Mochi Finance founder offloads 550K CVX as fraud claims deepen across DeFi

Mochi founder Azeem Ahmed sold 550K CVX from a Curve-linked stash as on-chain probes allege over $8M in diverted rewards and $54M in DeFi losses.

Azeem Ahmed, founder of Mochi Finance and GaiaDAO, has sold approximately 550,285 Convex Finance (CVX) tokens from wallets linked to a 2021 Curve Finance drain, netting around $946,000 and triggering a double‑digit intraday slide in CVX’s price. On March 19, the tokens were liquidated at an average price of about $1.72, sending CVX from roughly $1.88 to $1.68, a drop of more than 10% according to on-chain data reviewed by Crypto Daily. The proceeds were routed to a multisig associated with the Mochi protocol, which held about $864,858 in assets after the sale, while another 500,000 CVX remain locked on Convex Finance.

The CVX position itself originates from Mochi’s controversial November 2021 move to mint its USDM stablecoin against MOCHI and drain roughly $46 million in DAI-equivalent liquidity from the USDM/3CRV pool on Curve. At the time, Mochi used 10 billion MOCHI tokens—assigned a hard‑coded oracle price despite near‑zero market value—to mint 46 million USDM, convert the proceeds into 9,876 ETH, and purchase about 1,050,285 CVX, which were then locked on Convex Finance, according to certified crypto‑trace reports by forensics firm IFW Global. Curve’s Emergency DAO responded by killing Mochi’s gauge and blocking further emissions after characterizing the maneuver as a “clear governance attack,” a clash that became part of the broader “Curve Wars” over CVX and CRV voting power and emissions.

In the aftermath, Ahmed re-emerged through GaiaDAO with a Peg Rebalancing Module (PBM) pitched as a mechanism to distribute CVX staking rewards from the locked position to USDM holders and gradually restore the stablecoin’s peg. The PBM charged a 2% management fee and 20% performance fee payable to Ahmed, but according to Curve governance forum records, he unilaterally hiked the performance fee to 50% before community backlash forced him to reverse the change. By November 2025, reward distributions from the 1,050,285 vlCVX position had stopped entirely, and on-chain data indicates those rewards were rerouted to a wallet that also acts as a signer on the CVX multisig, with the value of diverted staking rewards alone estimated at more than $1.6 million.

Beyond staking flows, investigators allege that about 2,198 ETH—worth roughly $6.67 million at the time—and $471,429 in USDC were drained from Mochi/ETH liquidity pools and never returned to depositors, while airdrops from protocols including Prisma, CNC, VELO, LFT, and YB reportedly remained unclaimed or undistributed. Aggregate investor losses tied to the Mochi ecosystem and its associated pools are now estimated at over $54 million, according to IFW Global’s certified reports.

Ahmed’s track record stretches back to at least 2020 and spans Yieldfarming.insure (SAFE), Armor.fi, Mochi Finance, and GaiaDAO, with repeated accusations of misappropriating community funds. During the original Mochi‑Curve confrontation, Curve alleged that Mochi’s strategy amounted to a governance attack, while Ahmed insisted in an interview with Crypto Briefing that the team had simply taken a “bold approach to gaining voting power in the DAO” and argued that the “DeFi Cartel … feels threatened that a small player on the outskirts” could challenge incumbents. Robert Forster, Ahmed’s former co‑founder at Armor.fi, later accused him publicly of stealing “millions in LP tokens,” a charge Ahmed denied by claiming the funds were “returned in full” and counter‑alleging that Forster had taken money for personal use.

Legal pressure has also followed the on‑chain drama into courts. A prior lawsuit by an Armor.fi user in San Francisco Superior Court (Chen v. Ahmed, Case No. CGC‑21‑589609) ended in an out‑of‑court settlement after a temporary restraining order application, according to filings referenced in IFW Global’s reports. Attorneys now point to potential U.S. claims spanning securities fraud under Section 10(b), racketeering (RICO), common‑law fraud, conversion, and unjust enrichment, and affected investors have been directed to file complaints with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the FBI’s IC3 portal.

Ahmed’s March 19 liquidation is the most aggressive on-chain move from Mochi‑linked wallets since the 2021 Curve incident and is being read by many affected investors as confirmation that the locked CVX will be used for exit liquidity rather than restitution. With roughly 500,000 CVX still locked on Convex Finance and controlled via the same governance structure, any further sales could become major liquidity events for CVX and reignite questions over how DeFi protocols respond when governance power is acquired through exploits rather than open‑market buying. Ahmed, described in IFW documentation as a UK citizen, has not publicly responded to the latest allegations, and his social media profiles have been inactive for months.