Shrinking Assets and Rising Legal Costs
Liquidators overseeing the collapse of Mirror Trading International (MTI), once described as South Africa’s largest pyramid scheme, have received 9,441 claims totaling nearly $395 million (6.5 billion rands), according to the latest figures released by legal representatives. Despite the massive volume of claims, the estate’s available funds have continued to shrink.
As of Feb. 18, 2026, only $35.8 million remained in the estate, a decrease from the $38.75 million reported in June 2024. According to a report, liquidators attribute the drain to significant costs associated with pursuing global recovery efforts across the United States, Canada, Europe, Singapore and Australia.
The liquidators recently corrected earlier court filings regarding the number of creditors involved in the collapse. While initial documents filed in the Singapore High Court suggested approximately 304,044 creditors, officials clarified that this figure represents the total number of registered users. Many of these users are considered “debtors” rather than victims, as they were “class 3 investors” who turned a profit before the scheme’s demise.
The scheme collapsed in December 2020 after CEO Johann Steynberg disappeared while traveling in Brazil. Steynberg was arrested in 2021 for using a false identity and is believed to have died in April 2024 while under house arrest awaiting extradition. The bulk of the current estate was secured through what liquidators described as sheer luck rather than investigative recovery.
In June 2020, the Belizean brokerage FXChoice froze 1,281 bitcoins after flagging suspicious activity. The subsequent sale of these assets generated approximately $57.2 million for the estate. Since then, recovery efforts have yielded more modest results. Liquidators have clawed back roughly $10.8 million across more than 690 settlements. A single major settlement accounted for $6.87 million of that total, while the remaining settlements averaged just over $5,700 each.
Financial records indicate that liquidators have spent approximately $32 million on legal fees and global recovery operations. This includes a $7.32 million fee claimed by liquidators in 2023. The investigation and objection process for the thousands of pending claims is set to begin shortly. Officials warned that the final value of valid claims is expected to decrease as they weed out fraudulent filings and those from investors who already profited from the scheme.
