I just read that Avraham Eisenberg, the guy who hacked Mango Markets and stole $110 million, was sentenced to 52 months in prison. But here’s what surprises me: the sentence was not primarily for the DeFi protocol attack, but for possession of child abuse material found on his devices.

Eisenberg had already been convicted of wire fraud and market manipulation related to Mango Markets in 2022, but Judge Arun Subramanian emphasized that most of the sentence corresponds to the CSAM charge. He apparently downloaded over a thousand images and videos between 2017 and 2022. The judge was quite clear: he said that general deterrence is critical in these cases and that prison sentences are the only way to try to curb the distribution of this material.

The ironic part is that Avraham Eisenberg insisted that his actions on Mango Markets were legal and that he only used the protocol as designed. His lawyers requested a new trial, arguing that the case was filed in the wrong jurisdiction. The judge noted that there is “a non-zero possibility” of granting that motion, but the sentence is already in place.

After serving his sentence at FCI Otisville, he will have five years of supervised release with strict monitoring of all his devices. It’s one of those cases that reminds you that crimes in crypto are not just numbers on a screen.