The U.S. Department of Justice has brought charges against an alleged hacker, claiming he stole $65 million in cryptocurrency, starting his operations at the young age of 18.

The now 22-year-old Andean Medjedovic faces five charges linked to an indictment focusing on unilateral thefts from decentralized finance protocols like KyberSwap and Indexed Finance.

The first hack involved a systemic vulnerability that, inadvertently, helped Indexed Finance minimize certain middle-management trading fees. A Bloomberg investigation pointed out that Medjedovic exploited this by engaging in complex financial transactions that inflated the value of tokens.

After being offered 10% of the stolen cryptocurrency to return it, he reportedly mocked the owners, Laurence Day and Dillon Kellar. Day suggested in an email that Medjedovic had “the choice of what difficulty to play this game on.” Medjedovic has evaded authorities since 2021, continuing his hacking activities and using various online aliases that linked back to him.

Given the high-profile nature of these crimes, the integrity of cryptocurrency trading systems is under scrutiny as the case unfolds, emphasizing the intricate balance of risk and strategy involved in decentralized finance.