{"id":20617,"date":"2026-07-29T05:21:53","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T00:21:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=20617"},"modified":"2026-07-29T05:21:53","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T00:21:53","slug":"ex-citigroup-managing-director-sentenced-to-30-years-in-prison-for-sex-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=20617","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Citigroup managing director sentenced to 30 years in prison for sex crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"prism-article-body\">\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \"><span class=\"oyrPY qlwaB AGxeB  \">NEW YORK &#8212; <\/span>A Harvard-educated former managing director at Citigroup Inc. who blamed autism for his actions was sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in prison for sex crimes that prosecutors say occurred over a 10-year period.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Edward Gene Smith, 50, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Paul A. Engelmayer after he pleaded guilty to sex crimes, receiving child pornography and obstructing justice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">His lawyers wrote in a presentencing submission to the judge that autism spectrum disorder was the \u201cprimary driver\u201d of his crimes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The lawyers said Smith has been \u201cdevastated to learn that his understanding of his relationships with the women he thought of as his girlfriends was wrong and that they experienced their encounters with him as non-consensual sexual abuse and even rape.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">But prosecutors, who requested a 30-year sentence, wrote that Smith&#8217;s \u201cpurported autism\u201d was \u201cinflammatory nonsense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">\u201cIt is an offensive smear to those in the autistic community. And it is utterly irreconcilable with what the defendant did, and how he did it,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Prosecutors said that in pleading guilty, Smith admitted drugging a woman with the intent to rape her and enticing another woman to travel to New York where he drugged and sexually assaulted her.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Smith \u201ccommitted these heinous crimes hiding behind a facade of a well-educated bank executive, using his outward appearance to draw in victims and evade detection,\u201d prosecutors said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">They said he also obtained and maintained tens of thousands of files of \u201chorrifying\u201d child sexual abuse material depicting toddlers and even infants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Smith used promises of financial security to lure young women from foreign countries or faraway U.S. states who were vulnerable and needed income to his New York Central Park residence, where he used drugs to incapacitate them before raping and sexually abusing them, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said in a release that Smith carried out his crimes from 2015 to 2024, subjecting numerous women to attacks in which \u201che would torture and punish his victims, and surreptitiously photograph them, while they were nude and unconscious.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Smith, who worked at Citigroup Inc. from 2021 until his 2024 arrest, said in a letter to the judge that it was \u201cobvious to all that I have fallen from the pinnacle of success to the pit of destitution and disgrace.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">He said, though, that he should be viewed as someone who has \u201clong put his errors behind him\u201d and reconnected with his loving family.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">\u201cThe man I used to be embarrasses me. I don\u2019t want to be him ever again,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Prosecutors also noted that he knew the harms he inflicted on women because he had written in the Harvard Crimson in 1998, a year after his college graduation, that \u201cthere is something particularly traumatic about being raped by someone a victim knows and had even liked or trusted. The right to say no to sex is a human right, a basic right of control over one\u2019s body.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">In a statement, Citigroup said: \u201cWe moved to terminate Mr. Smith immediately upon learning about law enforcement\u2019s initial investigation, well before the allegations of this depraved behavior came to light. We cooperated with law enforcement as they sought justice for the victims of these heinous crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK &#8212; A Harvard-educated former managing director at Citigroup Inc. who blamed autism for his actions was sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in prison for sex crimes that prosecutors say occurred over a 10-year period. Edward Gene Smith, 50, was sentenced in Manhattan federal court by Judge Paul A. Engelmayer after he pleaded guilty&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/s.abcnews.com\/images\/US\/abc_news_default_2000x2000_update_16x9_992.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}