The United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charging Mango Markets Exploiter Avraham Eisenberg for a $110 million exploit.
As per the filing, “This is the CFTC’s first enforcement action for a fraudulent or manipulative scheme involving trading on a supposed decentralized digital asset platform, and its first involving a scheme that is sometimes called ‘oracle manipulation.’”
The CFTC stated that Avraham Eisenberg engaged in a manipulative and deceptive scheme to artificially inflate the price of swaps offered by Mango Markets, culminating in the misappropriation of over $100 million from the platform.
Just last month, Avraham Eisenberg was arrested in Puerto Rico, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) charging Eisenberg with one count of commodities fraud and one count of commodities manipulation.
The CFTC noted in the filing, “The goal of Defendant’s scheme was straightforward: to artificially inflate the value of his swap contract holdings on Mango Markets through price manipulation so that he could ‘borrow’ a significant amount of digital assets that he had no intention to repay.”
The filing states Avraham Eisenberg engaged in a scheme to manipulate the price of MNGO, manipulate the price of MNGO-USDC Swaps, and use the artificially inflated value of his MNGO-USDC Swaps as collateral to misappropriate $110 million in digital assets.
The CFTC requests the court to enter an order of permanent injunction enjoining Eisenberg and any other person or entity associated with him, from entering into any transactions involving digital assets that are commodities.
It also asked the court to enter an order requiring Eisenberg to pay a civil monetary penalty, directing that Eisenberg make an accounting to the court of all of his assets and liabilities, etc. The CFTC also demands a jury trial for the case