WASHINGTON—The U.S. commodities regulator announced on Thursday it had filed civil charges against a South African man and his company for operating a fradulent commodity pool worth over $1.7 billion in bitcoin.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said the fraud scheme, which saw the firm solicit bitcoin online from thousands of people to purportedly operate a commodity pool, was the largest it had ever pursued involving the cryptocurrency. The CFTC filed charges against Mirror Trading International Proprietary Limited and its CEO, Cornelius Johannes Steynberg.
