Department of justice recently announced the arrest of avraham eisenberg for market-manipulation offenses related to his attack on the mango markets crypto exchange. eisenberg was charged with commodities fraud and commodities manipulation. on october 11, 2022, the mango markets decentralized exchange (dex) was drained of roughly $110 million.
Attack occurred on october 11, 2022 on the solana-based mango markets dex. the platform is governed by a dao made up of holders of its native token, mngo. eisenberg executed the attack by selling mngo perpetuals from one account to another separate account also under his control.
Strategy had the effect of increasing the value of his large mngo perpetuals holdings, which he then borrowed against and withdrew $110 million in assorted cryptocurrencies. this had the knock-on effect of essentially rendering the platform insolvent. in response, the mango dao offered the attacker a $47 million bug bounty and promised not to press charges if the attacker sent back $67 million worth of tokens. eisenberg admitted to being “involved with a team that operated a highly profitable trading strategy” shortly after the attack. the insurance fund in place was “insufficient to cover all liquidations.”
