A file photo of the Federal District court in Brooklyn. A Canadian man has been charged with stealing US$65mil in cryptocurrency from a pair of crypto platforms and also with laundering his illegal gains, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said on Feb 3, 2025. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
A Canadian man has been charged with stealing US$65mil (RM289.73mil) in cryptocurrency from a pair of crypto platforms and also with laundering his illegal gains, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, said Feb 3.
The defendant, Andean Medjedovic, 22, undertook sophisticated hacks of KyberSwap and Indexed Finance, crypto platforms that developed services on which users exchanged tokens with one another. He stole roughly US$49mil (RM218.41mil) and US$16mil (RM71.32mil), according to an indictment unsealed by prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York.
Prosecutors say that Medjedovic borrowed hundreds of millions worth of tokens and used them to manipulate prices through a sequence of trades on the exchanges and then extracted the tokens, making a profit and defrauding investors. Key to his scheme, prosecutors say, was exploiting weaknesses in the computer code that set prices on these exchanges.
John Durham, the acting US attorney in Brooklyn, said in a statement that people like Medjedovic who “take advantage of new technologies to harm investors” would “be held accountable no matter where in the world they carry out their schemes”.
Medjedovic, who according to the complaint referred to himself as a “pirate” who “may or may not be a criminal” in private exchanges, remains at large.
He has been on the run from authorities in Canada since 2021, when he was a masters student at the University of Waterloo. That year, he was charged in Ontario for the same Indexed Finance scheme he was just charged with in Brooklyn, a theft he pulled off by using his “formidable mathematical powers”, according to a judge in Canada.
Cryptocurrencies are digital coins that, unlike dollars, are not overseen by any federal authority and can be traded online through exchanges. Their prices have sharply increased in recent years, with bitcoin surging to more than US$100,000 (RM445,768) in December; and the price of President Donald Trump’s own cryptocurrency, $Trump, has also soared.
Crimes involving cryptocurrencies are becoming more commonplace. In September, federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., charged two men with stealing US$230mil (RM1.02bil) in cryptocurrencies and then going on a spending spree in Los Angeles and Miami. Last month, the founder of a French crypto company was kidnapped and held for ransom before being released.
Medjedovic, who could not be reached for comment and does not have a lawyer, has previously denied any wrongdoing in his trades. In a 2022 interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Medjedovic argued that his trades were legal, and that he had merely spotted a “mispricing opportunity” in smart contracts, or the code that executed the trades.
According to the complaint, Medjedovic undertook his KyberSwap scheme beginning in November 2023. After he stole the money, prosecutors said, Medjedovic offered to return half of it if KyberSwap were to grant him certain controls of the exchange.
“Hackers can at times be painted in a flattering light by pop culture, some admiring their skills and acumen,” said James E. Dennehy, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office. “They’re stealing money that isn’t theirs, and they’re breaking the laws of this country.” – ©2025 The New York Times Company
