Marlon Ferro, a 20-year-old California man known online as “GothFerrari,” was sentenced to 78 months in federal prison for his role in a sprawling cryptocurrency theft conspiracy that stole more than $250 million from U.S. victims. The sentence was handed down in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. Ferro, who pleaded guilty on October 17, 2025, to conspiracy to participate in a racketeer-influenced and corrupt organization, was also ordered to serve three years of supervised release and pay $2.5 million in restitution.
Prosecutors detailed a criminal enterprise that operated from late 2023 to early 2025, blending social engineering, database hacks, fraudulent calls, account takeovers, money laundering, and residential burglaries to target individuals holding large cryptocurrency balances. When online tricks failed to compromise hardware wallets, the group deployed Ferro as its “instrument of last resort,” according to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro.
In February 2024, Ferro traveled to Winnsboro, Texas, broke into a victim’s home, and stole a hardware wallet containing approximately 100 Bitcoin, valued at more than $5 million at the time. He later laundered the stolen funds through cryptocurrency exchanges and used fake identification documents to enable spending at retail stores and nightclubs. In July 2024, he flew to New Mexico, surveilled another victim’s home, and smashed a window with a brick while searching for a hardware wallet, but was recorded by surveillance cameras.
The stolen crypto financed an extravagant lifestyle for the group, including nightclub bills of up to $500,000 per night, luxury watches costing $100,000 to over $500,000, exotic vehicles priced up to $3.8 million, private jet rentals, and designer clothing. Ferro himself purchased more than $255,000 in apparel for co-conspirators and helped the group spend illicit funds through payment accounts set up with fraudulent foreign IDs.
Ferro’s sentencing follows the April case of Evan Tangeman, who received 70 months for laundering money tied to a related social engineering enterprise. The broader crackdown on crypto fraud comes as the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report recorded $11 billion in losses from 181,565 crypto-linked complaints, underscoring why federal investigators continue to prioritize such schemes.
