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By Martin Hesse 
8h ago
The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) reports that its investigation of the Bitcoin Mirror Trading International (MTI) investment platform, which is “near complete”, has revealed that it “does not have a significant reserve” of the assets of the Investors invested in any trading platform. with the implication that most of the investors’ Bitcoin assets were never invested in their name and may have simply been stolen.
The FSCA says it believes that MTI and its senior management (CEO Cornelius Johannes Steynberg, Clynton Hugh Marks and Cheri Marks) “are conducting an illegal operation, misleading customers and have broken various laws” and has referred the case to police.
Bitcoin Trader
MTI began operations in April 2019. According to the FSCA, “Members of the public were invited to register on the MTI website (www.mirrortradinginternational.co.za and www.mymticlub.com) and move their bitcoins from their Bitcoin wallets to MTI Bitcoin wallets. Steynberg had full control of these MTI Bitcoin wallets. From the MTI Bitcoin wallet, the Bitcoin was transferred to the ‘broker of choice’ of the MTI currency platform under the name of FXChoice.
“Steynberg testified that, from April 2019 to July 2019, members’ business accounts were linked to a professional operator designated by MTI through a multiple account manager agreement. The negotiation was carried out with derivative instruments based on currency pairs.
“However, according to Steynberg, MTI experienced substantial losses (of up to 80%) and as a result, MTI requested its members to unlink their respective FXChoice accounts from the multi-account manager account and move their Bitcoin to a pooled account.” .
The FSCA says that Steynberg and Cheri Marks testified that all of the clients’ crypto assets were transferred from FXChoice to Trade300, another online trading platform. “Steynberg testified under oath and repeatedly in the press that the trades were averaging 10% per month and that MTI had never had a negative profit trading day with one exception. Marks also repeatedly confirmed commercial successes on social media. “
In October this year, after the FSCA warned MTI that it was acting illegally as an unregistered transaction, MTI claimed that because it was trading cryptocurrency-based derivative instruments, it was not under the jurisdiction of the FSCA and was not required financial services. provider license.
The FSCA says this is wrong: investment platforms that trade derivative products must be registered. On top of that, the FSCA “found no evidence that any crypto trading had taken place, as communicated with MTI members.”
Investigation
The FSCA says that the evidence it obtained from FXChoice, a Belize-registered online trading platform, completely contradicts the claims of Steynberg and Marks.
“FXChoice said that it received inquiries from clients from MTI and in the process clients provided trading statements to FXChoice. The source of the commercial statements was MTI. These commercial statements were based on demo trading accounts and not actual transactions. As a result, FXChoice froze the balance of MTI-linked crypto assets on the FXChoice platform.
“However, the total crypto assets frozen at FXChoice is a negligible amount, considering the total assets that MTI claimed to have invested on behalf of its clients,” says the FSCA.
The FSCA says it then tried to track down Trade300 for a statement and trade details, to verify the version of MTI events. The authority says that it followed all possible links on the Internet to establish whether Trade300 existed. He could only find the Trade300 website, which was and is still “under maintenance”, and the only reference linked to the website is the name “Joe Steyn”, a known alias of Steynberg.
Search and capture
The FSCA carried out search and seizure operations at Steynberg and Marks homes and MTI offices. On Steynberg’s Steynberg desktop, the research team found evidence related to Trade300. “So it would appear that Trade300 is linked to Steynberg,” says the FSCA.
As an additional effort to verify the evidence from Steynberg and Marks, the FSCA asked MTI about the transfer of the assets of FXChoice clients to Trade300. “MTI intended to provide proof of the transfer in the form of Bitcoin wallets, stating that MTI transferred 16,444 Bitcoin from FXChoice to Trade300 in four installments in July 2020,” says the FSCA.
However, the authority found that no such transfer took place, concluding: “We have not found evidence of any significant deposit of crypto assets on any trading platform and that the majority of crypto balances appear in the name and under the control of Steynberg. The amount of such balances is well below the balance advertised on MTI’s trading platform due to MTI investors. “
He said that he had recently received complaints that investors were unable to repay their investments.
The FSCA has opened a criminal case with the South African police services.
PERSONAL FINANCE
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