Malone Lam pleads guilty to RICO conspiracy over $245M crypto theft
Malone Lam, the 22-year-old Singaporean accused of running a ring that stole and laundered more than $245 million in cryptocurrency, has pleaded guilty to one count of RICO conspiracy, the US Justice Department said Tuesday.
The plea, entered before US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly in Washington, D.C., marks the first time federal prosecutors have applied racketeering laws to a Bitcoin-related crime. That matters for every case that follows: prosecutors can now charge a crypto theft crew as an organized criminal enterprise rather than piecing together individual theft and fraud counts.
The Justice Department said Lam organized the international operation, identified prospective victims and coordinated other conspirators. Court documents show the enterprise was formed through connections on online gaming platforms and ran from no later than October 2023 through at least May 2025.
The case began with a single heist. Prosecutors accused Lam and Jeandiel Serrano of taking more than 4,100 Bitcoin from one Washington, D.C. victim on Aug. 18, 2024, one of the largest single-victim crypto thefts on record. Prosecutors allege the pair posed as Google support staff, then as Gemini support, to talk the victim into resetting two-factor authentication and running screen-sharing software that exposed private keys. The proceeds were laundered through crypto mixers, exchanges, pass-through wallets and virtual private networks, according to prosecutors.
On May 15, 2025, a superseding indictment charged 12 additional defendants and expanded the case to an alleged racketeering conspiracy covering more than $263 million in thefts, including a separate $14 million theft in July 2024 and an alleged home break-in targeting a hardware wallet. The $245 million figure covers the conspiracy Lam admitted to; the $263 million total is the wider case scope.
Prosecutors also allege the group spent heavily on private jets, rental properties, watches and at least 28 exotic cars, some priced up to $3.8 million each, with nightclub bills reaching $500,000 in a single evening, and that Lam kept directing associates from pretrial detention. Those details are allegations and have not been adjudicated.
Lam faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in federal prison. A status hearing is set for Dec. 8, 2026, and no sentencing date has been announced.
