SINGAPORE, Oct 24 — Twenty-year-old Malone Lam has been charged in the US with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering after allegedly stealing and laundering US$230 million (RM1 billion) in cryptocurrency by pretending to be a Google employee. Together with co-conspirator, Jeandiel Serrano, they allegedly stole over 4,100 bitcoin from a victim in Washington in a scam that has been described as “one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts from a private individual ..
. in the history of the United States” by prosecutors. Serrano appeared in court yesterday for a status hearing where both the prosecution and defence were “seeking a resolution of this matter short of a trial”.
They requested about 60 days to continue plea negotiations and will inform the court if a deal is reached before the deadline, reported ChannelNewsAsia . Court filings unsealed earlier this month detailed how Lam and Serrano, 21, from Los Angeles, allegedly carried out the scam and how they spent the money. Substantial planning went into the scam, with a co-conspirator causing “unauthorised Google account access” notifications to be sent to the victim in the week leading up to the theft.
Proxy and virtual private network (VPN) services were used to make it appear as if the access attempts were coming from overseas. Lam and his accomplice called the victim, pretending to be Google support team members claiming there had been a hack attempt on his account and that they needed to shut .
