- Canadian national Andean Medjedovic has been indicted for allegedly exploiting DeFi protocols KyberSwap and Indexed Finance, stealing $65 million.
- Prosecutors claim he used deceptive trades, laundered funds through fake identities, and attempted to extort KyberSwap after a $48.8 million exploit.
A Canadian citizen has been indicted in the United States for allegedly exploiting vulnerabilities in two decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to fraudulently obtain approximately $65 million from investors, including those in the U.S.
According to the indictment, 22-year-old Andean Medjedovic is accused of manipulating the smart contracts of DeFi aggregators KyberSwap and Indexed Finance between 2021 and 2023. Prosecutors allege he used a series of deceptive trades to artificially alter prices, allowing him to withdraw investor funds while devaluing their holdings.
Medjedovic, who remains at large, is facing five charges: one count of wire fraud, one count of unauthorized damage to a protected computer, one count of attempted extortion under the Hobbs Act, and two counts of money laundering.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the indictment on Monday, stating,
“If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on the unauthorized damage to a protected computer count and 20 years in prison on each of the other counts.”
Authorities, including the Netherlands’ Public Prosecution Service and the Dutch National Police Cybercrime Unit, are assisting in efforts to locate Medjedovic.
The indictment outlines Medjedovic’s alleged tactics, including borrowing large sums of digital tokens and conducting transactions that tricked smart contracts into miscalculating financial metrics. He then reportedly converted stolen funds into other cryptocurrencies, moved assets across blockchains using bridging transactions, and employed digital asset mixers to obscure the trail of money.
Prosecutors claim he and his associates also created accounts on various cryptocurrency exchanges using false identities to further conceal their activities. Following the Indexed Finance hack, Medjedovic allegedly conspired with another individual to launder the stolen funds through accounts opened with falsified Know Your Customer (KYC) information.
Investigators also uncovered a document allegedly maintained by Medjedovic, titled moneyMovementSystem, detailing step-by-step methods for obfuscating transactions. In one instance, he reportedly paid an undercover law enforcement agent $80,000 to bypass restrictions and unlock $500,000 in frozen crypto.
In November 2023, Medjedovic allegedly executed an exploit on KyberSwap, a DeFi protocol operating on Ethereum and Arbitrum, among other blockchains. By manipulating liquidity pools, he reportedly drained $48.8 million from 77 pools.
Following the exploit, he is accused of attempting to extort KyberSwap’s developers, investors, and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) members through a settlement proposal prosecutors have described as fraudulent.
The case is part of broader efforts by law enforcement agencies to combat cyber-enabled financial crimes. In a separate investigation, Delhi Police’s Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) division recently arrested a suspect in West Bengal in connection with a $235 million cyberattack on India’s largest crypto exchange, WazirX.
Edited by Harshajit Sarmah
