A former Citigroup managing director was ordered to serve 30 years in federal prison on Tuesday after admitting in court to drugging and sexually assaulting women over an extended period.
Edward Gene Smith, 50, received the sentence seven months after entering a guilty plea to an array of federal charges that prosecutors said included sex trafficking, possession of child pornography, drug offenses and other crimes. As part of the plea, Smith acknowledged that he intentionally drugged two women to have intercourse with them and that he bought and possessed explicit images of minors.
Had the case gone to trial and resulted in conviction on all counts, Smith faced a statutory maximum sentence of 80 years in prison. Under terms of his plea agreement, prosecutors agreed not to request more than 30 years, and the court imposed that ceiling.
Prosecutors presented a timeline alleging that Smith targeted vulnerable young women online from at least 2015 through 2024. According to charging documents, he lured victims to his Central Park South apartment and to other locations where he administered drugs without their consent, sexually abused them while they were incapacitated and recorded the assaults on camera.
Smith graduated from Harvard University in 1997. In the years before his arrest, he held a series of roles in the financial industry. He served as a managing director at Citigroup from 2021 until his arrest in 2024. Earlier in his career he worked at BlackRock Inc., and also held positions at Banco Santander SA, State Street Corp. and consulting firm Oliver Wyman.
At the time of his arrest, Smith was employed in capital risk analytics at Citigroup. Government filings cited his compensation as a base salary of $400,000 and a target bonus of $1 million.
The sentence concludes a federal prosecution that included multiple criminal counts and a negotiated plea that limited the prosecutor's sentencing recommendation. The case record identifies a pattern of alleged predatory conduct spanning several years and involving both drug-related offenses and offenses involving minors.