Michael Kunzelman
A 22-year-old man pleaded guilty to teaming up with friends to steal nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in bitcoin from a Washington, DC, resident — one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in US history — and then embarking on a wild spending spree with the laundered proceeds.
Malone Lam, an eighth-grade dropout who came to the US from Singapore, faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years after pleading guilty to a federal racketeering conspiracy charge. US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly didn’t immediately schedule Lam’s sentencing hearing in Washington.
Lam was an organiser for a network of young men who carried out a string of crypto scams starting in 2023, prosecutors said. He is one of 18 defendants charged in the case and is the 11th to plead guilty, but his conviction marks a major breakthrough for the Justice Department’s investigation.
In August 2024, Lam and others used “social engineering” techniques to dupe the Washington man out of bitcoin worth over $US245 million ($339 million). Two of Lam’s alleged co-conspirators posed as representatives of Google and the Gemini crypto exchange to manipulate the man into giving them access to his Google Drive and revealing security codes that allowed Lam to siphon off over 4,100 bitcoin, according to prosecutors.
And then the party started.
Lam helped launder and covert stolen crypto into cash that he used to buy a fleet of sports cars, rent mansions in Miami and spend millions at nightclubs, including $US569,000 in one evening at one Los Angeles club, authorities said.
The spending spree lasted a month before FBI agents arrested Lam in Miami. An off-duty law enforcement officer had tipped off Lam that authorities were on their way to arrest him, the indictment says.
“We always talked about what it would be like if I were to go down, but never thought it would be this crazy,” Lam told associates from jail on a recorded call, according to his indictment.
Lam’s purchases included a $US2 million watch and over 30 cars, including custom Porsches, Lamborghinis and Ferraris, according to the FBI. When Lam indicated that he purchased most but not all of those vehicles himself, the judge asked him if he remembers which ones he personally bought.
“I would need some time,” he told the judge.
The charges against Lam and 17 others are an extreme example of an increasingly common form of cybercrime. Complaints of cryptocurrency investment fraud to the FBI rose by nearly 50 per cent in 2025, while Republican President Donald Trump’s administration largely abandoned a regulatory crackdown on the volatile industry.
Last year, the Justice Department disbanded a unit dedicated to prosecuting crypto-related crimes. Meanwhile, crypto companies that complained of unfair treatment during Democratic President Joe Biden’s presidency are enjoying the government’s hands-off approach under Trump, who took in roughly $US1.2 billion from his crypto businesses in 2025.
Cybersecurity researcher Allison Nixon, who has spent years tracking The Com, an underground subculture of young hackers united by the “insane amount of money” that crypto fraud can generate, advocates for more law enforcement resources to go after them.
“If we don’t seriously ramp up the resources to take these people down and do it faster, then it’s going to spread more and more,” she said.
Scammers nabbed millions though ‘social engineering’ heist
A man identified as “Victim 7” in court filings was at home in Washington on August 18, 2024, when his phone rang. The first caller identified himself as a Google representative inquiring about attempts to breach his account. A second, claiming to be from the Gemini crypto exchange, warned the man of a malware attack affecting his crypto wallet.
The callers manipulated the man into giving them access to his Google Drive and revealing security codes that allowed Lam to siphon off over 4,100 bitcoin, according to prosecutors. They said Lam and his friends on the calls — Veer Chetal and Jeandiel Serrano — targeted the man because he was a wealthy, longtime crypto investor.
A private recording captured the moment when the friends realised how much money they just stole, according to a video posted by a well-known private investigator of cryptocurrency crimes who goes by ZachXBT.
“Oh, my God! Bro, bro, I’m going to spaz out!” a voice on the video said.
Once they swiped the man’s savings, they used money laundering specialists to wash it through multiple exchange platforms and convert virtual currency into government-issued cash.
It wasn’t the first social engineering scam for the friends, who met in online gaming forums. They had teamed up on other multimillion-dollar thefts since late 2023 using a similar playbook, according to prosecutors.
This time, however, one of them made a costly mistake: Serrano failed to conceal his IP address when he created an account on a cryptocurrency exchange to hold nearly $US30 million in stolen crypto, according to prosecutors. Investigators linked the IP address to a home in Encino, California, that Serrano was renting for $US47,500 a month.
Lavish spending quickly drew attention
Serrano was vacationing in the Maldives when investigators identified him as a suspect. Lam was in Los Angeles, where he and friends spent $US4 million at nightclubs in one month, authorities say. Chetal gifted a Lamborghini to his parents and hid a duffel bag filled with $US500,000 in cash in their laundry machine.
‘We always talked about what it would be like if I were to go down, but never thought it would be this crazy.’
Lam’s phone call to an associate from prison
Word of their windfall quickly spread in crypto scammers’ circles. A week after the big score, Chetal’s parents were driving in Danbury, Connecticut, when several masked men cut them off, forced them out of their new car, beat Chetal’s father with a baseball bat, shoved the couple into a van and bound their hands.
The captors, from Miami, had intended to use Chetal’s parents as leverage for extorting him into giving up his share of the stolen crypto. But the ransom plot fell apart when witnesses notified police, who apprehended the carjackers.
The FBI showed up to search Chetal’s apartment in Brunswick, New Jersey, on September 9, 2024, and found $US37 million in stolen crypto in his possession. He agreed to cooperate with their investigation.
Lam was attracting attention, too, for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a night at clubs and tossing handbags worth tens of thousands of dollars to women in the crowds. He also used stolen cryptocurrency to buy over 30 cars, according to the FBI.
“This luxury lifestyle, of which so many young men and women could only dream, was just built on a foundation of fraud,” a prosecutor, William Hart, said during a recent sentencing hearing for a money laundering co-defendant.
‘Ferris Bueller gone bad’
Serrano was wearing a $US500,000 watch when FBI agents arrested him at Los Angeles International Airport on September 18, 2024. He initially professed his innocence but soon admitted to having roughly $US20 million of the D.C. man’s stolen crypto, prosecutors said.
Lam was arrested at one of his Miami mansions on the same day as Serrano. An off-duty law enforcement officer had tipped off Lam that authorities were on their way to arrest him, the indictment says.
The judge for Lam’s initial court appearance in Miami sounded astonished by a prosecutor’s summary of his lavish spending.
“I could only think of Ferris Bueller gone bad,” US Magistrate Alicia Valle said, referring to the school-skipping protagonist of the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
Lam’s capture didn’t stop the splurging. Ferro, who pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy charge last year, used stolen funds to cover Lam’s legal expenses.
Chetal pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in November 2024 and awaits sentencing. Serrano’s charges remain pending.
Tucker Desmond, who pleaded guilty to destroying evidence of other plotters’ crimes, was sentenced to probation. Desmond apologised at his sentencing hearing in March, saying he “got obsessed with the image of success rather than actually becoming a hard-working individual myself.”
Ferro declined to address the court during his sentencing hearing in May. His attorney, Kevin Wilson, described the co-defendants as mischievous “young kids,” but the judge didn’t accept that as an excuse.
“Being young only goes so far,” Kollar-Kotelly said.
AP
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