A French man has been charged with allegedly squandering money from investors, including those in the U.S. &nbsp, by allegedly using threats in two decentralized finance practices to extort roughly$ 65 million from investors.

Peruvian Medjedovic, 22, is accused of manipulating the bright contracts between 2021 and 2023 of fragmented exchange aggregators KyberSwap and Indexed Finance, withdrawing investor funds at arbitrary prices, and rendering their investments stupid.

Despite the prosecution, Medjedovic remains at large. With the assistance of the Netherlands ‘ Public Prosecution Service and the Dutch National Police Cybercrime Unit in The Hague, law enforcement organizations are constantly looking into his whereabouts.

Medjedovic is facing five expenses, including one count of wire fraud, one count of unauthorized injury to a protected computer, one count of attempted Hobbs Act bribery ( refers to the use of force, dangers, or fear to fraudulently acquire property ), and two counts of money laundering, the U. S. Department of Justice announced Monday.

The department stated that if found guilty, he could receive a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for unauthorized damage to a protected computer count and 20 years in prison for each additional count.

According to the indictment, the man allegedly forged a series of deceptive trades to trick the automated smart contracts into calculating crucial financial variables by borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars in digital tokens.

The indictment details how he allegedly relied on digital asset mixers to conceal the real flow of money, conducted bridging transactions to transfer funds between different blockchains, and used swap transactions to exchange stolen tokens for other digital assets. &nbsp,

Additionally, the prosecution claims that Medjedovic and his associates used fabricated identities to open accounts at various crypto exchanges to cover their tracks.

He allegedly conspired with another person to steal the proceeds from exchange accounts opened using fabricated KYC ( Know Your Customer ) information following the Indexed Finance hack. &nbsp,

The indictment reveals Medjedovic maintained a detailed step-by-step playbook for obfuscating transactions, which he titled a “moneyMovementSystem”.

At one point, after one bridge protocol froze several of his transactions, Medjedovic allegedly paid an undercover law enforcement agent—who posed as a software developer —$ 80, 000 to bypass restrictions and unlock$ 500, 000 in stolen crypto.

In November 2023, Medjedovic allegedly executed an exploit targeting KyberSwap, a DeFi protocol operating on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and other blockchains. &nbsp,

By forcing the protocol’s liquidity pools to “glitch”, in his words, Medjedovic was able to drain$ 48.8 million in investor funds across 77 KyberSwap liquidity pools.

Following the exploit, Medjedovic allegedly attempted to extort KyberSwap developers, investors, and members of its decentralized autonomous organization ( DAO ) through a” sham settlement proposal”.

The indictment comes as global law enforcement is retaliating against cyber-enabled financial crimes. &nbsp,

In a separate case, Delhi Police’s Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations ( IFSO ) division arrested a man from West Bengal in connection with a$ 235 million cyberattack on India’s largest crypto exchange, WazirX.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.

Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!