Kunal Mehta Pleads Guilty in $263M Crypto RICO Case

Kunal Mehta, a 45-year-old from Irvine, California, pleaded guilty on November 18, 2025, to a RICO conspiracy charge for laundering at least $25 million in cryptocurrency stolen by a young hacking-and-social-engineering ring that took more than $263 million from victims across the United States. He entered the plea before Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, agreed to forfeit funds and cryptocurrency tied to the scheme, and remains detained pending sentencing. The RICO count carries a maximum of 20 years in federal prison.¹

Within the group, Mehta went by “Papa,” “The Accountant,” and “Shrek.” He was the eighth defendant in the case to plead guilty.¹

What Mehta Admitted Doing

Mehta joined the conspiracy in early 2024 after being introduced through a money exchanger connected to the owner of a Los Angeles exotic car dealership. His job was to convert stolen cryptocurrency into spendable cash, and he charged a 10 percent fee for it.²

To do that work, he set up multiple shell companies in 2024, including one called Code Ninja LLC, and opened bank accounts in their names. Stolen crypto was first handed off to associates who ran it through mixers, peel chains, pass-through wallets, and privacy coins such as Monero, then converted it to Tether. The resulting dollars were wired into Mehta’s shell-company accounts from other U.S. shell companies, with transaction memos labeled “family support” or “IT services” so the payments would look ordinary to a bank. Mehta reportedly told co-conspirators to use the “family support” label because it is not taxable and would not draw attention.³

He also moved physical cash. Prosecutors described “bulk cash services” that included personally delivering a duffel bag holding roughly $500,000 to co-conspirator Malone Lam and his associates.⁴ On other occasions he hid cash inside plush toys and shipped them through the U.S. mail.⁵

Titling Cars in Shell Companies

A second piece of Mehta’s role was concealing who actually owned the ring’s assets. The enterprise’s members were mostly unemployed teenagers and twenty-somethings, and their spending was hard to explain: nightclub tabs of $500,000 in a night, watches worth up to $500,000, monthly rentals in Los Angeles, the Hamptons, and Miami running $40,000 to $80,000.⁶

Mehta titled a fleet of at least 28 exotic cars — Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, and Rolls Royces valued at up to $3.8 million each — in the names of his shell companies so the young members would not appear as registered owners. He also recruited “straw signers” who put their names on vehicle titles and purchase documents in exchange for payments over $10,000 per signing.¹

Arrest, Detention Fight, and Plea

Federal agents arrested Mehta in California on May 13, 2025, the day a superseding indictment adding 12 new defendants was unsealed. In a search of his home, they seized nearly $300,000 in cash along with three pistols and a shotgun.³

A federal magistrate in California initially ordered him released. Prosecutors filed an emergency motion for review, arguing he was a serious flight risk because of his access to illicit funds, an extensive history of international travel, and evidence they said suggested he had planned to flee to a non-extradition country where two co-conspirators were believed to be living. On June 2, 2025, Judge Kollar-Kotelly revoked the release order and directed that he be held pending trial. The court later denied his motion to reconsider.⁷

Mehta had no prior criminal record. He is a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country for more than 20 years and was licensed to carry concealed firearms. He told the court he owned two southern California businesses — an IT firm and an Airbnb rental-management company that he said generated $70,000 to $80,000 a month — though prosecutors alleged those were shell companies used for laundering.⁷

Five months later, on November 18, 2025, he pleaded guilty to one count of RICO conspiracy. As part of the plea he agreed to forfeit property and proceeds tied to his laundering activity, including funds in bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets.³

Sentence He Faces

The RICO conspiracy count carries a statutory maximum of 20 years in federal prison and possible fines of up to twice the monetary gain from the offense.¹ Channel News Asia has reported the exposure at up to 14 years based on the specific counts to which Mehta pleaded — RICO conspiracy and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments.⁴ A sentencing date had not been set as of the most recent reporting.³

Two co-defendants sentenced earlier offer some comparison. Marlon Ferro, the 20-year-old burglar known as “GothFerrari,” received 78 months in prison plus $2.5 million in restitution on May 6, 2026.⁸ Evan Tangeman, a 22-year-old money launderer who admitted moving at least $3.5 million, was sentenced on April 24, 2026, to 70 months in prison and three years of supervised release; agents seized a Rolls Royce Ghost, a Porsche GT3 RS, and a Mercedes Benz from him.⁶ Mehta admitted to laundering several times more than Tangeman.

How Mehta Fits Into the Larger Case

Prosecutors call the group a “Social Engineering Enterprise” that operated from at least October 2023 through May 2025 and grew out of friendships formed on online gaming platforms. Members had specialized roles: database hackers who breached sites or bought stolen data, organizers who identified high-value crypto holders, callers who used spoofed numbers and posed as support staff, and residential burglars who broke into homes to steal hardware wallets that could not be reached remotely.⁵

The single largest theft attributed to the ring came on August 18, 2024, when co-conspirator Malone Lam and an associate allegedly persuaded a victim in the District of Columbia to hand over more than 4,100 Bitcoin, worth roughly $230 million to $263 million depending on the valuation date. By November 2025, the same amount of Bitcoin was worth more than $384 million.² A separate July 2024 incident took more than $14 million from another victim.⁵

The case, filed as No. 24-cr-00417 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ultimately named at least 17 defendants. Lam, a Singaporean national arrested in Miami in September 2024, is described as the ringleader; he has pleaded not guilty and rejected a plea offer. As of a May 2026 hearing, his case was pending, with a status hearing set for June 18, 2026, and several co-defendants who have already pleaded guilty have signaled willingness to testify against him.⁹ Whether Mehta cooperates against Lam has not been disclosed in the available filings.

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Cryptocurrency Money Launderer Pleads Guilty to RICO Conspiracy in Scheme That Stole $263 Million
2
IRS Criminal Investigation. Cryptocurrency Money Launderer Pleads Guilty to RICO Conspiracy in Scheme That Stole $263 Million in Crypto
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American Banker. Money Launderer Pleads Guilty in $263 Million Crypto Scheme
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Channel News Asia. Kunal Mehta, Malone Lam Crypto Laundering
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U.S. Department of Justice. Additional 12 Defendants Charged in RICO Conspiracy Over $263 Million Cryptocurrency Thefts
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U.S. Department of Justice. California Money Launderer Sentenced in D.C. to 70 Months for Role in Scheme That Stole $263 Million
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Midpage. United States v. Lam
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U.S. Department of Justice. GothFerrari Sentenced to 78 Months in Prison for Role in Massive Cryptocurrency Heist
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Channel News Asia. Malone Lam Cryptocurrency Heist US Plea Deal