CFTC orders MTI to compensate $1.7 billion
The order stemmed from a complaint filed by the CFTC on June 30, 2022, which required MTI to pay more than $1.7 billion in damages to victims of fraud.。
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced today that Judge David A of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.Ezra issued a consent order against Mirror Trading International Proprietary Limited (MTI) on September 6, finding it liable for retail foreign exchange fraud, commodity pool operator (CPO) fraud, registration violations and non-compliance with CPO regulations.。MTI, a company based in the Republic of South Africa, is currently in liquidation.。
The order stemmed from a complaint filed by the CFTC in June 2022 that required MTI to pay more than $1.7 billion in damages to victims of fraud.。
The order also permanently bans MTI from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and imposes a permanent trading ban on any CFTC-regulated market, as well as a registration ban on MTI.。
Order resolves CFTC enforcement case against MTI。Previously, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas issued a default judgment against MTI founder and CEO Cornelius Johannes Steynberg on April 24, 2023.。The absentee order requires Steynberg to pay restitution to the victims and impose more than $1.7 billion in civil fines, the highest in a CFTC case.。
According to the order, from approximately May 2018 to approximately March 2021, Steynberg, alone and as the controller of MTI, engaged in an international fraudulent multi-level marketing scheme to raise Bitcoin (BTC) from people to participate in the unregistered merchandise pools operated by MTI.。
The commodity pool, controlled by defendants MTI and Steynberg, allegedly made OTC retail foreign exchange transactions through proprietary "robots" or software programs falsely claimed by the defendants.。During this period, Steynberg, as principal and agent for MTI, accepted at least 29,421 bitcoins (worth more than $1,733,838,372) from at least 23,000 individual traders in the United States and thousands of individual traders worldwide to participate in the commodity pool.。The defendants then embezzled, directly or indirectly, all the bitcoins they received from participants in the pool.。
The CFTC warned that an order requiring payment of funds to victims may not recover any lost funds because wrongdoers may not have sufficient funds or assets.。The CFTC will continue to vigorously protect customers and ensure that offenders are held accountable。
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