6 Years For $236 Million In Bitcoin? The Price Of Quick Crypto Riches

The United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the District of Columbia announced that a defendant who was involved in a scam that stole $236 million in Bitcoin was sentenced to six years in prison. This comes as the Department of Justice (DOJ) continues to crack down on crypto crimes. 

Defendant Sentenced To Six Years In Prison Over Bitcoin Scam

The USAO for DC announced in a press release that Evan Tangeman was sentenced to 6 years in prison for laundering millions of dollars, which was generated by a social engineering scheme. This scheme was said to have been orchestrated by a multistate criminal enterprise that stole more than $263 million in Bitcoin. 

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said that Tangeman didn’t just launder the money for the criminal enterprise but also moved to destroy the evidence when his co-conspirators were arrested. “That is consciousness of guilt, and this office and the court have treated that accordingly,” she said. 

The prosecutors stated that Tangeman pleaded guilty to participating in a RICO conspiracy before the court and admitted that he helped to launder at least $3.5 million of the stolen Bitcoin for members of the enterprise. In addition to the six-year sentence, the court also sentenced the defendant to serve three years of supervised release. 

Meanwhile, the USAO revealed that the criminal enterprise began no later than October 2023 and continued through at least May 2025. The group is said to have comprised individuals based in California, Connecticut, New York, and abroad. Besides Tangeman, the money launderer, the group included database hackers, organizers, target identifiers, callers, and residential burglars who targeted Bitcoin wallets. 

In laundering the stolen Bitcoin, Tangeman was responsible for converting the crypto into fiat cash and worked with real estate agents in Los Angeles to acquire large mansions for members of the criminal enterprise. 

DOJ’s Scam Center Strike Force Seizes $700 Million in Crypto

As part of the crackdown on crypto crimes, the USAO announced that it has seized over $700 million in Bitcoin, allegedly tied to money laundering from crypto scams. This comes amid a broader effort by the DOJ’s Strike Force mission to identify funds laundered by scam centers and to seize and forfeit them.

Meanwhile, the DOJ had announced in the release that the Scam Center Strike Force had carried out coordinated actions against Southeast Asian criminal organizations operating scam centers that have defrauded Americans of billions of dollars. As part of the action, they criminally charged two Chinese nationals who managed a compound for crypto investment fraud in Burma. The Strike Force also seized over $63 million from these Chinese nationals, which brought the Force’s tally for seizures up to the $700 million mark.