Former FBI Agent Says $114M Mango Crypto Exploit Was 'Market Manipulation, Not A Hack'

Former FBI Special Agent Chris Tarbell said Mango Market’s $114 million alleged exploit was a "market manipulation," and not a result of the hack. 

What Happened: According to the FBI agent, the hacker didn’t intend to get “into a system and get unauthorized access,” but it was “more of a market manipulation,” Tarbell told CoinDesk during an interview.

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The hacker revealed his identity on Twitter as Avraham Eisenberg, returning over $67 million back to the DeFi platform on Oct.16, and kept $47 million as a bug bounty. 

The attacker had wiped assets including USD Coin (CRYPTO: USDC), Marinade Staked Solana (CRYPTO: MSOL), Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), Tether (CRYPTO: USDT), Serum (CRYPTO: SRM) and Mango token (CRYPTO: MNGO).

According to the blockchain auditing website Ottersec, the attacker first manipulated the price of their collateral and then took massive loans from the Mango treasury. Eisenberg called his actions “legal” and “a highly profitable trading strategy." 

Tarbell noted that the crypto industry needs to “clean itself up,” and regulators are likely to step in, “even if crypto doesn't want it to.”

Price Action: MNGO is at $0.02165, down 4.05% over the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

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