Former Amazon engineer Shakeeb Ahmed has been sentenced to three years in prison for stealing over $12 million from two decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges.

Ahmed, who was a senior security engineer, exploited vulnerabilities to hack into the exchanges, one being Crema Finance, a Solana-based platform.

This case is the first conviction for hacking a 'smart contract' on blockchain technology.

After the theft, Ahmed communicated with the exchanges, offering to return most of the stolen funds, and disclosed another hack into Nirvana Finance.

Despite his guilty plea to one count of computer fraud and cooperation, Ahmed was sentenced to prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

Prosecutors noted Ahmed laundered the stolen money and searched online for fraud and money laundering techniques post-theft.

Ahmed is ordered to forfeit the stolen $12.3 million and pay $5 million in restitution to the victims.

The conviction highlights the increasing threats to decentralized finance (DeFi) crypto exchanges, which have seen billions lost to fraud.