20-Something Who Flaunted Hermes Bags at LA Club Turns Out to Have Stolen Hundreds of Billions of Won in Bitcoin

A man in his 20s from Singapore, who frequently bragged about his wealth by tossing tens of million-won Hermes bags to people at a Los Angeles nightclub, has been revealed to have stolen hundreds of billions of won worth of bitcoin.

According to outlets like the BBC, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that Malone Lam, a Singaporean national indicted for masterminding a cryptocurrency fraud case worth approximately 328 billion won, appeared in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on the 8th and pleaded guilty.

Lam dropped out of middle school in Singapore at the age of 14 and moved to the United States in 2023. Not long after, his visa expired, but he continued to stay illegally in the U.S.

He is accused of conspiring with individuals he met on an online gaming platform to deceive a victim living in Washington, D.C. in August 2024, ultimately stealing 4,100 bitcoins.

Lam and his accomplices divided roles, posing as employees of Google Cloud and the U.S. cryptocurrency platform Gemini, and approached the victim by falsely claiming that "an unauthorized account access attempt had been detected."

Investigators found that they sequentially compromised the victim's Google Cloud, PC, and bitcoin wallet private keys to steal the 4,100 bitcoins.

After living lavishly in Los Angeles and Miami, they were arrested by the FBI in September 2024, just a month after the crime.

Lam rented luxury residences in Miami and purchased over 30 high-end sports cars, including Lamborghinis and Ferraris.

He also brazenly flaunted his wealth, spending about 760 million won in a single night at a Los Angeles nightclub and buying multiple Hermes Birkin bags worth tens of millions of won each to throw at people inside the club.

Having pleaded guilty in court, Lam faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison following further trial proceedings.

Reported by Jung Da-eun | Video by Lee 의-seon | Graphics by Yang Hye-min | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.