The terrifying way a man stole millions in Bitcoin is hard to stomach

Malone Lam, 20, is accused of orchestrating and carrying out one of the biggest person-to-person cryptocurrency thefts in US history

A Singapore resident who overstayed his 90-day visa waiver has been accused of orchestrating one of the biggest person-to-person cryptocurrency thefts in US history.

Malone Lam, 20, is said to have stolen over $100 million in Bitcoin from a Washington man on August 18. Prosecutors claim a total of $230 million was taken, but only $130 million has been accounted for.

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 show Lam went on to buy 31 sports cars, including custom Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Porsches, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars at nightclubs.

He also purchased a $2 million watch and used the online handles Anne Hathaway and $$$.

After traveling from Los Angeles to Miami on a private jet, Lam was arrested and found to be renting multiple homes in the city.

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.

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.

Since then, Lam has requested a ‘speedy trial’.

UNILAD contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Columbia for comment.