The Disappearing Act in Belgrade
Andean Medjedovic, a 22-year-old Canadian with a mathematics background, has vanished from Serbian authorities. He was arrested in August 2024 in Belgrade after four years of international pursuit, but somehow managed to escape during extradition proceedings. I think this is one of those cases that makes you wonder about international law enforcement coordination.
His current location is unknown, which is concerning given the scale of the alleged crimes. The FBI unsealed a criminal indictment this week detailing how Medjedovic supposedly manipulated two DeFi protocols to obtain about $65 million. That’s not pocket change by any measure.
The DeFi Exploits Timeline
The first incident happened back in October 2021. According to court documents, Medjedovic manipulated Indexed Finance’s index pools using borrowed cryptocurrencies. This operation drained more than $16.5 million from investors. A year later, he apparently worked with an unidentified accomplice to launder the funds through fake exchange accounts and cryptocurrency mixers.
But the bigger story is what happened in November 2023. Medjedovic targeted KyberSwap, a Vietnam-based platform, in what authorities are calling his most audacious strike. He exploited flaws in the protocol’s code to artificially manipulate prices in liquidity pools.
The United States Attorney’s Office explained that Medjedovic calculated precise combinations of trades that would cause what they call a ‘glitch’ in KyberSwap’s automated market maker. This allowed him to extract $48.8 million from the platform. Hours after the theft, he sent a public message saying negotiations would start when he was fully rested.
The Failed Negotiations and International Chase
KyberSwap offered the standard 10 percent bounty for reporting vulnerabilities, but Medjedovic rejected it. Instead, he demanded complete control of the Kyber platform and offered to return only 50 percent to investors. That’s quite a negotiating position.
Dutch authorities eventually traced the hack to a hotel in The Hague, where Medjedovic had checked in with a fake Slovak passport. Two weeks after his flight departed Amsterdam for Kuwait via Istanbul, authorities issued a European arrest warrant and an Interpol Red Notice.
Court documents show he traveled extensively through Brazil, Dubai, Spain, Bosnia, and Serbia while trying to maintain what appears to have been a lavish lifestyle with stolen cryptocurrencies. He was finally arrested in Belgrade on August 9, 2024, when he booked an apartment under the alias “Lorenzo.”
The Current Situation
During extradition hearings, Medjedovic denied all accusations and stated, “I do not wish to go to the Netherlands. I would like to have children in Serbia.” Now he’s disappeared again, and the $65 million remains dormant in crypto wallets.
If he refuses to cooperate by returning the funds, he could face more than 10 years in prison. But first, authorities need to find him. This case highlights some of the challenges in tracking and prosecuting cross-border crypto crimes. The international nature of these crimes, combined with the pseudonymous aspects of cryptocurrency, creates real difficulties for law enforcement.
Perhaps what’s most striking is the combination of technical sophistication and what seems like poor operational security. A mathematics master’s degree, complex DeFi exploits, but then getting caught using a fake passport at a hotel and booking apartments under aliases. It’s an odd mix of competence and carelessness.
The funds are still out there, and Medjedovic is somewhere out there too. Whether he’ll be found again, and what happens to that $65 million, remains to be seen.
