? Whoever? It was? So?
Speaker 3: On her LinkedIn, she said that she had limited working
Speaker 3: proficiency in Arabic, Turkish, and Korean.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? Limited work, limited working proficiency efficiency, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like I can read street.
Speaker 3: Signs, I can hit Google Translate, full professional proficiency in Japanese.
Speaker 2: Full professional fluency in Japanese.
Speaker 3: That's not proficiency in Japanese, elementary proficiency in Cantonese and Russian.
Speaker 2: Holy and got it solves a polyglot, quote native or.
Speaker 3: Bi lingual proficiency in English and Furbish.
Speaker 2: Furbish. Furbish is that like furbaby language.
Speaker 3: It's the language spoken by ferbies, those toys. Oh I
Speaker 3: am not kidding you.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I wish I were making that up. I
Speaker 3: wish I could go back in time and not know this.
Speaker 3: But like ferbies make that noise.
Speaker 2: Speak like a speaks Hamburglar. He didn't steal them. So
Speaker 2: what else did you like to know?
Speaker 3: Okay, so we know about Heather. Now let's meet Dutch.
Speaker 3: There's a named Dutch Ilia Dutch Liechtenstein.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, he does Russian named Dutch.
Speaker 3: Dutch was born in Rostov, Russia in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: He came to the US when he was six, fleeing,
Speaker 3: you know, from religious persecution. He grew up in the
Speaker 3: Chicago area as a young and he was doing some
Speaker 3: minor hacking and a slacken internet fraud on him. He
Speaker 3: went to the University of Wisconsin and he studied psych collegy.
Speaker 2: Of course, that's one of those degrees.
Speaker 3: Graduates twenty ten goes to Silicon Valley. Heather. So he
Speaker 3: started a bunch of failed websites and businesses, including.
Speaker 2: I cannot wait for this list.
Speaker 3: Ronpaulfan dot com, which he called the Number one source
Speaker 3: for Ron Paul News. He was also quote an investor
Speaker 3: and a part time mentalist magician Wow, heart time magician magician,
Speaker 3: heart time magician.
Speaker 2: That goes on the list of band names. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: According to Force.
Speaker 2: Part time magician.
Speaker 3: Dutch quote invested in startups alongside heavyweights like Mark Benioff,
Speaker 3: and he launched his own company, Mixed Rank, backed by
Speaker 3: Mark Cuban.
Speaker 2: Mark Benioff ben ceo.
Speaker 3: No, he's the CEO of Salesforce. Like the actual one, sales.
Speaker 2: Isn't his kid? The guy did Game of Thrones. I
Speaker 2: think that benfic related.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Benioff comes from like a well to do peninsula fan. Interesting,
Speaker 3: but it's like a tech genius growing up. Like he
Speaker 3: developed as a kid. He was like a teen, he
Speaker 3: was developing all this. He's now worth ten point three billion.
Speaker 2: Good for him and he is.
Speaker 3: It's he's Salesforce, right. They have that giant tower in
Speaker 3: the city with the eye of sore on.
Speaker 2: This is the one that's leaning.
Speaker 3: No, that's the Millennium all right, Salesforce, and I work
Speaker 3: on I use Salesforce in my use it all the
Speaker 3: time life. Yeah, so uh it's I've heard of it.
Speaker 3: It's it's everywhere, and they take over the city for
Speaker 3: all sorts of top So this guy, he's he's mixing
Speaker 3: with the big dogs, tech Mark Cuban.
Speaker 2: What is he on the He's got sharp elbow, She's
Speaker 2: the shark tank.
Speaker 3: Thing and he's the medicine man. Okay, so there we are.
Speaker 3: We got everybody in this mix. Twenty thirteen, Dutch met Morgan. Okay,
Speaker 3: the sky's open. They started dating later that year after
Speaker 3: this is when she got back from Brazil. Okay, pretty
Speaker 3: soon she moved into his high rise apartment in the city.
Speaker 3: Whether that's in the Milie Name Tower, who knows, who knows.
Speaker 3: So they're living the high life. They're traveling to Hong Kong, Panama, Mexico,
Speaker 3: all first class.
Speaker 2: Really yeah.
Speaker 3: And then it later came out that in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 3: Dutch quote illicitly obtained and transferred a small amount of
Speaker 3: pay coin, an alternative form of virtual currency. So May
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen said illicit yeah, and illicitly obtained and transferred.
Speaker 2: So stolen crypto. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: So then like the next year May twenty sixteen, his company,
Speaker 3: Mixed Rank is doing pretty well, but he suddenly quit
Speaker 3: it and then he and Morgan moved to New York.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm starting to guess where the trips stt coming from.
Speaker 3: They got a two bedroom, two bathroom apartment in a
Speaker 3: luxury building on Wall Street. Later, quote, Lixenstein founded a
Speaker 3: blockchain based cybersecurity company called en Pass and an investment
Speaker 3: business called demand Path. In just over a decade, he
Speaker 3: was also investing in startups. Of course, he was, Yeah,
Speaker 3: so let's take a break and we come back. We're
Speaker 3: going to get to my favorite part of this whole mess.
Speaker 2: Okay, and it's not a Winkle Boss.
Speaker 3: It is not a Winkle Boss.
Speaker 2: Thank god? All right, ZARONO, Hey, howday?
Speaker 3: Okay, goodness, all right, So we're getting to my favorite part.
Speaker 3: As I said, yes, this isn't the criminal aspect of
Speaker 3: the story of Heather Morgan, but it is criminally ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you got me sold.
Speaker 3: So twenty eighteen, things aren't going well at sales twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: Salesfolk not doing so well.
Speaker 2: Salesforce killing it, gangbusters, Salesfolk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is what Morgan wrote for Forbes. Quote, I
Speaker 3: had legal threats, learned that dishonest employees that were fudging
Speaker 3: numbers and people I want deeply respected. We're trying to
Speaker 3: bully and shame me into removing content I had published
Speaker 3: that I firmly believe the public needed to see sales folks.
Speaker 2: Sounds like in a movie with merph folk and they're
Speaker 2: going to have a salesforce company, you would be called
Speaker 2: sales folks. That's what it sounds like, like a gag
Speaker 2: in a movie.
Speaker 3: Exactly, children, Exactly, she was. So she's burned out, she's
Speaker 3: stressed out. She has to take time off. Like, what
Speaker 3: do you do when you're feeling stressed out and you
Speaker 3: need to take time off?
Speaker 2: Go as fast as I can?
Speaker 3: You go fast on a bike? Yes, I go in
Speaker 3: the garden. You know whatever. So sometimes though, we get solaced.
Speaker 2: Through inspiration sometimes, yeah, it comes to you.
Speaker 3: Are there artists who inspire you, who refresh you, make
Speaker 3: you want to do something creative?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Give me just one, just one lucial ball.
Speaker 3: Lall makes you, well, what about you? I have no
Speaker 3: inspiration for my life.
Speaker 2: Heather had her own bacon.
Speaker 3: Yes, Heather had a Lucille ball into Francis bacon. She
Speaker 3: was inspired by Yolandi visser Wait except the South African
Speaker 3: rapper and singer from the rap Raved Group tour.
Speaker 2: Yes, that like, yeah, Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: She's the one who's like super pale and has that
Speaker 3: crazy lopsided bleach blonde haircut that's like a mulled mullet
Speaker 3: with Mark Davis.
Speaker 2: Bangs trailer park fabulous.
Speaker 3: She's out there. Heather wanted to be out there too,
Speaker 3: of course.
Speaker 2: Why not. That's the best place to be. There's so
Speaker 2: few people out there.
Speaker 3: She decided to start writing rap lyrics.
Speaker 2: Remember I wanted to rap.
Speaker 3: She said that one Tuesday morning, will quote completely sober.
Speaker 2: Okay, she.
Speaker 3: Had quote this crazy idea for a song that I
Speaker 3: just had to make. And so the song that she
Speaker 3: said she wrote in thirty minutes, right, Prince was quote
Speaker 3: an absurdist stoner story similar to the likes of Harold
Speaker 3: and Kumar go to White Castle, but underneath is an
Speaker 3: allegory of Silicon Valley chalk full of symbolism. Oh my goodness,
Speaker 3: did you know there's symbolism and allegory.
Speaker 2: So this is like Elon Musk's favorite song. It's like
Speaker 2: high in Silicon Valley. That's my life, man.
Speaker 3: Probably She found a producer online fellow by the name
Speaker 3: of Kiesus like Jesus with Yeah, I really feel like
Speaker 3: Keesus took a look at her and thought I could
Speaker 3: take her money.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is this is a ripe sucker.
Speaker 3: So Keesus stepped in. He made the beats. That's b
Speaker 3: e ats, not Bublet's not just whipping up borsed in
Speaker 3: the studio place smells like must and work cold faraway spices.
Speaker 3: So yeah, anyway, so Heather, Yes, Heather said that Keyses
Speaker 3: quote helped her improve her rhythm and flow.
Speaker 2: Her rhythm and rhythm and flow. Yeah, the rapper. But listen, listen, Saren, Saren,
Speaker 2: I can't wait to hear.
Speaker 3: Wasn't Heather anymore?
Speaker 2: Oh no, of course not.
Speaker 3: Now she was Razzle Khan what Yeah, and it's not
Speaker 3: con like con artists con con k h a n
Speaker 3: like the Aga Khan or Shaka Khan.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I think it was a nod to her
Speaker 2: time in Turkey, That's what I'm guessing. Yeah, the former Khan,
Speaker 2: the Golden Horde.
Speaker 3: Heather reached her apex form Khan Razzle Khan wow to
Speaker 3: get into characters. She'd sport a look that like it
Speaker 3: looked like if someone in high school, like a high
Speaker 3: school volleyball player in like Middle America Heartland in the nineties,
Speaker 3: decided that she would dress as a hip hopper for
Speaker 3: Spirit Week, like that's she had, Like she has long
Speaker 3: brown hair, and she'd put on a flat billed baseball
Speaker 3: cap and like round lens reflective sunglasses and do like
Speaker 3: the whole what's up gesture really with her elbows raised
Speaker 3: in her hands pointing down, and she'd have like a
Speaker 3: smirk or like pout, like.
Speaker 2: Like full on former milk chicken territories.
Speaker 3: It's so regrettable. Yes, it made me feel bad for her. Yeah,
Speaker 3: she's like a sunny d commercial, like what's up kids?
Speaker 3: It didn't just like stop with Razzle Khan. Really, she
Speaker 3: had other identities. According to Vanity fair Quote, Morgan, for
Speaker 3: her part, had a half dozen different Utra personalities online.
Speaker 3: She was sometimes Turkish Martha Stewart, who cooked lamb kebabs
Speaker 3: in her kitchen and be razzled her elliptical machine by
Speaker 3: decorating with spray paint and LEDs. She also had an
Speaker 3: alter ego of sorts named Sharlene, who wore an eighties
Speaker 3: era blonde wig and spoke in a Southern accent about
Speaker 3: taking laxatives before going out. So Quote I can look skinny.
Speaker 3: And then there was the ultimate second self, the one,
Speaker 3: the only Razzle Khan.
Speaker 2: So she was just hitting all the buttons. Seems tund
Speaker 2: to see which one hits, basically like, well, which one
Speaker 2: of these personas can I monetize? I'm really hoping it's
Speaker 2: Razzle Khan.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, she called herself the crocodile of Wall Street.
Speaker 2: Makes sense, according to.
Speaker 3: Her website quote, because Raz has anesthesia. Her art often
Speaker 3: resembles something in between an acid trip and a delightful nightmare.
Speaker 3: Definitely not for the feint of heart or easily offended.
Speaker 3: Raz likes to push the limits of what people are
Speaker 3: comfortable with. Her style has often been described as sexy
Speaker 3: horror comedy because of her fondness for combining dark and
Speaker 3: disturbing concepts with dirty jokes and gestures. Just like her fearless,
Speaker 3: entrepreneurial spirit and hacker mindset, Raz shamelessly explores new frontiers
Speaker 3: of art, pushing the limit of what's possible. Whether that
Speaker 3: leads to something wonderful or terrible is unclear. The only
Speaker 3: thing that's certain is it won't be boring or mediocre.
Speaker 2: So she's like the worst version of Brook Candy you
Speaker 2: could possibly have they downtown l a rapper. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: completely a minute.
Speaker 3: Wait, let me let me tell you some song titles.
Speaker 3: Oh the song title, yeah, please go fund yourself, Versauce
Speaker 3: bedouin vacuum cleaner, Menace to Society, which I don't know
Speaker 3: cover I think taken getting high in a cemetery, and
Speaker 3: that track has the chorus puff puff pass, I love
Speaker 3: me some gravegrass, getting high in the cemetery, getting high
Speaker 3: in the cemetery.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, here's how Marissa the researcher summarized that too. Okay,
Speaker 3: quote to quote Marissa. This song is a real voyage.
Speaker 3: It starts with the narrator alone in the cemetery one night,
Speaker 3: smoking weed next to her grandpa's grave. When a horse
Speaker 3: propositions her, she declines. Then her grandpa comes up from
Speaker 3: the grave and asks for some weed, but she says
Speaker 3: she doesn't share her weed for free, and she tells
Speaker 3: him to go back to hell unless he has money.
Speaker 3: He offers a magic lamp he won from at a
Speaker 3: turk during a game of backgammon. The narrator is intrigued.
Speaker 3: Hold on, let me let me play something.
Speaker 2: I wone. She managed to get the founder of Turkey
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 3: Let me play, Let me play Versachi Bedwin for you.
Speaker 2: Just are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: I mean this is for the sake of journalism.
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, listens original that song is the Entrepreneurs
Speaker 2: and Trackers.
Speaker 5: Russell KM the better Win come real far, but don't
Speaker 5: know where I'm at, and the crocodile of Wall Street
Speaker 5: over on my fingers and foods on my feet. Always
Speaker 5: see a goat, not a goddamn sheet and email me
Speaker 5: your message on the beat.
Speaker 2: Beat her cadence. Her cadence sounds like someone making fun
Speaker 2: of someone's.
Speaker 3: There's a video. Oh yeah, it totally sounds like someone
Speaker 3: making fun of something. There's a video, and it's just
Speaker 3: like all I wished is that, Like I could run
Speaker 3: up on her like Marshawn Lynch and just tackle her
Speaker 3: tackler in the street anyway.
Speaker 2: I got to a point where Marshall Lynch didn't sually
Speaker 2: tackle people. I know he didn't.
Speaker 3: There one would if he could tackle her, If my
Speaker 3: man Marshawn had to, he would.
Speaker 2: I promise, I.
Speaker 3: Promise you He's not a one trick ponies.
Speaker 2: I would not. You can do anything.
Speaker 3: He can do anything in this world anyway, she's got.
Speaker 2: Your good personal friend, Marshaun Lyunch. You cannot limit him.
Speaker 3: I want him to be friends with me. I want
Speaker 3: him to be my friend, my celebrity friend. I want
Speaker 3: that makeup artist Aaron Parsons to be my celebrity.
Speaker 2: I can't tell you where to find him in Oakland.
Speaker 2: He's often it's the same place. Just go down there.
Speaker 3: Do go down there, Sarah, and I want her friendship
Speaker 3: to blossom organically.
Speaker 2: Saren, divity happened. Don't talk to him, let him talk
Speaker 2: to you, let him approach you.
Speaker 3: Anyway. She's got another song, CALIFORNI year rolls.
Speaker 2: Oh my God, where she can make a joke California
Speaker 2: kind of a punk band would make fun of people
Speaker 2: using that title.
Speaker 3: Plains about an Upper east Side bro and basic ass
Speaker 3: white Hose.
Speaker 2: So they're they So she's in on the physician. Yeah,
Speaker 2: heal thyself.
Speaker 3: She refers she's referring to Hose, who listened to the
Speaker 3: Jonas Brothers in one direction. Apparently she made n f
Speaker 3: t s for single for her songs VERSACEI Bedouin and
Speaker 3: Social Distance. Later, the NFTs, which at some point had
Speaker 3: been purchased I'm sure, disappeared from the NFT marketplace that
Speaker 3: they were housed on.
Speaker 2: Gasp, shocked, shocking.
Speaker 3: The art for Versace bed Win the single is so
Speaker 3: so so so, so so so terrible. It has a
Speaker 3: parental advisory icon on it growing up for me, that
Speaker 3: was a seal of approofal. It was a good album.
Speaker 3: It's not so here. I can't fathom buying any n
Speaker 3: f T, but in particular the Versace Bedouin one. So
Speaker 3: we've got Heather flouncing around as Razzle Khan.
Speaker 2: By the way, sounds like, you know, the Academy Awards
Speaker 2: is called the It's called the OSCAR.
Speaker 3: There's also that's like a convention, like a con where
Speaker 3: people get together. She's gonna hack me, dude, probably yeah, anyway, right,
Speaker 3: so she's I have no crypto to steal. I lost
Speaker 3: my Apeslizabeth apes Dutch. This made him love her even more,
Speaker 3: of course, in fact, he wanted to make an honest
Speaker 3: woman of her.
Speaker 2: Oh nice.
Speaker 3: He spent a year planning his marriage proposal. Okay, and
Speaker 3: he hired a marketing agency to put up posters of
Speaker 3: Morgan as Razzle Khan around the city. And then there was,
Speaker 3: as he called it, non cheesy billboard that he put
Speaker 3: up in Times Square with a photo of her taken
Speaker 3: from one of these rap videos.
Speaker 2: Does not sound cheesy at all.
Speaker 3: The words the most brutally honest rap album of the year.
Speaker 3: She was sold. She's like, guess what I do? A
Speaker 3: hip hip hop I do? It's like the what's his name?
Speaker 3: The comedian that I love? Who does the Hannibal Burris?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, who does eighties rap? Find it?
Speaker 3: Look it up online. It's amazing anyway, So she's sold.
Speaker 3: The couple officially engaged in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: Oh, congratulations, so happy for the family. Yeah, Sarah, listen,
Speaker 2: I'm glat to took each other off the market. Oh no, no, yes, yes, okay.
Speaker 3: I want you to picture it. It's November thirteenth, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one. You are at Plaia Studios in Culver City, California.
Speaker 3: The venue's website describes it as owned by bicoastal music
Speaker 3: production company Mophonics. Plia Studios is a unique and creative
Speaker 3: venue nestled in Culver City on the West side of
Speaker 3: Los Angeles. Curated with a mix of modern, industrial and
Speaker 3: eclectic design, the space breathes life into its former warehouse
Speaker 3: bits like you don't have to imagine it. Those are
Speaker 3: and you are there totally, and you're there because you've
Speaker 3: been invited to a wedding there, oh lord, not really
Speaker 3: invited by the couple. You're the plus one of the
Speaker 3: sound bath practitioner. You've been dating for a couple months.
Speaker 3: She goes by the name Sparkleshot, but you know her
Speaker 3: government name is Melanie and she's from Encino.
Speaker 2: She knows me as mister Andre.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's right. You're the son of a venture capitalist,
Speaker 3: of course, and you're working for your dad. You recognize
Speaker 3: some of the guests, people from tech startups in Venice,
Speaker 3: some of sparkleshots pals from Burning.
Speaker 2: Man mm hm and Silicon Beach.
Speaker 3: That you are looking sharp in a great bespoke suit.
Speaker 2: Sure, look at me, and not in.
Speaker 3: Like a pooky tell them what you're wearing way, but
Speaker 3: in a way that even like your cologne smells like wealth.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, feel good.
Speaker 3: You're not comfortable in this crowd, not at all. So
Speaker 3: as down tempo pseudo techno plays in the background, making
Speaker 3: you feel like you're shopping at H and M or something.
Speaker 3: A woman comes around and passes out gold spray painted
Speaker 3: banana leaves to the wedding guests wave them at Morgan
Speaker 3: when she comes in. Okay, guys. She then passes you
Speaker 3: a handful of Rasulkhan stickers. Suddenly there's a thumping bead.
Speaker 3: The music has picked up tempo and has a sort
Speaker 3: of Middle Eastern vibe to it. There's a commotion at
Speaker 3: the back of the room and you turn around. There,
Speaker 3: being carried on a Moroccan pelican is Heather Morgan. She's
Speaker 3: wearing a golden crown and some sort of beaded headdress.
Speaker 3: The crowd waves their palm leaves at her as she passes.
Speaker 3: You've never met her, nor seen her, and now you're
Speaker 3: stuck by one thing. She looks like a total dork.
Speaker 3: Like there's really no other way to put it. She
Speaker 3: looks like a nerdy kid in middle school who stole
Speaker 3: some raver's luggage and is now wearing about three other
Speaker 3: outfits at once.
Speaker 2: Do you record my internal modelogues?
Speaker 3: That's what I'm giving you, especially those round glasses with
Speaker 3: the amber tinted lenses. The ceremony is a strange blur,
Speaker 3: and you've survived to the reception. The bride, who you
Speaker 3: hadn't realized had disappeared, emerges from a side room. The
Speaker 3: DJ announces People of Earth, I give you Razzle Khan
Speaker 3: performing her new single Moon and Stars. The bride takes
Speaker 3: the stage and starts uncomfortably wrapping. The younger folks in
Speaker 3: the crowd do that faux social media inspired party dance
Speaker 3: in their seats, arms in the air, and poudy faces
Speaker 3: and faked excitement on their faces. The older folks in
Speaker 3: the crowd, presumably the bride and groom's families, looked totally confused.
Speaker 3: They've looked confused the whole time. The performance ends and
Speaker 3: the groom takes the stage. He tells the crowd to
Speaker 3: get ready to have their minds blown again. You aren't
Speaker 3: sure you're ready for that. The groom, Dutch you've heard
Speaker 3: him called, is wearing a black suit and a black shirt.
Speaker 3: He tells the crowd he's a magician.
Speaker 2: You roll your eyes.
Speaker 3: Your date is totally into this, loving every second. Dutch
Speaker 3: tells the guests to recall a fond memory of Heather.
Speaker 3: He then slowly makes his way around the room, guessing
Speaker 3: what moment was in their head. He gets a couple
Speaker 3: of them wrong, then correctly guesses a woman's memory. He's
Speaker 3: really good. Your date says you. Sigh. So we've met
Speaker 3: these characters. We know they're weird and techy and shady.
Speaker 3: Where do they have the money for all this stuff?
Speaker 3: This lifestyle?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I'm waiting for my uber outside. Worry to
Speaker 2: they elizabeth money?
Speaker 3: Look at me? What's this podcast called Ridiculous cross that's right, baby,
Speaker 3: let's get criming.
Speaker 2: Oh you know it.
Speaker 3: August second, twenty sixteen. We're going back in time.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: An unknown hacker uncovered a flaw in the code for bitfinex.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, yeah.
Speaker 3: A cryptocurrency exchange exchange that was like, is it bit
Speaker 3: bit finex, it's bitfinex, h whatever.
Speaker 2: So go there and buy and trade, yeah, crypto.
Speaker 3: This unknown hacker stole one hundred and nineteen thousand, seven
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty four bit coins. Oh wow, Yeah, from
Speaker 3: various user's wallets. So this is twenty sixteen. That was
Speaker 3: about half of bitfinex's inventory. Ooh, and the coins, nearly
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty thousand of them, were worth seventy
Speaker 3: two million dollars at this time.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 3: As with cryptocurrencies, the value later ballooned into billions. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: So the breach in the code quote triggered a slump
Speaker 3: in bitcoin prices. It dropped twenty three after the news
Speaker 3: broke Oh damn yeah. At some point, the stolen bitcoins
Speaker 3: were transferred into a digital wallet, a wallet belonging to
Speaker 3: none other than Ilia Dutch Liechtenstein, not Dutch la. For
Speaker 3: six months, the coins didn't move. This was because more
Speaker 3: legitimate sites that accepted bitcoin had been warned not to
Speaker 3: use the stolen tokens. But in early twenty seventeen, according
Speaker 3: to Vanity Fair Quote, software security companies noticed that someone
Speaker 3: was laundering some of that stolen crypto through a darknet
Speaker 3: marketplace called Alpha Bat, one of the world's largest sellers
Speaker 3: of feentanyl and heroin. Alpha Bay was already under investigations.
Speaker 2: Sure they were by multiple.
Speaker 3: Yeah, international authorities for other matters, and they were shut
Speaker 3: down by police later in twenty seven which I yes.
Speaker 3: In the course of that investigation, the FEDS arrested Alphabat's
Speaker 3: founder and went through the servers. This will become importantly
Speaker 3: so because the bitcoins were all stolen Dutch and old Razzlekhan,
Speaker 3: they needed to launder them. So, according to the New
Speaker 3: York Times quote, the maneuvers, according to prosecutors included opening
Speaker 3: accounts under false names, moving stolen funds in small sums
Speaker 3: in thousands of transactions to avoid detection, using computers to
Speaker 3: automate their transactions, spreading funds across virtual currency exchanges, and
Speaker 3: using US business accounts to obscure their illegal activity. Despite
Speaker 3: their efforts, that activity sometimes drew the scrutiny of cryptocurrency exchanges.
Speaker 3: In one instance, the couple used false identities to open
Speaker 3: seven accounts on a single exchange, only to have them
Speaker 3: frozen when the identities could not be verified. The accounts
Speaker 3: held over one hundred and sixty thousand dollars in assets.
Speaker 3: They nonetheless used cryptocurrency housed at another exchange to buy
Speaker 3: prepaid debit cards. One five hundred dollars card bought from
Speaker 3: Walmart was used to pay for Uber Andhotels dot Com
Speaker 3: purchases and to buy a PlayStation.
Speaker 2: Gotta get that place, got to get your place.
Speaker 3: So you know they're gamers too, hackers and gamers. So,
Speaker 3: according to the government's later press release, over the last
Speaker 3: five years, approximately twenty five thousand of those stolen bitcoin
Speaker 3: were transferred out of Liechtenstein's wallet via a complicated money
Speaker 3: laundering process that ended with some of the stolen funds
Speaker 3: being deposited into financial accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan.
Speaker 3: The remainder of the stolen funds, comprising more than ninety
Speaker 3: four thousand bitcoin, remained in the wallet used to receive
Speaker 3: and store the illegal proceeds from the hack man.
Speaker 2: If they could have gotten away with this billions, they
Speaker 2: could have bought themselves all the protection of some foreign countries.
Speaker 3: Totally, totally. So they also bought seventy gold coins and
Speaker 3: Heather buried them actual gold coins, physical yeah something finally,
Speaker 3: not digital.
Speaker 2: Yeah something real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that was worth tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 3: They got all those gift cards from big stores that
Speaker 3: could be converted into air miles.
Speaker 2: Thing I don't understand.
Speaker 3: And they also had you know, salesfolk.
Speaker 2: Of course, Elizabeth use that to like get.
Speaker 3: An institutional bitcoin account. Let's take a break. When we
Speaker 3: come back, we're going to continue on this crypto journey
Speaker 3: with Razul Khan and Dutch. All right, so we're back,
Speaker 3: and Dutch Man, every.
Speaker 2: Crazy kid is going to do. I know, well, who
Speaker 2: are they going to scam next?
Speaker 3: Those They got all this bitcoin and they're filtering it
Speaker 3: and laundering it and doing Yeah, well, they lied to
Speaker 3: their accountant about how they got it. Of course, they
Speaker 3: said that they bought one hundred and twenty in May
Speaker 3: of twenty eleven for three dollars and sixty four cents each,
Speaker 3: so which.
Speaker 2: You know is probably was right at the time. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: this whole time, my friends who bought it for like
Speaker 2: a dollar. Yeah, back of the day, I don't even think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they're kadrillionaires. Now they're living it up. This
Speaker 3: whole time they did all that first class travel. In
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, they took a month long trip to Ukraine,
Speaker 3: and while they were there, they had a bunch of
Speaker 3: packages delivered from the dark web. That's simcards, bank accounts,
Speaker 3: fake Ukrainian passports, you know, so it's like me getting
Speaker 3: Amazon packages. They're getting like return addressed dark web. All
Speaker 3: the travel was actually away for Dutch to meet with
Speaker 3: people who would convert the bitcoin into government issued currency
Speaker 3: and then he'd deposit it into Russian and Ukrainian bank That's.
Speaker 2: What I was waiting for. Yeah, I figure he had
Speaker 2: that set up from the get So there.
Speaker 3: Is in Ukraine they're laundering money. Yes, the authorities are
Speaker 3: closing in. There was that rate of alphabet like I
Speaker 3: said that Dark Web drugged in. They the Feds, they
Speaker 3: get the servers on that and they could see who
Speaker 3: was trying to cash out the stolen bitcoin. Eventually they
Speaker 3: had a suspect Dutch. Some of the accounts that he
Speaker 3: was using to launder money even used his real name,
Speaker 3: and on occasion he used his real driver's license to
Speaker 3: verify his identity and his own home address for a
Speaker 3: gold trade.
Speaker 2: He just didn't have the time. Was he's a busy
Speaker 2: life type.
Speaker 3: Yeah. To really get him and to understand where the
Speaker 3: rest of the not yet laundered bitcoins were. The FEDS
Speaker 3: needed to get into his encrypted cloud storage account, I
Speaker 3: bet and so basically, where's your drammax? So in later
Speaker 3: court docs quote in twenty twenty one, the agents obtained
Speaker 3: a copy of the contents of the cloud storage account
Speaker 3: pursuant to a search warrant. Upon reviewing the contents of
Speaker 3: the account, agents confirmed that the account was used by Lichenstein. However,
Speaker 3: a subset of files were secured with a strong encryption
Speaker 3: algorithm and a lengthy password. A password of that length
Speaker 3: would typically prevent a well resourced attacker from accessing the
Speaker 3: file within his lifetime. November twenty twenty one, a financial
Speaker 3: services company accidentally sent a notice to Dutch letting him
Speaker 3: know that he and Heather were the targets of a
Speaker 3: criminal probe.
Speaker 2: Oh and whoops.
Speaker 3: They read the letter and immediately they tossed a computer
Speaker 3: down a garbage chute, hoping it would stall investigators. But
Speaker 3: I don't think it works that way. No. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: on the morning of January fifth, twenty twenty two, agents
Speaker 3: from the FBI IRS Criminal Investigation DHS they arrive at
Speaker 3: the couple's apartment with a search warrant.
Speaker 2: And they wouldn't have needed the search warrant for what
Speaker 2: they threw in the trash because once you put it
Speaker 2: in the trash, it becomes basically public property. So that's
Speaker 2: like the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Unless they thought, well, we'll throw a dummy computer down
Speaker 3: the chute and it'll take them all this time to
Speaker 3: look at it. So Heather's parents were visiting from Californy,
Speaker 3: so we have to tame a family in town. She
Speaker 3: asked the fedes if she and her parents and I
Speaker 3: feel like she would be the dork to refer to
Speaker 3: her to them as the rents. Yeah, could they leave
Speaker 3: the apartment during the search.
Speaker 2: And so she has as are in town for a
Speaker 2: little while, you.
Speaker 3: Got to go with the rents. She also asked if
Speaker 3: she could bring their Bengal cat, Clarissa, who by the way,
Speaker 3: had her own Instagram account, and they walked the cat
Speaker 3: and the cat stroller outside because Clarissa had been hiding
Speaker 3: under a bed. Instinct so the agent's like, yes, you
Speaker 3: can get your parents and Clarissa out of here. But then,
Speaker 3: according to court documents, quote, while Morgan was crouched next
Speaker 3: to the bed calling to the cat, she positioned herself
Speaker 3: next to the nightstand, which was still holding one of
Speaker 3: her phones. She then reached up and grabbed her cell
Speaker 3: phone from the nightstand and repeatedly hit the lock button.
Speaker 3: It appeared Morgan was attempting to lock the phone in
Speaker 3: a way that would make it more difficult for law
Speaker 3: enforcement to search the phone's contents. Law enforcement had to
Speaker 3: wrest the phone from her hand.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, they thought over that, they thought, Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they go through this raid.
Speaker 2: I thought they wouldn't set them down at all.
Speaker 3: Who knows, they find forty thousand dollars in cash, a
Speaker 3: bunch of other foreign currency. They found a bag with
Speaker 3: the words burner phone written on it. Oh yeah, God,
Speaker 3: they find like fifty different tablets, phones, other electronics. Two
Speaker 3: partially hollowed out books.
Speaker 2: Fake id's written on it, followed up books is nice.
Speaker 2: I gotta admit it's pretty qu if you hollow it
Speaker 2: out yourself.
Speaker 3: I doubt it Dutch. He also had a folder on
Speaker 3: his computer called personas that had like bio information and
Speaker 3: other identification of Russian and Ukrainian men and women. And
Speaker 3: then there was a document on his computer called Ukraine
Speaker 3: Underscore Package which was written in Russian and was how
Speaker 3: like it was a document about how to anonymously receive
Speaker 3: a package in Ukraine. And oh, they also found evidence
Speaker 3: of tracking info for various shipments arriving in Ukraine at
Speaker 3: the same time that they were there. So they kept
Speaker 3: all the tracking information at long after they get home.
Speaker 2: They kept so much paperwork.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything like definitively ties that online wallet connected with
Speaker 3: the Bitfinex A lawyer them, Yeah, so they hired a
Speaker 3: couple of lawyers. They hired the bit lawyers, and then
Speaker 3: they also just went ahead and renewed their lease on
Speaker 3: their apartment for another year, like they're never going to
Speaker 3: get us. We have enough money.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness. G. K. Chesterton is so right.
Speaker 3: So January thirty first, twenty twenty two, law enforcement was
Speaker 3: able to decrypt some of the key files in the
Speaker 3: cloud storage I see you were able to do it.
Speaker 2: Bet on them every time.
Speaker 3: It had a list of two thousand virtual currency addresses
Speaker 3: along with corresponding private keys, and almost all of the
Speaker 3: addresses were linked to the bitfinex heist. So there it is,
Speaker 3: and so then it also said this is what was
Speaker 3: in the court documents quote. The encrypted area within the
Speaker 3: cloud storage account also held a parent wallet files for
Speaker 3: additional cryptocurrency that the government has not yet been able
Speaker 3: to seize. Several of these files include variations of the
Speaker 3: word dirty in their names, such as dirty underscore wallet
Speaker 3: dot dat. The account also contained a folder holding data
Speaker 3: files for numerous financial institutions, many in Russia, with notes
Speaker 3: that appear to be reconnaissance of potential laundering avenues. The
Speaker 3: account additionally included a text file named passport underscore ideas
Speaker 3: that included links to different darknet vendor accounts that appeared
Speaker 3: to be offering passports or identification cards for sale.
Speaker 2: Ohs it just.
Speaker 3: Took notes, you know, so they didn't they didn't prove
Speaker 3: that it was Dutch who hacked bitfinex, just that he'd
Speaker 3: gotten all the bitcoins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can see that. February.
Speaker 3: Yeah, February eighth, twenty twenty two, Dutch and Razlkhan, they
Speaker 3: were arrested, charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and
Speaker 3: conspiracy to defraud the United States. The government sees ninety
Speaker 3: four thousand, six hundred thirty six bitcoin that at that
Speaker 3: point February eighth, twenty twenty two, was worth three point
Speaker 3: six billion. Wow, that they hadn't laundered yet.
Speaker 2: And now the people who had that stolen, do they
Speaker 2: get that back at the amount that it was worth
Speaker 2: when it was stolen? Amount they get it?
Speaker 3: I think they get it at the coin?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Did they get to get their number of coins back? Right?
Speaker 2: And then if the value goes up, it just happens
Speaker 2: to go up. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 3: Twenty five thousand of the original coins were still missing,
Speaker 3: which the government figured they'd already been laundered. Yes.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 3: And since the initial three point six billion dollars in
Speaker 3: assets was received, then the DOJ recovered four hundred and
Speaker 3: seventy five million more, and then the couple agreed to
Speaker 3: forfeit seventy two million dollars. By the time they were arrested,
Speaker 3: the value of the total stolen bitcoin from the original
Speaker 3: theft was more than five billion with a B dollars.
Speaker 2: They stole five billion dollars of imaginary money.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I told you it was ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Oh my yes.
Speaker 3: In the press release, government called it the largest financial
Speaker 3: seizure in US history.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Dutchess bail was set at five million, and he had
Speaker 3: his parents home posted to security. Heathers was set at
Speaker 3: three million. Dutchess lawyer argued that he wasn't a flight
Speaker 3: risk because his family had left Russia for religious persecution reasons,
Speaker 3: and then the government pointed out that in twenty nineteen
Speaker 3: he got himself.
Speaker 2: A Russian passport so he can travel and.
Speaker 3: Conveniently, Russia does not extradite its own citizens.
Speaker 2: Yes, very right, famously, So.
Speaker 3: The lawyers argued that the couple, though they weren't a
Speaker 3: flight risk because they also had recently had some embryos
Speaker 3: frozen in planning to try IVF.
Speaker 2: And they renewed their lease.
Speaker 3: And they renewed the lease, so we aren't going anywhere
Speaker 3: they're staying. Yeah, and then, in true government fashion, prosecutors
Speaker 3: pointed to a Razzlecon lyric as proof of her technical expertise. Yes,
Speaker 3: spearfish your password, all your funds transferred. They're like, she
Speaker 3: put it in the wrap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, come on, young thug, take notes.
Speaker 3: So Dutch stayed in custody. Morgan was later allowed to
Speaker 3: stand her house arrest in the apartment on bond with
Speaker 3: electronic monitoring. September of twenty twenty two, Razzlecon tweeted about
Speaker 3: looking for remote work for B to B tech companies
Speaker 3: like business to business.
Speaker 2: Anyone's like, yes, we totally were.
Speaker 3: Apparently she found something.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 3: In January twenty twenty three, the judge approved that she
Speaker 3: could work in her employer's office on Monday, Wednesday Friday
Speaker 3: from ten am to eight thirty pm.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine being a parent saying this news and being like.
Speaker 3: Oh, so you did get a job, trying to go
Speaker 3: back to the office like you have an excuse. They
Speaker 3: said that she could also have a computer and a
Speaker 3: smartphone that so that she could work from home, but
Speaker 3: she would be monitored and was not allowed to make
Speaker 3: any crypto transactions. Naturally, Dutch August twenty twenty three, he
Speaker 3: pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering. She pleaded
Speaker 3: guilty to one count of money laundering conspiracy in one
Speaker 3: count of conspiracy to defraud the US.
Speaker 2: They hardly more charges.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they weren't charged with the actual hack, but Dutch
Speaker 3: admitted in court that he was the one who did it,
Speaker 3: and according to Bloomberg, he later said he had quote
Speaker 3: access to bitfinex's systems for several months and also hacked
Speaker 3: into individual accounts at other crypto exchanges such as coinbase
Speaker 3: and Kraken. Once he gained access to bitfinex, Liechtenstein said
Speaker 3: he came up with a way to save customer passwords
Speaker 3: so he could use them to access accounts at other exchanges.
Speaker 3: In some cases, he deposited money into crypto exchanges by
Speaker 3: using accounts in the name of other individuals that he
Speaker 3: purchased on the darknet. And he said he did it
Speaker 3: because quote, at the time, my business was struggling and
Speaker 3: I was feeling very burnt out from it, So he
Speaker 3: hacks hard. Marketing's very hard. The Daily Beast David said
Speaker 3: that the charge that he confessed to had a maximum
Speaker 3: of twenty years in prison five hundred thousand dollars fine,
Speaker 3: but based on his criminal history, number of other factors,
Speaker 3: his acceptance of responsibility, prosecutors recommended restitution of seventy two
Speaker 3: million and then ten to twelve years Razlkhan. She said
Speaker 3: that in twenty twenty, Dutch admitted to her that he'd
Speaker 3: hack Bifinex, and that she was always suspicious of the
Speaker 3: extra money.
Speaker 2: Always suspicious, so she thought it.
Speaker 3: Was from drugs or tax evasions.
Speaker 2: So she didn't really flip on him. She just like
Speaker 2: he could be dirty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And she said that some of the times
Speaker 3: they went to Ukraine or Kazakhstan, she thought they were
Speaker 3: just tourists or like building their businesses.
Speaker 2: I thought I was on tour. One time when they.
Speaker 3: Were in Kazakhstan, she found him burning documents in a
Speaker 3: trash can. But she was like, well that's weird. I
Speaker 3: better rap about it.
Speaker 2: That's what you do in tech.
Speaker 3: So prosecutors may have offered to sponsor them in witness protection.
Speaker 3: Why if he had to like disappear for his own safety.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but what bigger fish do they have?
Speaker 3: Yeah he no, he didn't. I'm there's really there's no
Speaker 3: news on them, either Dutch or razzal Khan. The most
Speaker 3: recent thing was that a quote federal judge would determine
Speaker 3: any sentencing, and then February twenty twenty four, apparently he
Speaker 3: was quote helping federal prosecutors in their case against bitcoin Fog,
Speaker 3: one of the mixing services he said he'd use to
Speaker 3: conceal assets. Okay, this is no way to end the
Speaker 3: tail zeron.
Speaker 2: So wait a minute. So okay, Yeah, they're just trying
Speaker 2: to get this guy to flip and help them make
Speaker 2: other case.
Speaker 3: Sounds like it. Yeah. Almost immediately after the arrest, though,
Speaker 3: Netflix announced a series dropped a new new banger like No,
Speaker 3: this isn't the End from Prison, like on.
Speaker 2: The Phone, like real hip hop tiles.
Speaker 3: It's going to be directed by the same guy who
Speaker 3: did the Firefest documentary Really serious. As of now, there's
Speaker 3: no updates on the status of that project. Hulu is
Speaker 3: was always working on a limited run series called Razzle
Speaker 3: on the infamous Crocodile of Wall Street starring Lily Collins.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3: In early twenty twenty four, Amazon MGM Studios announced it
Speaker 3: was quote launching development on a film called Razzle Khan
Speaker 3: Okay and Finally.
Speaker 2: They didn't no casting announcements now.
Speaker 3: Well, March twenty twenty four, it was announced that a
Speaker 3: feature film, Dutch in Razzle Khan, starring Lewis Pullman and
Speaker 3: Chloe Grace Moretz. Oh that's cool, would start production this
Speaker 3: summer twenty twenty four. So let's see if they need
Speaker 3: us for anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's write them.
Speaker 3: What's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, So like all this crypto right as
Speaker 2: somebody who grew up like idolizing con men and like hustlers,
Speaker 2: I had an immediate instinct that this is just like BS.
Speaker 2: But I didn't realize it would last so long. Yeah,
Speaker 2: because I have heard about it way back in the
Speaker 2: day from my like friends who were deep in the
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley. Did not have the intelligence to buy any
Speaker 2: of these like bitcoin type things, but I did have
Speaker 2: the intelligence to sneer at it the entire time. So
Speaker 2: I've been right about that part. Did not pay it
Speaker 2: all well, But yeah, man, I hate this stuff and
Speaker 2: it just keeps going. And now they're he's using up
Speaker 2: like cities worth of water to make up imaginary money.
Speaker 2: She's only making people like this wealthy. It's not like
Speaker 2: you hear about like and then they gave a billion
Speaker 2: dollars to a charity because of all the free money
Speaker 2: they'd made. Like if I could feel a little better
Speaker 2: if I ever heard that.
Speaker 3: But new that's the you know, my ridiculous take thanks
Speaker 3: for asking, is that it's everything is theoretical about it, right,
Speaker 3: Like it's just all ones and zeros in the matrix.
Speaker 3: But then there are the real world aspects of it.
Speaker 3: And I'm not talking about razzle Khan walking up and
Speaker 3: down the street wrapping. I'm talking about, like you said,
Speaker 3: like the amount of energy that gets used, and it's
Speaker 3: so crazy wasteful. I mean, I suppose not if you're
Speaker 3: going to talk about like the money that it makes,
Speaker 3: but sure, and it's it's but it's all again theoretical,
Speaker 3: and it's it's the on the ground though it's so damaging,
Speaker 3: so damaging and wasteful, very very wasteful. So that is
Speaker 3: my ridiculous takeaway. Thank you very much, Dave. Could you
Speaker 3: could you give me a talk back?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh.
Speaker 5: Oh god, I went ge.
Speaker 3: Hey's Aaron Elizabeth and producer Dave.
Speaker 2: This is Ben from New York City.
Speaker 5: So I'm unemployed and I've been looking for jobs recently, and.
Speaker 3: I saw a Craigslist ad to become a private investigator.
Speaker 5: The guy wants me to drive tomorrow morning out to
Speaker 5: Long Island for an interview.
Speaker 2: I need your guys advice. Should I go? Should I
Speaker 2: become a PI? From what I have to stand? Yeah,
Speaker 2: we we had the intern to get back to this guy.
Speaker 2: We're waiting for an update. Correct.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're just waiting to hear from him. We urged
Speaker 3: him desperately for you. He's got to go do this
Speaker 3: and report back. Yes, please, and then also don't get murdered,
Speaker 3: so you know, bring like mace and do a pin
Speaker 3: drop when you get there.
Speaker 2: Pizzaza, bring a pizza.
Speaker 3: You know everyone likes pizza. Yeah, but oh my gosh, hangry.
Speaker 3: That's all I have for today. You can find us
Speaker 3: online at ridiculous Crime dot com. We're at Ridiculous Crime
Speaker 3: on Twitter and Instagram. You can email us at ridiculous
Speaker 3: Crime at gmail dot com, and then, most importantly, leave
Speaker 3: us a talk back on the iHeart app. Just reach out.
Speaker 3: Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett,
Speaker 3: produced and edited by Dave Kusten aka Sizzle Korn. Research
Speaker 3: is by founder and CEO of Sales Farce Marisa Brown
Speaker 3: and banana leaf painter Andrea song Sharpen Tear. The theme
Speaker 3: song is by Razulkan, stylist Thomas Lee and razzlecon lyricist
Speaker 3: Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany five Hundred.
Speaker 3: Executive producers are Crypto Bully Ben Boleen and Crypto Keeper
Speaker 3: Noel Brown.
Speaker 5: Ridicous Crime Say It One More Times Crime.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
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