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 12 months after a New York jury discovered Eisenberg responsible of wire fraud, commodities fraud and commodities manipulation for his Mango Markets stunt, and a 12 months 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 prices final 12 months, claiming that the Division of Justice pursued the case within the unsuitable 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 value and that his “alleged deceptions … were immaterial.”
In a listening to in Manhattan on Thursday, Choose Arun Subramanian stated 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 chance I will grant that motion” associated to the Mango Markets-related prices.
The majority of any sentence could be associated to the CSAM cost anyway, the decide stated.
“I think that in this specific area, general deterrence has more weight … the only way to try to stem the tide of the distribution of this material” is thru a jail sentence, the decide stated, earlier than studying three witness statements.
The decide additionally stated he acknowledged to Eisenberg’s effort to higher perceive the influence of his crime, however {that a} jail sentence was nonetheless obligatory. Eisenberg is sentenced to 5 years of probation with strict guidelines after he’s launched from jail, the decide stated, 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 had been “compliant” with the protocol and thus didn’t break the regulation (an argument a jury clearly didn’t purchase), prosecutors say Eisenberg was nicely conscious that what he was doing was a criminal offense. Earlier than his Mango Markets heist, he’d filed swimsuit towards another person for crypto-related market manipulation, and fled the nation for Israel as soon as his id because the attacker was unveiled.
I imagine all of our actions had 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 baby sexual abuse materials prices, telling the decide that between 2017 and 2022, he downloaded 1,274 sexually-explicit photographs and movies of youngsters — together with toddlers and two-month-old infants — in addition to “depictions of sadistic violence and masochism against children.”
In their very own sentencing submission to the court docket, Eisenberg and his attorneys tried guilty his strict spiritual upbringing and his lifelong “struggles to conform to social norms” for his crimes, calling him a “fundamentally decent person” and detailing his challenges adapting to the “daily horrors” of life in jail.
