Ringleader pleads guilty to scheme to steal millions in cryptocurrency

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Jeanine SantucciUSA TODAY
Sept. 10, 2026, 9:19 a.m. ET

A 22-year-old man has pleaded guilty in a scheme to steal hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency as ringleader of a group of over a dozen people who went on a lavish spending spree with the money.

Malone Lam, also known online as “Anne Hathaway,” “$$$” or “King Greavy,” is a Miami resident who is a citizen of Singapore. He pleaded guilty to one count of participating in a conspiracy under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announced on Sept. 8.

According to prosecutors, Lam was a leader of a group of at least 16 other people from California, Connecticut, New York, Florida and abroad who connected primarily through online gaming platforms. The group used “social engineering,” or tricking someone into revealing sensitive information such as passwords, to steal the cryptocurrency, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said in an indictment that the group used the millions to purchase nightclub services that cost up to $500,000 per evening; luxury handbags worth tens of thousands of dollars that they gave away at nightclub parties; watches worth $100,000 to $500,000; luxury clothing; five rental homes in Los Angeles, the Hamptons and Miami; private jet rentals; private security guards; and a fleet of cars ranging in value from $100,000 to $3.8 million.

“If you build a cybercrime empire, we will find you, dismantle your operation, and hold you accountable,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said in a statement. “This defendant led an international network that preyed on victims through deception, invaded their privacy, and stole hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency.”

Lam was arrested in September 2025. USA TODAY has reached out to Lam’s attorney. He faces up to 20 years in prison and will appear next in court in December.

The plot began in about October 2023 and continued through May 2025, prosecutors said. Lam’s co-defendants had roles that included hacking websites and servers to obtain databases of people who held cryptocurrency to identify targets, or purchasing databases on the dark web; organizers who identified targets; callers who cold-called victims to convince them that they were trying to secure their accounts; and money launderers who received the stolen currency and converted it into cash or wire transfers or provided services.

They stole currency from multiple victims that ranged in value from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, according to the indictment. Group members broke into some victims’ home to steal a virtual currency hardware wallet, Pirro’s office said.

One Washington, DC, resident was duped into downloading a program onto his computer that allowed Lam and others to access the computer and ultimately steal over $245 million in cryptocurrency, according to the indictment.

Group members in messages to each other called their victims “stupid” and “dumb f—,” the indictment said.

When Lam learned that authorities were on their way to arrest him, he dropped his cell phone off a dock at his Miami rental home into Biscayne Bay, according to the indictment.

According to the indictment, in a recorded group call from jail after his arrest, Lam said: “We always talked about what it would be like if I were to go down, but never thought it would be this crazy.”

Co-defendants Evan Tangeman of Newport Beach, California; Marlon Ferro of Santa Ana, California; and Kunal Mehta of Irvine, California, previously pleaded guilty. Tangeman was sentenced to 70 months in prison and Ferro was sentenced to 78 months and ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution.