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

[Mpamaegbu]

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

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.

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.

[Somegory]

It is always them eagerly ready to start spending lavishly, you can easily identify someone who's source of income isn't clean with the way they spend their money, I'm glad they are caught because that 245M Bitcoin belongs to people who suffered for it.

I'm seeing some comments in here talking about why they choose to spend in the public, even if they choose to hide it they will one day get bursted, evil is evil and I hate it when people tend to play smart by telling criminals to stay low key to avoid getting caught.

People like them are simply giving criminals the courage to keep going, what is bad is bad, something will end up pushing you to make a simple mistake that will lead to you getting caught, you are human after all, the spirit of those who you hurt won't let you off easily.

[Sobz]

This amount of btc is one that should  make one to be strict about security and to learn more about security because i dont expect someone with this amount of bitcoin to be so dull.

If i have this amount of bitcoin i will treat everyone around me as a suspect and even the kind of message i recieve in all my social media handle. It makes no sense to have huge amount of bitcoin and not to be security conscious. I think the victim is yo be blamed for a lose like this because the fear of losing this amount of money should have made him to be security smart.

[davis196]

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.

That Malone Lam guy desperately wanted the "ultra wealthy crime boss" lifestyle, so he got what he deserved. Thirty sports cars? The guy obviously had an obsession with sports cars. He didn't successfully launder those BTC. Buying a bunch of luxurious cars and mansions doesn't mean that the crypto is being laundered. Luxurious purchases made by someone, who doesn't have a big enough legal income usually trigger the algorithms of the banks and the tax authorities. That guy was just stupid, but at least he enjoyed the "billionaire lifestyle" for a while.

[The Cryptovator]

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.

That’s what we have been warning the community about: why we shouldn’t store our seed phrase on any online storage. It doesn’t matter how trusted the company is; somehow it would be compromised at all. We should take a lesson from that story; it was a costly lesson for the victim.

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.

Well, criminals always should be punished. Good to see somehow the criminal eventually punished. Although hackers change their tricks nowadays, somehow they might leave their footprints, and that’s how they would be punished. The criminals actually failed to protect the weight of the money hence he was over confidence.

[Nothingtodo]

It is actually absurd that employees of such a trusted site like Google would hack and take away 4100 Bitcoins of a person under the guise of a fake Google employee. So the victim's brain is very raw because how did he get cheated by a fake Google employee? Doesn't he know that Google can never take access to someone's wallet by pretending to be an employee. No Google employee would ask for the security seed phase of a Bitcoin wallet of a Bitcoin holder under the guise of a fake employee or by cheating. However, the victim himself has fallen into the trap of all this fraud and he has been cheated. This happened due to the victim's own mistake.

[Lida93]

Who stores bitcoin private keys on Google cloud this days except for fools! Because tell me how you are able to make such huge amount into bitcoin and you couldn't take responsibility of safe storing the keys yourself under your own watch. Now the funds are gone, spent in a not more than a month what may have taken you the rightful owner many years of hard work to accumulate. The sentence of a 20 years serving time in prison still wouldn't bring back all those funds, so it'd an absolute loss for the Washington resident who saw the responsibility of storing his keys offline as a difficult task.

[cryptoaddictchie]

From what I remember, their target was a somewhat a prominent person who was involved in tech/crypto_{(don't know how true)}. And what even makes it crazier is that the scammers weren't even sophisticated hackers or tech geniuses according to reports. This was literally one of the biggest social engineering scams I've seen, and I remember spending a lot of time following up on the case.

Woah really? Not technically a genius hacker? If social engineering done this crime then they are so good in acting considering they manage to fool a prominent person in this case. Its rarely to be bait by some scammers who arent tech genius and this incident proves that theres users who still capable of mouth method scamming style who put a lot of effort into their targets.

I personally would blame the victim in the case. The whole social engineering technique only gave them access to his Google account, but they were lucky enough to find wallet information lying around freely. I can bet that even the victims hardware wallet came with strict instructions that says something like... "Don't store seedphrase online". It's quite an unfortunate situation.

Yeah I get the point that its his responsibility to keep it safe. But considering its a crime that involved by someone intentionally, then you cant in anyway avoid all potential move by a scammer even at the least precautions.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

I read about this guy before, it just shows that crime does not pay. Seems like he was just asking to be caught too, being so careless and obvious about his ill gotten gains. The victim was a bit stupid and gullible too, it’s a lesson to all of us to up our security, our set ups and be vary of rogue actors.

[greysonz]

In the first post, I didn’t write about the details of the arrest and how the FBI got involved in the first place. First, the victim, of course, filed a statement and provided his equipment. The FBI investigators started digging and came across an error with the VPN. A guy from the gang, whose last name is Serrano, made this fatal mistake. The moment when the VPN wasn’t enabled coincided with the registration on the Trade0gre exchange, during the transfer of 1 million. The address in Encino was found right away. So, upon his return from Los Angeles, they took him by the arms; by the way, one of them was wearing a watch worth 500k dollars
 So  the whole gang fell apart like a chain reaction.
I think they quickly turned on each other.

[promise444c5]

Seems like he was just asking to be caught too, being so careless and obvious about his ill gotten gains.

Yeah.. he was really begging for it lol

Members and associates of the conspiracy used the stolen cryptocurrency to purchase, among other things, nightclub services ranging up to $500,000 per evening, luxury handbags valued in the tens of thousands of dollars which were given away at nightclub parties, luxury watches valued between $100,000 up to over $500,000, luxury clothing valued in the tens of thousands of dollars, rental homes in Los Angeles, the Hamptons, and Miami, private jet rentals for travel, a team of private security guards, and a fleet of exotic cars, ranging in value from $100,000 to $3,800,000. 

There’s no way his background isn’t going to be checked after attracting such attention to himself, no job, no business, no nothing, just a 22yrs old kid spending millions every week ..  he deserved it anyway   .

Surprised his case has been ongoing for 1.5 years and still “ Judge Kollar-Kotelly set a status hearing December 8, 2026.”

[Faisal2202]

You'd be surprised at how many people out there who simply have no conscience, they will steal and they will sleep at night just like any other night, 20 years isn't enough punishment for these kind of people. This heist is not his first, the Prosecutor said that Malone Lam has been doing the same social engineering attack for months already, if he got out easy, he'd definitely do it again. The guy literally has been making millions from various crypto scams before the big heist that land him $245M and got arrested not too long after. That's dozens of people's lifesaving gone to the drain only for this guy to blew the money off on booze and hermes.

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.

[Die_empty]

In the first post, I didn’t write about the details of the arrest and how the FBI got involved in the first place. First, the victim, of course, filed a statement and provided his equipment. The FBI investigators started digging and came across an error with the VPN. A guy from the gang, whose last name is Serrano, made this fatal mistake. The moment when the VPN wasn’t enabled coincided with the registration on the Trade0gre exchange, during the transfer of 1 million. The address in Encino was found right away. So, upon his return from Los Angeles, they took him by the arms; by the way, one of them was wearing a watch worth 500k dollars. The criminals once forgot to turn it on. And then the whole gang fell apart like a chain reaction.
I think they quickly turned on each other.

Regardless of how careful one is, there will always be mistakes. This is why it is essential to always stay out of crime because one mistake can give a hint of your personal information. I am happy that these scammers were caught and they will be punished for this crime. It is also a reminder that we should never give anybody access to a password or seed phrase.

[pawanjain]

Isn’t that how criminals spend stolen money? They didn’t work honestly for it so they don’t know the value of a hard day’s shift. It’s hard to keep a low profile when you’re that young and have millions of dollars. They can’t resist the urge to show off to their peers and on social media that they are rich. As a result, it made it easier for the authorities to piece it all together.

You're right. Those who has passed that age would definitely know the urge to show off whatever one has got.
May be if he was a little mature he wouldn't have done that but then again, what's wrong is wrong.
Glad that the cops arrested him and imprisoned him. Just hope that the victim got at least some of his money back.
Can't even imagine losing something like that.

[Jubilee58]

This kind of scam could lead someone into frustration because this is really some huge amount amount of Bitcoin. Some of us have invested so much in Bitcoin, considering it is a good investment, but another challenge that some investors are encountering is the challenge of safety of their investment. From time to time, this kind of news pops up in the Internet, could sometimes be the fault of the custodian of Bitcoin asset. It is important we guard our Bitcoin investment so jealousely because scammers are all over looking for a way of stealing other people's investment.
In this very case, the scammers must have known the amount of Bitcoin asset he has in his Google drive, but such gadget containing such amount of Bitcoin is not meant to be exposed to anyone. This is a big lesson to other Bitcoin investors, the safety of our investment should be our topmost interest, and on no account should we compromise it.

[vincentixz]

the Google Drive part is what really stands out to me. you can have all the security around your bitcoin, but if someone gets tricked into giving access in the first place then none of that matters much. crazy how quickly something that started with social engineering turned into $245m being stolen.

[sidrabtc]

You'd be surprised at how many people out there who simply have no conscience, they will steal and they will sleep at night just like any other night, 20 years isn't enough punishment for these kind of people. This heist is not his first, the Prosecutor said that Malone Lam has been doing the same social engineering attack for months already, if he got out easy, he'd definitely do it again. The guy literally has been making millions from various crypto scams before the big heist that land him $245M and got arrested not too long after. That's dozens of people's lifesaving gone to the drain only for this guy to blew the money off on booze and hermes.

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.

It always matters because everywhere nothing is happening like this in many places or regions where people never take care of what is happening around them, but criminals are caught due to their own behavior and activities, which they engage in intentionally, and then they have a troubling time.
If someone is doing positive things no one will be take care about his activities but any suspicious activity surely take intention from anyone and he had problems its not new many times happen around us peoples suddenly have things which are not possible through their proper channel but they done crime and then gone out of control which is usual thing.
Hopefully now many will be learn their lesson and try to keep on good way instead of going for quickly rich and have worst time like these dudes.

[Decimation]

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

Just think once, how multi-talented a person the 22-year-old boy is. He had taken it away by tricks and strategies but in the end he got caught.

Here I am not considering the matter of the boy getting caught and being punished because the person who had so many bitcoins lost the bitcoins like this because of his unawareness.

Here the complete fault is of the person who had the bitcoins but did not maintain privacy.

[Silverstonez]

This is bad I really feel pity for the victim, because $245 million worth of bitcoin is a huge amount of money. The amount is enough to live extremely comfortably for generations if managed properly, now imagine the number of years, sacrifice and effects made in accumulating such a large amount of bitcoin just for some nuisance who don’t know what life is all about came to steal it just to live a fake lifestyle. People should just be careful, I don’t know how they got access to the victims wallet but it shows that nobody is above being scammed but you can avoid it if you are careful enough and following best practices.

[Slow death]

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.

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.