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.”

‘Ghost’ and the illicit crypto economy

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.

A teenager testified he laundered stolen crypto through buying gold in the downtown L.A.’s Jewelry District.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

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.

Lamborghinis and ‘$5 wrench attacks’

Eric Halem created Drive-LA in 2021 as a side gig to his day job patrolling the San Fernando Valley for the LAPD.

The business, which also offered customers access to jets, homes and chauffeurs, gained a loyal following among local rappers and social media influencers. During an internal affairs interview, Halem said that he raked in about $1 million a year in profit from Drive-LA, according to a department source who requested anonymity in order to discuss personnel matters. He claimed in online interviews that he had interests from venture capitalists and was looking to expand.

A 13-year veteran of the LAPD, Halem quit the force in 2022 but was still working as a reserve officer when he met Louis, who testified he brokered hundreds of car leases for Drive-LA.

A former LAPD officer, Eric Halem, owned a car rental business called Drive-LA in this business center in Van Nuys.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Louis said he was at Drive-LA counting cash he’d received from Ghost when Halem asked where the money came from.

“From the crypto kids,” Louis replied.

Halem was curious how they were so rich. “I told him they basically scam or steal people’s crypto,” Louis recalled during his testimony.

Through Halem, Louis said, he was introduced to Gabby Ben. Twice convicted of fraud, Ben, 51, has ties to Israeli organized crime circles, a prosecutor said at his bail hearing in November.

Louis brokered the sale of Amiri clothes and Hermes bags from Lam to Ben, who bought the luxuries on credit and never paid him, Louis testified.

At Ben’s rented mansion in the Hollywood Hills, Louis said, he spitballed with Ben and Halem ideas on how to rob crypto kids. Louis recalled Halem saying they were criminals who wouldn’t report being robbed to the police.

“It’s basically like stealing something from somebody who stole,” Halem said, according to Louis.

It’s increasingly common for criminals to use physical force to extract crypto from a victim, said Marilyne Ordekian, a lecturer of security and crime science at University College London who co-wrote a paper on the trend.

The heists are called “$5 wrench attacks” after a comic strip in which a robber bypasses a laptop’s encryption protections by threatening the user with a wrench. A perpetrator who may lack the technical expertise to hack into a crypto wallet can resort to cruder methods, Ordekian said.

According to authorities, the tools Halem, Ben and Louis planned to use included police uniforms, handcuffs and a gun.

Masked men, handcuffs and a setup

The plot came together two days after Christmas in 2024, Louis testified.

Daniel had sent Louis $23,000 in crypto to convert to cash. Louis said the plan was for him to call Daniel down to the parking garage from his 18th-floor apartment, hand over the money and stall while the others entered the apartment using the door code that Louis had provided.

Louis, Halem, Ben and three others set out from Ben’s house around 2 a.m., driving to Koreatown in a green Range River and orange Lamborghini Urus, Louis testified. Both cars were owned by Drive-LA, Louis said.

Louis texted Daniel when he arrived. Ben had given Louis $7,000 in cash for the transaction. When Daniel got in Louis’ Range Rover, he testified, he gave the teenager $6,000 — pocketing $1,000. Louis said he “dapped him up” and told him he’d see him soon.

In Daniel’s telling, he was counting the money in Louis’ car when he got a text from his girlfriend that read, “Help me.”

His girlfriend — identified in court only by her first name, Victoria — testified she was in the bedroom alone when she heard the sound of someone entering the incorrect code to the front door. She looked through the pinhole and saw two men wearing hoods.

She testified that she fled to a closet and was hiding there when she heard the sound of the code being entered again — this time correctly. Through the crack under the closet door, she said, she saw feet traipsing through the bedroom and heard men whispering in a foreign language.

The feet approached the closet door. Then it was thrown open.

“I’m greeted by four masked men,” Victoria testified. “One of them is holding a gun. I have my hands up. I’m saying, ‘I’ll give you what you want. I’ll give you the safe. Just please don’t kill me.’”

The men said they were LAPD officers serving a search warrant.

“Exit the closet,” one said.

They cuffed her wrists and demanded to know where her boyfriend was, she testified. Then she heard the sound of Daniel opening the front door.

Daniel said he was “absolutely terrified” to see men wearing black clothes, police vests and black masks that covered everything but their eyes inside his apartment.

“There was nothing running through my mind other than fear,” he recalled.

The men slammed him against a wall, snapped handcuffs onto his wrists and pushed him into the spare bedroom he used as an office. The intruders told him to turn on his computer and transfer crypto out of his wallet. Trying to trick them, he showed them a wallet that contained only a little money.

Daniel testified one of the men threatened to shoot him in the foot, asking another intruder for a gun. Daniel told them the combination to a safe where he stored his hardware wallet, which was about the size of a USB drive.

Daniel testified he was being detained in a bathroom with the shower running when one of the intruders burst in and said something in a foreign language. The intruders fled the apartment, leaving Daniel and his girlfriend in cuffs.

A forgotten code and a missing fortune

Louis testified he was responsible for cutting the robbery short. After Daniel left his car, he circled the block a few times, then pulled over, he said.

“I started to feel guilty about what was going on,” Louis testified. “He didn’t do nothing to me.”

Louis had spent a few hours earlier that night drinking at Poppy on La Cienega Boulevard. He said he felt compelled to text his accomplices inside Daniel’s apartment that the police were on the way.

“I think it was the alcohol mixed with my feelings,” Louis said. He thought about how Daniel, like himself, was “just a person trying to make it big.”

Later that night, Louis said, he and his bodyguard returned to Koreatown to check on Daniel — and retrieve the cuffs his accomplices had left behind.

Louis said he found Daniel and his girlfriend hiding in a safe room in the apartment. She was still handcuffed.

“We’re going to find who did this,” Louis recalled Daniel saying.

Louis testified he felt guilty about setting up Daniel, but he wasn’t above pestering Halem and Ben for a cut of the profits. Both tried putting him off by claiming they hadn’t stolen anything, Louis testified.

Halem called the whole thing a “major waste of time,” Louis said. Yet Ben went on a “nice little shopping spree” with his girlfriend, Louis testified, while Halem bought two Porsche 911 GTs and a Rolex Yacht Master watch.

When Louis confronted Ben at his house, Louis said, an associate he knew by the nickname Lucky brandished a gun and warned “not to mess with them.” Louis testified that Ben said he was from the “Israeli mafia” and knew people “everywhere.”

Ben has pleaded not guilty to charges of kidnapping, robbery and fraud. At a bail hearing, his lawyer said Ben owned legitimate healthcare and assisted living facilities.

Louis was arrested five months after the robbery. In a jail call, Halem told him to “hang tight” and said he knew an FBI agent who could get him out of jail, according to Louis.

No one from the FBI ever came to see to him, Louis said, and Halem was arrested three months later.

Halem was convicted this month of robbery and kidnapping. He has maintained his innocence but faces a possible life sentence.

Louis was charged with robbing Daniel, and he agreed to testify against Halem in hopes of getting out of prison early. He has yet to be sentenced.

The LAPD never determined what happened to the crypto on Daniel’s hard drive.

Daniel testified he might have been able to access his wallet remotely using a “seed phrase,” a unique string of words that he wrote down on a piece of paper. But the men who robbed him took it from his safe, he said, and he can’t remember the phrase.

Now 18, Daniel testified he doesn’t want the crypto back, although he still tracks the price of bitcoin on his phone’s home screen.

“I see it every day,” he said.