Just over a year after being sentenced to five years in prison for the theft of billions of dollars in Bitcoin, hacker Ilya Lichtenstein is now a free man. Lichtenstein shared his release on X, giving a nod to Trump: “Thanks to President Trump’s First Step Act, I have been released from prison early. I remain committed to making a positive impact in cybersecurity as soon as I can.”
The First Step Act he mentioned is a criminal justice reform bill that passed in 2018 during Trump’s first term, aimed at expanding early release options, including earned time credits. A Trump administration official confirmed his early release in a statement to CNBC, noting that Lichtenstein “has served significant time on his sentence and is currently on home confinement consistent with statute and Bureau of Prisons policies.”
Lichtenstein’s wife, Heather Morgan, responded to his announcement with a photo of the two of them. Morgan, known to some as the rapper “Razzlekhan” or “the Crocodile of Wall Street,” was also charged in the scheme to launder billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin stolen in the 2016 hack of the crypto exchange Bitfinex. She received an 18-month prison sentence but apparently was released early, which she revealed from her bathtub in an X post back in October.
The couple was arrested for the hack in 2022. Since then, they’ve become the focus of a Netflix docuseries and an upcoming film.
