Ex-Wall Street bigwig gets 30 years for drugging, raping women after blaming his autism
A former Citigroup bigwig was sentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday after admitting to drugging and raping multiple women in his luxe Central Park South digs — and blaming his “autism” for the sinister sex crimes.Harvard-educated Edward Gene Smith, 50, called his “autism spectrum disorder” the “primary driver” of a decade-long reign of terror — a claim Manhattan federal prosecutors called “inflammatory nonsense” as they described the chilling notes he kept to document his attacks.Smith recorded one of his depraved assaults in April 2023, when he raped an incapacitated woman after drugging her with a laced drink, according to his guilty plea in January.He then shared the footage with other deviants on an encrypted platform.The ex-Wall Street hotshot was arrested in 2024 after working at several banks and rising through the ranks at Citigroup to become a managing director.He repeatedly drugged and raped a college student he convinced to move to New York City in 2019, according his sick admission.
Smith separately kept a twisted trove in his Manhattan rental apartment of tens of thousands of images of children being sexually abused, and paid one of his victims thousands of dollars to sign a phony “letter of support,” according to Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton.The disgraced former bank bigwig kept extensive notes planning how he would torture and punish his victims, prosecutors said.“Edward Gene Smith is a sexual predator and a serial rapist,” Clayton said in a statement. “He spent years hiding behind wealth, education, and status while he committed egregious sexual crimes.”“He is now where he belongs, in prison,” Clayton added.After pleading guilty, Smith brought up his purported “autism spectrum disorder,” or ASD, in a bid to convince Judge Paul Engelmayer to hand him a more lenient sentence.“Mr.Smith’s ASD is the primary driver of his offense conduct.
It is the reason that his interactions crossed the line from leg...