Singaporean crypto kingpin pleads guilty to orchestrating $240 million bitcoin heist

A 22-year-old man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to pulling off one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in history, duping a stranger out of bitcoin worth over $240 million.

Malone Lam, an eighth-grade dropout who came to the U.S. from Singapore, teamed up with friends to steal nearly a quarter-billion dollars in bitcoin from a Washington, D.C., resident — one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in U.S. history — and then embarked on a wild spending spree with the laundered proceeds.

Lam faces a maximum prison sentence of 20 years after pleading guilty to a federal racketeering conspiracy charge. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly didn't immediately schedule Lam's sentencing hearing in Washington.

Lam was an organizer for a network of young men who carried out a string of crypto scams starting in 2023, prosecutors said.

The charges against Lam and 17 others are an extreme example of an increasingly common form of cybercrime. Complaints of cryptocurrency investment fraud to the FBI rose by nearly 50% in 2025, while Republican President Donald Trump's administration largely abandoned a regulatory crackdown on the volatile industry.

Last year, the Justice Department disbanded a unit dedicated to prosecuting crypto-related crimes.