Hawks nail man for R11,500 Bitcoin transfer while millionaire scammers walk free

While South Africa is prosecuting a 35-year-old man for a R11,500 Bitcoin donation made in 2017 that allegedly breached terrorism funding laws, financial criminals who stole millions from people continue to walk free.

On 30 November 2017, Ziyadh Hoorzook transferred money from his bank account to Luno, bought Bitcoin, and transferred the cryptocurrency to an organisation called al-Sadaqah.

He was arrested more than seven years later, on 3 January 2025, for allegedly contravening the Protection of Constitutional Democracy Against Terrorist and Related Activities Act (POCDATARA).

Hoorzook denies any wrongdoing, saying that he innocently donated money to what he believed to be a charitable cause at the time.

A representative of the Crimes Against the State team of the Hawks Serious Organised Crime Investigation said the investigation was meticulous and that the state’s case against Hoorzook was watertight.

Hoorzook’s final bail hearing was scheduled for Wednesday; however, News24 reported that it was postponed by six days to 28 January because of a power outage that affected the Lichtenburg Magistrates court last week.

While it took the Hawks seven years to arrest a suspect in this case, that is infinitely better than the nothing the elite law enforcement agency has to show for cases like BTC Global and State Capture.

Both investigations date back to around the same time and involve much more money that could have been used to fund all manner of criminal activity.

BTC Global was a pyramid scheme allegedly founded by “master trader” Steven Twain in 2017. It operated until 2018, promising members extremely high returns on bitcoin investments.

When the music stopped, Twain vanished along with everyone’s money. There was only one problem — there was no evidence that Twain ever existed.

However, his convenient disappearance gave BTC Global’s most ardent promoters, who had made a killing on referrals, a fall guy.

When victims complained about the money they lost, they could simply point to Twain and say that he had stolen everyone’s money — including theirs.

Initial reports said that BTC Global has scammed over 27,000 people, including people from South Africa, the United States, and Australia.

At the time, the Hawks said over $50 million was lost in the scam — with South African victims having invested between R16,000 and R1.4 million each.

Nearly seven years later, nothing has happened.

With State Capture, a handful of cases have been brought to court. However, this was also only many years later, and none involved the real masterminds.

Former Public Protector Thuli Madonsela released her State Capture report in 2016, leading to the Zondo Commission being established in 2018.

The Commission cost a billion rand, and Chief Justice Raymond Zondo delivered the fifth and final part of his report on 22 June 2022.

Two other cases involving massive sums of money are Steinhoff and Mirror Trading International (MTI).

Steinhoff also dates back more than seven years, with the accounting irregularities at the company coming to light on 5 December 2017.

Despite the mountains of evidence, the German authorities prosecuted and sentenced Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste seven months before the Hawks got a warrant for his arrest.

In 2019, News24 reported that the National Director of Public Prosecutions, Shamila Batohi, said the National Prosecuting Authority did not have the in-house skills to prosecute commercial crimes like those involving Steinhoff.

She also assured the perpetrators were not off the hook.

Jooste did not return to Germany to serve his sentence, but committed suicide in March 2024 after the Hawks secured an arrest warrant and ordered him to hand himself over.

Mirror Trading International was another South African bitcoin-based pyramid scheme that ran from 2019 to 2020.

It drew in thousands of members worldwide and was much larger then BTC Global, with one estimate indicating that 39,000 bitcoins had been deposited into the scheme and 32,000 withdrawn over its lifetime.

At the prevailing Bitcoin prices at the time, roughly R19.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency flowed through the scheme, making it the biggest pyramid scheme ever in South Africa.

The scheme’s promoters were extremely active online, posting videos, audio, and text to YouTube, Facebook, and elsewhere, leaving volumes of evidence of their activities.

Law enforcement also has access to a database of every MTI member and the funds they deposited and withdrew from the scheme, obtained from the hosting company that developed MTI’s website.

Despite this, there have been no arrests.

Reports surfaced last year that the founder and CEO of MTI, Johann Steynberg, died in Brazil last year after fleeing there in December 2020 and being arrested in December 2021.

He was under house arrest when he reportedly suffered a pulmonary thromboembolism.

According to an official report of Steynberg’s death, his Brazilian romantic partner declared that he did not have any assets to be inventoried and that she was unaware of the existence of a will.

MyBroadband asked the Hawks for feedback on the progress of the BTC Global, Mirror Trading International, and State Capture investigations. We also asked why it took so long to obtain a warrant for Jooste’s arrest.

The Hawks did not respond by publication.