Singapore Man Malone Lam Pleads Guilty To $245M Bitcoin Heist, Spent Millions On Supercars In Washington

WASHINGTON — A 22-year-old Singaporean man pleaded guilty Tuesday to a racketeering conspiracy charge tied to one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in U.S. history, admitting to helping steal more than $245 million in bitcoin before spending the proceeds on a fleet of luxury sports cars, private security, and lavish nightclub outings.

Malone Lam, an eighth-grade dropout who moved to the United States from Singapore in 2023, entered his guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington. Judge Kollar-Kotelly did not immediately schedule a sentencing hearing, and Lam now faces a maximum prison term of 20 years.

According to federal prosecutors, Lam served as the organizer of a network of young men who carried out a string of cryptocurrency scams beginning as early as October 2023 and continuing through May 2025, with co-conspirators operating across multiple U.S. states, including California, Connecticut, New York and Florida, as well as internationally, primarily connecting through online gaming platforms.

Court documents identify Lam as having used various online aliases, including "Anne Hathaway," "$$$," and "King Greavy," while playing a central role coordinating the group's activities, identifying potential victims and directing the responsibilities of his co-conspirators.

The scheme's most significant confirmed theft occurred on Aug. 18, 2024, when Lam and his associates used what prosecutors described as "social engineering" techniques to defraud a Washington, D.C., resident out of more than 4,100 bitcoin, then valued at over $245 million. According to the Justice Department, two of Lam's co-conspirators posed as representatives of Google and the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange to trick the victim into granting access to his Google Drive account and revealing security codes, which Lam and his associates then used to drain the victim's bitcoin wallet.

The stolen cryptocurrency was subsequently laundered through a combination of cryptocurrency mixing services, exchanges, so-called "peel chains," intermediary digital wallets and virtual private networks designed to obscure both the flow of funds and the true identities of those involved, according to the Justice Department.

Federal prosecutors say the stolen funds were quickly converted into an extraordinarily lavish lifestyle. According to court records, Lam and his associates spent as much as $500,000 in a single night at nightclubs, with one particularly striking instance involving a $569,528.39 bill run up during one evening at a Los Angeles club. Lam personally purchased more than 30 high-end vehicles, including customized Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis and a $3.8 million Pagani Huayra, along with a watch valued at up to $2 million and tens of thousands of dollars' worth of designer clothing and jewelry.

Prosecutors said Lam also purchased Hermès Birkin bags with the stolen proceeds, at one point throwing one of the luxury handbags into a crowd during a nightclub party. Lam and members of his network rented luxury properties in Los Angeles, Miami and the Hamptons, traveled by private jet, and employed a team of private security personnel throughout the roughly month-long spending spree that followed the August 2024 theft.

U.S. Attorney's Office officials in Washington confirmed Lam's arrest, alongside a co-conspirator, in September 2024, effectively dismantling the criminal network less than a month after the theft occurred. During an earlier court hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Alicia Valle compared Lam's spending habits to the title character of the 1986 film "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" while addressing the extravagant lifestyle the stolen funds had financed.

U.S. Attorney's Office spokesperson Jeanine Pirro, addressing the case, emphasized the Justice Department's commitment to pursuing similar cybercrime networks going forward.

"If you build a cyber crime empire, we will hunt you down and dismantle your organization to hold you accountable," Pirro said.

Pirro further characterized Lam's specific conduct in the case.

"Through deception, he targeted victims, violated their privacy, and led an international network that stole hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency," Pirro said.

According to investigators, Lam told U.S. authorities he had dropped out of secondary school in Singapore at age 14. He traveled to the United States in October 2023 and remained in the country even after his visa expired the following January, according to court records.

Lam is one of 18 defendants charged in connection with the broader case, and his guilty plea marks the 11th such plea secured by prosecutors as part of the ongoing investigation. Among his co-defendants, Evan Tanzeman was previously sentenced in April to 70 months in prison on charges related to laundering the stolen cryptocurrency proceeds. According to the Justice Department, Tanzeman attempted to destroy evidence following Lam's arrest, conduct the court characterized as demonstrating an awareness of his own criminal culpability in the scheme.

A separate co-defendant, 19-year-old Veer Chetal, previously a student at Rutgers University, pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy charges tied to fraud and money laundering connected to the same theft and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors, testifying against Lam and other co-defendants as part of his own plea agreement. Chetal now faces up to 24 years in prison and has separately been linked by prosecutors to roughly 50 additional cryptocurrency thefts totaling approximately $3 million between November 2023 and September 2024. In a related and disturbing development, Chetal's parents were targeted in a botched kidnapping-for-ransom plot in Connecticut carried out by six men who reportedly believed Chetal still controlled substantial cryptocurrency holdings; the attack failed with the help of witnesses and an off-duty FBI agent who happened to be nearby at the time.

With Lam's guilty plea now secured, the case stands as one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts targeting a private individual in U.S. history, according to the Justice Department's own characterization of the scheme. Prosecutors are expected to continue pursuing the remaining defendants charged in connection with the broader criminal network as Lam awaits formal sentencing in Washington.