SINGAPORE: Singaporean Malone Lam was 19 years old in October 2023 when he flew to Texas on his own to live with a few gamers he befriended online through the video game Minecraft.
Within a month of living together, the group hatched a plan to steal cryptocurrency by impersonating employees of security and technical support teams at major companies like Google, and cryptocurrency exchanges like Coinbase.
Lam, who told US investigators that he had dropped out of school when he was 13 years old, used his knowledge of computer software and technology to obtain breached databases containing cryptocurrency-related information and lists of high-net-worth individuals.
The group then targeted these individuals.
After analysing the stolen data, Lam triggered “account access attempt” push notifications to the targets, to make them think there were unauthorised attempts to access their accounts.
Other members of the group would then convince the targets to provide personal account information by pretending to be security technicians, gaining access to their digital currency wallets or passwords to their accounts before stealing their cryptocurrency.
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