Mango Markets hacker arrested in Puerto Rico
Abraham Eisenberg was arrested and charged with fraud, price manipulation and attempting to steal $110 million in cryptocurrency
Mango Markets hacker Abraham Eisenberg was arrested Dec. 27 in Puerto Rico, Reuters reports. The U.S. Attorney's Office charged him with fraud, price manipulation and attempting to steal about $110 million in cryptocurrency.
Mango is a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange run by Mango DAO. The platform allows investors to lend, borrow, exchange and use leverage to trade cryptocurrency assets.
According to a lawsuit filed Dec. 28 in Manhattan federal court, Eisenberg's transactions in Mango cryptocurrency futures (MNGO) in mid-October allowed him to withdraw about $110 million from other investors' accounts with no apparent intention of returning the funds.
He used two accounts to simultaneously buy and sell futures based on the relative value of MNGO and the USDC Stablecoin, court documents said. Eisenberg artificially inflated the price of MNGO relative to USDC, which allowed him to borrow and then withdraw assets in various cryptocurrencies.
After the hack, the hacker contacted the platform's management and offered a deal. He took responsibility for the withdrawal of assets and was willing to return the tokens on the condition that they would be spent to cover bad debts of users. He claimed that the platform had become insolvent. Soon after, Eisenberg began returning the funds.
The hacker claimed that all of his actions were "legitimate actions in the open market, using the capabilities of the protocol, even if the development team did not fully foresee all the consequences of setting the parameters as they were."
An announcement was made on the official Mango DAO page at the time that there would be no criminal investigations or freezing of funds once assets were returned. Eisenberg had reportedly previously reached an agreement with Mango for a $67 million refund.
In late October, Eisenberg also boasted about creating a "meaningless" token and getting $250,000 from its sale in half an hour. However, he also claimed that he didn't break any laws and warned that buying the coin would result in a loss of funds.
-OKX crypto-exchange will exclude futures with Filecoin and Chainlink
-Details of the hack of the BTC.com mining pool are published
-Nexo pulled out of negotiations to acquire Vauld
-Bitcoin miners' prices collapsed to one-year lows
-Testimony from former FTX executives and an SEC investigation. Highlights of the week
-Investors sue cryptocurrency exchange Gemini for fraud
