The Southern District of New York announced on Thursday (14th) that a senior security engineer named Shakeeb Ahmed has admitted to attacking the DeFi protocol Nirvana Finance and another unnamed decentralized cryptocurrency exchange.
Ahmed admitted to committing computer fraud and agreed to forfeit $12.3 million obtained from these two hacking incidents. He also agreed to pay a total of $5 million in restitution to the victims. Ahmed faces a maximum of five years in prison and will be sentenced on March 13 next year.
In 2022, Ahmed was charged with telecommunications fraud and money laundering in July of this year. The indictment shows that he exploited a vulnerability in a smart contract of an unnamed exchange on the Solana blockchain. According to Zombit’s previous report, descriptions and other details in the indictment indicate that the attacked exchange may be Crema Finance.
Shortly after the first hacking incident, Ahmed launched a $3.6 million attack on Nirvana Finance involving a flash loan and a vulnerability he found in the platform’s smart contract. Nirvana had offered a $600,000 reward for the hacker to return the stolen funds, but he demanded $1.4 million, and no agreement was reached.
During these two hacking attacks, Ahmed worked as a senior security engineer at an international technology company, with his resume reflecting skills in reverse engineering smart contracts and blockchain audits. However, after succeeding, Ahmed searched Google for information on how to handle funds, escape the United States, and avoid criminal charges.
The prosecution’s statement states that Ahmed “used sophisticated means” to launder money, “including token exchange transactions, ‘bridging’ fraudulent proceeds from the Solana blockchain to the Ethereum blockchain, converting fraudulent proceeds into Monero, utilizing overseas cryptocurrency exchanges, and using cryptocurrency mixers like Samourai Whirlpool.”
Source
Related report: “Security engineer ‘goes rogue’ arrested! After gaining $9 million, he asked Google how to protect himself”