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Shakeeb Ahmed , a cybersecurity engineer convicted of stealing around $ 12 million in crypto , was doom on Friday to three years in prison house .
In a press release , the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the sentence . Ahmed was accused of hacking into two cryptocurrency exchanges , and stealing around $ 12 million in crypto , according to public prosecutor .
Adam Schwartz and Bradley Bondi , the lawyers representing Ahmed , did not immediately reply to a request for commentary .
When Ahmedwas arrested last year , the authorities described him as “ a aged security system engineer for an international technology caller . ” His LinkedIn visibility said he previously worked at Amazon . But he was n’t working there at the time of his stay , an Amazon representative tell TechCrunch .
While the name of one of his dupe was never expose , Ahmedreportedly hackedinto Crema Finance , a Solana - based crypto exchange , in early July 2022 .
Then , weeks after , he hacked into Nirvana Finance . Ahmed slip $ 9 million and $ 3.6 million in those two taxi , respectively . In the grammatical case of Nirvana Finance , the slip cash in hand “ represented approximately all the funds possessed by Nirvana , ” which led Nirvana Finance to exclude down , according to the press discharge .
Ahmed plead shamed to having carried out both cyberattacks .
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After he hack Crema , Ahmed contacted the company in an attempt to reelect the stolen cash in hand , except for a fee of $ 1.5 million — a sort of unofficial finder ’s fee — and a hope that Crema would n’t cover the attack to the government . Crema declined , and Ahmed was eventually quail at .
While this type of deal is unusual in the cybersecurity world , ithasbecomenormalizedin the crypto world . These deals are often referred to as “ white hatting , ” even though it imply hacking a target and stealing a victim ’s funds without their consent , which is more cognate to what a “ dim hat ” hacker would typically do . Ahmed ’s subject point that while the crypto industry has accepted that this character of spate are sometimes the price of doing line , law enforcement does n’t see it the same way .
Apart from three years in prison , Ahmed was also sentenced to three year of supervised tone ending , and dictate to forego $ 12.4 million “ and a significant amount of cryptocurrency and ante up restitution to the Crypto Exchange and Nirvana in the amount of over $ 5 million , ” harmonise to the prosecutor ’ closet release .
Cybersecurity master accused of stealing $ 9 M in crypto
