Court documents reveal that Lam's principal roles included victim selection and social engineering support. He obtained databases of high-net-worth individuals with cryptocurrency holdings to guide the group's targeting, and triggered account access notifications on victims' devices to convince them their accounts were under attack. He was also involved in laundering the stolen proceeds through exchanges with lax Know Your Customer requirements.
Other group members carried out social engineering calls, posing as representatives of Google, Yahoo, Coinbase, Gemini, and other platforms to persuade victims to hand over personal information and access codes. Once inside, the crew searched for cryptocurrency accounts, seed phrases, and passwords to steal assets. In most cases, social engineering alone sufficed, but in one instance, the group arranged for a member to physically break into a victim's home and steal a hardware wallet.
During the nearly two-year operation, the crew stole amounts ranging from about $800,000 to tens of millions of dollars per victim, with one individual losing more than $245 million. The scheme involved at least 12 members, who spent lavishly on nightclub bills of up to $500,000 a night, handbags worth tens of thousands of dollars, luxury clothing and watches, exotic cars worth up to $3.8 million, private jets, and bodyguards.
Lam was arrested at a rented property in Miami on September 18, 2024. His sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled, with a status hearing set for December 8. The racketeering conspiracy charge carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
"If you build a cybercrime empire, we will find you, dismantle your operation, and hold you accountable," said US Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro. "This defendant led an international network that preyed on victims through deception, invaded their privacy, and stole hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency."