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

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

NEW YORK — 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.”