Heather Morgan is Razzlekhan, the rapper accused of laundering billions of dollars in bitcoin

Morgan and Lichtenstein are in custody pending a listening to scheduled for this week. Their legal professional didn’t reply to requests for remark for this story.

The investigation consists of the biggest single seizure of funds in Justice Division historical past, however what has drawn probably the most on-line consideration is Morgan’s two somewhat-distinct personas: one as a profitable, go-getting tech entrepreneur and one other because the self-proclaimed “Crocodile of Wall Road” rapping about investing in meme shares, coping with the coronavirus pandemic and getting excessive in a cemetery.

Lichtenstein has a decrease on-line profile than his spouse; he described himself as a “tech entrepreneur, explorer, and occasional magician” in a 2018 weblog submit. In response to court docket paperwork, the twin Russian and American citizen grew up in Glenview, Sick., a suburb of Chicago. He studied on the College of Wisconsin-Madison and co-founded MixRank, a gross sales agency initially funded by Y Combinator and traders together with Mark Cuban, in response to the firm’s web site.

Lichtenstein’s public missives embody the occasional tech tweets, however Morgan has a prolific social media presence, branding herself as a surrealist rapper who has “extra pizzazz” than Genghis Khan in posts that coexist along with her extra staid picture as a enterprise influencer and advertising knowledgeable.

Earlier than debuting Razzlekhan, her rap persona, Morgan grew up in Tehama, a city of about 400 folks in Northern California, in response to court docket paperwork.

After graduating with honors from the College of California at Davis, she moved to Cairo — the place she labored on the World Financial institution, in response to her LinkedIn profile — and later Hong Kong.

She was a “very motivated, very brilliant and really formidable” economics scholar, mentioned Travis Lybbert, an economics professor at UC Davis who employed Morgan as an unpaid analysis assistant in 2011, after she had graduated.

Their interactions have been over video chat, however Lybbert detected “a restlessness to her, professionally.” She had a formidable data of the Center East and deliberate to work within the area of developmental economics. Ultimately, they co-wrote a chapter in a e-book about meals safety and sociopolitical stability.

“Professionally, she was very clean, and there was type of a starvation for her discovering and leveraging alternatives,” he mentioned.

Lybbert recalled a sophisticated and put-together younger lady, a picture juxtaposed by her gold-jacketed rap persona who strutted about New York whereas rapping “an anthem for misfits and weirdos” in a video for her 2019 track “Versace Bedouin.” However the professor mentioned he noticed glimpses of a Morgan “who all the time cared about her look.”

“As a younger skilled, you’re educated to current a sure picture of aspiration, success and functionality. And she or he was good at it,” Lybbert mentioned. “It appears to me trying on the photos that she nonetheless has that very same fastidiously curated presentation to the world. However she’s presenting to perhaps a special world and with completely different aims.”

In 2014, Morgan — who was residing in San Francisco — based SalesFolk, a advertising agency devoted to creating electronic mail pitches, in response to data filed in California. A yr earlier, she had met her future husband at a celebration, in response to a submit in Lichtenstein’s Fb profile confirmed to The Submit by one among his highschool associates. This and different Lichtenstein posts weren’t publicly out there.

However Morgan mentioned she determined to pursue rapping whereas coping with burnout that adopted an expert mishap in 2018.

“All of the sudden, every part began to crumble throughout a enterprise journey to Asia,” she wrote in a 2019 Forbes article. Impressed by artists Yolandi, Awkwafina and Tierra Whack — “who appeared to interrupt the mould and ‘personal their weirdness,’ ” she wrote — Morgan tried her hand at an alternate profession.

“I needed to do this too,” Morgan wrote. “I desperately needed an opportunity to get to precise myself authentically and creatively, with out all of the constraints of the company enterprise world.”

Morgan’s songs are as raunchy as they’re eccentric (one rhymes “Jane Austen romance” with “taxidermy class”). However a duality strikes by her musical repertoire that features critical subjects, reminiscent of well being care, with sillier songs about genie needs.

“I’m positively not making an attempt to win a Grammy for my voice, however I’m hooked on rap,” Morgan wrote in 2019. “I do know I nonetheless have plenty of room to enhance, however that’s what I like about it, and I intend to maintain rapping into my eighties, in between constructing new software program.”

The coexistence of the lady’s personas shocked some who knew her completely as Razzlekhan.

“It wasn’t that she was bizarre — it was extra like she was going to this point out of her technique to be further untraditional and peculiar,” mentioned Dan, a New Jersey-based photographer who spoke to The Submit on the situation that solely his first identify be used as a result of he feared skilled blowback for discussing a possible shopper. The 2 didn’t work collectively, he mentioned, partially due to her “weird concepts” and partially as a result of he was busy with different initiatives.

Morgan contacted him final yr to ask whether or not he might shoot her engagement images and different pictures to have a good time her marriage. She needed a “vibe as attractive horror comedy with a romantic slant and a splash of absurdism and occasional grossness,” she wrote in a message to him. Within the pitch, Morgan — referring to herself as Razzlekhan — described herself as being “the extra bizarre, flashy, colourful one.” Lichtenstein — Dutch within the message — “wears extra grey and black however typically leather-based,” she wrote.

Her concepts included “bizarre couple images with a surreal twist,” Dan mentioned, reminiscent of posing with a banana and several other life-size cardboard cutouts.

“Probably the most fascinating one — I assume you possibly can name it that,” the photographer mentioned whereas studying the pitch, “was a square-shaped photograph of Dutch and all of his wives photoshopped collectively. Mainly Heather as regular and Razzlekhan and several other different characters she does in wigs … principally all grabbing him or touching him in numerous methods.”

However the biggest shock, Dan mentioned, got here after a Google search. Attempting to get a learn on somebody he described as “a postmodern piece of artwork that simply doesn’t exist on this present actuality,” Dan found Morgan’s business-oriented, skilled aspect — the one splashed throughout the slew of articles she wrote as a contributor to Forbes and Inc.com.

“Happening that rabbit gap was the best shock,” he mentioned. “You might have this seemingly tremendous skilled and good entrepreneur writing for respected websites about enterprise. It simply didn’t make sense how she was, on the similar time, so blissfully in her personal world, ignorant to the norms of society. It’s actually jarring.”

“Firms that didn’t have already got distributed groups or earn a living from home insurance policies have struggled to transition to going absolutely distant amidst the pandemic,” Morgan wrote in 2020. “Cybercriminals and fraudsters are benefiting from this surprising disruption, resulting in a spike in scams and cybercrime.”