Avraham Eisenberg Who Exploited Mango Markets Has Been Arrested in Puerto Rico

Avraham Eisenberg, a crypto investor, was arrested on Monday night in Puerto Rico. It is believed that this is the first time a US resident has been charged with manipulating a decentralized finance (DeFi) trading platform. The charges of commodities fraud and commodities manipulation that Eisenberg faces could lead to punishments ranging from fines to prison time.

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The FBI Special Agent Brandon Racz’s deposition claims that Eisenberg “willfully and knowingly” manipulated the sale of a commodity — namely futures contracts on Mango Markets. It is believed that Eisenberg had devised a “highly profitable trading strategy” which drained the DeFi trading platform of crypto worth $110 million.

Eisenberg had been manipulating the price of perpetuals contracts (a type of futures contract popular in crypto markets) for Mango Markets’ native token MNGO. He sold massive amounts of MNGO perpetuals contracts to himself, thus pumping the price of those contracts 1,300% in under an hour. After making a huge profit, Eisenberg then borrowed against the value of his position and “withdrew essentially all of the cryptocurrency deposits on the Mango Markets platform”.