Ladies and gentlemen, gather 'round and listen up, for I, Clem Fandango, have a tale to tell ya. It's a tale of mischief and mayhem, of hackers and heists, and most importantly, of the sweet, sweet fruit that is the mango.
You see, there's a little project on the Solana blockchain called Mango Labs, and they had a bit of a rough time last year. Some cheeky blighter by the name of Avraham Eisenberg decided to have a bit of fun at their expense, hacking into their system and making off with a cool $47 million. But Mango Labs, they weren't gonna take it lying down. Oh no, they decided to sue the pants off of young Avraham for that $47 million, plus interest.
Now, Avraham, he thought he was clever. He believed that he had carried out this exploit with "legal open market actions, using the protocol as designed." But Mango Labs, they didn't see it that way. They said that Avraham had manipulated the value of their token, the MNGO, and fraudulently converted $114 million from Mango Markets' depositors into his own accounts.
At first, Mango Labs agreed to drop the charges if Avraham returned $67 million of the stolen funds. But now they're saying that they only agreed to that under duress, because their insurance wouldn't cover the depositors' funds. So Avraham, he's in a bit of a pickle now, ain't he?
And it only gets worse for him, because the Department of Justice went and arrested him on December 27, 2022, on charges of commodities fraud and manipulation. And then, just to add insult to injury, the CFTC brought their own charges against him, indicting him on two counts of market manipulation. And now, the SEC has joined in, claiming that Avraham "violated numerous provisions of the federal securities laws, including certain anti-fraud and anti-market manipulation provisions."
Clem doesn't know about you, but all this talk of mangoes and market manipulation has got me craving a nice, juicy mango. So if you'll excuse me, I'm off to get myself one. And if you're feeling generous, why not tip me a couple of bucks for this fine tale?
