Omar Zaki was convicted of fraud by the SEC three years ago and is accused of being behind two other crypto projects that were hacked.
Decentralized finance, or DeFi, investigator @zachxbt published a series of tweets late Friday afternoon accusing fraudster Omar Zaki of hiding behind the guise of 0xbrainjar, the anonymous head of product at Composable Finance.
From November to February of this year, Composable Finance raised over $167 million in seed funding and crowdloan auctions on the Polkadot (DOT) and Kusama (KSM) parachains. The DOT crowdloan alone drew over 9,000 participants.
According to zachxbt, who cited SEC documents, Omar Zaki, a 21-year-old New York resident and Yale University graduate with a bachelor degree in physics and economics, was charged with fraud after misleading investors while operating an unregistered hedge fund, resulting in a civil penalty of $25,000. Furthermore, two crypto projects allegedly run by Zaki, Warp Finance and Force DAO, were allegedly hacked, resulting in $8.367 million in lost funds, some of which was partially recovered.
1/ I have found there is another fraudster in the mix behind multiple projects in the space. This time being @0xbrainjar aka Omar Zaki pic.twitter.com/okCgzoO1Rz
— zachxbt (@zachxbt) February 18, 2022
The DeFi investigator allegedly connected the two identities by first creating a burner Telegram account and messaging both Zaki’s personal and Anon accounts, where both messages were “read at the same exact time.” Then, zachxbt contacted people who “confirmed the anon identity link to Yale + physics/economic background.” Finally, zachxbt claimed a phone number was linked to the developer’s name, but it’s unclear how this ties Zaki’s identity to 0xbrainjar.
zachxbt is well-known in the blockchain community for his investigative skills in uncovering the history of anonymous DeFi project developers. Last month, the DeFi sleuth correctly discovered that Michael Patryn, co-founder of the now-defunct exchange QuadrigaCX, was Wonderland’s chief financial officer. After the negative publicity surrounding the unmasking caused a sharp divide in the community, the Avalanche-based reserve currency was shut down just a few days later.
Disclaimer: These are the writer’s opinions and should not be considered investment advice. Readers should do their own research.
