Fugitive CEO Ordered to Pay $3.4 Billion in Record Fraud Case Involving Bitcoin
- The executive has been arrested and is being held in Brazil
- More than 23,000 people in the US were defrauded in the scheme
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A US judge ordered a South African executive to pay more than $3.4 billion in restitution and fines for a fraud scheme involving Bitcoin — the highest-ever civil monetary penalty in any US Commodity Futures Trading Commission case.
Cornelius Johannes Steynberg, the founder and chief executive officer of Mirror Trading International Proprietary, committed fraud tied to retail foreign-currency transactions, among other violations, the agency said in a statement that announced the order by US District Judge Lee Yeakel.