MTI CEO Johan Steynberg flees South Africa
In a video update published earlier today, Mirror Trading International affiliates have confirmed CEO Johan Steynberg has fled South Africa.
As per the “Team Prime” video, information presented ‘is as shared by Cheri MTI’s head of communications.’
“Cheri” refers to Cheri Marks who, along with her husband Clynton (right), are suspected of being the actual owners of Mirror Trading International.
Steynberg fleeing South Africa, which we’re sure has absolutely nothing to do with the FSCA investigation and open criminal case, is apparently because he had to move MTI’s servers.
[15:20] There is a rumor that Johan Steynberg is not in South Africa, that he is in fact abroad in another country.
And I can tell you that according to Cheri that is indeed true. He is not in South Africa at this point.
The reason why he’s not in South Africa is because he’s currently working on the servers.
[5:19] Johan Steynberg had to force move his servers to brand new servers in a different country.
Why did Steynberg have to move MTI’s servers?
Steynberg (right) fleeing South Africa is put down to a “security breach”, which is also conveniently used to explain away ongoing MTI withdrawal delays.
It also conveniently explains Steynberg’s absence amid the FSCA’s recent announcement.
As relayed by Cheri Ward, a “syndicate of hackers” allegedly breached MTI’s systems 16 days ago.
[1:20] They’ve hacked Google. They’ve even hacked uh… I think it’s called the financial sector in Joburg.
But they hacked quite a few companies and held companies ransom and the same thing happened sixteen days ago with MTI.
As a result of the breach (of which of course there is no evidence, fabricated or otherwise);
[1:37] What Johan Steynberg then did, was to obviously shut down the servers as we knew them. And then he moved everything over to the new servers.
During the movement of the servers from the old servers to the new servers, the withdrawal function within MTI basically went broken.
Withdrawals are supposedly happening manually and taking fifteen minutes per withdrawal, with 2500 requests in the backlog.
New investment has also apparently not been tracked for approximately two weeks.
Meanwhile how changing servers and/or moving them overseas addresses a data breach is unclear.
Curiously, where Steynberg has fled to has not been disclosed. Seems a bit of an odd thing to omit.
Well, it would be if Steynberg wasn’t on the run from the law.
South African authorities appear to have a time of it arresting criminals within their borders. We can’t imagine how long it’d take to extradite Steynberg from wherever he’s hiding.
Despite announcing she’d personally address the FSCA’s press-release yesterday, Cheri Marks herself didn’t make an appearance on the webinar.
According to the hosts Marks was invited to participate, but didn’t reply because she was “very busy”.
Update 20th December 2020 – Mirror Trading International is now claiming Johan Steynberg is missing.
Update 21st December 2020 – Since publication of this article, Team Prime has deleted the referenced video from their Vimeo channel.
Update 7th January 2022 – Brazilian authorities have arrested Johann Steynberg on an Interpol issued warrant.
Cheri, your English is delicious! I guess Google Translate still needs some work on the Afrikaans. Maybe it also got hacked.
Steynberg probably drove across the border to Mozambique.
Joburg, short for Johannesburg, South Africa’s financial capital.
Clearly their desperate lying doesn’t stop their self-aggrandizement. The idea that this imaginary “syndicate of hackers”, going for the legitimate financial sector in SA, would include MTI in their target list is pretty entertaining.
I think on Mybroadband some of the posters analyzed the last Web meeting he was in and based on times and some other stuff like traffic and vehicles it’s likely he’s in South America.
Odd that he’d be there to move servers personally when the backend is hosted in an Indian Datacenter (Maxxtra technologies developed the MLM software MTI uses and the backend is there on shared hosting).
There’s even an old copy of the backend hosted on a Git with security vulnerabilities galore.
Indeed. With Brazil being a strong possibility – a country which doesn’t have an extradition agreement with South Africa. And he’s definitely not in Mozambique, since he’s somewhere where they drive on the right.
This whole thing about servers was clearly invented by someone who doesn’t know the first thing about IT.
In the video, they claim Steynberg has “thirty-odd IT guys” working around the clock, “twelve on a shift, with a supervisor on each shift, to get this server migration done”.
Wow, all that just to get some existing software running on a new server? And why would any of that require the physical presence of Steynberg?
And then of course, as Oz points out in the article: what good would changing servers do, if their problem genuinely was a security breach?
Ahhhh. Mystery solved!
@Oz
A notification is making the rounds that Steynberg vanished on the 14th
Bah, this is just a standard “we got hacked” exit scam. These guys don’t have servers worth hacking.
Well if a missing person case is filed .We want some sort of proof ……
Unfortunately for victims, when you’ve just defrauded thousands of people of several hundred million dollars, continuing the fraud by filling out a fake missing persons report is childs’ play
Hi guys. The first video (an MTI Prime video) now links to a dead Vimeo page. Either they made the video private, or they deleted it!
Deleted, it’s gone!
MTI Management are seasoned scammers with a long list of Ponzi Schemes and millions of victims on their trophy wall.
They will be adding a criminal record to their list off achievements sooner than they thought they would. If you lost your investment then see it as tuition fees. Do due diligence prior to investing.
I was fortunate enough to discover their scam soon after I invested in MTI and was able to withdraw all my funds in time.
Yes I invested prior to doing due diligence (lesson learned) but I grew suspicious with their drive for new members.
Hope all of them get at least 20 years, especially for the victims off Kipi MyDeposit.
MTI: dishonest.co.za/doku.php?id=mti
Download and install Tor Browser torproject.org/
Run Tor.
Paste the following link inside your Tor browser: s2mfew43os4nrxvf.onion/uts/
A few people have archived it for possible legal use. The internet never forgets.
2500 x 15 minutes = 37,500 minutes to process withdrawals…
37,500 / 60 = 625 hours
625 hours / 24 = 26.042 days to complete withdrawals manually…
Movies scene where the Narcos skedaddle to hide all the cash and drugs when the police show up comes to mind…
Very flabbergated on my hard earned savings to be defrauded by those idiots.
I believe we are in good hands with MTI after have read the purpose of Johann Stenberg for outreaching. Let us hope our beliefs in the company stand. Thank you.
@Taezo
Steynberg’s purpose was only ever to steal money from MTI investors. Same as any other Ponzi scammer.
There is no ways any of us are going to get our money back.
I have lost 150k in layout and whatever i had made in profit.
Arrest the other two plus Steynbergs wife, (she definitely had to have some knowledge of the scam).
I am definitely laying charges of fraud.
I had my doubts before investing and glad it was a small amount to which I’ve got back by the person who Invited me to this.
I had a feeling it’s a ponzi scheme because they don’t allow you to withdraw all your money and require you to pay an amount to reach the next level.
I had a hunch that once BTC hits a new high something with mti will happen and I was right.
He’s not kidnapped or missing. He’s on the run.
It’s easy to change your identity and seek citizenship in countries like Cuba where no law can touch you.
Hope they find him, get the truth out.
Unfortunately the BTC may all be gone onto the dark web. And none may get their money back.
Christopher Beavitt:
This is one of those delusions investors in Ponzi schemes keep showing when the inevitable collapse comes.
You’re like a person who bought shares in what a fraudster presented as a goldmine, but which didn’t have any gold in it. Even after the fraud has been exposed, you still think you’re entitled to some of the gold he lied about.
You can at most lose 100% of what you put in, nothing more. If you’re lucky, liquidators may be able to find some of the remaining money and make it a bit less than 100%.
But you never made any profit, since Ponzi schemes by definition don’t produce a profit. All you believe you lost are some completely made-up numbers on a screen.
Even if you were able to take out money while the scheme was still running, and ended up taking out more than 100% of what you put in, that’s still not a profit you’re entitled to: that’s other people’s stolen money.