Another Guilty Plea in Major Crypto Fraud Case
Evan Tangeman, a 22-year-old from Newport Beach, California, has pleaded guilty to participating in a racketeering conspiracy that helped steal hundreds of millions in cryptocurrency. He appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly on Monday, December 8, 2025.
This marks the ninth conviction in what authorities call a “pig butchering” scheme that operated from October 2023 to May 2025. Tangeman admitted to laundering at least $3.5 million for the criminal enterprise. Court documents show he rented expensive homes for other members in Los Angeles and Miami, with monthly rents ranging from $40,000 to $80,000.
How the Money Laundering Worked
At one point, Tangeman helped another defendant, Malone Lam, convert about $3 million in cryptocurrency to traditional fiat currency. The scheme appears to have involved multiple layers of money movement, with different participants taking cuts along the way.
Just last month, on November 18, 2025, another defendant named Kunal Mehta pleaded guilty to laundering $25 million for the same group. He reportedly charged a 10% fee for converting stolen crypto assets to cash. It seems these operations had established fee structures, which perhaps made them more predictable for investigators to track.
New Defendants Named in Updated Charges
The court also announced three additional defendants charged with RICO conspiracy in a Second Superseding Indictment. Nicholas Dellecave, Mustafa Ibrahim, and Danish Zulfiqar now face charges related to the scheme.
Zulfiqar’s case is particularly interesting because blockchain investigator ZachXBT had been tracking his activities. ZachXBT announced that Zulfiqar was arrested in Dubai, with authorities seizing more than $18 million. According to the investigator, Zulfiqar was involved in the Kroll SIM swap from August 2023, which compromised personal information of BlockFi, Genesis, and FTX creditors and led to over $300 million in thefts.
The Investigation’s Scope
ZachXBT has been central to this investigation, helping law enforcement track more than 4,000 Bitcoin valued at around $243 million. This amount was stolen from a single victim in 2024, which gives you some sense of the scale we’re talking about here.
The fact that investigators could trace this much cryptocurrency suggests the thieves weren’t as sophisticated as they might have thought. Or maybe they got complacent. Either way, the blockchain’s transparency worked against them in this case.
Tangeman now awaits sentencing on April 24, 2026. With nine convictions secured, the Department of Justice seems to be making progress against this particular criminal network. But I wonder how many similar operations are still active. The high rents Tangeman was paying for properties suggest there was plenty of money flowing through this scheme.
These cases show that while cryptocurrency can be used for illicit purposes, the same transparency that makes blockchain technology appealing to legitimate users also creates trails that investigators can follow. It’s not the perfect crime some might imagine, especially when you’re moving hundreds of millions of dollars.
