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News broke out that the South Africa-based firm that is Mirror Trading International has just been slapped with a final liquidation order. This cryptocurrency scandal was so big, it’s been deemed by many as the worst Ponzi scheme in that country to date. There’s a new development to this case as a total of 8,000 Bitcoins have already been traced worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
More Bitcoins to be tracked
In line with this, it was also stated that 29,000 more Bitcoins could be tracked down as well since the first batch that got located is already considered a breakthrough for the investors of the fraudulent investment firm. Before such development, it was previously reported that only 1,281 of these Bitcoins were surrendered by MTI’s former broker – FX Choice. These were later on converted into fiat money.
Court hammers the liquidation order
Going back to the above-mentioned liquidation order, it was finally handed down on June 30 by acting Western Cape High Court Judge Alma de Wet. The judge heard the application for MTI’s final liquidation and during the said hearing, Advocate Rinier Raubenheimer told the court that the firm had received billions of South African rand from the public, News24 writes. Further, the said ruling of De Wet was ordered to be posted over on the Telegram messaging group that was used to reach out to MTI’s unknowing victims.
Albeit the above-mentioned, Justice De Wet has put on hold the liquidators’ call to deem MTI as an unlawful business as this was moved to September 8 of this year.
MTI’s rise and fall
Mirror Trading International’s popularity grew in 2020 right in the middle of a global health crisis. The company utilized social media like YouTube and even referrals by close friends and family members to make their presence felt by would-be investors. The firm back then promised massive returns for what they describe as the “little man on the street.” That did not come to fruition, however, after payout to its members was put to a halt back in December 2020.
It was “provisionally liquidated” on the same month after its founder and CEO – Johann Steynberg went in hiding. He too was under investigation by the Hawks (South Africa’s Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation).
During a pre-trial inquiry, Steynberg’s wife – Nerina revealed that her husband informed her that he would be heading overseas for three weeks. Months have passed, but nothing was heard from the CEO. Further, she claims that Steynberg never returned from that overseas trip as she ended up filing for missing persons report over at a police station in Polokwane.
While everyone’s pointing a finger at the CEO, the YouTube channel of Jesse Singh believes otherwise. In his recent upload, he said that the real masterminds behind all this were the husband-and-wife tandem of Clynton and Cheri Marks (a.k.a. Cheri Ward). Singh added that the two ran off with $30 million which according to him is way more than what Steynberg ripped off.
Mirror Trading International leadership Zoom call
In line with this, back in January, there was a video that got uploaded over on YouTube with the title “MTI 22nd December 2020 Leaders Meeting. ” There’s a part during the meeting where they are discussing how to trick Steynberg’s wife to sign over a silver holding amounting to 1.6 million rands ($66,000) to pay what they call an extraction team and find the CEO. Charles Ward can be seen talking in the video, though the account is named after Cheri.
He, Cheri and the rest of the Mirror Trading International leadership are pretty much scrambling at that moment when they learned of Steynberg’s disappearance.