A 22-year-old Canadian math prodigy charged with defrauding two decentralized finance protocols of $65 million has vanished from Serbian custody following his arrest, according to court documents unsealed this week by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Andean Medjedovic, who earned a master's degree in pure mathematics at 18, allegedly stole about $16.5 million from Indexed Finance in October 2021 by manipulating its index pools with borrowed cryptocurrencies. In November 2023, he exploited a code vulnerability in KyberSwap's automated market maker to drain $48.8 million from liquidity pools. KyberSwap offered a standard 10% bug bounty, which he rejected. Instead, he demanded complete control of the platform and offered to return 50% to investors.
Medjedovic was arrested on August 9, 2024, in Belgrade under the alias "Lorenzo" after a four-year global evasion. During extradition hearings, he denied the accusations, stating he did not wish to go to the Netherlands and hoped to have children in Serbia. He claimed only a Bosnian passport despite being Canadian.
Elaborate Money-Laundering Scheme and International Trail
Dutch authorities traced the KyberSwap exploit to a hotel in The Hague, where Medjedovic had checked in using a fake Slovak passport. Two weeks after his flight from Amsterdam to Kuwait via Istanbul in late November 2023, a European arrest warrant was issued, followed by an Interpol Red Notice. Court documents show he later traveled to Brazil, Dubai, Spain, Bosnia, and Serbia.
The U.S. indictment revealed Medjedovic maintained detailed files, including a folder named "moneyMovementSystem" with step-by-step instructions for laundering crypto through mixers. He also noted plans to "make a new bank account under a fake ID" and "order documents online (Russian + Brazilian + American citizen)."
$65M in Stolen Crypto Remains Dormant On-Chain
As of this writing, Medjedovic has disappeared from Serbian custody, and the stolen $65 million in cryptocurrency has not moved from the flagged wallets. Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs keeps monitoring the addresses. Former FBI agent Kyle Armstrong at TRM Labs remarked, "He needs to be perfect from here until eternity in obfuscating the proceeds of this exploit, which are being tracked." TRM's global head of policy Ari Redbord noted that modern digital tracking makes prolonged evasion increasingly difficult: "The reality is that at some point you come in and you fall on your sword and potentially do everything you can to ultimately help the government."
If convicted and Medjedovic refuses to cooperate by returning funds and taking responsibility, federal sentencing guidelines suggest he could face more than 10 years in prison. KyberSwap's team worked with frontrun bot owners to recover user funds from pools on Polygon and Avalanche during the exploit. The case underscores persistent security challenges in the DeFi space.