In a bug development to the case of Mango Market exploitation, Avraham Eisenberg has been arrested by the Justice Department in Puerto Rico. Also known as the Mango Market Exploiter, Eisenberg is charged with committing fraud and manipulating the Mango Market by manually inflating the prices for his interests.
His identity was revealed in an article published on October 13, where it was also shared that the hack amounted to approximately $114 million. Eisenberg has claimed that his actions were legal, going to an extent where he has termed his attempt a profitable trading strategy.
Eisenberg reportedly inflated the prices of MNGO, driving the value by 1,300%. It enabled him to get his hands on additional funds with a bigger market cap and stable value without the liability of repayment.
As the graph had to lead, the value later went for a drop, and Eisenberg was left with nothing to fulfill his debt incurred during the process.
Eisenberg then went on to identify himself as a user responsible for the increase in the price of MANGO. He added that he was merely using the protocol according to its design even though the team had not fully anticipated the consequences of its actions.
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Having said that, while Eisenberg faces criminal charges for his actions, there is still a question about what happens to the team he is leading. There is currently no indication if the team will also face similar charges.
Eisenberg, also known as the Mango Market Exploiter, has returned a portion of the funds after the Mango users voted in favor of the said consequence. According to details shared by the community, Eisenberg has returned $67 million and retained $47 million for the bounty.
It is not the first time Mango Markets has encountered such an incident. It earlier reported a scam of over $100 million after a hacker successfully tricked the users of Solana into gaining access to the Phantom wallet. A security upgrade was reportedly shared with the users, which later turned out to be malware formulated to generate crypto coins.
The scam was loosely based on a threat informing naive users that they would lose their funds if the security update was not installed. The $100 million scam at Mango Market was reported in October 2022, stating that fake NFTs were released in the name of PHANTOMUPDATE.COM and UPDATEPHANTOM.COM, which hints towards a similar attack towards the naive users and take huge loans from the Mango Market’s treasury.
Solana network has been under scrutiny for constantly facing hack threats. Naive investors fall for such malicious activities only to lose their funds by unknowingly sharing personal information like passwords, history, cookies, and SSH Keys.
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Deposits were put on hold, and investors were duly informed about the activity. The arrest of the Mango Market Exploiter is a good sign that anyone who attempts to wrong the network and the community has only one place to return to.
