“He spent years hiding behind wealth, education, and status while he committed egregious sexual crimes” prosecutors accused ex-Wall Street banker

bigwig Howard Gene Smith, a former managing director at Citigroup was sentenced to 30 years in prison, Tuesday

Harvard educated Smith,admitted to drugging and raping multiple women in his luxurious Central Park South apt

Smith, 50, seeking leniency at sentencing blamed his “autism” for the sinister sex crimes

Harvard-educated Smith called his “autism spectrum disorder” the “primary driver” of a decade-long reign of terror

Manhattan federal prosecutors called his defense “inflammatory nonsense” as they described the chilling notes he kept to document his attacks

Confirming the allegations of sexual attacks on multiple women, the court saw shocking photos from inside Citibank exec Edward Gene Smith’s Central Park condo. One victim described sordid details of his sex crimes and the sordid nickname he forced girls to call him… as his twisted planning notes are revealed

Former Citigroup senior executive, Edward Gene Smith, on Tuesday learned he would be spending the next three decades behind bars following his conviction for sexual assault, child pornography, and obstruction of justice.
Before the former Citigroup executive was sentenced to 30 years in prison after admitting to the serial drugging and raping of women in his upmarket Central Park South apartment, he offered a head scratching excuse for his reprehensible behavior.
Ivy League trained Edward Gene Smith blamed his “autism” for the sinister sex crimes.
The 50-yeard-old Harvard-educated banker called his “autism spectrum disorder” the “primary driver” of a decade-long reign of deviant behavior.
Countering, Manhattan federal prosecutors called the autism defense “inflammatory nonsense,” while recalling the disturbing notes Smith kept, which chronicled planning and execution of his attacks.
According to his guilty plea in January, in one instance, Smith recorded his depraved assaults in April 2023, when he raped an incapacitated woman after drugging her with a laced drink. He then shared the footage with other deviants on an encrypted platform.

Harvard-educated Edward Gene Smith, [left], who has been married to Heather Rodgers [right], since 2012, called his “autism spectrum disorder” the “primary driver” of his decade-long reign of ‘sex terrorism’ on unwilling females, appealing for clemency at sentencing

Once considered a hotshot on Wall Street Smith after working at several banks, rose through the ranks at Citigroup to become a managing director.
He was arrested in 2024 over allegations that he repeatedly drugged and raped a college student he convinced to move to New York City in 2019, charges he has since admitted.
Smith separately kept a twisted trove in his Manhattan rental apartment of tens of thousands of images of children being sexually abused. He also 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 executive kept extensive detailed notes on planned torture and punishment of 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 legal, if unorthodox, to criminal,” defense lawyers Donna Newman and Clara Kalhaus wrote to the court earlier this month.
The Ivy League graduate was “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,” his attorneys added.
Prosecutors shot back that Smith had made “an offensive smear to those in the autism community” while shirking responsibility for the shocking crimes, which unfolded from as early as 2015 to his 2024 bust.

In another twist, Smith separately kept a twisted trove of tens of thousands of images of children being sexually abused in his luxurious Manhattan rental apt

Citigroup said Smith was fired as soon as the bank learned that he was being investigated by law enforcement.

“There can be no mistake.The defendant knew exactly what he was doing when he drugged and sexually abused his victims. He knew exactly what he was doing when he sought out, downloaded, collected, and organized horrific images of the sexual abuse of children …. and he knew exactly what he was doing when he paid a woman he raped to try to cover up his crimes,” the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office wrote.
Smith has been married to Heather Rodgers since 2012. According to court papers Rodgers lives in South Carolina in a home which is subject to seizure as feds are attempting to provide restitution to her husband’s victims,
Smith had reached out to the victims on online platforms where he pursued “sugar dating” relationships, telling the women he would pay them to act out his sexual “fantasies,” his lawyers wrote.
“Even before he married Heather, Edward had begun looking for sexual partners who would engage in sexual activities he had viewed on the internet, including his ‘drunk girl’ fantasy, in which his partner would consume copious quantities of alcohol before intercourse,” his attorneys said.
Citigroup said Smith was fired as soon as the bank learned that he was being investigated by law enforcement.
“We cooperated with law enforcement as they sought justice for the victims of these heinous crimes,” a company spokesperson said.