The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced, A judge in the District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled against Cornelius Johannes, founder and CEO of Mirror Trading International Proprietary Limited (MTI), a South African financial services provider Steynberg entered a default judgment and a permanent injunction ordering Steynberg to pay $17,3383,8372 in restitution and $17,3383,8372 in civil penalties to victims of fraud. The fine is the largest civil penalty in a CFTC case and the largest fraud case involving bitcoin in a CFTC case.

On June 30, 2022, the CFTC filed a complaint in court alleging that from approximately May 2018 to March 2021, Steynberg participated in a fraudulent international multi-level marketing scheme as an individual and as a controller of MTI. The unregistered commodity pool, which solicited bitcoins from the public to participate in MTI's unregistered commodity pool without being registered as a commodity pool operator (CPO), accepted at least 29,421 bitcoins from more than 23,000 investors in the United States and other parts of the world, with a total value of more than $1.73 billion. MTI and Steynberg manipulated this commodity pool and falsely claimed that they used a so-called proprietary "bot" or software program to trade over-the-counter retail currency pairs. The defendants ended up directly or indirectly misappropriating the bitcoins provided by all participants in the commodity pool.

Steynberg, founder and CEO of MTI, was found liable for retail currency pair transaction fraud, fraud by CPO related persons, registration violations, and violations of CPO related regulations in the case.

According to the order, Steynberg is permanently prohibited from engaging in any investment activities related to commodity pool operations, retail currency pair trading, etc., and from engaging in any trading in markets regulated by the CFTC.