Former Citi executive pleads guilty to drugging and sexually assaulting women

Businessinsider reports that Edward Gene Smith pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to luring women to New York so he could drug and sexually assault them and to receipt of child pornography; he faces up to 80 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on May 8. Smith, 50, pleaded guilty to four counts, including distributing a controlled substance with the intent to commit rape, according to court filings.

A Harvard graduate, he was working as a managing director at Citi until around his initial arrest in July 2024 on child‑pornography charges; prior to joining Citi in 2021 he was a managing director at BlackRock, court records and LinkedIn show. A superseding indictment filed in December 2025 says he met a woman called Victim‑1 in 2020, paid her to spend time with him — including traveling to Florida — and that in 2023 he drugged and raped her in his Central Park South apartment, recorded the assault and later shared the video on an encrypted app; the feds said Smith wrote, "I don't get a chance to do this every day, lol." The indictment says he met a second woman in 2019 when she was a college student, paid her to relocate to New York, then controlled her finances and social life and repeatedly drugged and raped her.

"We moved to terminate Mr. Smith immediately upon learning about law enforcement's initial investigation, well before the allegations of this depraved behavior came to light," a Citi spokesperson said.