Crypto Journalist

Anas Hassan

Crypto Journalist

Anas Hassan

About Author

Anas is a crypto native journalist and SEO writer with over five years of writing experience covering blockchain, crypto, DeFi, and emerging tech.

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Last updated: 

July 24, 2025

Two MIT-educated brothers accused of orchestrating the largest MEV bot exploitation in cryptocurrency history will face trial after a federal judge rejected their attempts to dismiss fraud and money laundering charges.

Anton Peraire-Bueno, 24, and James Peraire-Bueno, 28, allegedly stole $25 million in cryptocurrency within 12 seconds by manipulating Ethereum’s MEV-Boost protocol in April 2023.

Technical Error or Deliberate Exploit?

The brothers meticulously planned their operation over several months, studying trading patterns of Ethereum bots and establishing shell companies.

They created 16 Ethereum validators using approximately $880,000 in cryptocurrency, then executed what prosecutors called a “bait, block, search, and propagation” scheme targeting three victim traders operating MEV bots.

Their exploit involved proposing “lure transactions” to induce victim traders’ bots to purchase illiquid cryptocurrencies worth $25 million.

The brothers then sent a false signature to the relay system, gaining premature access to private transaction data.

They replaced the lure transactions with their own trades, selling the illiquid tokens and rendering the victims’ holdings worthless.

Following the theft, the brothers laundered the stolen funds through complex transactions across multiple addresses and foreign exchanges with limited KYC requirements.

They converted the cryptocurrency to DAI stablecoin, then to USDC, before transferring $20 million to U.S. dollar accounts. Foreign law enforcement froze $3 million of the stolen funds.

The case comes amid rising concerns about MEV exploitation across blockchain networks.

Recent incidents include a $2 million insider attack on Bedrock’s UniBTC protocol by a former Fuzzland employee and a notorious Solana MEV bot named “arsc” that accumulated $30 million in two months through sandwich attacks.

Brothers’ Legal Battle Reaches Critical Juncture

Federal prosecutors arrested the Peraire-Bueno brothers on May 15, 2024, with Anton taken into custody in Boston and James in New York.

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams described the scheme as meticulously planned, noting how the brothers “used their specialized skills and education to tamper with and manipulate the protocols relied upon by millions of Ethereum users.“

The brothers face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Each charge carries a potential 20-year prison sentence. A federal judge scheduled their trial for October 14, 2025, after denying their motions to dismiss the indictment.

The court found the wire fraud charges legally sufficient, determining that the brothers’ lure transactions and false signatures constituted material misrepresentations.

The judge ruled that the $25 million in stolen cryptocurrency represented a traditionally recognized property interest, not merely contingent profits.

IRS Criminal Investigation’s New York Cyber Unit traced the stolen funds back to the brothers despite their sophisticated laundering efforts.

Special Agent Thomas Fattorusso noted that investigators “simply followed the money” using cutting-edge technology and traditional investigative methods.

Growing MEV Threat Challenges Blockchain Scalability

MEV exploitation has emerged as a dominant threat to blockchain scalability, according to recent research from Flashbots.

According to a report covered by Cryptonews in June, MEV bots now consume 40% of all blockspace on Solana and over half of the gas usage on Ethereum rollups, such as Base and OP Mainnet.

The Peraire-Bueno case represents the first criminal prosecution of MEV manipulation; however, similar exploits continue to occur across various networks.

A Ronin Network breach in August 2024 initially appeared malicious but was later revealed to be a white-hat operation, with the hacker returning $9.8 million after discovering a vulnerability in the bridge.

Recent data from EigenPhi shows more than 81,000 users fell victim to sandwich attacks in the last 30 days alone.

These attacks now account for nearly $1 billion in weekly trading volume on Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges.

Flashbots has proposed new frameworks to address MEV abuse, including explicit MEV auctions and programmable privacy using Trusted Execution Environments.

The organization argues that current spam from MEV bots creates artificial fee floors, undermining the promise of near-zero transaction costs on scaled networks.

The brothers’ trial, scheduled for October, is likely to set precedents for future MEV-related prosecutions, as it isn’t technically precise whether it can be attributed to an exploit of a technical oversight.

Crypto Journalist

Amin Ayan

Crypto Journalist

Amin Ayan

About Author

Amin Ayan is a crypto journalist with over four years of experience in the industry. He has contributed to leading publications such as Cryptonews, Investing.com, 99Bitcoins, and 24/7 Wall St. He has…

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Last updated: 

May 24, 2025

A US federal judge has thrown out major convictions against Avraham Eisenberg, the man accused of exploiting decentralized exchange Mango Markets for $110 million.

On Friday, Judge Arun Subramanian vacated Eisenberg’s convictions for commodities fraud and market manipulation, stating that prosecutors failed to prove he made materially false representations.

The court also acquitted Eisenberg of a third charge, leaving the government’s case significantly weakened.

Eisenberg Used Token Pump to Drain $110M from Mango

Eisenberg had been found guilty in April 2024 after a jury concluded he manipulated Mango’s MNGO token price by over 1,300% within minutes.

He then used the inflated value as collateral to drain the protocol of $110 million in crypto.

While the Department of Justice framed the act as a calculated deception of a smart contract system, Eisenberg’s defense insisted he simply took advantage of flawed but open code — without lying or misleading the protocol.

Judge Subramanian sided with this view, noting that the platform was “permissionless and automatic,” making it difficult to establish a legal basis for fraud. “There was insufficient evidence of falsity,” he wrote.

The ruling also rejected New York as the proper venue for the trial.

Eisenberg was based in Puerto Rico during the trades, and the judge dismissed the DOJ’s attempts to tie the case to the state through a Mango user in Poughkeepsie and a third-party service provider in Manhattan.

The vacated charges now leave the Justice Department to decide whether to pursue the case again.

However, recent signals from the Trump administration suggest a cooling stance on crypto-related enforcement.

Eisenberg Remains in Prison for Child Pornography Possession

Despite the court win, Eisenberg remains in federal custody. Earlier this month, he was sentenced to nearly four years in prison on an unrelated charge of child pornography possession, based on evidence found during his 2022 arrest in Puerto Rico.

Eisenberg still faces separate civil cases brought by the SEC and CFTC.

On October 11, 2022, Mango Markets was the victim of an attack in which approximately $110 million was drained from its treasury.

Shortly after the attack, Avraham Eisenberg came forward as the perpetrator, asserting that the exploit was merely a “highly profitable trading strategy” and claiming it was conducted within the bounds of legality and the protocol’s intended design.

According to prosecutors, Eisenberg utilized two accounts to engage in manipulative trading involving futures contracts tied to the values of Mango’s token MNGO and the stablecoin USD Coin.

Last month, US federal prosecutors asked for a prison sentence of up to 6.5 years for Eisenberg.

In their filing, prosecutors emphasized the severity of Eisenberg’s actions, stating that his scheme not only defrauded investors of over $100 million but also forced Mango Markets to shut down.

A federal judge has approved a motion to suspend the lawsuit filed by a group of state attorneys general and the advocacy group DeFi Education Fund against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The complaint filed in November alleges that the SEC acted beyond its authority in filing enforcement actions against crypto exchanges, arguing that the power the regulator asserts over digital assets belongs to individual states.

“[W]ithout Congressional authorization, the SEC has sought to unilaterally wrest regulatory authority away from the States through an ongoing series of enforcement actions targeting the digital asset industry, premised on the theory that practically all purchases and sales of digital assets are ‘investment contracts.’”

On April 16th, Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove of the Eastern District of Kentucky ordered a 60-day pause on the deadlines and legal proceedings related to the case following the appointment of pro-crypto businessman Paul Atkins as the new SEC chair.

The development comes as the SEC takes a more friendly approach to the digital assets industry. The securities watchdog has already dropped numerous key crypto cases, including those involving the blockchain payments firm Ripple and the crypto exchange Kraken.

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A court in Brazil has authorized the use of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to notify unidentified defendants in a case involving missing Bitcoins (BTC) tied to an alleged pyramid scheme, BWA Brazil.

The decision stems from legal action filed by the court-appointed trustee of BWA Brazil’s bankrupt estate seeking to interrupt the statute of limitations on claims related to crypto assets allegedly acquired using creditor funds.

The estate requested that the court permit digital service of process by minting NFTs containing the relevant legal documents and transmitting them to wallet addresses involved in the initial transactions.

The ruling stated:

“Creditors who suffered multimillion-dollar losses cannot be further harmed by legislative delays in keeping up with technological innovation. Therefore, I authorize the court-appointed trustee to take all necessary actions to carry out notification of this interruptive protest [which interrupts lawsuit deadlines] via electronic communication using NFTs.”

Furthermore, the Public Prosecutor’s Office submitted a favorable opinion supporting the trustee’s petition. 

The measure targets holders of digital assets whose identities remain unknown but have wallet addresses that are traceable through the Bitcoin blockchain.

The estate claims that approximately 11,200 BTC were acquired using creditor funds. At current prices, 11,200 Bitcoin is worth over $900 million.

According to the filing, these transactions occurred before the bankruptcy and are now subject to potential recovery proceedings. 

A large scheme

BWA Brazil was founded in 2017 by Paulo Roberto Ramos Bilibio and presented itself as an investment company offering BTC exposure. It offered 5% fixed monthly returns on clients’ deposits, an impossible result based on a variable return asset such as Bitcoin.

However, the firm froze withdrawals in early 2020, leaving customers with losses estimated at R$300 million — roughly $52.2 million. Authorities estimated this is one of Brazil’s largest losses tied to an alleged crypto pyramid scheme.

In July 2020, a Brazilian court approved BWA’s filing for judicial recovery, claiming it would reimburse its customers. However, less than one year later, another court order changed the process from judicial recovery to bankruptcy, claiming the firm made no efforts to pay its clients.

Bilibio and his partner, Jessica da Silva Farias, allegedly used the money retained by BWA to buy Bitcoin. Both of them remain at large and have not been arrested yet.

Blockchain traceability enables new legal processes

The trustee highlighted that despite the anonymity of wallet addresses, Bitcoin’s technical architecture permits the tracking of individual coins. Once received into a wallet, BTC can be transferred repeatedly, but each transaction is permanently recorded on the blockchain. 

The filing acknowledged that some assets were moved through centralized exchanges, while others may have been transferred via peer-to-peer methods that bypass third-party intermediaries.

Authorities may be able to identify the ultimate beneficiaries in cases involving exchanges domiciled in Brazil, where entities are required to report user transactions to the Federal Revenue Service. 

However, peer-to-peer transfers using asymmetric encryption present significant challenges for attribution, making direct notification via the blockchain a necessary procedural innovation.

The use of NFTs to initiate legal notification marks an adaptation of procedural norms to accommodate blockchain-based financial activity’s unique characteristics as courts grapple with the jurisdictional and evidentiary complexities of decentralized asset flows.