A 20-year-old California man has been sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison for his role in a crypto theft ring that defrauded victims of more than $250 million.
Marlon Ferro, of Santa Ana, known online as “GothFerrari,” was sentenced to 78 months in prison alongside three years of supervised release and $2.5 million in restitution, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said Wednesday. Ferro pleaded guilty in October 2025 to participating in a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) conspiracy.
“Marlon Ferro served as the criminal enterprise’s instrument of last resort,” US Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro wrote, adding that when co-conspirators couldn’t talk victims into surrendering their crypto or hack into their accounts remotely, they sent Ferro to break in physically and steal the hardware wallets storing the funds.
In a February 2024 incident, he traveled to Winnsboro, Texas, broke into a home and walked out with a hardware wallet holding about 100 Bitcoin worth more than $5 million at the time. Months later, he flew to New Mexico, spent days staking out a residence and used a brick to smash his way inside while co-conspirators monitored the victim’s location through his iCloud account. A home surveillance camera caught him in the act.
Ferro using a brick to break into a victim’s home. Source: Justice
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When hacking didn’t work, they sent a burglar
The conspiracy ran from late 2023 to early 2025, with members across California, Connecticut, New York, Florida and overseas. The conspirators each had a role, including hacking databases, identifying targets, making fraudulent calls and laundering money. When victims kept their funds on hardware wallets that couldn’t be accessed remotely, the gang turned to Ferro.
Ferro and his co-conspirators spent the stolen funds on luxury items, including Hermès Birkin bags, watches priced up to $500,000, private jets and exotic cars worth as much as $3.8 million. Nightclub tabs alone reached $500,000 in a single evening.
Ferro also laundered money using fake identification documents, purchased over $255,000 in designer goods for co-conspirators, and helped a jailed conspiracy leader by converting crypto to cash to cover legal fees.
The investigation was led by the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation.
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Crypto hack losses top $630 million in April
April was the worst month for crypto hacks in over a year, with losses totaling $629.7 million, according to DefiLlama. KelpDAO’s $293 million exploit and Drift Protocol’s $280 million hack drove the bulk of the damage, together accounting for more than 90% of monthly losses.
According to Chainalysis security head Yaniv Nissenboim, April’s hack surge reflects a shift toward sophisticated attacks targeting the infrastructure connecting onchain protocols to offchain systems.
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