Malone Lam Faces Plea Hearing Over $245M Bitcoin Theft

Malone Lam, the 22-year-old Singaporean whom prosecutors identify as an organizer of the crew that took $245 million in Bitcoin from a single investor, is due in federal court in Washington on Tuesday for a plea agreement hearing.

A man named in court filings only as Victim-7 was at home in Washington when callers claiming to be from Google and Gemini warned him his accounts were under attack. They talked him into installing remote desktop software and surrendering his security codes, then moved more than $245 million in Bitcoin out of his wallets.

The indictment charges 18 people as a racketeering group it calls the Social Engineering Enterprise, with roles running from database hackers to callers to money launderers. It grew out of friendships formed in online gaming and worked from stolen crypto databases to pick targets. When a victim kept coins on a hardware wallet, prosecutors say, members flew to the house and broke in.

Rivals came for the family

Word of the score spread, and the crew became targets themselves. A week later, co-defendant Veer Chetal's parents were driving in Danbury, Connecticut, when a car rammed their Lamborghini and men pulled up in a van, beat the couple and tied them up, meaning to extort Chetal for his share. Eyewitnesses called police, and an off-duty FBI agent happened to be driving past.

The money itself went into Monero through exchanges that ask for no identification, then through peel chains, prosecutors say. Cash came back in bulk, some of it shipped across the country inside stuffed toys. Lam spent $4 million at Los Angeles nightclubs in a month and bought more than 30 cars, titling them to a shell company called Crypto Administration LLC.

Members relayed messages to and from Lam in a Miami jail, funded his defense with fraud proceeds, and were still attempting social engineering attacks from Dubai in early 2025, discussing them in coded language about "playing tournaments," according to the indictment.

Ten of the 18 have so far pleaded guilty. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who rejected one lawyer's description of the group as mischievous young kids, has sentenced three. "Being young only goes so far," she said.