Trial of Singaporean Malone Lam accused of brazen crypto heist delayed in the US

The highly anticipated trial of Singaporean Malone Lam, who is accused of carrying out a brazen heist of hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, was delayed on Monday (Oct 6) at the last minute.

The prosecutor’s office told CNA that the trial was postponed because they “superseded with 11 more defendants and an additional RICO Conspiracy count”.

“We have a status conference at the end of October and we anticipate a trial date being set at that hearing,” a spokesperson told CNA.

Lam faces a number of charges, including wire fraud, money laundering and RICO conspiracy – a charge traditionally used to put mafia bosses behind bars.  

Prosecutors allege that Lam and 12 associates formed a “Social Engineering Enterprise” in late 2023, born out of friendships formed in online gaming platforms.

They allegedly devised a scheme to steal cryptocurrency valued at more than $260 million at the time.

According to prosecutors, they identified people with vast amounts of crypto, sent them push notifications, then called them pretending to be support agents at Google or crypto exchanges.

Once on the phone, the victims were tricked into handing over their passwords, private keys, seed phrases and their login details.  

Using that information, Lam and his associates allegedly accessed the victim’s accounts, stole their virtual currencies, laundered them in offshore exchanges, and then converted them into hard cash.

This includes an unnamed victim in Washington DC that prosecutors say Lam swindled out of 4,100 Bitcoins, which were valued at US$245 million at the time.