Miami police arrest crypto scammers behind $243m theft

Los Angeles law enforcement arrested at least two persons involved in a $243 million social engineering attack launched against a lone Genesis creditor.

In August, three scammers, identified as Malone Iam, Veer Chetal, and Jeandiel Serrano, swindled a single Genesis Global creditor of nearly $250 million by impersonating a Gemini customer support agent. The investigation, spearheaded by crypto sleuth ZachXBT, revealed multiple videos of the trio sharing the loot and expressing euphoria over the successful theft.

In a video gathered by the online sleuth, one of the perpetrators shrieked, “I’m gonna spazz,” after the group received some 4,064 Bitcoin (BTC) from the deceived Genesis claimant. With the help of other bad actors, the funds were split across over a dozen exchanges and on-chain trading venues, such as Binance, eXch, and Thorswap.

The hackers also swapped the stolen wealth between Bitcoin, Litecoin (LTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Monero (XMR) to obfuscate their digital footprint. After the heist, members of the hacker trio went on a spending spree, splurging in Los Angeles clubs and buying luxury cars in Miami.

ZachXBT, together with blockchain forensic specialists CF Investigators and ZeroShadow, petitioned the Binance Security Team for aid, leading to $9 million in stolen assets being frozen.

The victim also recovered around $500,000 and worked closely with experts in the investigation, ZachXBT said in a Sept. 19 X thread. Iam and Serrano, two-thirds of the original scammer trio, were arrested in LA on Sept. 18.

According to ZachXBT, large on-chain transactions during the arrests suggest that local police seized more funds from the suspects. At press time, the whereabouts of Chetal, the group’s final member not yet arrested, remained unknown.

Genesis, a Digital Currency Group subsidiary, owed $4 billion to 100,000 creditors, with about $10 billion in liabilities. The crypto lender was one of several businesses caught in the debacle involving FTX and Three Arrows Capital, fallen crypto giants that collapsed after Do Kwon’s Terraform blockchain ecosystem imploded.