The U.S. Department of Justice charges 12 individuals in a cryptocurrency fraud case worth 263 million dollars.

The U.S. Department of Justice has charged 12 individuals in connection with a cryptocurrency fraud network allegedly orchestrated by Malone Lam. The group is accused of employing tactics such as social engineering scams, database breaches, and physical theft of hardware wallets. Lam himself faces charges for a single fraud amounting to 230 million dollars. Currently, 10 of the defendants have been apprehended, while two accomplices remain at large in Dubai.

The indictment describes the group's operations, which included target selection, phone scams, money laundering, and physical theft. Lam allegedly monitored the iCloud data of the victims remotely and directed his associates to carry out the thefts. Records from August 2024 indicate that the group stole 4,100 bitcoins, valued at 385.4 million dollars at that time, through peer-to-peer scams.

In September of the previous year, ZachXBT revealed that individuals known as Greavys (Malone Lam), Wiz (Veer Chetal), and Box (Jeandiel Serrano) were involved in a sophisticated social engineering attack, resulting in the theft of 243 million dollars from a Genesis creditor on August 19, 2024.