Did police bungle case?

Even after his supposed death, lots is unclear about the crypto scammer.

- Stephen Timm

This is the second article in a special Moneyweb series on Mirror Trading International (MTI) CEO Johann Steynberg. When Steynberg was reported to have died of a pulmonary embolism in Brazil in April, after fleeing to Sao Paulo in December 2020, there were rumours that the head of one of the world's biggest cryptocurrency scams had faked his own death. Now, using Brazilian court records and following a visit to Brazil, Stephen Timm attempts to piece together what really happened to Steynberg in Brazil. When Steynberg was arrested in Goiania, a city in Brazil's interior, in December 2021, it was the first news anyone in South Africa - or elsewhere - had received of Steynberg (at least officially). Yet a number of questions surrounding the arrest of Steynberg, who was reported by Brazilian media in April 2024 to have died of a pulmonary embolism while under house arrest in Goiania, Goias, remain largely unanswered. How had he come to be arrested only five days after arriving in the city on a flight from Sao Paulo with his girlfriend Karine Amelya de Andrade dos Santos Paniagua? Had police been tracking him, or had someone reported him to the authorities, perhaps a dis-gruntled Brazilian investor? Or was it someone in SA - an MTI investor or family member, perhaps - who tipped them off? One thing that is certain is the many inconsistencies in the account of his arrest given by the Goias military police and the accounts provided by those who were in the car with Steynberg when he was arrested. These inconsistencies suggest that something was amiss when he was brought in. The police initially reported that he was arrested for being in possession of two fake IDs and that the police's crime intelligence had been onto him because he was wanted by Inte