Mango Markets Exploiter Avi Eisenberg Will get 4+ Years for Little one Porn; Fraud Retrial Looms
NEW YORK, NY — Mango Markets exploiter Avraham “Avi” Eisenberg, who stole $110 million from the now-defunct decentralized finance protocol in 2022, was sentenced to 52 months in jail on Thursday — on his responsible plea to possession of kid sexual exploitation materials, not for his conviction on the crypto theft.
The sentencing comes a yr after a New York jury discovered Eisenberg responsible of wire fraud, commodities fraud and commodities manipulation for his Mango Markets stunt, and a yr after he individually pleaded responsible to the possession of kid sexual abuse materials (CSAM), which was discovered on his gadgets after his arrest.
Protection attorneys moved for both a brand new trial or an acquittal on the Mango Markets-related expenses final yr, claiming that the Division of Justice pursued the case within the incorrect venue (the Southern District of New York), that the federal government hadn’t correctly proved that the MNGO Perpetual was a “swap,” that Eisenberg meant to govern the MNGO Perpetual’s worth and that his “alleged deceptions … have been immaterial.”
In a listening to in Manhattan on Thursday, Decide Arun Subramanian mentioned he would sentence Eisenberg to greater than 4 years in jail at FCI Otisville, a medium-security facility about two hours’ drive from Manhattan, however that there was a “non-zero probability I’ll grant that movement” associated to the Mango Markets-related expenses.
The majority of any sentence could be associated to the CSAM cost anyway, the decide mentioned.
“I believe that on this particular space, basic deterrence has extra weight … the one method to attempt to stem the tide of the distribution of this materials” is thru a jail sentence, the decide mentioned, earlier than studying three witness statements.
The decide additionally mentioned he acknowledged to Eisenberg’s effort to higher perceive the impression of his crime, however {that a} jail sentence was nonetheless vital. Eisenberg is sentenced to 5 years of probation with strict guidelines after he’s launched from jail, the decide mentioned, however should set up monitoring software program on all of his digital gadgets and undergo a drug outpatient program.
Presentence filings
Of their sentencing submission to the court docket, prosecutors requested for Eisenberg to serve between 6.5 and eight years in jail, stressing the seriousness of his offenses. Although Eisenberg has maintained that his crypto buying and selling actions on Mango Markets have been “compliant” with the protocol and thus didn’t break the legislation (an argument a jury clearly didn’t purchase), prosecutors say Eisenberg was nicely conscious that what he was doing was against the law. Earlier than his Mango Markets heist, he’d filed go well with in opposition to another person for crypto-related market manipulation, and fled the nation for Israel as soon as his id because the attacker was unveiled.
I consider all of our actions have been authorized open market actions, utilizing the protocol as designed, even when the event workforce didn’t absolutely anticipate all the results of setting parameters the way in which they’re.
— Avraham Eisenberg (@avi_eisen) October 15, 2022
Prosecutors additionally detailed Eisenberg’s youngster sexual abuse materials expenses, telling the decide that between 2017 and 2022, he downloaded 1,274 sexually-explicit pictures and movies of youngsters — together with toddlers and two-month-old infants — in addition to “depictions of sadistic violence and masochism in opposition to kids.”
In their very own sentencing submission to the court docket, Eisenberg and his attorneys tried guilty his strict non secular upbringing and his lifelong “struggles to adapt to social norms” for his crimes, calling him a “basically first rate individual” and detailing his challenges adapting to the “day by day horrors” of life in jail.
