US authorities are now holding the cryptocurrency trader responsible for the $110 million hack of the Mango Markets decentralized finance (DeFi) trading platform, which is situated in Solana (SOL).
According to a court document sent by U.S. Attorney Damian Williams to Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker of the Southern District of New York, Avraham Eisenberg was arrested in Puerto Rico on December 26.
“Last night, the defendant was arrested in the District of Puerto Rico and will be presented later today.”
Eisenberg, who owns a trading company, acknowledged in October that he is the mastermind of the scam that rendered Mango Markets bankrupt and prevented users from accessing their money.
Prior to his arrest, he was accused of commodity manipulation and fraud.
FBI Special Agent Brandon Racz said in his deposition that Eisenberg purposely and artificially changed the price of perpetual futures contracts on Mango Markets. This allowed Eisenberg, who calls himself a digital art dealer, to borrow and withdraw large amounts of cryptocurrency from the exchange.
“While Eisenberg purported to be borrowing the cryptocurrency, he appeared to have no intention of actually repaying those loans. Following the withdrawals described above, Solana Wallet-1, the Exchange-1 Account, and the Exchange-2 Account ceased purchasing MNGO and began to sell MNGO for USDC.”
Racz says that Eisenberg was aware of the laws against manipulating the market and even tried to avoid being caught by taking a flight from the US to Israel the day after pulling off the scam.
“Based on the timing of the flight, the travel appears to have been an effort to avoid apprehension by law enforcement in the immediate aftermath of the Market Manipulation Scheme.”
