MTI announcement throws CEO and wife under the bus
Mirror Trading International’s collapse continues to follow the BTC Global Team playbook.
In the latest update, Cheri Marks spins quite a story.
Marks, who is believed to run MTI with her husband Clynton (right, with Marks), acknowledges that MTI has “unraveled”.
Following the search and seizure warrants executed by the FSCA on the 26th of October … it was becoming very difficult to handle to amount of work created for each department.
We insisted that Johann get help in the technical department as it was clear he and Nerina were not coping.
The system kept crashing and Johann told us that we had had numerous hacking attempts by a Russian syndicate.
Supposedly there were ransom demands sent by the Russians. No evidence of any of this, fabricated or otherwise, is provided.
Anywho, on the day the FSCA raided MTI’s offices, something something Johan Steynberg was unable to confirm MTI’s bitcoin balance.
A week after the raid, Johann requested that Clynton Marks give him BTC to pay members that had made
withdrawals as the limitation on withdrawals with the broker was still a hinderance.Johann agreed to put in 400btc as well. Clynton then agreed and paid over 400btc of his own outside of MTI to Johann on the 1st, 11th and 12th of November 2020.
Management has no proof that Johann did contribute the amount he stated. Clynton Marks had full confidence that he would get his Bitcoin back.
Johann said Nerina Steynerg also allegedly gave 200btc for this process.
Johann frantically processed withdrawals and management insisted on this being the highest priority
knowing full well Cheri Marks had promised this to members on Johann’s instruction.
It’s worth noting that, although presented as “outside” money, any bitcoin deposited by Nerina Steynberg and Clynton Marks was MTI investor funds to begin with.
Then there’s some random email presented from “from an anonymous source”. In the email the “anonymous do-gooders” claim they warned “numerous high level MTI members” about the FSCA’s raid.
The “anonymous do-gooders” warn of Johan’s pending arrest and go on to claim Mirror Trading International, a Ponzi scheme, is a “phenomenal gift to society”.
And then there’s a whacky conspiracy theory about “financial institutions” and freemasons.
The fact is, that you, sir, are stepping on the toes of major financial institutions in South Africa and abroad.
Freemasonry is not just a rumour.
It is a well known fact that the major players in the current financial system are 17, 18 and 33 degree masons which will do anything possible to see the downfall of MTI.
It is with great concern sir, that you pose a major threat to their ecosystem.
This is typical of the rubbish Ponzi promoters come up with justify their scams.
As per Cheri’s narrative, Johan took it upon himself to act on this random email. Because y’know, it’s perfectly normal to upend your life because you received a random anonymous email.
On the 2nd of December 2020 the team heard from Johann and Nerina Steynberg, this time they were on
their way to the airport.Johann assured us all that everything will be ok that he simply needed to secure himself for MTI and put measures in place if ever something did incapacitate him so that Nerina can run the company.
He did not disclose where he was going, he openly said that not even Nerina would be told his eventual destination. To date, his wife and daughter and extended family remain in SA.
Note that Cheri Marks’ story has changed. Just days ago Marks claimed that Steynberg left South Africa to work on MTI server migration (which itself made no sense).
Johan did send Clynton numerous pictures and messages of his flight to Doha.
Apparently from there he went on to Sao Paulo, this was conveyed to Cheri Marks in a telephone conversation at a later stage.
For the weeks between the 3rd of December to the 14th of December Johann and Nerina continued to
manage and run MTI’s technical department despite the challenges we faced, slow withdrawals, withdrawal reporting problems on the server side, a server that needed upgrades and better protection.On the 12th of December Clynton was very worried that he had not heard anything from Johann. The team
later made contact with him and he said he fell asleep and apologised for the scare.On Sunday the 13th of December we had a management meeting and Johann was told by our team that we
refused to work with him any longer if he didn’t appoint a proper second in charge that could run the
system in his absence.He reiterated that Nerina would do this, as she is his 2IC.
We said that if anything ever happened to him, Nerina would be in no position to run a company and suggested we appoint an outside contractor to assist.
Johann was reluctant but agreed.
Here Marks turns on Nerina, claiming that after Johan agreed to the contractor she
categorically stated that she can run the company and that Johann will not be handing the technical department over to anyone.
Supposedly a contractor was appointed and given access on Monday December 14th.
Later that same night Johann confirmed he continued to process MTI affiliate investor withdrawals.
At 12:27am on Tuesday he confirmed withdrawals were slow due to checking process but that 5200 withdrawals had been done for the day.
The last time we heard from Johann was Tuesday 01:51 am.
On Tuesday we had no news further from Johann. We called Nerina and she also had not heard anything. She did not seem worried.
On December 15th (Tuesday), the “Johann has not logged in for 12 hours” email was supposedly sent out.
Cheri Marks immediately called Nerina.
Nerina was calm and said she would go to see Johann’s best friend as he was flying to Brazil on that Saturday
to join Johann.When Nerina was asked what the first step should be to find him, she said “Maybe he doesn’t want to be
found”.
Marks claims MTI’s bitcoin is trapped in Trade300 accounts. Trade300 is a fictional broker created by Steynberg for MTI.
Nerina told us not to tell members about Johann being missing, and that she was sure he would turn up.
On Thursday 17/12 management got the press release from the FSCA.
We immediately contacted the server team and disabled all deposits into MTI. Nerina then confirmed
Johann uses the alias Joe Steyn “all the time, for everything”.
Nerina was again instructed to open a missing persons case immediately.
From the time of writing this statement she has still not opened a missing persons case.
On Wednesday 16 December we paid a private investigator to find Johann. Nerina was not happy about
that.The investigator interviewed Nerina, she refused to be recorded and was not forthcoming with information.
According to Marks, Nerina has claimed that Steynberg has booked a flight back to South Africa for December 22nd.
This was news to us, not once during the last week or after his departure was that ever communicated to us.
We are convinced she has control over his funds and the team of management and leaders were promised she could run MTI in Johann’s absence.
This is all the information we have up to the time of this statement. Further information will be communicated when we get it.
Is Steynberg back in South Africa? Did he actually ever leave?
Who knows.
I’ll give it to Marks, she’s worked on her storytelling craft since BTC Global Team. But this is still the same playbook.
Fictional brokers, piling the blame onto a missing person, and setting yourself and the rest of the MTI ringleaders up as victims (despite benefiting the most financially from MTI).
To anyone from the FSCA and/or South African police involved in the criminal investigation reading this, whilst it’s certainly amusing to document Marks’ fantastical excuses as an outsider, MTI’s victims deserve better.
You didn’t follow through with BTC Global Team and now the exact same performance is being trotted out again.
You know who the ringleaders are. You know they have the majority of invested funds. You know Marks is going to continue pumping out smoke and mirrors fiction until she’s apprehended.
On behalf of MTI victims, do your jobs please.
Mein Gott. Next will be abducted by aliens.
It’s a fascinating piece of fiction, is it not?
And sophisticated, multilayered fiction, too, since it is clearly suggested the anonymous email warning about the evil Freemasons (but only the 17th, 18th and 33rd degree ones, the other degrees clearly aren’t as evil) was Johann’s handiwork, so a piece of fiction within the fiction.
It’s also clever that the first-person narrators portray themselves as dimwits, who didn’t even bother to check whether “the broker” on whom their whole enterprise depended actually existed or not. A narrator too dumb to understand what is really going on can make for interesting fiction.
There are two things that stand out to me, if one tries to analyze this as the account of real events it pretends to be:
1.
Where is the effing bot?
In this whole story, they seem to have completely forgotten that the only reason for the existence of their company is supposed to be that they’re running a high-frequency trading bot.
They only talk about the “server team”, so the people in India running the website, and “the broker”, who they now believe was Johann in a wig and a dress and calling himself “Camila”.
But where are the systems on which their magical bot is running, which must be interfaced with the broker’s system? For that matter, who wrote that software, who maintains it, where and how is the source code guarded?
That piece of software is the one essential asset on which their entire company rests – yet it’s not even mentioned once in 7 pages of storytelling. There is absolutely nothing explaining where the broker (fictional or not) was getting its buy and sell orders from.
If the suggestion is that “the server team” is also running the bot, then Johann disappearing wouldn’t be a problem, since they’ve got the server team on board. So that can’t be it.
If the suggestion is that “the broker” was also running the bot, that would mean that they’d handed over possession of their magical money-making machine to a third party, without even verifying first whether that third party actually existed. Nothing could stop the broker from running it for themselves and keeping all the profits. Surely not even the dimwits they portray themselves to be would do that. Not to mention that running software for clients is not what brokers do – and they dealt with a real broker, FXChoice (although a forex rather than a crypto one), before, so they know that.
2.
It doesn’t establish which of the two possible scenarios is playing out.
Either this is all fake and planned, with Johann as Steven Twain Mk. 2, but acted out by a real person for added realism, and everyone planning to share the loot afterwards.
Or Johann actually ran off with all the loot (well, the remaining part of the loot, obviously things like the Marks’s house and expensive cars have already been paid with part of it, and others have profited as well).
Personally I’m inclined towards the second option (with perhaps the added twist that Cheri et.al. intended to use Johann as their patsy when the inevitable end came, and he preempted them from doing so).
The first option does have the fact that it would be rerun of the Steven Twain scenario going for it, and criminals tend to repeat methods that have proven to be successful before.
The only freemasons here seem to be Cheri, Clynton, Johann and his wife since they seem to have some higher power allowing them to get away with these scams for years on end.
After investigating these filthy fat fingers, you’d be surprised to know that back in BTCGlobal or whatever these muppets were calling themselves, she published TheTruthAboutCheri.
In all these years, this chick has not upped her smoke and mirrors layered in a pathetic play on emotional cards game. Sharing long soppy stories about her poor old life. Cry me a river!
She even goes as far as posting her “threats” that she received back then.
I have got to say that you have to be some special kind of stupid to keep angering people and scamming people continuously.
She is “good” at fabricating stories, but it would seem that she gets the help from her children writing up these stories as no sane human being with half a brain cell could possibly believe all the hogwash that comes out of her filthy sausage fingers.
Considering how big this conartists are, I am starting to wonder whether their greed for money was so big that they swallowed it all. Have you seen the size of these humans? Perhaps they are their own piggy banks.
Rest assured, with the large percentile of people the lot of them have done in, it’s only a matter of time before someone actually does something “stupid” and actually executes those threats and then they will have only themselves to blame.
I’ve got to hand it to them, whilst they are far from clever they have got some balls to keep repeating the same script over and over again thinking that they will actually get away with it.
Johann mentions having a daughter who he hoped would take over the business some day and Cheri going on about her poor little children’s oh so tough lives, I’ve got to ask what kind of people “love” their children so much as to gift them with such a caliber of parents. Sies!
What a filthy legacy with dirty money. Is that really what they think of their children. Makes me think twice about those poor kids. They did not ask to be here, yet their parents feel as though they are doing these great acts. That’s some special kind of sick.
On the topic of sick, how are people that greedy for other peoples money that they have to live their lives on the run and in fear, but money they must steal.
Yeah, you’ve got to be of sane and sober mind if that is your dynamic. Dirty, stolen money living like thieves running off in the night all the sake of money at the cost of those who have lost theirs distress. Such a pathetic excuse of humans.
Lastly poor Cheri, “bad luck” just keeps following her hey because there is always someone to blame who of course is never her, yet here we are.
Cheri living in a multi million rand home. Poor girl!
Pay back our Bitcoin.
Cheri Mark looks like Lydia in Breaking Bad. Best she watches what goes in her tea.
@Louise
Pay back from where? You don’t seem to grasp how money flows within a Ponzi scheme.
Dear author
Thank you for your writings, my suggestions would be that payments be returned to the last entries to the first entries. As those in longer have already gained some benefits.
Secondly, I think its vulgar that accounts and deposits were accepted since the October 2020 date as rumors and anonymous letters were already in circulation of major faul play… senior players must be accountable for not shutting MTI down sooner or at least stopping all new membership applications sooner!
There is more than the eye sees here… if you are leader, senior or major position holder, only stupid can say you were not aware of a major crime at play!
Facts are there and I believe more questions should be answered.
What has happened to pending deposits…. where did they go to if not to the account holders personal MTI account number?
Why are new memberships still accepted?
How come every senior player claims to know nothing when clearly players whom invested hugely spoke very highly of their corrupt management team… ‘com on, really?
Arrest them all and remove their personal funds too!
Please continue your good work. I was introduced via Germany!
Regards Antoinette
This is what happens when you allow common sense to be blocked by greed!!!
The creators of the scam and the investors!!!
where my career victims at ?
Strange, very strange that when JS fled ZA. the top earners also made themsel es scares.
No more telegram communications from themselves, but handed downline to others that also dissapeared from the scene a d left the pooly because they had multil.
I think Cheri Marks…had a lot to say and promise that she made a life video on YouTube where she stated that she and hubby was the founders of MTI International and that are not a scam.
pay all the victims btc out clear your name.. If Johan Steynberg would be found he will not go down alone you all will go down…like they say you can run but you can’t hide.
May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their nether regions and may their fingers turn into fish hooks……………
@Oz
The mysterious contractor and bitcoin expert seems to be none other than Andrew Caw.
In the December leaked clip the draft december letter is partially shown a few times and Caw’s name features prominently for the Succession and Technical access parts.
Why that didn’t make it to the released statement is another question.
Not surprised. MTI was always BTC Global 2.0.