CFTC Fines South African More than $3.4 Billion In Largest Bitcoin Fraud Case
This week, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission took aim at a South African individual in the largest Bitcoin fraud case under the regulator’s purview, resulting in more than $3.4 billion in penalties in the single-biggest CFTC case in terms of civil monetary penalties.
From May 2018 to March 2021, South African citizen Cornelius Johannes Steynberg, CEO of Mirror Trading International Proprietary Limited (MTI), engaged in a Bitcoin multilevel marketing scheme for an unregistered commodity pool the company was running.
As a result, Steynberg was charged with “fraud in connection with retail foreign currency (forex) transactions, fraud by an associated person of a commodity pool operator (CPO), registration violations, and failure to comply with CPO regulations.”
“The CFTC cautions that orders requiring payment of funds to victims may not result in the recovery of any money lost because wrongdoers may not have sufficient funds or assets,” the regulator said.
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Steynberg, who had previously been on the lam from authorities in South Africa, automatically lost his case. In winter 2021, he was detained in Brazil under an Interpol arrest warrant. He remains in the country.
