Malone Lam, 20, is accused of orchestrating and carrying out one of the biggest person-to-person cryptocurrency thefts in US history after he managed to steal over $100 million in Bitcoin.
Lam, who is a Singapore resident, had been living in LA and Miami after overstaying his visa waiver, which allowed him to visit as a tourist for 90 days.
According to a federal court filing, it is ‘one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts from a private individual … in the history of the United States’.
Court records described how Lam went on to buy 31 sports cars, a $2 million watch and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at nightclubs.
Prosecutors claim it all began on August 18 when he allegedly stole $230 million in crypto from a Washington man, leaving $100 million unaccounted for.
Lam was arrested in Miami after traveling from Los Angeles on a private jet and was found to have been renting multiple homes in Miami.
He used the online handles Anne Hathaway and $$$ at the time of the alleged crime.
However, police have been unable to locate a lot of his cars, as ‘many of Lam’s vehicles have not been located as of yet, such as his Pagani Huayra that he purchased for $3,800,000’, prosecutors revealed.
While he ‘admitted to purchasing 31 luxury automobiles, 22 of which have yet to be recovered by law enforcement’, he is claimed to have ‘also admitted to doing additional hacks and making millions from those separate cryptocurrency fraud schemes, which he states have supported his entire lifestyle since arriving in the United States in October 2023.’
The court filing in the District of Columbia federal court added that a kidnapping on August 25 could be connected; however, six other men were charged for that crime.
A month after the crypto theft, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia shared that the FBI had arrested two men —Lam, and Jeandiel Serrano, 21 — on conspiracy charges and laundering of Bitcoin.
Malone Lam is accused of stealing Bitcoin (United States District Court for the District of Columbia)
According to prosecutors, Serrano, who was known as VersaceGod and @SkidStar online, was wearing a $500,000 watch at the time of his arrest in LA.
Lam and his alleged accomplice are being held without bail after admitting to the crimes.
As per the documents, a month before they were arrested, Serrano, Lam and other unnamed accomplices are said to have targeted a man in Washington ‘because they believed he held a considerable amount of virtual currency’ after they ‘identified him as a high net-worth investor from the early days of cryptocurrency’.
Then, in August, one of the offenders supposedly used an ‘unauthorized Google account access’ notification to be sent to the victim, which would make it seem like it was coming from outside of the country.
From there, a member called the man and claimed to be from Google’s security team and asked him about his unauthorized access attempt.
This then led them to be able to access his Google Drive to grab his financial information to be able to locate his crypto exchange account.
They then called the man back and Serrano pretended to be part of the crypto exchange team from Gemini’s support team, while the group planned on Discord and Telegram ways to ‘manipulate the victim into providing private keys to his virtual currency holdings and enough computer access for the conspirators to steal his entire savings.’
Sadly, they managed to trick the man into downloading something onto his computer which gave them real-time access to his desktop, according to prosecutors.
While Serrano got the man to open private folders containing bitcoin, the others quickly stole its contents, which were then split five ways for each person.
They then used TradeOgre.com to deposit $29 million in cryptocurrency, while police were searching for their whereabouts.
“Meanwhile, his co-conspirator Malone Lam was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars per night at Los Angeles night clubs and amassing an impressive collection of custom Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Porsches,” prosecutors wrote.
