Here's a tip for any budding cybercriminals out there.

If you're going to steal a quarter of a billion dollars worth of cryptocurrency, maybe don't broadcast on a group chat every time you buy a Lamborghini, or blow half a million dollars on a single night out at a nightclub.

Because it might just be that you draw the attention of the authorities.

That's a lesson that 22-year-old Singaporean Malone Lam has now learnt the hard way, after pleading guilty to heading up a group that stole over US $245 million in cryptocurrency from victims across the United States.

Lam - who used online aliases such as "Anne Hathaway", "$$$", and "King Greavy" - is said to have operated his criminal operation from October 2023 until May 2025, recruiting accomplices through online gaming platforms.

Regular readers of Hot for Security may recognise Lam's name. Back in October 2024, we wrote about how he was arrested after allegedly tricking a single victim out of US $230 million worth of Bitcoin while posing as Google Support.

Further alleged members of the gang were charged in May 2025 for being part of the same racketeering conspiracy - providing different functions such as database hackers, target identifiers, callers, money launderers, and even burglars who would actually physically break into victims' homes to steal their hardware cryptocurrency wallets.

One of those charged was even memorably found to have stuffed approximately US $25,000 in cash inside Squishmallow plush toys to move the money around.

According to the US Department of Justice, Lam's gang spent their criminal proceeds extravagantly, running up nightclub tabs of half a million dollars a night, purchasing luxury cars worth up to US $3.8 million each, renting mansions in LA, the Hamptons, and Miami, and even hiring private jets and a team of private security guards.

Such conspicuous spending for someone like Lam, who was barely out of his teens, attracted precisely the sort of attention from the police investigators that a cooler-thinking criminal might know to avoid.

The party days are over now for Lam, who faces up to 20 years in prison when he is eventually sentenced. Fellow conspirator Evan Tangeman, 22, was sentenced in April 2026 to more than five years for laundering stolen funds, and other members of the gang are still working their way through the courts.

It's a staggering amount of money to have stolen and to have spent. The sad truth remains that the easiest way to part a cryptocurrency holder from their fortune is simply to talk them out of it, using social engineering tricks like fake tech support calls and spoofed numbers.

If you are fortunate enough to own a large amount of cryptocurrency for legitimate reasons, you should know to always be wary of anyone who asks you to share your screen on a support call or asks for a 2FA code. You money may be a lot more safely stored in a hardware cold wallet.