Senior Security Engineer Charged With $9M Cryptocurrency Theft From DEX

Key Points:

• Shakeeb Ahmed, a senior security engineer, is charged with stealing $9M in cryptocurrency from a decentralized exchange.
• It is unclear which exchange was targeted, but the hack may relate to last year’s Crema Finance hack.
• Ahmed communicated with the exchange, offering to return the stolen funds in exchange for not being reported to law enforcement.

Shakeeb Ahmed, a senior security engineer, was charged with stealing $9M in cryptocurrency. Is this hack related to the Crema Finance hack last year?

The United States has announced the first criminal case involving an attack on a smart contract operated by a decentralized exchange. Shakeeb Ahmed, a 34-year-old engineer from New York, has been charged with wire fraud and money laundering, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.

According to the indictment, Ahmed used his expertise to defraud the exchange and allegedly stole $9 million in crypto on July 2-3, 2022. He then allegedly used different blockchains, including privacy coin Monero and overseas crypto exchanges to hide the trace of the funds. Ahmed made an agreement with the DEX to return all of the stolen funds except for $1.5 million.

Though the DEX has not been named in the indictment, it may be related to the Solana-based liquidity protocol Crema Finance hack that happened at that time last year, when a thief made away with $9 million in digital assets in a flash loan attack but then returned most of the cash. Days after the attack, Ahmed allegedly made internet searches for “defi hack” and looking for information on how to flee the United States, cross borders with crypto, and buy citizenship elsewhere, according to the Department of Justice.

A DEX is a digital asset exchange that allows users to trade tokens without a middleman. Unlike centralized, major crypto exchanges like Binance or Coinbase, anyone can use a DEX and start trading without having to follow know-your-customer (KYC) protocols such as providing a name, address, or ID.

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