A former security engineer has been sentenced to three years in prison in the U.S. for charges relating to hacking two decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges in July 2022 and stealing over $12.3 million.
Shakeeb Ahmed, the defendant in question, pled guilty to one count of computer fraud in December 2023 following his arrest in July.
Subsequently, he initiated contact with the company and agreed to return most of the funds except for $1.5 million if the exchange agreed not to alert law enforcement about the flash loan attack.
It’s worth noting that CoinDesk reported in early July 2022 that an unknown attacker returned more than $8 million worth of cryptocurrency to a Solana-based crypto exchange called Crema Finance, while keeping $1.68 million as a “white hat” bounty.
The defendant then laundered the stolen funds to cover up the trail using cross-chain bridges to move the illicit digital assets from Solana to Ethereum and exchanging the proceeds into Monero using mixers like Samourai Whirlpool.
Besides the three-year jail term, Ahmed has been sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit approximately $12.3 million and pay restitution amounting more than $5 million to both the impacted crypto exchanges.
Source: https://thehackernews.com/
