Shakeeb Ahmed, a cybersecurity engineer convicted of stealing round $12 million in crypto, was sentenced on Friday to 3 years in jail.
In a press launch, the U.S. Attorney 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 security engineer for an international technology company.” His LinkedIn profile mentioned he beforehand labored at Amazon. But he wasn’t working there on the time of his arrest, an Amazon spokesperson advised Ztoog.
While the identify of one in all his victims was by no means disclosed, Ahmed reportedly hacked into Crema Finance, a Solana-based crypto change, 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. In the case of Nirvana Finance, the stolen funds (*3*) which led Nirvana Finance to close down, in keeping with the press launch.
Ahmed pleaded responsible to having carried out each cyberattacks.
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After he hacked Crema, Ahmed contacted the corporate in an try and return the stolen funds, besides for a charge of $1.5 million — a form of unofficial finder’s charge — and a promise that Crema wouldn’t report the assault to the authorities. Crema declined, and Ahmed was ultimately apprehended.
While any such deal is uncommon within the cybersecurity world, it has turn out to be normalized within the crypto world. These offers are sometimes called “white hatting,” regardless that it includes hacking a goal and stealing a sufferer’s funds with out their consent, which is extra akin to what a “black hat” hacker would sometimes do. Ahmed’s case exhibits that whereas the crypto business has accepted that any such offers are generally the price of doing enterprise, legislation enforcement doesn’t see it the identical approach.
Apart from three years in jail, Ahmed was additionally sentenced to 3 years of supervised launch, and ordered to forfeit $12.4 million “and a significant quantity of cryptocurrency and pay restitution to the Crypto Exchange and Nirvana in the amount of over $5 million,” in keeping with the prosecutors’ press launch.