Images in a European arrest warrant for Andean Medjedovic show a passport in the name of Luka Krajovic that he allegedly used, and hotel security camera footage of his face. Photo: BIRN.
Fugitive hacker Andean Medjedovic has hired lobbyists in Washington DC, paying them a reported $300,000 to work on getting him a pardon, according to documents from the US Department of Justice that were published by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, CBC.
The 23-year-old from Canada, who is of Bosnian origin, is suspected of using his mathematical and computer skills to extract millions of dollars from two cryptocurrency trading platforms. He also faces charges of computer fraud and money-laundering, according to the US indictment from February 2025.
In February this year, Medjedovic hired the lobbying firm JM Burkman & Associates to campaign for a pardon vis its contacts in the Trump administration.
“Medjedovic is a very brilliant young man and admirable in a lot of ways,” Jacob Wohl, a partner at JM Burkman & Associates told CBC’s investigative programme ‘the fifth estate’.
Wohl said that JM Burkman & Associates has “an understanding” with Medjedovic that “none of the money that he’s paying to us is ill-gotten”.
A recent investigation by BIRN and ‘the fifth estate’ revealed that the theft of the cryptocurrency was carried out in 2023 from a hotel in The Hague in the Netherlands.
Going on the run, Medjedovic fled to South America, Asia and then Europe. One of the countries he visited was Serbia, where he was arrested on a warrant from the Netherlands.
After 105 days in detention, he was released by the Serbian authorities in November 2024. The Higher Court in Belgrade stated that the evidence presented by Dutch prosecutors did not support the suspicion that he had committed the crimes, and that the punishment provided for those crimes in Serbia was not sufficient to warrant extradition.
The US Department of Justice also noted in one of its documents that it believes he spent some time in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was confirmed by prosecutors in the Netherlands and documents obtained by BIRN and ‘the fifth estate’.
Medjedovic was born in the city of Ontario in Canada, where his parents moved during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2021, a court in Ontario also issued a warrant for his arrest as proceedings are ongoing against him in Canada.
Toronto-based lawyer Benjamin Bathgate, who represents Medjedovic in the civil case in Ontario, has rejected the claims against his client.
“If the crypto trading market operated this way, it would be the Wild West, with no investor being safe from being the next target,” Bathgate said.
Medjedovic is still on the run. If his lobbyists fail in their efforts, he could face several years in prison.
“At the end of the day there’s only one person that can grant the pardon and there’s one person that makes those decisions. That’s the president,” Wohl said.
In October last year, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, who had pleaded guilty to violating money-laundering legislation.
