US court orders South African firm's CEO to pay $3.4 billion for bitcoin fraud

A federal judge in Texas ordered the head of a South African firm to pay a whopping $3.4 billion for what the U.S. commodities regulator said was its largest-ever fraud case involving bitcoin. Cornelius Johannes Steynberg was ordered to pay $1.7 billion in restitution to victims of the fraud scheme and another $1.7 billion as a civil penalty, a record for any Commodity Futures Trading Commission case, the regulator said in a statement on Thursday. Steynberg, whose last known residence was in S