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By Lyse Comins 
1 hour ago
Durban – Thousands of South African investors who invested over R9 billion in Mirror Trading International (MTI) are shocked after the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) announced that it was finalizing its investigation into what it believed to be a “transaction. illegal”. .
The FSCA said this week that it and other international authorities had previously warned the public against trading in ITNs.
In recent days, he had received new complaints from investors who could not rescue their investments.
The FSCA previously said that it had reported the matter to the police for investigation.
“The FSCA now reports that its investigation into this entity is close to completion as MTI is not licensed to perform financial services and has not applied for such a license. The authority believes that MTI and its senior management are carrying out an illegal operation, misleading customers and have violated various laws, ”said the FSCA.
“MTI first started trading in April 2019. Members of the public were invited to register on the MTI website and move their Bitcoin from their Bitcoin wallet to the MTI Bitcoin wallets. From the MTI Bitcoin wallet, the Bitcoin was transferred to MTI’s forex platform, the “broker of choice”, under the name FXChoice Ltd (“FXChoice”). The negotiation was carried out with derivative instruments based on currency pairs. ”
The FSCA said that MTI later reportedly experienced substantial losses (of up to 80%) and as a result requested its members to unlink their respective FXChoice accounts from the multi-account manager’s account and move their bitcoins to a pooled account.
As a result, since August last year, MTI employed a bot (high frequency artificial intelligence trading) together with a main trader and a trading team to make all of their trading decisions, with great success. The authority found evidence that contradicted this claim, the FSCA said.
He said that he had found no evidence of any significant storehouses of crypto assets on any trading platform. Most of the crypto balances appeared in the name and under the control of one of MTI’s top executives.
The FSCA said investors should expect the worst regarding any hope of redemption.
“Time will tell, but tracking and freezing cyber assets can be very difficult or impossible. Unfortunately, after we and other regulators around the world warned the public not to invest, many new people invested and many chose to ignore our warnings and continued to invest. We will do what we can to help them recover the funds invested, but there are investors from many countries and investors converted the money into bitcoins, which has new and unique challenges, ”said the FSCA.
MTI and the high-level individuals involved in the company, whose names are known to The Mercury, could not be reached for comment.
However, in a statement that MTI issued on its social media channels on Tuesday this week, the firm said that a senior executive was the cause of its problems.
“The entire management team is cooperating with law enforcement agencies and will continue to do so until this matter is resolved,” the firm said.
Several investors, many of them based in Durban, spoke to The Mercury, some on condition of anonymity because they were afraid, while others were embarrassed by their misplaced confidence. Investors said they had been told that they would be paid 10% of the investment sum of each person they hired to invest in the plan, but that the payments were derived from earnings and not from contractor deposits. Sources have estimated that the total investments affected are in the region of R9.9 billion that investors must redeem.
Vivian Lusibi, a resident of Pretoria, said she was angry that she had invested R500,000 in the scheme in March and a relative had invested R500,000 more last month. However, when they wanted to withdraw their funds on November 13, they were unable to do so. She said the person who had recruited her invested R5 million in the scheme.
“The money is stagnant until today. I feel very bad, ”Lusibi said.
A Durban man said he had invested millions in the scheme and was shocked after learning Saturday that the company was under investigation.
He said he had been elevated to a “leadership position” in the scheme because he was a large investor.
“I blame myself and hope my family can forgive me. It was the biggest show in the world. There should be a movie made out of this. I was on an emotional roller coaster, ”he said.
A former Ballito man living abroad said that he had invested more than $ 40,000 (about R583,000) and members of an MTI social media group he belonged to had collectively invested R40 million.
“Honestly, I think the money was taken long before all of this blew up. They allowed people to take their so-called 10% bonuses for signing up new people. But the interest they were getting on their investments kept them hooked. So, nobody took out their initial investments only their bonuses, ”he said.
Hawks spokesman Colonel Katlego Mogale confirmed that a case had been opened for investigation.
“No arrests have been made yet. FSCA is helping to identify the victims in the matter, ”Mogale said.
“We urge those who have become victims to contact the nearest police station.”
The Mercury
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