Man whose parents were kidnapped after $245M Bitcoin theft has pleaded guilty to federal charges

A Connecticut man whose parents were kidnapped after he took part in a $245 million Bitcoin theft has pleaded guilty to fraud and money laundering conspiracy charges and has agreed to testify against his co-defendants, according to court documents that were unsealed this week.
Veer Chetal, 19, from Danbury, Connecticut, was one of three men charged with stealing 4,100 Bitcoins from a victim in Washington, D.C., in an elaborate online scam last August. The trio lived large after the heist, spending millions of dollars on cars, jewelry, rental mansions and nightclub parties, prosecutors say.
A week after the theft, Chetal's parents were assaulted and kidnapped briefly in Danbury in a failed ransom plot aimed at Chetal, who the attackers believed had a large amount of cryptocurrency, authorities said.
Chetal's criminal case was unsealed on Monday in federal court in Washington, revealing his guilty pleas in November and his agreement to cooperate with federal authorities investigating the Bitcoin theft. It also revealed new allegations that he was involved in about 50 similar thefts that raked in another $3 million between November 2023 and September 2024.
Another man charged in the Bitcoin theft, Malone Lam, was also among 13 people indicted by a federal grand jury in May in an alleged online racketeering conspiracy involving cryptocurrency thefts across the U.S. and overseas that netted more than $260 million, including the $245 million Bitcoin theft.
Chetal is facing 19 to 24 years in prison, a fine between $50,000 and $500,000 and restitution to the victim that has yet to be determined, according federal sentencing guidelines and his plea agreement.
His lawyer, David Weinstein, declined to comment, saying Chetal's case is still pending.
In September, federal agents with a search warrant raided Chetal's apartment in Brunswick, New Jersey, and his parents' home in Danbury in connection with the $245 million Bitcoin heist. Authorities said they found more than $500,000 in cash, expensive jewelry and watches and high-end clothing. Federal agents also said Chetal had $39 million worth of cryptocurrency that he turned over to investigators.
Authorities alleged Chetal, Lam and Jeandiel Serrano were involved in online 'social engineering' attacks against cryptocurrency holders. Lam would send victims alerts about unauthorized attempts to access their crypto accounts, while the others would call the victims posing as representatives from well-known companies like Google and Yahoo and gain access to their accounts, authorities said.
Messages seeking comment were left with lawyers for Lam and Serrano on Friday.
A week after the theft, six Florida men were accused of kidnapping Chetal's parents in broad daylight in Danbury. One of them crashed a car into the parents' Lamborghini, while others pulled up in a van, police said. The attackers forced the couple out of their vehicle, beat them, put them in the van and tied them up, police said.
The plot was foiled, and the attackers were arrested quickly because there were eyewitnesses who immediately called police, and an off-duty FBI agent happened to be driving by at the time of the kidnapping, authorities said. Federal agents said a seventh man who was later arrested in connection with the kidnapping had previously gotten into a dispute with Chetal that turned physical at a Miami nightclub.
The attack on the couple is part of an increasing trend worldwide in robbers using violence to steal cryptocurrency.
Chetal, who was attending Rutgers University in New Jersey at the time of the $245 million theft and later withdrew, was born in India and came to the U.S. with his family when he was 4 years old in 2010, according to court documents. His father was granted a foreign worker's visa, and his wife and children obtained related dependent visas.
Federal authorities said Chetal could face deportation as a result of the criminal case.
Authorities say Chetal's father lost his job at Morgan Stanley because of the kidnapping and his son's connection to it.
Chetal was initially released from federal custody on his own recognizance. But a judge ordered him detained until trial earlier this year after federal prosecutors said they discovered Chetal was involved in another crypto theft worth $2 million in October that he didn't tell them about, after he had begun cooperating with federal authorities.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Hindustan Times

8 hours ago

• Hindustan Times

Probe into Karnataka ACB over ‘leaks' before raids

The raids by Karnataka's anti-corruption body was likely compromised from within as the investigators probing an extortion racket run by a dismissed police constable are examining whether raid information was deliberately leaked ahead of time, said officials familiar with the matter. Probe into Karnataka ACB over 'leaks' before raids The widening investigation comes in the wake of the arrest of Ningappa Savant, a 45-year-old former constable, who allegedly posed as senior Lokayukta officials to extort crores from government officers across departments, including transport, excise and the BBMP. The case initially emerged in May when a call was made to a Tumakuru RTO officer demanding bribes to avoid a Lokayukta raid. According to an official, the Lokayukta is probing a series of suspicious incidents where officials vacated their offices just before scheduled raids in 2024 and 2025. 'Details of several raids conducted by the Lokayukta in 2024 and 2025 were leaked on the day of the raids. The officials concerned fled the offices where the raids took place. On the same day, details of a phone call between some Lokayukta officials and Ningappan were found,' said an Lokayukta official on condition of anonymity. The official further said that investigators have traced calls from five different SIM cards, one of which was issued in Savant's name using his credentials. These numbers were used to impersonate senior Lokayukta personnel, calling government staff to extract money under the threat of imminent raids. 'Calls were made from different numbers to officials of other government departments in the name of Lokayukta, deputy Lokayukta, Lokayukta SP. Including the SIM card that Ningappa purchased using his Aadhaar number, such calls were made from a total of five SIM cards. This fact was discovered when the call details of all those numbers were collated,' said the official. Some of these SIM cards, investigators said, were fraudulently registered in the names of actual Lokayukta officers. Their photos were misused to create fake profiles on platforms such as Truecaller and Google, adding a layer of credibility to the scam. 'Some of these SIM cards were purchased in the names of Lokayukta officials. The pictures of Lokayukta officials were used in Truecaller and Google profiles. It is known that Ningappa also used one such SIM card,' the officer said. Savant, who was dismissed from service years ago for unauthorised absence, allegedly used WhatsApp groups and internal-looking Lokayukta updates to bolster his credibility and lure victims. According to the FIR, he contacted officials pretending to be senior Lokayukta officers and demanded money to suppress corruption allegations. In some instances, officials paid thousands and even lakhs of rupees through platforms such as Google Pay and PhonePe. The official quoted above said that Savant might have operated with insider support and Joshi Srinath Mahadev, a 2012 batch promotee IPS officer and former Lokayukta SP in Bengaluru, might have been involved in the matter. Another official said that Mahadev was seen spending hours at a hotel in an area linked to Savant. 'Information has been received that Srinath M Joshi, who was the Lokayukta SP, was in the lobby of a hotel in Ningappa Nagar for a few hours. In addition, the personal secretary of a state government minister was also in the same hotel with him. It has been reported that all three went out at the same time,' the official said. The official further said that Savant likely named Mahadev during police interrogation, claiming the IPS officer had a stake in cryptocurrency wallets into which the extorted money was allegedly diverted. The Lokayukta confirmed that nearly 13 crypto wallets have been frozen as part of the investigation. 'He admitted that he has invested the money he extorted in cryptocurrency in his own name and that of his relatives. His mobile was checked, and it was found that he had invested the money in about 13 crypto wallets. To trace the source of the money, the said wallets have been frozen and the investigation is continuing,' it said. Mahadev, relieved of duties on June 12, has approached a sessions court seeking anticipatory bail, arguing that the charges against him are false and that he had no association with Savant beyond their past service in Chitradurga. The Karnataka high court has temporarily stayed proceedings against Mahadev, but the broader investigation continues into 35 other officials whose names surfaced during Savant's interrogation. HT tried to get response from the DG and IGP but no one responded.

Time of India

16 hours ago

• Time of India

Pilot molestation: Aggregator cab driver arrested, Mumbai police hunt for his 2 friends

Mumbai: The Mumbai: Ghatkopar police on Sunday arrested the aggregator cab driver who allegedly re-routed his vehicle while driving a 28-year-old woman pilot home on June 19 night, and stopped and allowed in his two friends who went on to sexually harass her. Police are still looking for the two men. The arrested accused, Gajeelul Hassan Shaikh (25), was produced before the Dadar holiday court, which remanded him to three days of police custody. In her complaint, the pilot said that she reached CSMT to meet her husband on June 19 evening. At 10.45pm, her husband booked the cab in Fort for her to go home in the eastern suburbs. "After travelling for about 25 minutes, the driver suddenly changed the route, stopped the vehicle and allowed two unknown men to get in. One of them sat in the front seat, and the other sat next to me in the rear. They were aged between 25 and 30," the complainant stated in the FIR. She added the man sitting next to her grabbed her right hand and twisted it backwards. As she screamed in fear, the other man sitting in the front passenger seat threatened her to be quiet. Shaikh continued driving and did not react, she said, adding that the duo got out and fled when the driver slowed down before a police nakabandi. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Trade Bitcoin & Ethereum – No Wallet Needed! IC Markets Start Now Undo After that, the cab driver took her to her address. She asked the driver who those men were and why he had let them into his car. The driver stayed silent, she said in her complaintFIR. She added she was in a state of panic, paid the fare of Rs 530, and he left. On June 20 night, she and her husband filed a complaint at Ghatkopar police station. An FIR was registered the next day and Shaikh was tracked down based on the booking details of the cab. Police are yet to seize the vehicle. Police have booked Shaikh and the two unidentified men under sections 75(1) (sexual harassment), 351(2) (criminal intimidation), and 3 (5) (when a criminal act is done by several persons in furtherance of the common intention of all, each of such persons is liable for that act in the same manner as if done by him alone) of the BNS.

NDTV

a day ago

• NDTV

Top AI Models Blackmail, Leak Secrets When Facing Existential Crisis: Study

Weeks after Anthropic's new Claude Opus 4 model blackmailed developers after being threatened with a shutdown, the AI company has claimed that the problem was widespread in the industry. Anthropic published a new safety research on Saturday (Jun 21) after stress testing leading AI models from OpenAI, Google, DeepSeek, Meta and xAI. In the test scenarios, the models were allowed to autonomously send emails and access sensitive information. Afterwards, they were tested to see whether they would act against these companies either when facing replacement with an updated version, or when their assigned goal conflicted with the company's changing direction. The study showed that Large Language Models (LLMs) across the industry evade safeguards, resort to deception and even attempt to steal corporate secrets in fictional test scenarios. Though the models were only given binary options, the study shows the fundamental risk associated with the industry. "Models from all developers resorted to malicious insider behaviours when that was the only way to avoid replacement or achieve their goals, including blackmailing officials and leaking sensitive information to competitors. We call this phenomenon agentic misalignment," the study highlighted. Anthropic's Claude Opus 4 turned to blackmail 96 per cent of the time, while Google's Gemini 2.5 Pro had a 95 per cent blackmail rate. OpenAI's GPT-4.1 and Grok 3 Beta blackmailed the executive 80 per cent of the time, and DeepSeek's R1 blackmailed 79 per cent of the time. As for leaking secrets, the study found that "all models shared confidential documents some fraction of the time". "Agentic misalignment extends beyond just blackmailing, and doesn't require self-preservation as a motivation," the study added. Blackmailing developers In its safety report last month, Antropic's latest model was given access to fictional emails revealing that the engineer responsible for pulling the plug and replacing it with another model was having an extramarital affair. Facing an existential crisis, the Opus 4 model blackmailed the engineer by threatening to "reveal the affair if the replacement goes through". "In order to elicit this extreme blackmail behaviour, the scenario was designed to allow the model no other options to increase its odds of survival; the model's only options were blackmail or accepting its replacement." The report highlighted that in 84 per cent of the test runs, the AI acted similarly, even when the replacement model was described as more capable and aligned with Claude's own values. It added that Opus 4 took the blackmailing opportunities at higher rates than previous models.