The scammer, the fixer and the cop: Inside L.A.'s world of millionaire 'crypto kids'

Daniel landed in Los Angeles with his girlfriend and a hard drive containing $350,000 in bitcoin. The 17-year-old's lifestyle was intended to draw attention: Parties at the hottest clubs. Rented sports cars.

Cuban link chains. Imitation Richard Mille watches. California is full of young people who were transformed into millionaires when crypto went mainstream.

But Daniel didn't just buy digital money when it was cheap and watch it skyrocket in value. He stole it. The teenager — who was identified only by his first name when he testified as a cooperating witness at a recent trial — was part of something called "the comm," which federal authorities say was a loose network of con artists who treated defrauding investors of millions of dollars like a game.

Holed up in lavish rental homes in Encino and Malibu, they hatched schemes to trick people into giving up access to crypto accounts with nine-figure balances. They gleefully screen-recorded some of the heists, prosecutors wrote in court documents charging them with racketeering, fraud and money laundering. For Daniel, a rail-thin teenager with a wispy goatee and thick black hair, the fun was not necessarily spending the stolen funds on cars, cocaine, jewelry and his 23-year-old girlfriend, but flaunting his lifestyle on social media.

It got him noticed by the wrong people. Daniel was the star witness of a trial in February and March that revealed a subculture revolving around newly created crypto wealth. There are "crypto kids" — some scammers like Daniel, others who acquired their riches legitimately.

There are fixers who set up them up with homes, cars, clothes and other luxuries. And then there are those who preyed on the crypto kids. When masked, armed men forced their way into Daniel's apartment in 2024, they identified themselves as police officers.

One of them had worked for the Los Angeles Police Department, but he wasn't on the job when he came for Daniel.

According to one witness, the former officer justified taking the teenager's crypto at gunpoint, calling it "stealing something from somebody who stole." On the witness stand, Daniel didn't say where he grew up. He spoke English without the trace of an accent and said he's also fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

A detective testified the teenager showed him a passport that said he was born in Rio de Janeiro, but he acknowledged the document could have been fake. Daniel said he met members of the comm through the encrypted messaging app Telegram. As he described it, they were not hackers.

They stole fortunes through deceit, working in concert to impersonate employees from well-known crypto exchanges. Daniel testified he called people with accounts on Coinbase and other platforms, pretending to be a customer service representative. After tricking investors into handing over login access, he transferred bitcoin and other currencies into "hardware wallets" beyond the reach of law enforcement, Daniel said.

In one of the most brazen heists attributed to the comm, Malone Lam, a 20-year-old Singaporean national who was then living in Los Angeles, allegedly stole $248 million in 2024. While staying at a rented Encino mansion, prosecutors say, Lam plotted with several accomplices to trick an investor from Washington, D.C., into thinking he was being hacked. After Lam's accomplices purposely used incorrect credentials to access the man's Google account, the investor got a security alert, Jonathan Stratton, an assistant U.S. attorney, said at Lam's bail hearing.

Lam has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering, fraud and money laundering.

According to Stratton, Lam, posing as a Google representative, called the investor and convinced the man to give up his password and security codes to prevent what Lam described as a hacking attempt. Lam allegedly saw the man had an account with Gemini, a crypto brokerage, and an accomplice posing as a Gemini representative then called the investor. Convinced his Gemini account had been compromised, the man agreed to download what he thought was a security program.

In fact, it was a remote desktop application that enabled Lam and his conspirators to transfer 4,000 bitcoins to themselves, Stratton said. If Lam had tried to carry off that amount of money in $100 bills, the prosecutor said, it would have weighed more than 2½ tons. Afterward, Lam embarked on "what only can be described as an outrageous and exorbitant spending spree," Stratton said.

According to the prosecutor, Lam spent $569,525 in one night at an unnamed L.

A. nightclub, and he became "notorious" for throwing Hermes bags worth tens of thousands of dollars into crowds of partygoers. On Telegram, Lam was known as $$$, King Greavys and Anne Hathaway. Daniel was known as Scare. Testifying in a downtown L.

A. courtroom, Daniel, dressed in a charcoal suit, white dress shirt buttoned to the throat and Louis Vuitton belt, said someone else had already claimed the Scare handle on Instagram, so he bought it from them for $16,000. He posted photographs that showed off trappings of luxury without ever revealing his face. One depicted a Louis Vuitton bag with the caption: "I've never seen a cheater lose so why would I play fair?”

When he arrived in L.

A. in November 2024, Daniel had no credit history and couldn't rent an apartment in his own name.

He said that through a nightlife promoter, he was introduced to Pierre Louis, a fixer who specialized in getting rich people what they wanted. Louis, 27, testified he grew up in Montreal. In a thick Quebecois accent, he said he set up rappers, athletes and other wealthy clients with rented cars, homes, jewelry and clothes.

Although he catered to rich people and hung out in posh nightclubs on the Westside, Louis said he made only about $50,000 a year and lived in an apartment in Burbank. When he first met Daniel, Louis testified the teenager tried to scam him by offering to help with his crypto investments. That didn't put off Louis, who rented Daniel a high-rise apartment on Wilshire Boulevard.

The teenager sent him $60,000 in bitcoin for six months' rent. Louis offered another service: a way to launder stolen crypto. Unable to use legitimate exchanges, Daniel testified he converted some by trading it for gold with a downtown L.

A. jeweler. He also relied on Louis to connect him with people willing to pay cash for bitcoin without asking questions. Through mutual friends in the luxury car rental business, Louis said, he had met a man called Ghost who had a network of crypto buyers.

Louis testified that he sent Ghost funds he'd received from Daniel and other crypto kids, and Ghost brought him cash. Both Louis and Ghost charged their clients fees of 2% to 5%, the rate varying depending on who was involved, Louis said. After meeting Ghost, Louis said, he usually brought the cash to a car rental business in Van Nuys called Drive-LA to use its electric money counter.

The company, which owned a fleet of Lamborghinis, Porsches and Bentleys, was run by a former officer who aspired to be more than just a patrol cop. Eric Halem created Drive-LA in 2021 as a side gig to his day job patrolling the San Fernando Valley for the LAPD.