A 20-year-old Singaporean living in the United States, Malone Lam, has been charged alongside 21-year-old Jeandiel Serrano from Los Angeles for allegedly conspiring to steal and launder over US$230 million in Bitcoin.
The pair was arrested by the FBI on Wednesday (Sep 19) night and has been implicated in a sophisticated scheme to fraudulently obtain more than 4,100 Bitcoin from an unsuspecting victim in Washington, D.C.
According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice issued on Thursday, Lam, who is known online by various aliases including “Anne Hathaway” and “$$$”, and Serrano, who goes by “VesaceGod” and “@SkidStar”, made their court appearances shortly after their arrests, according to NBC report.
The duo is accused of orchestrating a series of cryptocurrency thefts and engaging in laundering activities since at least August 2023. Their alleged operation involved unlawfully accessing cryptocurrency accounts belonging to their victims and transferring funds into their controls.
Once the stolen cryptocurrency was obtained, the conspirators utilized various sophisticated techniques to launder the proceeds, which included cycling the digital assets through multiple exchanges and leveraging mixing services. The operation reportedly employed “peel chains”— a common method for laundering large sums of cryptocurrency by breaking them into smaller transactions—along with pass-through wallets and virtual private networks (VPNs) to obscure their identities.
Authorities claim that Lam and Serrano subsequently indulged in a lavish lifestyle with the laundered funds, spending generously on international travel, upscale nightclubs, luxury vehicles, designer watches, jewelry, and high-end handbags, with notable expenditures in Los Angeles and Miami.
According to a report, the conspirators contacted a victim in Washington D.C. on Aug. 18 and fraudulently obtained 4,100 Bitcoin, worth more than $230 million at the time. Court documents for the case weren’t immediately available Thursday afternoon. Lam had been booked into the Broward County jail Wednesday and received a mug shot, but, as of Thursday afternoon, was no longer listed in Broward Sheriff’s Office online jail records.
Blockchain investigator ZachXBT shared a post on social media platform X, alleging that Lam, Serrano, and another individual named Veer Chetal conspired to target a creditor of the now-defunct trading firm Genesis using a sophisticated social engineering scam. According to ZachXBT, the victim was approached by a counterfeit phone number impersonating Google support and was persuaded to reset their two-factor authentication settings, ultimately sending funds to a compromised wallet.
Investigations into this high-profile scam are still underway.
Image via screengrab from NBC6
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