Tears for scheme’s investors
MTI: COLLAPSED AFTER CEO FLED COUNTRY WITH OVER R5 BILLION OF PEOPLE’S BITCOIN
One victim still has more than R840 000 in her ‘account’.
It seems that Mirror Trading International (MTI) which was started in April 2019 and called itself a “copy trading service” has caused financial destruction in many small communities in South Africa.
MTI collapsed after its CEO Johann Steynberg fled the country with over R5 billion worth of investors’ Bitcoin.
While some “investors” in MTI still believe Steynberg will “do the right thing” and pay out their money, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) says there was “negligible trading, but 99% of funds were never invested” as far as they could see.
The liquidators will do the forensic work required to determine how much money was “invested” by investors.
“There was also no ‘profit’ for investors because what was paid to them was money from other people,” says Brandon Topham, divisional executive of enforcement at the FSCA.
Elme van Vuuren, 55, from Rayton invested about R300 000 and withdrew about R100 000 in November. She still has more than $55 500 (about R840 000) in her “account”, but she has been unable to withdraw it, she tells us with a shaky voice.
“What do you do when something like this happens? You get a box of red wine and take anti-depressants,” she says.
After someone told her of this wonderful opportunity, Van Vuuren put the third of her pension money that paid out into the scheme.
She went on to recruit 101 people to join and feels particularly bad about hounding a friend for two months to invest the R50 000 she inherited from her husband.
The woman lives on a small holding with no electricity. Another man invested R1.2 million of his pension money.
Van Vuuren says she did not check with the FSCA if the scheme was legitimate, because they worked with crypto which “does not fall under financial legislation”.
“I think it was brilliant the way the website and the scheme were designed and it could have worked if he did not pay 10% commission when you got a new member to join. That was too high.”
According to Van Vuuren, she knows how people abused the system. “I know of one man who would pay in a million rand and withdraw R100 000 in commission every week.”
One source says transactions ranged from R200 to R50 million, with some of the high earners withdrawing up to R1 million per week for the 300 000 recruits he got.
Other investors, such as Marilize Opperman and some investors who want to stay anonymous, invested up to R10 000 to “see if the system works”.
They all say they checked on Google to see if the scheme was legitimate, but nobody contacted the FSCA to check.
“We repeatedly tell people not to consider an investment if the company is not registered with us and even then there is risk. People can also check our website for warnings,” Topham says.