ROB ROSE: Hunting Mirror Trading’s ponzi cash
Mirror Trading was named the global crypto scam of 2020. The liquidators have hunted down R1bn of bitcoins, but can they find the rest?
It’s a turn-up for the books of just about every liquidation you might have read about. Thanks to fantastic sleuthing, Riaan van Rooyen, who was appointed in December last year to wind up the crypto scam Mirror Trading International (MTI) — which duped 280,000 investors — has traced and recovered 1,281 bitcoins. And he reckons there are far more to come.
It’s a considerable haul since, usually when there’s a cryptocurrency scandal, the founder vanishes with the digital keys and the loot. In this case, the leading protagonist is computer programmer Johann Steynberg, 37, who was involved in a number of dubious get-rich-quick schemes before he founded MTI. Last December, Steynberg vanished, telling his wife he was going to Brazil after receiving an "anonymous" threat — and apparently he hasn’t been heard from since...
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