Man pleads guilty to $245 million cryptocurrency theft

A 22-year-old man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to teaming up with friends to steal nearly a quarter-billion dollars in bitcoin from a Washington 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 did not immediately schedule Lam’s sentencing hearing in Washington.

Lam was an organiser for a network of young men who carried out a string of cryptocurrency 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 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 US$245 million.

Two of Lam’s alleged co-conspirators posed as representatives of Google and the Gemini cryptocurrency 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.

Lam helped launder and convert stolen cryptocurrency into cash that he used to buy a fleet of sports cars, rent mansions in Miami and spend millions at nightclubs, including US$569,000 in one evening at one Los Angeles club, authorities said.