MTI leader Joel Santiago has an epic meltdown
A recording of a late December Mirror Trading International leaders zoom meeting has emerged.
In the wake of MTI’s collapse, top US investor Joel Santiago has an epic meltdown.
On the call with Santiago are Cheri Marks, Peter Muller, Rich Simmonds and other MTI leaders and top earners.
Seven minutes into the call, one of the hosts reads out a message heard received on her phone.
(Atter?) Simon says that one of his members just stabbed one of his downline with a knife.
To which Rich Simmonds (right) replies, “that sounds like Nigeria for you”.
After the female host directs someone else to further investigate, Santiago chimes in;
[7:26] Yeah I’m sure we’re gonna be hearing a lot about this stuff.
I gotta be a little vocal here ‘cuz this is killin’ me. You know we need to uh, we need to relay something.
You know there’s members… I haven’t had sleep, I haven’t slept in like seventy-two hours.
At this point Santiago’s voice cracks and he becomes emotional.
[7:50] I’ve been on calls with members that are suicidal, that have lost everything y’know?
And then we’re sitting here. We’re laughing. We’re making comments about Nigeria and people getting stabbed.
You know, we have people live’s at stake here. You know, we have people’s live’s at stake here.
And if we can’t see that, if we can’t see that… if we can’t agree to the biggest aspect of everything is lives of our members, then I can’t be a part of this.
I’ve already made the decision. My family can’t move forward with this. But it is my goal and my duty to be here for everyone.
These people believed in us. They followed me. Do you know what I’m saying?
For the last few weeks I’ve been paying out of my pocket. Out of my family’s home. These people that don’t have money to pay their mortgage.
Well it’s gone. I don’t have the ability to do that anymore. I’m not gonna lie anymore. I’m not gonna continue to do this.
And if we can’t come together, if you guys can’t come together to relay this then I’m sorry, I’m done. I am done.
I have to repair my family. I have to repair my marriage and on top of that I will not abandon our members.
I will not abandon our members for anything for the life of me. And if we can’t realize that that is the foundation of all of this.
Not any of the other nonsense… not our perspective, not whether we believe whether we’re right or wrong, people are suffering right now.
And I’m disgusted. I’m disgusted with all of us. I’m disgusted with how we’re handling this. And it’s not right. It’s not right. Period.
As Santiago pours his heart out, suspected MTI owner Cheri Marks listens with a stone-cold expression.
So fix this please. Fix this, relay something. Let the repairing start.
But to try to drag people on with hope? There is no hope.
Charlie said on the call that yesterday that MTI was dead. Several times, that MTI is done, MTI is done.
And then we asked to have the meeting at, an hour after had that meeting, so that we can relay it to our teams.
All of us voted to do it. Charlie overruled our vote. You know what I’m saying?
So we can’t progress. He does that and what happens to me, what happens to us? We get attacked!
Cheri Marks steps in at this point and asks Santiago to “take a second”.
That doesn’t go down well with Santiago;
[10:24] I mean Cheri what you need to understand it I’ve taken more than just a second.
I’ve been in this, one hundred percent and and and, I’m for the people.
And when things don’t add up and I’m over here trying to defend this vision that now… I don’t believe anything anymore. And I’m tired of being involved in this.
I’m tired of going through this and dragging our members through the mud. I’m not gonna do it. Okay?
As Santiago continues to sob, Cheri Ward attempts to console him with a wishy-washy “I know your heart” response.
That doesn’t appear to have worked. Santiago has since deleted all MTI promotional material from his social media profiles.
According to the initial MTI data leak, Santiago had personally recruited over 100 affiliate investors into MTI as of mid September.
Curiously, Santiago doesn’t appear in the latest data leak list of MTI’s top two hundred earners.
Update 9th January 2021 – Despite being uploaded nearly three weeks ago, within hours of this article going live Joel Santiago’s epic meltdown video was deleted from YouTube.
Here’s a screenshot of the video as it was available less than twenty-four hours ago:
Center left you have brother and sister team Charles Ward and Cheri Marks.
Up top, left to right, you have Joel Santiago, Cheri Marks’ webcam, some guy with an awkward username, Charlene Chiang, Johnny Kruger and Marinus Bell.
For prosperity, here is a screenshot of the comments prior to video deletion (replies to comments aren’t available now that the video is gone):
General consensus is nobody else is buying what Cheri’s airing either.
Update #2 9th January 2020 – A reupload of the original Joel Santiago meltdown video is available here.
Does Joel Santiago have an MLM history, or is this his first attempt at MLM scamming?
Is Santiago “Ignatius Michael Bell”?
Of course he has form:
dishonest.co.za/doku.php?id=joelsantiago
(There could be more, that site lays no claim to being exhaustive.)
Ignatius Bell is a real, and different, person.
I checked out PassingBy’s link (comment #3), and there’s a picture of a smiling Joel Santiago, arms folded, calling himself a “Trainer and Presenter,” claiming to be “Creating a Culture of Servant Leadership.”
Barf.
A friend of mine got sucked into Visalus years ago, and one of the things he conveyed to me was how impressed he was that the founders believed in “Servant Leadership.” They sure know which buttons to push, don’t they?
Was Santiago really breaking down, or is he just a good actor? Is he really so dumb as to be involved in multiple Ponzis yet not see that MTI was more of the same, or is he just playing dumb?
One thing is clear: no honest person should involve themselves in anything Santiago is involved in.
Whatever motivates him, his track record speaks for itself.
I tend to trust the collective wisdom of the people on the Mybroadband.co.za forum on anything MTI-related.
They’be been following things closely since MTI started getting some traction, and the participants have collectively done a great job in digging up, and cleverly piecing together, information.
The consensus there is that Santiago was putting on an act, playing all dumb and innocent and concerned, with the intention all along of leaking the recording when it suited him.
There is no doubt he is the source of the recording: he can be heard speaking after he’s been muted. (Or so I’m told – since you have to sign in to Youtube to watch the video I haven’t seen it myself.)
By no means is Joel Santiago an innocent bystander in this.
I’d say he’s not acting but having a cry after the fact and given his Ponzi history there is no excuse.
If I thought the performance was genuinely remorseful I wouldn’t have titled it an epic meltdown.
Oh and I see the video has been removed from YouTube. Hi Cheri and the gang!
Added what I was able to salvage from the video.
I got an hour and fifteen or so in before going to bed, so if anything happened after that I missed it.
Main points I didn’t cover in this article was the floating of hiring a team to forcefully repatriate Steynberg to South Africa.
Charlie Ward puts forth he’ll forcibly get Nerina Steynberg to file a missing persons report. And he doesn’t want any of this made public because it “legally implicates us”.
Ward states he doesn’t trust Nerina Steynberg, is “selective” with the information he shares with her and believes she’s protecting husband Johann.
Other MTI leaders are worried letting their downlines know all of this will tip Steynberg off and he’ll go deeper into hiding.
And unsurprisingly almost immediately reuploaded by someone else: youtube.com/watch?v=8Ep3-7FS2zw
Sweet. I can finish watching now, thanks.
I’m listening to the call (thanks PassingBy), a few stray point.
*The date of this call is December 23rd as per a comment about it being “two days before Christmas”.
*Cheri claims that there are outstanding arrest warrants for her and Clynton are. Sadly as with anything she says it looks like a lie (presently).
*Cheri is repeating the “Steven Twain” exit strategy, blaming Johann, while pretending she isn’t culpable for her roll in the fraud.
*It’s clear that this recording was originally made by Joel Santiago.
*Joel makes an impassioned plea for transparency swearing he’ll be open and honest with his downline. But I’m in his “Santiago Secret” facebook group and besides a half assed plan to repay everyone. no matter how long it takes, he fell far short of informing his downline of the the sad, shabby truth of MTI.
*Charlie Ward is a little too calculating when he says (several times) that any effort from an upline to refund those they stole from would “legally implicate” them.
Here’s a tip, being in the “corporate leadership” of a dying ponzi scheme legally implicates you.
*It’s vaguely fascinating to see that the lies in a ponzi scheme go straight to the top.
Charlie and Cheri controlled the conversation and all blame was being deflected to Johann instead of the people who made the most money off this scheme (Clynton and Cheri).
The webinar was held on December 23rd. Later that same day Cheri Marks would release the “corporate response”, throwing Nerina Steynberg under the bus and blaming Russian hackers.
https://behindmlm.com/companies/mirror-trading-international/mti-announcement-throws-ceo-and-wife-under-the-bus/
It was obvious the document was written by her when it surfaced. This confirms it.
This is the “transparency” Santiago was pushing for. Armed with the recording that preceded its release, you can see the tale Cheri spun is nothing akin to what they discussed.
I agree that Charlie Ward is likely involved in MTI’s operations. Honestly it seems like running BTC Ponzi schemes is all the Marks/Ward family do for a living.
SA authorities could have prevented all of this by following through with the BTC Global investigation. Instead here we are.
Leak 2 purports to be up to 24 Dec.
Ah. I remember clicking one of the profiles and seeing it go up to mid November.
I’ll go by the late December dating then.
Yeah, it seems that the last payments went around 8 Dec, anything after stuck in pending, at least for the current leak’s top people.
They all knew it was the end. They were just stealing and taking the commissions from poor people.
With they I mean: Cheri Marks, Clynton Marks, Joel Santiago, Liz Malton, Scott Smith and all the other “top” leaders and in the staff.