Missing CEO and founder of collapsed Bitcoin trading platform Mirror Trading International, has been arrested. Johann Steynberg went missing in late 2020 after MTI stopped payouts to tens of thousands of members.
His wife, Nerina, told investigators at a closed-door inquiry last year that Steynberg had bought a timber plantation in Panama in early 2020, opening a possible line of inquiry reaching into South America.
MTI’s leadership in the past doggedly denied it was a Ponzi scheme, accusing detractors of jealousy. However, the scheme suddenly imploded in December when it stopped paying out funds to members. It was provisionally liquidated soon after.
It was later named 2020’s biggest global cryptocurrency investment scam by data firm Chainalysis.
Brandon Topham of the Financial Sector Conduct Authority said on Friday afternoon that the Hawks had confirmed Steynberg’s arrest.
While Topham said the Hawks did not say where Steynberg was arrested, the government of the central Brazilian state of Goiás announced they had arrested a South African fugitive in the regional capital, Goiânia, on December 29. In a statement, he was described as the founder of MTI.