Shakeeb Ahmed, a cybersecurity engineer convicted of stealing round $12 million in crypto, was sentenced on Friday to a few years in jail.
In a press launch, the U.S. Legal professional for the Southern District of New York introduced the sentence. Ahmed was accused of hacking into two cryptocurrency exchanges, and stealing round $12 million in crypto, in keeping with prosecutors.
Adam Schwartz and Bradley Bondi, the legal professionals representing Ahmed, didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
When Ahmed was arrested final 12 months, the authorities described him as “a senior safety engineer for a global expertise firm.” His LinkedIn profile mentioned he beforehand labored at Amazon. However he wasn’t working there on the time of his arrest, an Amazon spokesperson advised KryptoCoinz.
Whereas the title of one among his victims was by no means disclosed, Ahmed reportedly hacked into Crema Finance, a Solana-based crypto alternate, in early July 2022.
Then, weeks later, he hacked into Nirvana Finance. Ahmed stole $9 million and $3.6 million in these two hacks, respectively. Within the case of Nirvana Finance, the stolen funds “represented roughly all of the funds possessed by Nirvana,” which led Nirvana Finance to close down, in keeping with the press launch.
Ahmed pleaded responsible to having carried out each cyberattacks.
Contact Us
Do you’ve gotten details about cryptocurrency heists and hacks? From a non-work machine, you may contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Sign at +1 917 257 1382, or through Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or e mail. You can also contact KryptoCoinz through SecureDrop.
After he hacked Crema, Ahmed contacted the corporate in an try and return the stolen funds, apart from a payment of $1.5 million — a form of unofficial finder’s payment — and a promise that Crema wouldn’t report the assault to the authorities. Crema declined, and Ahmed was finally apprehended.
Whereas one of these deal is uncommon within the cybersecurity world, it has turn into normalized within the crypto world. These offers are sometimes called “white hatting,” though it entails hacking a goal and stealing a sufferer’s funds with out their consent, which is extra akin to what a “black hat” hacker would usually do. Ahmed’s case exhibits that whereas the crypto business has accepted that one of these offers are generally the price of doing enterprise, legislation enforcement doesn’t see it the identical means.
Aside from three years in jail, Ahmed was additionally sentenced to a few years of supervised launch, and ordered to forfeit $12.4 million “and a big amount of cryptocurrency and pay restitution to the Crypto Change and Nirvana within the quantity of over $5 million,” in keeping with the prosecutors’ press launch.