Two additional suspects in the case — 20-year-old Malone Lam and Jeandiel Serrano, 21 — were arrested in September 2024 and charged in connection with the theft of about $245 million from a victim in Washington, D.C through a social engineering attack. Then in August 2024, Lam and four unnamed suspects went after a creditor for the crypto lender Genesis, according to ZachXBT, a virtual currency investigator who says he helped law enforcement research the case. Twelve more suspects have been charged for their alleged involvement in a spree of cryptocurrency thefts and the subsequent laundering of virtual currency worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Purporting to be customer support agents from cryptocurrency exchange Gemini informing the victim their account had been hacked, they instructed them to reset their multifactor authorization and to transfer funds to a compromised wallet. Some of the suspects allegedly “cold-called victims and used social engineering to convince them their accounts were the subject of cyberattacks and the enterprise callers were attempting to help secure their accounts,” according to the DOJ. Four of the suspects — Kunal Mehta, Hamza Doost, Joel Cortez and Evan Tangeman — were charged for their alleged roles in laundering the funds. With their riches, members of the group lived a lavish lifestyle, renting out mansions in Florida and California using fake documents, flying on private jets to the Hamptons and buying up exotic cars, prosecutors said. The schemes netted them huge sums of money, prosecutors allege, including one theft worth $14 million and another worth $2.9 million. The charges include RICO conspiracy, which is used to combat organized crime, as well as conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and obstruction of justice.
This Cyber News was published on therecord.media. Publication date: Fri, 16 May 2025 17:54:54 +0000