2023-04-28 08:49:50
This is a historically high penalty for a cryptocurrency scam: Cornelius Johannes Steynberg, boss of the Mirror Trading International (MTI) platform, was sentenced on Thursday April 27 to pay more than 3.4 billion dollars ( 3 billion euros), a announced the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the US financial regulatory agency. Placed in compulsory liquidation in July 2021, MTI guaranteed investors stratospheric potential returns of more than 100% per year, thanks to an algorithm which made it possible to carry out transactions on the foreign exchange market, which turned out to be imaginary.
According to the CFTC, MTI and Mr. Steynberg, a South African national, allegedly accepted more than $1.7 billion in bitcoin deposits, some of which came from some 23,000 U.S. residents. His sentence, pronounced by a judge of a federal court in West Texas, consists of reimbursing all the depositors as well as paying a fine of an equivalent amount to the CFTC.
“This is the largest civil financial award in a case presented by the CFTC”the agency said in a statement, adding that “The lawsuit also concerned the largest case of fraud involving bitcoin”. The organization recognizes, however, that the victims are unlikely to get their money back because “the criminals probably do not have sufficient funds”.
Pending his extradition
According to several South African media, MTI had nearly 300,000 users when it was suspended in December 2020. The company is the subject of several investigations and an international arrest warrant has been issued by Interpol against Mr. Steynberg, who was arrested in Brazil in December 2021. He is currently in detention pending a decision on an extradition request from South African authorities. It is also subject to civil proceedings in South Africa at the initiative of users of the platform.
With the popularization of the cryptocurrency industry, cases of fraud have increased in recent years. Another person involved in a similar fraud, Ruja Ignatova, nicknamed the « cryptoqueen », has been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list since last June. In 2014, this entrepreneur of Bulgarian origin and naturalized German had launched OneCoin, a cryptocurrency project which allowed her to collect more than 4 billion dollars. But the motto never saw the light of day and Mme Ignatova is accused of embezzling most of the funds.
A suspected accomplice, Bulgarian Irina Dilkinska, was extradited to the United States on March 20, according to the Sofia prosecutor’s office, where she was arrested in June 2021. She faces up to a total of 40 years in prison, according to American justice.
1682676687
#boss #cryptocurrency #platform #sentenced #pay #billion #euros