Transcription
This kid's dad got a government contract to handle cryptocurrency seized by the US government. So what's he do? He steals it. Starts posting pictures online of him and private jets.
"Voices of me on the private jet, a mill on my wrist. Obviously, you saw me wearing that."
Posing with Lambos outside the FBI headquarters. They really should have arrested him for those shoes on the spot. Flexing cash clothing, hoping that this will get him girls.
"Are you hitting on me?"
"The heck? No, I'm not."
But when another kid in the comm accused him of being poor, they decided to go banan for band, as they call it, pull up their crypto wallets on screen share to see who is worth more money in a weird sort of cyber willy measuring contest. But unbeknownst to him, as he cracked open wallet after wallet showing millions of dollars, this was all being recorded.
"Is this supposed to be like an honest reaction to him only having 6 mil? Cuz this is like pretty embarrassing."
A recording that would end up in the hands of probably the one person on earth he didn't want to see it. Online investigator Zack XBT. His expose triggered an astronomical crash out that resulted in this kid getting scammed by a fake clavvicular.
"Never got money from anyone. You think I'd be streaming right now if I had 100k in crypto that I made for no reason that's ever sent me."
This is the story of Lick. Perhaps the stupidest cyber criminal of 2026. And we've only barely started the year.
"I vibe coded the whole thing on cursor."
"Wait, that's what you did?"
"Yeah."
If you've seen my videos, you know they often end with the US government seizing or holding forfeited cryptocurrency from cyber crime cases. Folks like James Jong, who gave up 50,000 bitcoins, then worth $3.4 billion when they found he acquired them through Silk Road. The US government has an insane crypto portfolio from cases like this. Check this out. This is a blockchain tracing website here. They're tracking how much the government is holding. They estimate 323,000 bitcoins and hundreds of millions in other cryptocurrencies worth a staggering total of $24 billion. And from time to time, the government's been known to sell these coins off for fiat currency. For example, after taking James crime proceeds, they sold off just shy of 10,000 coins for $215 million. People monitor these government addresses to see when selloffs or transfers happen. One of those people is online investigator Zack XPTt.
In October 2024, he noticed some of the funds seized by the government were sent to an unknown address, writing that it was likely stolen. Even stranger, the next day, 19.2 million had been sent back to the address it was taken from, but the other 800,000 had already been sent to instant exchanges, a common tactic used by crypto thieves to obscure the flow of stolen coins on the blockchain. The government would never have sold the coins off this way because you lose a ton of money going through these weird instant exchanges. Curiously, a new company, CMDSS, had just been awarded a contract to assist the United States Marshall Service in managing and disposing seized and forfeited digital assets, including crypto not supported by major exchanges and assets tied to complex criminal cases. But this is where that story ended. For well over a year, it was too small of an amount to get precedence on an investigation.
But all the while, a new cyber criminal was on the come-up, flexing on Telegram. He commonly went by Lick or John on Telegram. Had all these vanity usernames attached to his account. A lot of them are crime related like at fraud or at evade. Even Lick is slang for committing a robbery. And these Telegram names are worth tens of thousands of dollars. See, Telegram has a system for trading collectible names like this. We can explore their sale history. Many were originally purchased by other people when Telegram first released this in 2023 for around $8,000 a pop, but those people were hoarding them because they could get them cheap. And in recent years, the prices on these names have gone absolutely insane. For example, if we scroll to the very bottom of the history of transactions on his Telegram account, we can see that Lick was transferred to him and whoever did the transfer of ownership left a note saying that it was sold for $120,000. But that's really just the tip of the iceberg because if you click on his Telegram profile, at Devil went for $780,000, at drug for $50,000, at John for $40,000. So this dude's pixels were working overtime.
But he was also posting photos, too. Him on a private jet, another in what appears to be business class, sporting two Royal Oaks worth somewhere around $250 to $300,000, posing with a Lambo outside the FBI headquarters in Washington, lots and lots of designer clothes. He was even taking and posting videos. So, it's no surprise when a member in a Telegram channel he was part of called him poor that he freaked out. It makes sense. I'm sure he didn't pull out stacks of cash to flex in the back of his Uber black ride just to get called poor on the internet. And so, as this escalated, they decided to do what's known in the community as going ban for band, seeing who has the bigger edict by pulling up their crypto wallets on screen share.
"Is this supposed to be like an honest reaction to him only having 6 mil? Cuz this is like pretty embarrassing."
That's Dreon, the guy Lick is trying to flex on. Lick pulls up his crypto wallet, 2.3 million sitting in a Tron address and roughly 6 million total across his entire Exodus wallet holding a mix of coins. And instead of complimenting him, they post a picture of him in the chat.
"This had even stuff."
"Yo, look at you, bro."
"Start making fun of him."
"Beat the out."
"Goofy as hell, bro."
"Ugly."
This entire interaction is beyond insane. It's like a middle school playground conversation about who has the better shoes except there's tens of millions of dollars in stolen money being shown. And Dre's non-reaction, I think, let a fuse for Lick to keep going to show more because he starts plugging crypto hardware wallets into his computer containing another $6.7 million. Then starts pulling up websites like he's going to transfer the balance out of them into his Exodus wallet. Dreen even says here,
"Wait, he might be tough. He might be tough."
"Oh my gosh, he might be tough, guys."
Because this is an insane thing to do. Lick wants to make the total balance of his Exodus wallet represent all the coins he has to flex harder and the comm having that balance screenshot. It's like a status symbol. They'll post it in chats to brag. So, it's got to be consolidated. But at the same time, this is exposing all of his addresses. Addresses that could be used to trace where those funds came from. And by the way, there's 11 people in this call watching him flaunt this stolen cash. And it's also being rereamed on a Brave talk call. By the end of this band for band, he had consolidated $23 million. And Dreen, from the looks of it, didn't even show anything of his own. He just spent the entire time talking smack, saying he has more. But at the end, we do hear him whisper, "Holy shit."
Because this was a massive mistake. No one had connected him to the fraud up until this point. What he didn't realize is that this whole ordeal had been recorded. And that recording was about to end up with the last person on Earth you'd ever want seeing the wallet addresses associated with your crime. Speaking about flexing, this is often done with stolen money. If you're a longtime viewer of my channel, you know people's private data is the most valuable asset to hackers. Worse, there are hundreds of data brokers harvesting and selling your personal information, putting you at risk for pennies. Luckily, today's sponsor, Incogn is a tool that deploys all the latest tech to actually fight against them by automatically contacting and sending data protection law compliance requests on your behalf, insisting they remove your information from their databases. It's kind of neat. You get access to a dashboard that will update you in real time on their day-to-day progress of removing your information from these thirdparty marketing companies and people search websites. You can see how bad this is right now by googling yourself, full name, city, and state. Page after page of websites you've never heard of selling your phone number, your relatives where you live, medical background, the list goes on and on. They'll take care of this. And for the other sites that don't come from these brokers or aren't obvious that they need to be removed, their new custom removals tool is perfect. All you have to do is paste the link to the website exposing you and their privacy experts will handle the rest. I've been using Incogn to protect myself for the last 2 years. I've even signed up my aging parents because they are so susceptible to scam callers. So, if you don't want super spooky cyber delinquents searching you either, use my link in the description or go to incogn.com/crcum to get a massive 60% discount off their annual plans. I use an annual plan, so they're constantly monitoring and taking me off these list as new ones crop up throughout the year. Thank you, Incogn.
Zack XBT is an independent onchain investigator who has become the hero of these stories time and time again, busting those stealing crypto. People like Malone Lamb, who I cover in my last video. Now would be a great time to hit that subscribe button. Zach works with law enforcement to get these guys arrested. If you end up in a Twitter thread by him, your run is nearing its end. For Lick, after someone sent Zack the recording, that's exactly what happened. He writes, "Meet the threat actor John Lick, who was caught flexing 23 million in a wallet address directly tied to 90 million plus in suspected thefts from the US government in 2024 and multiple other unidentified victims at the end of 2025." See, when Zach watched the video, he traced the addresses shown through the blockchain to see where the funds came from. Obviously, Lick didn't do a great job of mixing these coins to obscure that they were stolen from the government. Zach posted a screenshot from some software that traces through Telegram chats showing that Lick, remember he also goes by John, has an extensive history of calling people broke. Zach thought he would finish this thread by writing, quote, "Threat actors only continue showing off stolen funds and leaked recordings rather than simply staying quiet after an alleged theft from the US government." It's really that simple, isn't it?
At this point, Zach wasn't even confident that Lick's real identity was John Deita, despite some chatter. But just minutes after finishing off this thread, Zach had to come back to give an update because Lick had already seen it and quickly scrubbed his Telegram profile, hiding the NFT usernames and changing his screen name. I guess seeing Zach's update post about this made him realize it was too late to try and hide. So, in an even more brazen show, Lick started sending stolen crypto to Zach's donation wallet. Zack said he'll send any of these stolen funds back to the US government. Kind of funny for it to go full circle like that.
Then two days later, Zach posted the nail in the coffin. He had done a little more digging. Quote, "In case you're curious how John Deita aka Lick was able to steal 40 plus million from the US government Caesar addresses, J's dad owns CMDSS, which currently has an active IT government contract in Virginia to assist the US Marshall Service in managing/disposing of seized/forfeited crypto assets. It still remains unclear at this point how Jon obtained access from his dad."
But after Zach posted this, a video started to be shared on Telegram where allegedly Lick is detailing how he did it.
"21-year-old has like literally ripped off the gov like I made a whole exchange for them and I vi I vibe coded the whole thing on cursor."
"Wait, that's what you did?"
"Yeah."
"So like the the [ __ ] about it being your dad's share. Is that not true? Why not?"
"I worked I worked on I worked inside of it. He didn't do anything. And he just like was the reason why I was in there cuz like he just like >> it was like word of mouth. Like he didn't do anything. I did all the work."
"What? What? Like what exchange? Like what?"
"It was just like >> I coded an exchange"
"Like an exchange for what?"
"To deposit coins."
"Oh. And then you just exit."
"Yeah. Simple. Like got scammed."
"They got they got burned. Like well they're dumb."
"I'm not going to lie. Like, bro, the way the government moves, it's not even like you're taking money from like, you know what I mean, bro? Like, >> I mean, bro, it's also ethical dilemma cuz like, bro, like, yeah, like I've lost some bread, but like like, bro, their crypto reserve is 30. I saw billions of dollars, bro. Their crypto reserve is like 36 bill. Like, I've saw like they were moving like 10k BTC every other day. Like, there was nothing."
"Yeah. Isn't half of that money like just from like >> Silk Road."
"Yeah, >> it's like Silk Road and it's like [ __ ] pig butchering."
Now, I wasn't able to confirm if this is actually Lick talking in the video. It's all blurred out like this, but if it is, he's describing getting Nepo hired at his dad's company, then spinning up a fake exchange using AI chat bots to code it to make it look like they were selling off funds per the government contract, except they were just going straight into his own wallet. There's other videos that got shared on Telegram, too.
"This is me on the private jet, a mill on my wrist. Obviously, obviously you saw me wearing them. Your tattoo is so cute."
"Yeah, that's like my Wait, why you hitting on me?"
"The heck? No, I'm not."
"It's a glo case working. No, in case the bed's come working, bro."
Sounds like he's talking to someone impersonating being a girl here, but they were recording him, coaxing him for information so they could expose him. It does seem that he had a bad relationship with his family because he was arrested in September of 2025 for assault and battery on a family member in Arlington County, Virginia. I don't like to speculate, but maybe his dad was upset after finding out he had been stealing money and it turned violent. Or maybe for whatever reason that this violence happened, that's what triggered him to steal the crypto. It's really impossible to say. Either way, if Lick wasn't already trying to speedrun, destroying not just his own life, but his dad's career. Well, all this attention from Zack XPTt was giving him even worse ideas on how to capitalize on it.
With thousands flooding into Lick's Telegram channel from Zach's post and all the associated news articles going up, he decided to capitalize on the attention by not just launching one, but two meme coins.
"Insanely parabolic. I'm going to buy with rewards, too. Oh my god."
But he didn't jump right into that. First, he leaned into the spectacle. Starts posting messages saying that people should file FBI reports against him so they can come arrest him. He was like playing the villain. Then he started to flaunt the money even more by acquiring Telegram handles like at fraud for $900,000 at drug and at devil for another 1.4 million. Even gets the name seizure and starts using it to impersonate the US Department of Justice asset forfeiture division on Telegram. Now there's an open question here. It's possible he already owned these handles on a separate account and simply transferred them to his main account at inflated prices for attention. Telegram publicly displays what a handle last sold for, which makes this kind of stunt very effective. But either way, he was using a middleman for the transactions, possibly to make them appear more legitimate, and that middleman alone was paid over $50,000 in fees.
Next came the giveaways. $250,000 allegedly funded from the stolen crypto, but the person entrusted with holding the funds and giving it out appears to have run off with them. This is where the story starts getting a little messy. The documentation is what people capture. What's important is at this point all eyes were still on him. To keep the attention rolling, he started randomly dropping unreleased music into his Telegram channel. If you've seen my video on that scene, you know how insane this is. Unreleased tracks from major artists can sell for tens of thousands of dollars. People go to extreme lengths to obtain them. Zach refused to post any of this as updates, saying it was attention-seeking. And he's not wrong, but it was working really damn well. The entire community was watching him spiral in real time. And with that many eyeballs, Lick made his next move.
Announcements went out on Telegram. He was launching a coin on pump.fun called Lick. I've been counting flex.
"Quite the announcement video. People were told to get their money ready for the drop at noon EST."
When the coin launched with over a thousand people watching him screen share on Telegram, it soared, pumping to a market cap of over $900,000. As people were posting images of their profit, an opportunity to send this coin to the moon came in Lick's Instagram DMs. Clavvicular was willing to join the call on stream for $100,000 in crypto. The money was sent, but then Cleavvicular double back, saying that because it's stolen funds, he's actually going to need a million since the feds are going to surely show up at his door over this. But a million dollars would make that worthwhile. Just send it over and he'll join the call for 15 minutes. At this point, he realized it was a scam. It seems this person used an Instagram bug to make it click into Clvicular's real profile even though he was writing from a fake account. Clavvicular would later be asked about this on stream and deny that it was him.
"Yeah, I never got any. Like I never got money from anyone. Yeah, I didn't get 100K. Dude, if I got 100K, I wouldn't be streaming right now. You think I'd be streaming right now? If I had 100K in crypto that I made for no reason, that's what sent me. I'd at least take the day off and maybe two days off."
Meanwhile, the kid who impersonated him and got the $100,000 was going live on Discord laundering the funds on screen share.
"That's a bad dude. Sounds like he's pretty excited."
Given this turn of events, Lick decided it was time to rug his memecoin, pulling out a fat profit to the detriment of everybody else investing their money. And because his fans hadn't had enough, the next day, he rinsed and repeated this system with another memecoin, this time called Wumpus Corp Global. Over a thousand people watching him do this. It was again rugged. And from these coins, he allegedly made $760,000. And seeing this, the kid who snaked him out of the 100,000 started trying to launch his own memecoin. The entire thing just started descending into chaos.
Then Zach XBT posted an update saying, "Patrick Wit, the executive director for the US President's Council of Advisers for Digital Assets and the United States Marshall Service have both stated they're looking into the incident." So what do people do with this news? In classic late capitalism fashion, they rush to start betting on when Lick will be arrested. Lick, apparently not being very happy with this, started buying lots and lots of shares on No. This would say that his chances of being arrested are below 1%. And now people are dusting Lick's own Taon address with meme messages like by the handle at Sellmate Next. I guess only time will tell if lick gets licked.