Russian woman who stole billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency attends bitcoin conference

Heather Morgan appeared at the Bitcoin 2024 conference. In February 2022, the US authorities arrested Russian Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife, seizing more than 94,000 BTC ($ 3.6 billion) from them. In August 2023, they pleaded guilty to money laundering.

Instead of serving her sentence, she continues to attend public events. Her presence was noticed at several such cryptocurrency conferences throughout the year, so a wave of indignation and discussion arose in the community. Thus, Bitcoin Casa co-founder Jameson Lopp called on the organizers to ban Morgan from attending crypto conferences, as she poses a real threat to bitcoin holders BTC $98,460.99 Bitcoin -0.24% Market capitalization $1.95 trillion VOL. 24 hours $4.17 billion . He suggested that she could use her social engineering experience to collect information in the interests of the state.

As a reminder, since the end of 2022, citizens of the terrorist state have been trying to withdraw their cryptocurrency through the darknet to circumvent EU sanctions. And last October, the EU tightened sanctions against the killer country regarding cryptocurrency transactions in the eurozone. Companies with a European license were banned from opening accounts and crypto wallets for citizens of the aggressor state.

According to analysts, accounts of 10,000 to 20,000 Russians have been blocked on cryptocurrency exchanges, and the amount of funds under sanctions exceeds ₽2−3 billion in cryptocurrency.