A record-breaking $3.4 billion penalty has been handed down by a Judge in a lawsuit brought by a United States financial regulator involving a fraudulent scheme involving Bitcoin. An April 27 statement from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said Texas District Court Judge Lee Yeakel ordered Cornelius Johannes Steynberg to pay the sum for his role in perpetrating a fraudulent commodity pool scheme involving foreign currency transactions and Bitcoin. Steynberg, a South African national and CEO of Mirror Trading International Proprietary Limited (MTI), a purported trading and networking company, was ordered to pay $1.73 billion in restitution to defrauded victims and an additional $1.73 billion civil monetary penalty. The CFTC said it is the “highest civil monetary penalty ordered in any CFTC case” and also “the largest fraudulent scheme involving Bitcoin charged in any CFTC case.” The order explained that as the head of MTI, Steynberg “engaged in an international fraudulent multilevel marketing scheme to solicit Bitcoin from members of the public for participation in an unregistered commodity pool,” the value of which totaled more than $1.7 billion as of March 2021.
Full story : CFTC wins record $3.4B penalty payment in Bitcoin-related fraud case.