Mango Markets, a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange, filed a complaint against Avraham Eisenberg on Wednesday with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking $47 million in damages.
Eisenberg, a decentralized finance trader, allegedly stole and converted almost $114 million from Mango Markets “through fraud and deception.” Later, he refunded $67 million but “retained” the remaining funds, according to the petition.
The defendant exploited the decentralized exchange platform by momentarily acquiring roughly 488 million MNGO tokens (from around 500 million tokens in circulation), taking out huge loans against the inflated collateral, and then cashing out after the currency’s value tripled.
Doing so allowed Avraham Eisenberg to manipulate the value of his posted MNGO tokens to higher prices. This depleted the substantial user assets and depositor smart contract of Mango Markets.
Mango Markets Seeks $47 Million in Damages
The documents state that, following the incident, the firm stopped operations. Mango Markets, however, demands $47 million in damages and attorneys’ fees based on the extent of the evidence, expenditures incurred, and interest accruing since the attack.
Along with that, it asked the court to invalidate and deem a contract between Eisenberg and a related decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) of Mango “void and unenforceable.“
The deal was a result of Eisenberg’s governance proposal, which asked the DAO for permission to keep $47 million in exchange for Mango Markets agreeing not to file a criminal case for the loss of its assets.
According to Mango Labs’ most recent complaint, Eisenberg “was not engaged in meaningful negotiation,” and he coerced Mango DAO into signing an unenforceable settlement agreement that was supposed to waive depositors’ claims against him and prevent them from opening a criminal probe.
The Solana-based exchange defined Eisenberg as a “notorious online personality” with “a history of attacking multiple cryptocurrency platforms and manipulating cryptocurrency markets.”
Eisenberg has tried to make use of several operations. On November 22, he employed a number of complex methods in an effort to exploit the DeFi protocol (AAVE).
This is not the first lawsuit that Avraham Eisenberg has faced as a result of his mango market exploitation. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) detained him on December 27, 2022, in Puerto Rico.
Other American government organizations, including the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), have also filed cases against the exploiter.
