A 20-year-old California man has been sentenced to six and a half years in federal prison for his role in a cryptocurrency 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 along with three years of supervised release and $2.5 million in restitution, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announced he said Wednesday. In October 2025, Ferro pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in criminal-influenced and corrupt organizations (RICO).
“Marlon Ferro was a tool of last resort for a criminal enterprise,” wrote U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro, adding that when co-conspirators could not get victims to hand over cryptocurrency or remotely hack into their accounts, they sent Ferro to physically break in and steal the hardware wallets that held the funds.
In the February 2024 incident, he traveled to Winnsboro, Texas, broke into a home and left with a hardware wallet containing approximately 100 bitcoins worth more than $5 million at the time. Months later, he flew to New Mexico, surveilled the residence for several days, and used a brick to gain entry while co-conspirators monitored the victim’s location via his iCloud account. He was caught red-handed on a home surveillance camera.
Ferro uses a brick to break into the victim’s house. source: Justice
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When the break-in didn’t aid, they sent a burglar
The conspiracy lasted from delayed 2023 to early 2025 and included members in California, Connecticut, New York, Florida and abroad. Each conspirator had a role to play, including hacking databases, identifying targets, making fraudulent phone calls and laundering money. When the 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 worth up to $500,000, private jets and exotic cars worth as much as $3.8 million. Nightclub cards alone reached $500,000 in one evening.
Ferro also laundered money using false identification documents, purchased more than $255,000 worth of branded merchandise for co-conspirators, and helped the imprisoned leader of the conspiracy by converting cryptocurrencies into cash to cover legal fees.
The investigation was conducted by the FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation.
Related: Law enforcement freezes $41 million in connection with the collapse of a $150 million Ponzi cryptocurrency
In April, losses related to cryptocurrency hacking reached $630 million
According to DefiLlama, April was the worst month for cryptocurrency hacks in over a year, with losses amounting to $629.7 million. The $293 million KelpDAO exploit and the $280 million Drift Protocol hack caused most of the damage, collectively accounting for more than 90% of monthly losses.
According to Chainalytic’s chief security officer, Yaniv Nissenboim, the April wave of intrusions reflects a shift toward sophisticated attacks targeting infrastructure connecting onchain protocols with offchain systems.
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