Mirror Trading International Ponzi blown open by data leak
Owing to the use of off-the-shelf scam software, the internals of Mirror Trading International have been made public.
We know how much they company currently has on deposit, what they owe and who who has so far stolen what.
The MTI data leak has been published on a Tor network website by “anonymous_za”.
I’m not going into any further detail because, in light of MTI’s response, the source of the leak doesn’t matter (more on that later).
The software company Johann Steynberg bought MTI’s backoffice script from is Maxtra Technologies.
Maxtra Technologies markets itself as a “mobile app development company” from India. Mirror Trading International’s logo features on its website.
The provided leaked data is accurate up until September 14th, 2020.
I’ve included current USD amounts to represent what has been stolen in fiat but, as per bitcoin’s volatility, note these amounts are subject to change.
As per the data, Mirror Trading International affiliates have invested 22,984.038907 BTC (~$251.1 million).
Of funds invested a total of 16,503.804706 BTC has been withdrawn (~$180.3 million).
Based on returns provided to MTI affiliates in their backoffice and yet to be withdrawn commissions, 17,247.03597 BTC is owed (~$188.7 million)
The problem?
Mirror Trading International only has 7331.05472 BTC on deposit (~$80.2 million).
This is a deficit of 9915.98124 BTC. And considering MTI is a Ponzi scheme, that figure will continue to grow over time.
As of September 14th 160,000+ affiliate accounts have been created. 99,077 of these are from South Africa, 10,867 are from the US and 4923 are from Namibia.
MTI is not registered to offer securities in any of these countries.
Moving onto withdrawals, MTI’s top net-winners of September 14th are as follows:
- Ignatius Bell – 273 BTC (~$2.9 million)
- Ignatius Michael Bell (second account) – 183.58702 BTC (~$2 million)
- Clynton Marks (MTI admin) – 130.20470 BTC (~$1.4 million)
- Alice Potgieter – 110.46455 BTC (~$1.2 million)
- M Bell (third account) – 79.30734 BTC (~$867,979)
- George Beetge – 76.57953 BTC (~$838,124)
- Kathleen Meinking – 75.8 BTC (~$829,593)
- Nico van der Merwe – 58.22434 BTC (~$637,236)
- Sean Logan – 45.06488 BTC (~$493,212)
- Henriette Bell – 44.57892 BTC (~$488,464)
- Johannes Fourie – 42.18916 BTC (~$462,279)
- XG Int Ltd – 39.15 BTC (~$428,978)
- Crypto Analyzer (aka Gary Jeremiah Handley) – 38.19548 BTC (~$418,519)
- Morne Kapp – 38.09453 BTC (~$417,413)
- Mine Hendriksz – 35.70899 BTC (~$391,274)
Ignatius Bell, Clynton Marks and Alice Potgieter received additional funds through a “founders pool”.
MTI founders are also reported to get “better ROI” rates over regular affiliates.
According to analysis of leaked data;
Members have been noted to exploit the pyramid scheme by using multiple accounts and positions as well as transferring deposits between positions using the internal transfer (member-to-member) scheme in order to achieve better binary income.
The internal transfer scheme has been (ab)used by members and founders, to transfer funds between weaker and stronger legs of their pyramid just before bonus calculations occur.
Ignatius Bell and his related accounts are a perfect example of this.
Top recruiters (or at least MTI accounts with the largest downlines) are:
- Janire Pascual Dominguez – 910
- Eduardo Daniel Cardona Ramirez – 855
- Johann Steynberg (MTI’s owner) – 752
- Crypto Analyzer (YouTube shill) – 658
- Rabu Gary – 230
- Ron Singh – 188
- Madisson Romero – 175
- Sean Logan – 169
- Manuele Claudi – 154
- Joel Santiago – 137
Nowhere in the data is there any evidence of external revenue generation.
MTI initially claimed they were using a forex bot. When that blew up in their face the company announced it was using a crypto trading bot.
In response to the leak, Mirror Trading International has instructed affiliates “to not give any comments on the matter”.
The company claims it is “happy with our system and security.”
Of note is MTI does not challenge the accuracy of the leaked data. Considering affiliates are able to search and verify the information as it pertains to their own accounts, MTI didn’t have a choice.
To date regulatory warnings have been issued against Mirror Trading International in the US and South Africa.
No direct action has been taken against MTI founder Johann Steynberg or any of the company’s net-winners.
“They Hate Us Cause They Ain’t Us” is how Joel Santiago is spinning the data breach.
I wish the state of Florida got off their butts and shut Santiago and MTI down.
His video: youtu.be/HQAUwjXmPDc
Bit of self loathing seething through?
If the sum total of my life was scamming people through Ponzi schemes I’d certainly hate myself.
edit: The fuck is Santiago going on about? MTI hasn’t proven anything to anyone.
To date MTI has failed to register with a single financial regulator and provide legally required audited financial reports.
Lololol. Ponzi go boom.
mybroadband.co.za/news/business/368165-explosive-information-about-mirror-trading-international-released-by-anonymous-za.html
Quite a few zeros short on their liquidity.
With this news starting to slowly go viral you can bet your ass that the most skeptical of MTI members will now try to withdraw all their funds and the most loyal members (those not directly involved in the scam) will at least take out a small chunk to set their mind at ease.
Members will start questioning their uplines and the upline won’t have any answers cause they were conditioned to believe that you don’t need to know anything about this in order to make money.
So why would you want to know how it works if you don’t need to. An MTI member’s response to me: “As long as it makes me money, I don’t care how it works.”
It will now become exponentially harder to try and recruit new victi erh……..members to the scheme. Capital will start running out and payouts will no longer be possible.
I foresee one of two things happening in the near future:
1) If these MTI criminals have the stones to carry on, they make getting a payout a much more complicated process.
They’ll bring out propoganda to convince their following to keep your money in cause if you take it out, you’ll lose all the profit and now is the time to start aggressively recruit new members (possibly offering higher binary bonuses) and they’ll try and keep this shit going cause as we all know, money corrupts and greed is one of the seven deadly sins for a reason.
Or
2) Once international travel is allowed in South Africa again, they’re gonna tuck tail between legs take whatever they have already stolen and get the hell out of dodge.
They’ll most likely blame the loss of BTC on a hack or some sort of market crash or the trading bot went crazy and made losing bets and all will be lost. I mean their back office has already been proven to be vulnerable to attacks.
I feel we might see this all unfold from two weeks onwards to even maybe six months before this finally collapses.
Has anyone shared this information with the FSCA yet? I’m sure Mybroadband must’ve contacted the authorities with the information that was sent to them?
The last time pretty much the same gang needed an excuse for the collapse of one of their Ponzi schemes, BTC Global, they blamed their “master trader”, Steven Twain, who disappeared without a trace, taking all the money.
Which would have been a very good explanation, if Steven Twain had ever existed.
@ Concerned Citizen
Has this been raised with the SA Financial Intelligence Centre or the Asset Forfeiture Unit? The FIC can act without an investigation if it looks bad and work with the AFU.
Someone in SA just needs to raise it with them – fic.gov.za – and it will be immediately actioned. They’re one of the last pockets of excellence.
Hmm, I joined MTI earlier this year with about a hundred bucks. Everything seemed to be working as advertised, no worries, and I accumulated over 7 thousand dollars passively.
After seeing some of the bad press here and wondering whether it was true or fake news, I requested a 3,000 dollar withdrawal last week, my first and only request. It was completed as advertised within 24 hours.
So I suppose you guys will hate me for wanting to make some bitcoin online? Maybe you will accuse me of being greedy? Or maybe you will just despise me for telling the truth?
At any rate, anyone, including the U.S. Government websites can and have been hacked, hospitals, schools, businesses of all sizes, and subjected to ransoms, so unfortunately that’s par for the course in today’s online environment. You folks seem to take pleasure in that?
You didn’t “make some bitcoin online”, you stole money from people who joined a Ponzi scheme after you. Own your thievery.
And MTI wasn’t hacked. All the data collectors had to do was change a URL string, which was visible on the public website source-code (it was just commented out).
Shitty security is what you get when you run your Ponzi scheme with a “scam in a box” software solution.
We literally aren’t even concerned with the hack. The real problems lies in the fact that the hack revealed that MTI has no external inflow of money/BTC and that they now do not have enough BTC to fulfill the commitments to their clients should everyone request a withdrawal of all their funds.
If you’re gonna spin a bullshit story about how you made money with MTI just to give them credibility at least fabricate a story that is relevant to the matter at hand.
Now go be a useless troll somewhere else on the internet you poser.
@ Centurion
You’re the kind of doos that makes people ashamed to be a white South African. You stole. Live with it
You people seem so full of HATRED for somebody like myself who has nothing to promote and simply states the TRUTH of my experience.
Makes me wonder whether this is just a site for losers and SCAMMERS who want to spew hatred and denigrate others in order to promote their own online money making schemes?
If so, remind me to never join anything with any of you. I prefer the company of folks who are HAPPY when others succeed rather than losers who rant, rave and riot when someone like myself simply takes a program at its word, tries it, and finds that they say what they do and do what they say.
As for you folks, I spoke TRUTH to your “power” and as Jack Nicholson once said in one of his movies, “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”
@centurion
No, you are not stating TRUTH. You are stating what you’ve experienced from your perspective.
What we are all trying to tell you is very simple:
BEING ABLE TO MAKE A WITHDRAWAL IS NOT EVIDENCE THAT YOU’RE NOT INVOLVED IN A SCAM.
Do yourself a favour and just spend even 5 minutes reading about how a Ponzi scheme works. The Madoff scam ran for 17 YEARS. You think people didn’t make withdrawals? You think people weren’t convinced that they were making profit?
Madoff gave people 10% PER YEAR, not even 10% or more PER MONTH like MTI.
A Ponzi can ONLY work as long as people believe that it’s not a scam, and that is achieved by allowing withdrawals to happen strategically.
The moment the total withdrawals exceed what is available or the amount that is being deposited, that’s when the thing collapses.
This is ENTIRELY why there is the referral programme and why the referral and binary bonuses are where people “make the most”. Without the allure of those bonuses, the MTI scam would’ve collapsed within a week.
Again, just go do a little bit of reading on how a Ponzi works, and then you’ll see why successful withdrawals are NECESSARY for the illusion to work.
I rest my case. Once again speaking nonsense about the transparency of MTI and that it works (like that isn’t subliminal marketing…..sorry I mean propaganda).
And then throwing a few deflective comments to take away from the fact that there was a data breach that proves (@Centurion, I believe you are quite fond of the truth, proof is often found to be linked to the truth) MTI is not making money.
I don’t seem to recall anyone promoting anything in the comments apart from the MTI disciples?
@Stevie, no use trying to speak to this one. There’s no use. It’s just a troll trying to antagonize. Must’ve had a boring Monday or something. Let him be.
And your experience accounts for nothing. It’s called personal anecdote. Plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not truth, not even “data”.
You could be lucky. Your transfer could be rescinded. You may not even actually exist and are here just trolling us.
And even if you are a net winner, and MTI goes under, receiver may come after you for what you took out, assuming you *did* get something out.
See, that’s the interesting about scams. They show you exactly what you wanted to see. How do you know what you saw is the truth?
You don’t.
So don’t bother telling us about truth. You reported what you saw, but you can’t verify whether it’s real or an illusion.
Assuming you are real, of course.
@ Centurion
Ons lag vir jou. Jou geld is weg, Jammer
Centurion, if you were so proud and not ashamed of being a member of MTI, you would have posted using your real name not a moniker. Afraid if you did one of the members who lost money would come looking for you?
But I really loved your lame attempt at trying to sanitize your stealing money from other members of MTI as your having done nothing wrong. Same BS I have heard ad nauseum from Ponzi pimps for more than 15 years.
Sorry to disappoint you, but your comments are not new, original, or based in truth. You know, “YOU can’t handle the truth.”
@Centurion
If you have to make up a narrative to justify your scamming, you’ve already lost.
You attempted to justify financial fraud with the old “bUt I gOt PaId!” chestnut. You’ve been responded to accordingly.
Scammers. Always quick to play the “haterz” card. Centurion played it in their very first comment.
Yep, didn’t even wait for an answer before calling people haters.
I now see that ploy for what it is: guilt. Guilt and projection.
@Centurion, we really don’t care enough to hate you. Disapprove and disrespect, sure. But you’re not worth wasting hate on.
So I can of course and have DOCUMENTED what I said to my subscribers. However, let’s set that aside because here’s the TRUTH and I have also DOCUMENTED this to my subscribers … MTI is NOTHING, just a small, tiny blip on my and my subscribers radar screen, so in all TRUTH, none of this nonsense matters to me. (Ozedit: great, bye.)
Nobody gives a fuck about your subscribers.
Offtopic waffle = spambin.
So You’re a Youtuber.
Did you know you can BUY subscribers for pennies? Average price is usually 1000 subscribers for $30-50 USD.
And what exactly did you document? Your own “eyewitness” stories… again, anecdotes, not independently verified facts.
If your subscribers like to hear you talk, great for you.
But don’t bother portraying that as “fact”, because it’s not. it’s fact to only YOU, because you trust a suspect scam and has no need for independent verification from a trustworthy source (not your upline or sponsor).
Of course MTI matters to you and what has been posted here or if it truly didn’t matter to you and your “subscribers” you would nave never come here trying to defend MTI as being legal because you got paid.
You are showing yourself to being nothing more than a wannabe Ponzi pimp that has a following that hangs on your every word as the “truth,” when it is all lies you are feeding them.
I hope they see through you real quick and don’t lose a lot of money following your “truthful” (cough, cough) documentation.
The only “truth” you have claimed is you got paid from MTI. But then so did a lot of others who got in early and are getting out early before it collapses. Everything else you have said is nothing more than smoke and mirrors trying to legitimize a Ponzi.
I am sure you were stunned and upset that we weren’t impressed with your so-called “truth,” name-calling and your documentation, whatever that is supposed to be.
Maybe gullible subscribers bought into your documentation, but not here. So much for what you know is the “truth.”
It’s difficult to assess both sides of the coin. From my homework i saw the bot in delayed live trading. They give you the trades everyday than are they fabricated ? I did a audit to the trades and they are real trades.
How do you answer this? I am confused. Johan Steynberg went to the FSCA they did not come to him. The live trades were shown to them and the number of Bitcoinsin trading. If he was a scamster why go to them ?
You assistance.
Fabricated or not they are not a substitute for legally required audited financial reports filed with securities regulators, in every jurisdiction Mirror Trading International solicits investment in.
You auditing trades is also not a substitute securities legal requirements. Nor is it evidence of external revenue being actually used to pay advertised returns.
In order to operate legally an MLM company offering passive returns has to register with securities regulators. This has to be done before investment is solicited.
After launch, period audited financial reports are required to be filed and provided to the public.
What Johan Steynberg claims he did or didn’t do is irrelevant.
MTI is not registered with financial regulators in any jurisdiction is solicits investment in. MLM + securities fraud = Ponzi scheme.
@Mack I thought, considering that @Centurion has delivered a furious monologue about how important facts are (yet failed to produce any factual evidence himself) to provide you with all the relevant links and articles (from reputable and factual websites).
moneyweb.co.za/in-depth/investigations/financial-regulator-investigating-mirror-trading-international/
coindesk.com/south-africa-investigating-mirror-trading-forex-club
mybroadband.co.za/news/business/368165-explosive-information-about-mirror-trading-international-released-by-anonymous-za.html
fsca.co.za/News%20Documents/FSCA%20Press%20Release%20Mirror%20Trading%20International%2018%20August%202020.pdf
I’ve also included the link to the warning against MTI that was issued by the FSCA.
@Centurion, so this is your turn. Please provide any factual evidence that MTI is legitimate. The facts should come from a factual and reputable external third party (such as a news agency) that has no stake in either side of the MTI debate.
That means a news letter from from your CEO, head of Media or a Schmuck with a youtube channel doesn’t count, just in case you were wondering.
Oh, and don’t forget to publish and document my response to your youtube following. Remember to quote me so as to not cause any confusion or to try and produce any horribly orchestrated propoganda.
And if you cannot produce and factual evidence, just remember: there is no shame in being wrong but there is shame in being a coward.
@Concerned Citizen, while your offer is quite genuine and respectful, I’m afraid that Centurion has left the building never to return again. He accomplished his goal.
He set out to try and discredit the review of MIT so he can brag to his subscribers how he took it to all of us haters, losers and a forum for scammers. We couldn’t disprove he didn’t get paid, so therefore we failed and he won.
This is how wannabe Ponzi pimps ply their trade. They never base anything in facts about the legality of the program, except they got paid as if that somehow make the program legal.
They don’t want to admit that all Ponzi’s pay in the beginning. If they didn’t they would be a very good Ponzi.
I also loved the part where he tried to claim that you can’t criticize and call it a Ponzi unless you join and know what is happening on the inside, or speak directly to the founder/admin of the program nonsense for their side of the story. Like they are going to admit to running a Ponzi just because you asked. Incredulous.
But it would be nice for him to come back and try, but he can’t because he has nothing except “I got paid, so therefore it is real.”
He’s tried a few times. Attempts were self-promotion of his YouTube channel so I hit spam.
At no point has Centurion addressed MTI committing securities fraud and running a Ponzi scheme.
A few readers pointed this out before I’d woken up but due to the offtopic nature of Centurion’s comment I trashed them to preserve the conversation flow.
Yeah for sure. Look, I don’t mind if someone comes onto this forum and stands up for MTI. They’re fully entitled to it. However, if you are so bold, you should best come with decent evidence to support your claims.
This person was so ill informed that I dare say MTI’s media releases made more sense then him. So my general goal, if I’m being completely honest, was to discredit him. If he had factual evidence he would’ve been in a position to leave me read in the face.
At the end of the day, all of us on this forum who believe MTI is a Ponzi really have nothing to gain from it’s impending demise (I mean it’s not like we can short MTI’s stock). We just don’t want to see people who are taking a chance on MTI in order to provide for their family or to try and make it in life see all their money lost due to a lack of understanding about what is really going on.
I, for one, welcome anyone to defend MTI on this forum. It makes the narrative in the comments so much more interesting and rewarding.
Forbes India seems to endorse this?
forbesindia.com/article/brand-connect/introducing-mirror-trading-international-the-next-generation-of-bitcoin-earning/63051/1
Nope. Forbes didn’t write that press-release, it’s on “BRAND CONNECT”.
Brand Connect = pay money and you can publish spam. It’s not Forbes proper.
A relative tried to get me to sign up, offering to cover my buy-in (because with the ratios it pays for itself quickly—in theory). I got a ‘creepy’ gut feeling as I was transferring from coinbase.
MTI wanted my drivers license. I protect my SSN and drivers license like crazy due to ID theft. I stopped right there and did some research. Found behindmlm and immediately informed my relative this is likely a Ponzi scheme.
He said, “I know all this”. He seemed upset that I pointed it out.
He signed up a few other relatives paying for their buy-in to give him a big down line (referral) list. I don’t know how much he’s in, but I’d guess a good $15K.
Any tips or ideas about how he can withdrawl this and have it go through? The scam is still going right? As long as it’s still going I imagine he can withdrawal.
By the way, now known scammers have photo IDs and drivers license numbers of these members. I don’t think that’s safe!
Your relative knows he’s involved in a scam. Leave him be; he’s an adult.
You can’t save people from themselves; they’ll just resent you for it.
Say you talk him into getting out and he’s able to do so. He’s just going to think you messed things up by talking him into chickening out. Why, if he’d stayed in, maybe he would have made some serious money before it crashed. Now you’re the bad guy.
The sad fact is, your relative is a scammer. Don’t poke him if you don’t want to get bit.
I find this discussion fascinating.
Most people are opinionated and going on what media and others are saying. They have no experience of the site have not done hours and hours of investigation or fully investigated the process but are lambasting others. They do not even have friends that have lost money on the scheme.
It is an interesting scheme. So it is a low risk for the company and governed around OPM.
People invest money in bitcoin. They the company take it and speculatively trade (Ozedit: snip, see below)
As someone who reviewed MTI long before any media reports, did my research and fortunately isn’t inclined to know people who routinely lose money in Ponzi schemes, I can factually state MTI is a Ponzi scheme.
If you want to make definitive claims about what MTI does with invested funds, beyond using it to pay returns, feel free to provide legally audited financial reports as evidence.
MTI is dead now. The criminal case opened by the FSCA and the CEO absconding from the country as per the middle managers means no-one is getting their requested withdrawals now.
New Scam by Rabu Gary & Mo Kumarsi is part of. Omega. 45% a Month. Scamming people.
vimeo.com/557888401/4053e17ef6
They started off disussing Auto BTC Builder.
https://behindmlm.com/mlm-reviews/autobtc-builder-review-six-tier-2×2-matrix-bitcoin-ponzi-cycler/
I wasn’t able to suss out what Omega is. Any further information available?
Ah got it, Omega Digital.
Added to the review list, thanks.