Cryptocurrency
"Federal Court Orders South African CEO to Pay Over $3.4 Billion for Forex Fraud"
Primary Source ↗Blockchain(s)
Bitcoin
Incident Details
After finding that the South African businessman Cornelius Johannes Steynberg had run Mirror Trading International as a multi-level marketing scheme, in which he accepted 29,421 Bitcoin from at least 23,000 Americans, the CFTC has imposed a record fine. Those 29,421 BTC were priced at $1.7 billion in March 2021 — around the end of Steynberg’s multi-year scam. Today they’re priced at around $863 million, but unfortunately for Steynberg, the CFTC isn’t using today’s prices to calculate their penalties.Steynberg has been ordered to pay a total of $3.4 billion — $1.7 billion in restitution and another $1.7 billion penalty. Steynberg was arrested in Brazil in December 2021 on an INTERPOL arrest warrant, where he has remained since pending extradition.
Technical Details
- Initial Attack Vector
- Regulatory / legal action
- Vendor / Product
- Steynberg CFTC fine
Timeline
- 2023-04-27 Breach occurred
- 2023-04-27 Publicly disclosed