How almost $250M in stolen crypto led to Lambo carjacking and abduction

A Lamborghini carjacking, a failed kidnapping, and alleged stolen cryptocurrency all sounds like the makings of a bad movie. But this case is all too real.

Let’s set the scene. A middle-aged couple is cruising around a gated community in their brand new Lamborghini, looking to buy a new house, until they’re rear-ended by a Honda Civic.

Following the “accident,” witnesses see three men leave a van that was tailing the Honda. These men begin viciously assaulting the couple while attempting to force them into the van.

The gang binds the couple’s hands and feet with duct tape after forcing them inside. During the ordeal, the man is beaten with a baseball bat.

Local police saw the van speed off and closely followed. They found the van abandoned not too far from the scene, and inside, they found the bound couple.

The suspects in the kidnapping and carjacking were Florida men aged between 18 and 26. Police also managed to retrieve the stolen Lamborghini.

But how does this relate to alleged stolen cryptocurrency? Well, the six assailants believed that the couple’s son had access to a life-changing amount of cryptocurrency that they could obtain if they held his parents for ransom.

Before the failed abduction and carjacking took place, the couple’s son had allegedly been involved in a social engineering attack where they stole $243 million worth of cryptocurrency from a victim in Washington DC, according to Krebs on Security, which first reported the story.

The article's author, Brian Krebs, said a crypto crime investigator published a thread that revealed details of the scheme and the criminals who orchestrated the crime.

1/ An investigation into how Greavys (Malone Iam), Wiz (Veer Chetal), and Box (Jeandiel Serrano) stole $243M from a single person last month in a highly sophisticated social engineering attack and my efforts which have helped lead to multiple arrests and millions frozen. pic.twitter.com/dcY1e9xsPd

undefined ZachXBT (@zachxbt) September 19, 2024

ZachXBT, the crypto crime investigator with over 650,000 followers on X, posted a screen recording from a Discord chat showing the criminals' reaction when they found out they pulled off the heist.

3/ Here is a private video recording showing the live reaction by multiple of the threat actors to receiving $238M.

Theft txn hash
4064 BTC - Aug 19 at 4:05 am UTC
4b277ba298830ea538086114803b9487558bb093b5083e383e94db687fbe9090 pic.twitter.com/djSxBTkOF8

undefined ZachXBT (@zachxbt) September 19, 2024

According to ZachXBT, the criminals, named Greavys (Malone Lam), Wiz (Veer Chetal), and Box (Jeandile Serrano), supposedly called the victim, claiming to be Google Support. They used a spoofed number to compromise the person’s accounts.

The perpetrators then called the victim again, claiming to be a cryptocurrency exchange support worker, and stated that their account had been hacked. The victim then reset their two-factor authentication and sent the cryptocurrency exchange firm Gemini funds.

However, it wasn’t the real Gemini. The perpetrators orchestrated the attack so that the victim would send funds to a compromised wallet.

According to ZachXBT, Veer Chetal is a 19-year-old from Danbury who goes by ‘Wiz’ online. Chetal is supposedly the son of the couple that were carjacked and kidnapped by the original criminal gang.

The Department of Justice announced that two of the crypto criminals, Jeandiel Serrano (Box) and Malone Lam (Greavys), had been charged for their role in the cryptocurrency scam on a victim in Washington DC.