WASHINGTON: US authorities have charged Singaporean Malone Lam with heading up a 13-member crime ring that allegedly stole hundreds of millions of dollars of cryptocurrency.
The 20-year-old has already been charged with stealing cryptocurrency worth US$230 million from one victim in Washington DC.
In a new indictment, federal prosecutors alleged that he orchestrated a wider scheme with a dozen other individuals.
This included hiding money inside “squishmallow” stuffed animals and shipping them across the US to pay the gang’s members.
Lam appeared on Monday (May 19) in a court in Washington DC, where he pleaded not guilty to the superseding indictment.
The 13 suspects allegedly became friends via online gaming platforms and they developed a scheme that netted them a total of US$263 million.
They stole the money from cryptocurrency wallets, converted the crypto into dollars, and then laundered the money.
Malone Lam was reportedly central to the scheme and is named in the indictment as one of the gang’s two organisers.
The US Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia alleged that Lam and 21-year-old Conor Flansburg organised the scheme to identify and target crypto users.