A 22-year-old Canadian man has been charged in the U.S. related to a significant cryptocurrency scheme and could face up to 90 years in prison as a result.
U.S. officials unsealed a criminal indictment on Wednesday, accusing the suspect of stealing $65 million USD From two cryptocurrency platforms.
Court documents allege that between 2021 and 2023, Andean Medjedovic, 22, exploited “vulnerabilities in the automated smart contracts of the KyberSwap and Indexed Finance DeFi protocols.”
“Medjedovic borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars in digital tokens, which he used to engage in deceptive trading that he knew would cause the protocols’ smart contracts to falsely calculate key variables,” the U.S. Department of Justice wrote.
“Through his deceptive trades, Medjedovic was able to, and ultimately did, withdraw millions of dollars of investor funds from the protocols at artificial prices, rendering the victims’ investments essentially worthless.”
Accused has been on the run from Canadian authorities dating back to 2021
Medjedovic has also been accused of trying to extort the victims and launder the proceeds, and unknowingly ended up working with a federal agent posing as a software developer.
There was a civil trial involving the accused and “indexed finance” in Ontario in 2021, which says he holds a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Waterloo.
“Mr. Medjedovic used his formidable mathematical prowess to devise and unleash a complex computer attack against Index Finance and essentially induced it to send him $15 million in others’ cryptocurrency tokens,” court documents read.
“The plaintiff says he ‘hacked’ the system to trick it and defraud participants of their assets. The defendant may argue that he did no more than what the code allowed and the code is law.”
Medjedovic is charged with one count of wire fraud, one count of unauthorized damage to a protected computer, one count of attempted Hobbs Act extortion, one count of money laundering conspiracy, and one count of money laundering.
If convicted on all charges, the 22-year-old could be facing up to 90 years in prison.
Cryptocurrency crimes have been steadily on the rise, involving illegal crypto activities, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other digital assets. This often includes fraud, hacking, money laundering and ransomware attacks.
