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Crypto Trader Avi Eisenberg's $110M Fraud Trial Delayed Until April 2024

The alleged Mango Markets exploiter said he needs more time to prepare for trial.

SDNY courthouse (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
SDNY courthouse (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Crypto trader Avi Eisenberg won't stand trial until April 8, 2024, after the judge overseeing the alleged Mango Markets exploiter's case agreed to a delay just a month before the trial was scheduled to begin.

Federal prosecutors allege Eisenberg committed commodities manipulation and wire fraud when he deployed a "highly profitable trading strategy" against the Solana-based decentralized crypto exchange Mango Markets in October 2022.

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The trial is being brought in the Southern District of New York, where just this week a team of lawyers secured the conviction of Sam Bankman-Fried in a quick-turnaround case that played out in less than a year.

Eisenberg's trial schedule was moving nearly as speedily until late October, when the Bureau of Prisons moved him from a New Jersey federal jail to Brookyln's more restrictive Metropolitan Detention Center, hampering defense lawyers' efforts to prepare for his December 8 trial date, according to a filing.

His lawyers also requested additional time because of the "complex and novel legal and factual issues" at play. Eisenberg's alleged scheme involved heady crypto-native concepts that will make any prosecution – and defense – far thornier than Bankman-Fried's relatively plain-vanilla fraud proceeding.

The government begrudgingly agreed to push the trial until April 8, 2024, and the judge overseeing the case agreed on Friday.

Read More: Accused Mango Markets Exploiter Wants to Keep $47M in Disputed Funds: Court Filings

Danny Nelson

Danny is CoinDesk's managing editor for Data & Tokens. He formerly ran investigations for the Tufts Daily. At CoinDesk, his beats include (but are not limited to): federal policy, regulation, securities law, exchanges, the Solana ecosystem, smart money doing dumb things, dumb money doing smart things and tungsten cubes. He owns BTC, ETH and SOL tokens, as well as the LinksDAO NFT.

Danny Nelson