Netflix has ordered a docuseries about the recently arrested Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, who are accused of running a large cryptocurrency laundering scheme, the streamer announced this Friday.
As reported by the New York Times, Lichtenstein and Morgan were arrested on Feb. 8 for charges relating to a 2016 hack of the Bitcoin virtual currency exchange. Allegedly, the two hacked into the exchange and stole around 120,000 Bitcoin assets. As the value of the stolen cryptocurrency rose from $71 million to nearly $5 billion, the two allegedly tried to launder the assets by creating fake identities and online accounts to buy physical gold and NFTs. A press release from Netflix describes Lichtenstein and Morgan’s case as “the biggest financial crime case in history.”
The series will be directed by Chris Smith, who has directed several documentaries and docuseries for Netflix, many of which focus on scam artists and criminal activity. In 2019, he directed “Fyre – the Greatest Festival that Never Happened,” about the infamous fraudulent 2017 music festival that resulted in founder Billy McFarland being sentenced to six years in prison. That same year, he directed the eight-part Netflix miniseries “The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann,” which looked at the disappearance of the titular three-year old, who was reported missing while taking a holiday with her family in Portugal.
More recently, he directed the “100 Foot Wave,” a series chronicling the career of big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara, for HBO last year. The channel has renewed the series for a second season. Smith executive produces the series along with Nick Bilton, whose producing work includes work on documentaries and docuseries such as “Fake Famous,” “The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” and “American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road.”
