
La CFTC accuse Avraham Eisenberg d'exploiter le marché de la mangue
- La CFTC a poursuivi Avraham Eisenberg, un artiste numérique, pour deux accusations de manipulation de marché liées à l'exploitation de Mango Market.
- It claims that Eisenberg “engaged in a manipulative and deceptive scheme to artificially inflate the price of swaps offered by the DeFi platform.”
- Gretchen Lowe a déclaré que le régulateur utilisera tous les outils d'application disponibles pour poursuivre agressivement les accusations de fraude et de manipulation.
On January 9, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) filed a lawsuit against Avraham Eisenberg, a self-described digital artist, for two charges of market manipulation related to last year’s major exploit of decentralized financial platform Mango Markets. Eisenberg is currently in police custody after being detained on related charges on December 27.
Selon to the regulatory agency, between October 11, 2022, and October 15, 2022, Eisenberg “engaged in a manipulative and deceptive scheme to artificially inflate the price of swaps offered by Mango Markets, a decentralized digital asset exchange, culminating in the misappropriation of over $100 million from the platform.”
Moreover, the self-described digital artist allegedly purchased more than 400 million MNGO-USDC swaps on Mango Markets with a position size of around $19 million. The CFTC claims that the defendant then purchased “large quantities” of MNGO tokens on the Oracle Exchanges over a span of less than 30 minutes.
The rise in the price of MNGO was advantageous to Eisenberg, who borrowed cryptocurrencies worth around $144 million from Mango Markets at a higher price. After this, the price of Mango Market’s native token fell, leaving the platform illiquid. The CFTC stated that the artist’s actions resulted in a “wash transaction.”
Acting Director of Enforcement Gretchen Lowe stated that CFTC “will use all available enforcement tools to aggressively pursue fraud and manipulation regardless of the technology that is utilized. The CEA prohibits deception and swap manipulation, whether on a registered swap execution facility or on a decentralized blockchain-based trading platform.”
Le régulateur a en outre affirmé:
“The goal of Defendant’s scheme was straightforward: to artificially inflate the value of his swap contract holdings on Mango Markets through price manipulation, so that he could ‘borrow’ a significant amount of digital assets that he had no intention to repay.”
However, the defendant’s manipulation led to an illusion about the value of his collateral. In order to stop manipulating MNGO and the MNGO-USDC Swaps after “borrowing” digital assets from Mango Markets, the defendant transferred the borrowed digital assets out of his Mango Markets account.
La valeur de ses swaps MNGO-USDC a chuté simultanément alors que le prix du MNGO est tombé en dessous de son niveau d'avant la manipulation. Il en est résulté que les emprunts du défendeur sont devenus gravement sous-garantis, laissant Mango Markets avec une main presque vide.
Dans un tweet du 15 octobre 2022, Eisenberg a avoué qu'il était derrière l'attaque de Mango Markets et a fait valoir que ses actions étaient justifiées. Eisenberg a précédemment fait une demande anonyme pour une prime de bogue de 70 millions de pièces USD (USDC), soit $70 millions. La communauté Mango Markets a voté contre l'action en justice contre lui en faveur de le laissant garder les $47 millions.
“All mango depositors will be made whole. By voting for this proposal, mango token holders agree to pay off the bad debt with the treasury, and waive any potential claims against accounts with bad debt, and will not pursue any criminal investigations or freezing of funds once the tokens are sent back as described above,” read the governance proposal.
Il est intéressant de noter que le 27 décembre, Eisenberg a été arrêté par le ministère américain de la Justice et accusé d'un chef de fraude sur les matières premières et d'un chef de manipulation des matières premières. La CFTC l'a accusé d'avoir enfreint la loi sur les échanges de marchandises et plusieurs autres règlements de la commission.