In Biggest Heist Ever (Netflix), a new documentary from Chris Smith, director of Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened and Mr. McMahon, the trail to track down billions of dollars in stolen cryptocurrency leads federal investigators not to rogue nations or nefarious oligarchs or even faceless digital mercenaries, but instead to…Razzlekhan? The story of how Heather Morgan, her gonzo rap alter ego, and Ilya Lichtenstein, her serial tech entrepreneur/quiet computer nerd husband, became targets of a massive financial fraud investigation is a twisty one. It’s also tailor-made for Netflix, which seems to release contemporary true crime docs like Biggest Heist Ever each and every week. But it’s also remarkable for how brash this whole story is. In 2022, even after their New York City apartment had been raided by the feds, Morgan was still rapping online as Razzlekhan, and the couple were living all the way large. You know, like they had actually gotten away with it.
The Gist: In 2016, somebody reached their digital fingers into a wallet on the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, and helped themselves to 120,000 bitcoin. As a heist, it was a $70 million-dollar haul. But over time, as the crypto industry started to boom, that figure ballooned to over $4 billion in stolen funds. It was Internal Revenue Service money laundering investigator Chris Janczewski’s job to follow the funds, try and figure out who had them, and to be there when they tried to off-ramp the loot from the digital depths into a hard cash situation. Given the complexities of crypto and its virtual currency exchanges, this proved to be a difficult job for Janczewski. And that was before he had to watch all of Heather Morgan’s wacko Razzlekhan-tent.
Biggest Heist Ever knows it’s just not very interesting to feature investigators staring intently at computer screens, or intricate on-screen roadmaps of mazelike crypto networks. The heist happened years ago. And besides, during its investigation, the government didn’t even have the private key access that would show them the money. Janczewski says stolen crypto floating around in a visible blockchain is like a bank robbery where the money is right there but completely untouchable. Which is why former Forbes writer and tech world hustler Heather Morgan’s Razzlekhan persona is a boon, at least for documentary purposes. At every turn, her goofy vids and outsized, eccentric personality amplify the visual vibe in Biggest Heist.
Heather and Ilya definitely were not hiding their bling-y lifestyle. But Janczewski and the feds wondered: were Morgan and Lichtenstein, nicknamed the “Crypto Bonnie & Clyde,” hiding their criminal activity in the space between “Puff puff pass/I love me some grave grass” and “Spear fish your password, all your funds transferred”?
Janczewski is interviewed extensively in Biggest Heist Ever, as is Vanity Fair writer Nick Bilton, former cyber criminal Brett Johnson, a handful of people who were friends with Heather and Ilya throughout their lives, and people they encountered professionally. And as the federal dragnet tightens around the couple, and they’re still out there getting nuts or going big on the Internet, pretty much everyone comes to one conclusion. Morgan and Lichtenstein were either sure that they were about to get caught, or they believed in the power of their own teflon hustle.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Bitconned is another recent documentary that will make you seethe at the gall of these crypto and financial market types. But the list goes on.
Performance Worth Watching: Biggest Heist likes to try and catch the friendly but straightlaced Janczewski in moments where his training and bearing bump up against the craziness of Heather Morgan’s Razzlekhan persona. “These were some of the more…unique people we encountered,” Janczewski says at one point of his investigation, and the camera hovers as he makes a pained “Jim from The Office” face.
Memorable Dialogue: Vanity Fair’s Nick Bilton has all of the questions. “How do the feds show up at your front door, raid your apartment, take all your electronics, which could tie you to billions of dollars in stolen crypto, and you still go out for several weeks and make these crazy videos?”
“If I know there is a potential that I can go to jail for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t post bizarre, eccentric, fucking insane videos.”
Sex and Skin: Nothing beyond some mildly risque dancing and outfit wearing from Morgan as Razzle.
Our Take: There is an outcome in Biggest Heist Ever, if that’s what you’re after. But the value in this documentary is the bananas behavior it shows along the way. The doc gets a ton of mileage out of Heather Morgan’s lively and unpredictable social media presence, tracks down the people who helped her realize her Razzlekhan dreams, and does its best to probe her motivations. (Morgan’s college friends on the steady amplification of her alter ego: “Yeah, that seems about right.”) But Morgan isn’t the only thing being crazy in Biggest Heist. For the everyday viewer, the common thread in all of these recent documentaries about the subject is the free-for-all insanity of cryptocurrency. It feels like a closed-loop system, where people with either bad intentions or fluid morals earn millions and millions, only to largely skate on accountability. It’s more than a little infuriating!
But it’s also pretty interesting. We are sure to see the stream of crypto docs continue to flow, as the industry itself lives through another moment of exposure, expansion, and even more questions. But there’s a pretty decent chance none of those docs to come will have as quirky a personality as Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan as their centerpiece.
Our Call: Stream It. Biggest Heist Ever adds to Netflix’s booming true crime digital wallet with an interesting look at both the mildly unhinged nature of a tech world hustler/aspiring rapper, and how a married couple nobody expected were eventually connected to an epic crypto scam.
Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.