A Canadian man has been indicted on five federal charges for allegedly exploiting security flaws in two decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms, fraudulently obtaining approximately $65 million from investors, U.S. prosecutors announced Monday.
According to court documents, Andean Medjedovic, 22, manipulated vulnerabilities in the automated smart contracts of KyberSwap and Indexed Finance between 2021 and 2023. Prosecutors say he borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars in digital tokens to engage in deceptive trading, tricking the platforms into miscalculating key financial variables. This allowed him to withdraw investor funds at artificially inflated prices, effectively rendering victims’ investments worthless.
Authorities also accuse Medjedovic of laundering the stolen funds through complex transactions, including digital asset swaps, “bridging transactions,” and cryptocurrency mixers. Prosecutors allege he and his associates used fake or borrowed identities to open accounts on cryptocurrency exchanges, further concealing the origins of the illicit proceeds.
In November 2023, after allegedly hacking KyberSwap, Medjedovic attempted to extort the platform’s victims, prosecutors say. He purportedly offered to return only half of the stolen assets in exchange for full control of the KyberSwap protocol and its governing decentralized autonomous organization.
Medjedovic faces charges of wire fraud, unauthorized damage to a protected computer, attempted extortion, and money laundering. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison for most counts, with a federal judge determining the final sentence.
