The U.S. Justice Department has indicted 22-year-old Canadian national Andean Medjedovic for orchestrating a sophisticated $65 million theft from two decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms.

The suspect allegedly exploited vulnerabilities in smart contracts used by KyberSwap and Indexed Finance, both decentralized exchange aggregators operating on the Ethereum network. The breach resulted in the theft of $48.4 million from 77 KyberSwap Elastic liquidity pools and $16.5 million from two Indexed Finance pools.

Medjedovic’s scheme involved borrowing substantial amounts of digital tokens to conduct deceptive trades, manipulating the protocols’ smart contracts to miscalculate crucial variables. This manipulation allowed him to withdraw investor funds at artificial prices, effectively rendering the victims’ investments worthless.

Following the KyberSwap exploit in November 2023, Medjedovic attempted to extort victims by proposing a fraudulent settlement, demanding control of the KyberSwap protocol in exchange for returning half of the stolen assets.

The suspect allegedly laundered the stolen funds through:
– Crypto exchange accounts using false identification
– Cryptocurrency mixing services
– Swap and bridging transactions

Charges filed against Medjedovic include:
– Wire fraud
– Unauthorized damage to a protected computer
– Attempted Hobbs Act extortion
– Conspiracy to commit money laundering
– Money laundering

If convicted, Medjedovic faces up to 20 years imprisonment for most charges, with an additional 10-year maximum sentence for unauthorized computer damage.