According to The Block, Shakeeb Ahmed, a 34-year-old security engineer, was charged with wire fraud and money laundering after the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York stated that Ahmed defrauded an unnamed decentralized cryptocurrency exchange and stole approximately $9 million in cryptocurrency.
“We also allege that he laundered the proceeds through a complex series of transfers on a blockchain, where he exchanged cryptocurrencies, leveraged different blockchains, and used overseas crypto exchanges to conduct these operations,” Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. “None of these actions covered the defendant’s tracks, deceived law enforcement, and certainly did not prevent law enforcement from following the money.”
Law enforcement authorities said that in July 2022, Ahmed exploited "a vulnerability" in the exchange's smart contract and entered false pricing data, causing the smart contract to "generate approximately $9 million in inflated fees that Ahmed did not lawfully earn."
Afterward, Ahmed told the Solana blockchain-based exchange that he would return all but $1.5 million of the funds if no legal action was taken, the statement said.