The US Securities and Exchange Commission charged Avraham Eisenberg with orchestrating an attack on the crypto trading platform Mango Markets that allowed him to steal $116 million in digital assets.
"As we allege, Eisenberg engaged in a manipulative and deceptive scheme to artificially inflate the price of the MNGO token, which was purchased and sold as a crypto asset security, in order to borrow and then withdraw nearly all available assets from Mango Markets, which left the platform at a deficit when the security price returned to its pre-manipulation level," David Hirsch, chief of the SEC's Crypto Assets and Cyber Unit, said in an statement Friday.
Eisenberg, 27, also faces parallel criminal charges, the SEC said. He was arrested and detained in Puerto Rico, accused by the SEC of violating anti-fraud and market manipulation provisions of the securities laws.
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a lawsuit earlier this month against Eisenberg for allegedly manipulating the price of swaps contracts as part of the scam.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.