US to begin fraud trial on Avi Eisenberg’s $116 million Mango Markets exploit

A New York federal court will start the trial on Avraham Eisenberg’s criminal fraud and manipulation charges Tuesday, which will examine his alleged $116 million exploit of Solana-based DeFi exchange Mango markets. The trial is expected to last two weeks.

The trial was originally scheduled for Dec. 4, 2023, but was postponed at the request of Eisenberg’s defense team. 

While Eisenberg confirmed that he and his team orchestrated the attack on Mango Markets in October 2022, he claimed it was merely a “highly profitable trading strategy” that legally took advantage of the protocol as designed.

The strategy involved Eisenberg inflating the platform’s native Mango token by manipulating the price oracle and using the inflated tokens as collateral to take out about $116 million worth of crypto loans that left the platform insolvent. Eisenberg later agreed with the Mango DAO to return $67 million of the funds.

Eisenberg was arrested in December 2022, after being charged by the Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the U.S., wire fraud charges may carry sentences of up to 20 years in prison.