Written by Dave Collins
According to court documents unsealed this week, a Connecticut man who participated in a $245 million Bitcoin theft and had his parents abducted has entered a guilty plea to conspiracy charges of fraud and money laundering and consented to testify against his co-defendants.
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In an intricate online fraud last August, Veer Chetal, 19, of Danbury, Connecticut, was one of three men accused of stealing 4,100 Bitcoins from a victim in Washington, D.C. Prosecutors claim that the three led extravagant lives following the crime, spending millions of dollars on jewels, automobiles, rental homes, and nightclub parties.
According to investigators, a week after the theft, Chetal’s parents were attacked and temporarily abducted in Danbury as part of an unsuccessful extortion attempt against Chetal, who the perpetrators thought possessed a significant quantity of cryptocurrency.
Chetal entered guilty pleas in November and agreed to assist federal investigators looking into the Bitcoin theft, according to Chetal’s criminal case, which was unsealed in federal court in Washington on Monday. New claims that he was responsible for roughly 50 thefts of a similar nature that brought in an additional $3 million between November 2023 and September 2024 were also made public.
A federal grand jury in May indicted 13 individuals, including Malone Lam, another man charged in the Bitcoin theft, in connection with an alleged online racketeering conspiracy involving cryptocurrency thefts in the United States and abroad that resulted in over $260 million in revenue, including the $245 million Bitcoin theft.
According to federal sentencing guidelines and his plea deal, Chetal faces 19 to 24 years in prison, a fine of $50,000 to $500,000, and an undetermined amount of restitution to the victim.
David Weinstein, his attorney, said Chetal’s case is still pending and declined to comment.
In September, Chetal’s parents’ house in Danbury and his apartment in Brunswick, New Jersey, were raided by federal officials with a search warrant in relation to the $245 million Bitcoin theft. More than $500,000 in cash, pricey jewelry and watches, and designer clothes were discovered, according to authorities. Additionally, according to federal authorities, Chetal gave investigators $39 million worth of cryptocurrencies.
Chetal, Lam, and Jeandiel Serrano were accused by authorities of participating in online social engineering attacks directed at cryptocurrency owners. According to officials, Lam would notify victims of illegal attempts to access their cryptocurrency accounts, while the others would call the victims and pretend to be representatives of reputable organizations like Google and Yahoo in order to access their accounts.
Lawyers for Lam and Serrano received messages on Friday asking for comment.
Six Florida men were charged with abducting Chetal’s parents in broad daylight in Danbury one week after the crime. According to authorities, one of them struck the parents’ Lamborghini with his vehicle, and others arrived in a van. According to authorities, the attackers battered the couple, threw them into the van, tied them up, and pushed them out of their car.
Because an off-duty FBI agent happened to be driving by at the moment of the kidnapping, and because witnesses notified the police right away, the plot was thwarted and the attackers were apprehended promptly, according to authorities. According to federal officials, a seventh individual who was later taken into custody in connection with the kidnapping had a violent altercation with Chetal at a nightclub in Miami.
The couple’s attack is a part of a global trend where thieves are increasingly resorting to violence in order to take cryptocurrency.
According to court filings, Chetal was born in India and arrived in the United States with his family when he was 4 years old in 2010. He was enrolled at Rutgers University in New Jersey at the time of the $245 million crime and later left. His wife and kids received connected dependent visas, while his father was given a foreign worker’s visa.
Chetal may be deported as a result of the criminal prosecution, according to federal authorities.
According to authorities, the kidnapping and his son’s involvement in it caused Chetal’s father to lose his position at Morgan Stanley.
Chetal was first freed on his own recognizance from federal custody. However, earlier this year, after Chetal started working with federal authorities, federal prosecutors said they found out he was engaged in another $2 million cryptocurrency crime in October that he failed to disclose to them, so a judge ordered him to be held until trial.
