Ex-Citigroup managing director sentenced to 30 years in prison for sex crimes

2026-07-28T22:56:30Z NEW YORK (AP) — 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 to sex crimes, receiving child pornography and obstructing justice. His lawyers wrote in a presentencing submission to the judge that autism spectrum disorder was the “primary driver” of his crimes. The lawyers said Smith has been “devastated 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.” But prosecutors, who requested a 30-year sentence, wrote that Smith’s “purported autism” was “inflammatory nonsense.” “It 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,” they said. 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. Smith “committed these heinous crimes hiding behind a facade of a well-educated bank executive, using his outward appearance to draw in victims and evade detection,” prosecutors said. They said he also obtained and maintained tens of thousands of files of “horrifying” child sexual abuse material depicting toddlers and even infants. (