Mirror Trading International (MTI)
A South Africa-based operation that accepted only Bitcoin for a 'commodity pool' it claimed a bot traded. The CFTC called it the largest Bitcoin fraud it has charged — at least 29,421 BTC (~$1.7B) from 23,000+ people.
Also known as: MTI, Mirror Trading International
Summary
Mirror Trading International (MTI) accepted only Bitcoin for a global "commodity pool" it claimed was traded by a proprietary bot. The CFTC called it "the largest fraudulent scheme involving Bitcoin charged in any CFTC case". [1][2]
Scale
Per the CFTC, from about May 2018 to March 2021 MTI accepted at least 29,421 BTC — valued over $1.7 billion — from at least 23,000 people in the U.S. and more worldwide, and the defendants misappropriated all of it. [1][2] South African courts declared MTI a pyramid and Ponzi-type scheme. [3]
People
A U.S. court ordered founder Johann Steynberg to pay over $1.7 billion in restitution and a matching civil penalty. He was detained in Brazil and reported to have died in 2024. [1][3]
Bracketed numbers refer to the numbered sources listed below.
Sources (3)
See also
World Liberty Financial (WLFI) — Justin Sun token freezeProjectsWLFI, a DeFi project linked to Donald Trump and his family, blacklisted/froze the wallet of major investor Justin Sun in Sept 2025 — ~540–595M unlocked WLFI tokens (~$107M) plus ~2.4B locked. Sun sued, alleging an undisclosed admin 'blacklist backdoor'; WLFI denied it and threatened a countersuit. The dispute is ongoing.
Gala Games exploitTokensOn May 20, 2024 an attacker abused a privileged minter account on the GALA token contract to mint 5 billion GALA (≈$200M+ nominal) and dumped ~600M of them for ~$22M of ETH before Gala froze the address. Gala Games called it an internal access-control failure; the attacker later returned the ~$22M.
This page was last updated on Jun 15, 2026. View revision history.
