22-year-old guy teamed up with friends to steal $245M in BTC

[Hatchy]

What if thieves found out he had written down his private keys on a piece of paper, showed up at his house, held a gun to his head, and said, "Hand over the paper with the private keys...". And what if the Bitcoin owner gave in? In that case, would you ask, "Why didn't the owner hide the paper with the private keys properly?" It makes no sense to blame the victim. He lives in a free country governed by laws where theft is a crime. a crime committed by the thief, not the victim. Therefore, he has the right to keep his private keys wherever he sees fit, and others should not take them without authorization.

Really? Don't be ridiculous man, it's called hide for a reason if you store your keys properly how on earth would thiefs be able to location a piece of paper very small that might not even be noticed and say it's a seedphrase? Also if they just show up at your house asking for the keys it then is a planned robbery and it would be been because the person couldn't keep his mouth shut and had the idea of his bitcoin holdings publicly, another reason to blame him once again. We all live in free world, but what we do and say can deprive us of that freedom. I'll still stand with what I said as there are many reasons to blame the victim.

[Bigjoe33]

Today he pleaded guilty, and now he faces up to twenty years in prison.

As for that criminal, living flamboyantly on other people's sweat is the only thing they know how best to do, twenty years prison term is child's play. He deserves more.

For the fact that he has the mind to squander such a huge amount of money that belongs to someone recklessly without a conscience or fear shows how hardened he is as a criminal. Just a 22 year old boy. Perhaps, he might still be I'm school grabbing some degrees. I'm so many cases, a buy of that age is still living with his parents.

His spending attitude shows how useless and senseless he is. What will he be doing with all the cars? And the club spendings too, he didn't even think that it will be incriminating. Of course, people will ask questions because such habit seems very suspicion. Am with you on this, 20 years inprisonnment is too small, it should be double of that sentence(40years). So that by the time he gets out, if he is still alive, he would think better. What a criminal he is...

[Y3shot]

I'm kind of confused about why he had his Bitcoin stored on Google Drive. How and why would anyone store the keys to such a large amount of Bitcoin on Google Drive? Honestly, I feel the victim was partly responsible for what happened because it was unreasonable to keep such sensitive information that way.I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to simply write down their keys on paper and store them somewhere safe. He could have also bought a hardware wallet and kept his coins completely offline. Instead, he left the keys on his Google Drive, on a PC that he regularly uses online. It's really unfortunate, but I can't feel too sorry for him. Sometimes, people have to learn the hard way so they don't make the same mistakes again.

So many people who have a huge amount of Bitcoin investment lack the basic understanding of how to secure their seed phrase because of the lack of security tips. Some people are so careless.

Like I don’t really know how they were able to convince the victim to get the login for Google Drive. This particular case seems very different from all of the stories I have heard about how scammers tried so hard to convince someone to get their login.

[ArabBTC]

I’ve also been thinking about this: how old is the person they deceived? It turns out that he’s either very old, or he simply turned out to be very naive, but at the same time, it sounds very strange that he had such a huge amount of bitcoins. After all, that means he somehow earned them and figured it out, so these points remain somewhat unclear to me personally. And how can a person have 4,000 bitcoins if they’re not a very good technical specialist who understands this? He also has a bright enthusiasm. I didn’t think people like that could be naive at all.

Falling victim to scammers isn’t really age related, it can happen to anyone regardless of age variation, i feel the level of awareness is a key factor that played a major role in the sad event else how can one store such in a Google Drive of all places it makes no sense to me, that is why i always advise most bitcoin investors to go for knowledge, one thing is to have bitcoin another thing is to know how to secure your bitcoin, the young boy in question too wasn’t knowledgeable enough else he won’t have acted childish the way he did, what will you do with such number of flashy sports cars? why the sudden extravagant life? he must have ended up drawing unnecessary attention to himself, this story is an eye opener for every bitcoin investor.

[Patikno]

I'm kind of confused about why he had his Bitcoin stored on Google Drive. How and why would anyone store the keys to such a large amount of Bitcoin on Google Drive? Honestly, I feel the victim was partly responsible for what happened because it was unreasonable to keep such sensitive information that way.I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to simply write down their keys on paper and store them somewhere safe. He could have also bought a hardware wallet and kept his coins completely offline. Instead, he left the keys on his Google Drive, on a PC that he regularly uses online. It's really unfortunate, but I can't feel too sorry for him. Sometimes, people have to learn the hard way so they don't make the same mistakes again.

Storing important, or highly confidential data (including personal information) online is a mistake. Such storage methods are exposed to real threats, such as theft, or hacking. People often assume that online storage is convenient, and secure, but the reality is quite the opposite: it is unsafe, and can lead to complications. Ultimately, the risks outweigh the convenience of easy access. That is why I constantly advise everyone to store important personal data offline, and to keep offline backups as well.

Speaking of mistakes, I believe negligence or carelessness played a role in the case the OP mentioned, and that serves as an important lesson to be learned from the situation.

[snowpega]

I say 20 years are not enough, just like the guys behind the Ponzi scam got a life sentence, these scammers should also be given a life sentence. That's the only way to spread the fear among the new generation, they will never spend their whole life for a few years of fun buying jets and cars.

Why don't the authorities question such things at all? I buy a car tomorrow (if), my whole community will start questioning how did I get it haha, not because they know me but because people these days have so much interest in other affairs. Especially where I live.

I did not follow that case, but I was reading the news yesterday on a random Telegram channel and got to know about this incident in the form of a headline, but not the deep details, like that guy working at Google or Gemini, and he compromised or stole funds from Google Drive after getting access to them. All these things I came to know from OP. Other than this, I was laughing after reading this new headline that this guy is now guilty of this act; haha, why? And no doubt this is a crime where the victim stays in depression unless they recover their loss or lost funds, and the criminal enjoys all that money by spending it in some corner of the world, haha.

By the way, do you know any other facts about this case? Like, after this guy announces he is found guilty of this act, what kind of charges did the court impose on him? Haha, as his guilt alone will not help the victims, haha. There must be some kind of fines or charges that this guy has to pay back to those victims to compensate them little or full? Any idea?

[MainIbem]

Storing important, or highly confidential data (including personal information) online is a mistake. Such storage methods are exposed to real threats, such as theft, or hacking. People often assume that online storage is convenient, and secure, but the reality is quite the opposite: it is unsafe, and can lead to complications. Ultimately, the risks outweigh the convenience of easy access. That is why I constantly advise everyone to store important personal data offline, and to keep offline backups as well.

Speaking of mistakes, I believe negligence or carelessness played a role in the case the OP mentioned, and that serves as an important lesson to be learned from the situation.

Sometimes things like these happen to serve as a lesson to others who make same mistake, I know there are lots of people who have important informations about their wallet stored in Google Drive or somewhere online, they'll refrain from that and take the security of their wallet more seriously when they figure out they're at the risk of losing their money to hackers. I think it's negligence cause he didn't believe he'll be decieved by fake Google staff someday. Scammers are very smart, people need to be smarter.

[philipma1957]

Is 20 years prison sentence even enough for someone that committed such a crime, maybe it's enough if he can also return all those stolen Bitcoin to the victim. I just have this suggestion that any time these set of scammers is being caught, they should be made to return all those stolen Bitcoin to the victim or risk serving a lifetime prison sentence.  I think this could make other scammers to be afraid when they think of being caught if they commit such crime.

My thought on punishment is remove his lens as if he had a cataract. And replace them with black lens.

So he would be blind and put him in prison for 20 years.

If well behaved release him in 20 years but still keep him blind.

Have him come to a parole officer 1 time a month to see that the black implants are in place.

Maybe finally put in some working implants once 10years passed on parole.

So 20 years blind in prison and 10 year blind on parole.

I wonder why we don't do this to criminals it is cheap and easy to do the punishment.

Make the criminal suffer a bit more for the crimes done.

We have the tech as i have had my birth lens lasered and replaced with clear lens .

We could put in dark lens instead

[alastantiger]

Sometimes things like these happen to serve as a lesson to others who make same mistake, I know there are lots of people who have important informations about their wallet stored in Google Drive or somewhere online, they'll refrain from that and take the security of their wallet more seriously when they figure out they're at the risk of losing their money to hackers. I think it's negligence cause he didn't believe he'll be decieved by fake Google staff someday. Scammers are very smart, people need to be smarter.

Being more protective or our  wallets and not using anything that is online and connected to the internet to use to protect our private key is the only way to protect ourselves from hackers that will want to steal our Bitcoin. We can not be smarter always because hackers will try different hacking methods untill they can scam us when we keep our private keys online. Google is the worst company to trust with our privacy because they do not have a strong serve and they always get hacked too much. The only way to protect our wallet is to make use of a non custodial wallet and protect our private key offline.

[retreat]

I saw this guy on TikTok and he had commented on a few videos. Not sure whether this is a real account or not. But knowing what he did, it's really unfortunate that someone so young would do something like that. I think this guy should get a harsher punishment than 20 years in prison. Because he's only 22 now, he might get out of prison in his early 40s or so. That would still give him more time to rebuild his life. A life sentence is most appropriate because this guy is just trash and doesn't deserve the opportunity to build his life with the losses he has made.

[Dogedegen]

What a foolish way to get arrested. Why would he spend millions of dollars in a single month ?

Even if he spends $M of dollars in a longer time like several months, years, it will still be a suspicious financial activity and big financial change from him. If a person suddenly changes his finance from poor to super rich, there are surely something happened behind the scene and if the person can not prove reasons of such considerable financial improvement, and sources of such huge money, legal problems will surely appear.

It just shows how inexperienced and foolish they really are. Someone who is smart but is not already well connected and does not have infrastructure in place will take this kind of thing slowly. It would take them many years before they would be confident in their setup of laundering the money to buy a single luxury car. They would never do something like these foolish children because they are aware of how it raises suspicion and it increases the risk from many angles, even if all of the money was legal.

They mostly have hard lives before successfully stealing big fund from victims, and they are always hurry to enjoy their new lives with massive money. It's hard to control human instinct that motivates bad people to show off their wealth even they got it illegally.

Sadly they are going to have even worse lives before. In our time people have forgotten that the best path is the old and slow way, fixing problems by doing hard work. These get rich stories, legal or illegal often end up badly.

I’ve also been thinking about this: how old is the person they deceived? It turns out that he’s either very old, or he simply turned out to be very naive, but at the same time, it sounds very strange that he had such a huge amount of bitcoins. After all, that means he somehow earned them and figured it out, so these points remain somewhat unclear to me personally. And how can a person have 4,000 bitcoins if they’re not a very good technical specialist who understands this? He also has a bright enthusiasm. I didn’t think people like that could be naive at all.

There are much richer people that store stuff the same way, some even in worse ways. Being rich in Bitcoin or other stuff does not need to involve some kind of technical specialist, but also us poorer people are attached to what little we have so we think wrongly about these things. Someone could be so rich that they don't really if they get hacked for $200 million, enough at least to protect it.

Do you protect every $1000 of cash that you have with a safe? If you have $100 000 in total cash and you don't protect each $1000 stash, that is the same for a person who has $20 billion and does not protect each $200 million he has somewhere. It is a multiplier of 100 in each case. You can adjust to $10 000 and $100 in cash, or even less $1000 total cash but I don't think people protect each $10 bill in that case.

[Agathamay]

Everybody is seriously looking for fast money and one common thing with these scammers is that they mostly squander these stolen funds on silly things because they absolutely don't know the worth and always believe there would be more victims for them to scam and the fact that the boy pleaded guilty is sign that we shouldn't underrate anyone and treat everyone with caution as criminality knows no age boundary now and since his above 18 years he should face the full weight of law so others who intend to do same can learn from it.

But people do have money, at some point, I totally forgot about the incidence and was focused on what the victim did to earn such about of money. People are truly blessed

[m2017]

Malone Lam, a 22-year-old from Singapore, pleaded guilty to stealing $245 million worth of Bitcoin from a Washington resident. The incident occurred two years ago: his accomplices, posing as employees of Google and Gemini, tricked the victim into granting access to their Google Drive and stole 4,100 Bitcoin.
Lam then laundered the stolen funds, spending millions in a single month on thirty sports cars, mansions, and nightclubs.
Today he pleaded guilty, and now he faces up to twenty years in prison.

It’s a fascinating story (though it’s a shame there’s so little information, as it would undoubtedly have made for an entertaining read), and it raised a few questions for me:

1 – How did they find this owner of 4,100 Bitcoins (and where did he get such substantial savings in the first place)? You can’t find this info via google, and the odds of accidentally "stumbling" upon this holder are practically zero. The question is: how did information about this holder "leak" to the bad guys? That’s a dark spot in this story.

2 – Ok, so they used social engineering - that’s nothing new; it’s a "classic vulnerability."$245 million was stored on google drive? In 2023? Had the owner of this crypto assets really never heard of hardware wallets? (then again, maybe it’s a good thing he hadn't; if he’d owned a Coldcard... well, you know the rest.)

I wonder how much more crypto is sitting on google drives out there?

3 – If these bad guys were blowing half a million dollars a night, what was the total amount spent? I ask because I’m curious: what portion of his crypto balance did this BTC-holder lose forever? After all, that money is almost certainly never coming back - the criminals simply don't have the means to repay such sums.

4 – Anyone who read the article knows that 18 people were involved in the story. Why such a large criminal group? To spend the stolen money faster?

5 – There’s also a moment in the story where an off-duty law enforcement officer tipped off Lam about his impending arrest. It sounds like he was partying with the group, too, doesn't it? Was that perhaps because he helped them "zero in" on the victim? Otherwise, why would a "tough cop" be friends with 22-year-old guys?


Trading 20 years of life for a single month of ultra-luxurious living. What could be stupider? Or do we have absolutely no idea how to live our lives to the fullest?

[oll]

I don’t understand at all how he could spend such large sums of money, and no one asked any questions about where the 22‑year‑old migrant got that money from? After all, for example, in the country where I live, one old man saved up for an apartment all his life, and when he finally bought it, the tax authorities immediately came to him with questions about where he had gotten the money for it.
And it was even covered in the news - and yet he had only bought a small apartment in an old building, albeit in a single payment, but that became suspicious to the tax authorities. Is the US tax authority so overwhelmed with cases that it doesn’t notice that a 22‑year‑old guy is making purchases that clearly don’t match his income level - especially when it comes to 30 sports cars?

[Decimation]

I don’t understand at all how he could spend such large sums of money, and no one asked any questions about where the 22‑year‑old migrant got that money from?

If we look for questions in this way, many kinds of questions will arise among us.

When a 22-year-old boy sells Bitcoin and converts it into fiat currency, everyone will also ask different kinds of questions.

I mean, naturally, everyone will want to know what is the mystery behind a 22-year-old boy getting such a large amount of money.

[savetheFORUM]

I'm kind of confused about why he had his Bitcoin stored on Google Drive. How and why would anyone store the keys to such a large amount of Bitcoin on Google Drive? Honestly, I feel the victim was partly responsible for what happened because it was unreasonable to keep such sensitive information that way.I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to simply write down their keys on paper and store them somewhere safe. He could have also bought a hardware wallet and kept his coins completely offline. Instead, he left the keys on his Google Drive, on a PC that he regularly uses online. It's really unfortunate, but I can't feel too sorry for him. Sometimes, people have to learn the hard way so they don't make the same mistakes again.

Probably, the reason why he kept his wallet details in his Google Drive is because apparently a lot of people believe that their data is extremely secure if they are kept in the cloud, and even some of the services such as wallets also encourage their customers and users to do the same thing. Take Trust Wallet as an example of this, and more wallets and services have also started providing such options to their users that they can save their seed phrase in the cloud by signing into their Google account. This is a wrong practice, services shouldn't provide users with this option but even if they do, users should avoid using such options and putting their accounts and assets under risk.

If such young guys can easily hack into someone's cloud storage and steal their wallet information then it is obviously not that difficult. People who own such large amounts and have invested them in cryptocurrencies should at least behave more carefully and manage their accounts and wallets with more care. Using online storages for such sensitive information is such a bad idea, but some people only learn things the hard way.

Such incidents should always become public, because others will learn from the mistakes such victims made and then they will not repeat those mistakes, hopefully.

[Comeacross]

I'm kind of confused about why he had his Bitcoin stored on Google Drive. How and why would anyone store the keys to such a large amount of Bitcoin on Google Drive? Honestly, I feel the victim was partly responsible for what happened because it was unreasonable to keep such sensitive information that way.I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to simply write down their keys on paper and store them somewhere safe. He could have also bought a hardware wallet and kept his coins completely offline. Instead, he left the keys on his Google Drive, on a PC that he regularly uses online. It's really unfortunate, but I can't feel too sorry for him. Sometimes, people have to learn the hard way so they don't make the same mistakes again.

Tell me you're just kidding 

The victim was reckless on his own part but we can't hold him responsible. It sounds as we are trying to justify the wrong of these boys if we want to look from that angle. The victim didn't not display his keys publicly for everyone to see, he kept on Google drive and assumed it was saved. That was probably the best way he thought it was free from harm. The boys overstepped on him to convince him to hand over the access to the drive and they duped him.

My curiosity here is how they know the victim had that much coin in the first place. The twenty years sentence is actually too small compared to gravity of their offense. They ruined someone's life and they shouldn't be allowed to enjoy theirs as well. The 20 years is fine if they're to return everything they stole which I doubt.

[theguywhoisnice]

Malone Lam, a 22-year-old from Singapore, pleaded guilty to stealing $245 million worth of Bitcoin from a Washington resident. The incident occurred two years ago: his accomplices, posing as employees of Google and Gemini, tricked the victim into granting access to their Google Drive and stole 4,100 Bitcoin.
Lam then laundered the stolen funds, spending millions in a single month on thirty sports cars, mansions, and nightclubs.
Today he pleaded guilty, and now he faces up to twenty years in prison.
https://talkimg.com/images/2026/09/09/UeOlro.jpg

That’s why every wallet says not to store anything about your crypto wallets (except addresses) online. Even if it’s only available to you - no online storing crypto wallet stuff. And storing 4.1k BTC in Google Drive is not good idea. I hope he learned lesson from it haha

[spiker777]

I'm kind of confused about why he had his Bitcoin stored on Google Drive. How and why would anyone store the keys to such a large amount of Bitcoin on Google Drive? Honestly, I feel the victim was partly responsible for what happened because it was unreasonable to keep such sensitive information that way.I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to simply write down their keys on paper and store them somewhere safe. He could have also bought a hardware wallet and kept his coins completely offline. Instead, he left the keys on his Google Drive, on a PC that he regularly uses online. It's really unfortunate, but I can't feel too sorry for him. Sometimes, people have to learn the hard way so they don't make the same mistakes again.

The problem was not the storing keys in google drive, nothing was wrong in storing keys in a google drive, the problem started when he fall victom of phishing attacks of these thieves. He did a huge mistake but the mistake was completely different than you are thinking. He should've never believed anyone who pretend to be someone else, in his case google and gemini employees.
Even if the employees were legit google employees, sending your credentials is really a huge mistake from his part.
But he learned his lesson regardless and criminals are being charged now.

[Felicity_Tide]

How on earth would someone leave that quantity of Bitcoin in this modern time in one address, considering what that's worth when they aren't running an exchange business? It doesn't make any sense to me. Even Cexs have cold wallets where they move coins to and away from the internet to safeguard it.

I think it was actually stored on a hardware wallet, but where the whole mistake came from was his decision to backup his recovery phrase on his Google drive. A simple attempt to carry out a social engineering attack on the victim, just to gain access to his Google account, eventually gave them this jackpot after they came across his seed phrase sitting freely among other confidential information. And what's even more disturbing is that there are rumors that the victim isn't a newbie in the tech space, so I believe he actually knew better, but probably didn't think he could become a victim, or fall for a scam.

As for that criminal, living flamboyantly on other people's sweat is the only thing they know how best to do, twenty years prison term is child's play. He deserves more.

He actually deserves more, but unfortunately, that's not going to bring back the money that has already been squandered. This is the aftermath of being a victim that I honestly don't like... Future consequences never changes what has happened, so it's always better to avoid becoming a victim in the first place especially through silly mistakes.