Britons posing as Tokyo based investment brokers have launched a new ‘boiler room’ scam operation out of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh seeking more pension victims in Australian and New Zealand.
In the latest scam under the name BEI Trading they are selling shares in Ant Financial – a subsidiary of the giant Chinese multi-national conglomerate Alibaba,
Ant Financial, the China equivalent of PayPal is described as the highest valued financial technical company in the world at $150 billion.
In 2014 Bangkok boiler room scammers tried to sell shares in the Alibaba Group itself from offices in Sukhumvit Suites, Bangkok. It is believed this operation is a follow up and conceived after early this year Ant Financial announced to wire services that it would be raising another US$10 billion from a clutch of global investors.
The boiler room Britons plus a few Australian and Americans are falsely claiming on the net that they represent BEI Trading, which has access to a pre-IPO (pre-Initial Public Offering) of Ant Financial’s shares.
In the script given to their cold callers they are told to say they are calling from Tokyo and are giving their potential victims a ‘lifetime opportunity to benefit from a phenomenal offer’ before the public gets the chance to buy the shares.
And they claim imaginary financial coups in the past.
“Let me give you two examples of pre-IPOs we were involved in this year.
“Dropbox went public on the 23 March 2018 on the Nasdaq. We got our clients in when pre-IPO shares were issued at $16, and IPOs were issued at $21 and the first day of trading shares closed at $28.
Now our pre-IPO clients made 80% on the first day!
“The other is a Chinese tech company Xiaomi. They are the third largest smart phone manufacturer in the world. Got listed on the Hang Seng (Hong Kong exchange). We put our clients pre-IPO at HK$12 and it got listed 9th July as an IPO at 16 HK$ and went high as 19H
K$ and our pre-IPO clients made 60% on the first day.”
A source confirms that indeed this boiler room did tout shares of Xaoimi, China’s biggest mobile phone manufacturer from office in Phnom Penh when the company listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, and also shares in Disney, discounted at 5 per cent. But they did not have any shares to offer
Moreover Xiaomi opened at HK$16.60 and closed at 1.2 per cent up only. Trading was described as luke-warm.
This photo retrieved from the files of a British boiler room oik’s computer shows how they like to see themselves.
Potential Australian and New Zealand investors should know that Bei Trading is not based in Tokyo but on the second floor at #25 & 63, St. 348/205, Sangkat Toul Say Prey II, Khan Chamkarmorn, in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.
The salesmen are not high-flying investment brokers but mainly low-lying Brits. who trawl the girly bars of Phnom Penh. Some have arrived on holiday and extend their stay to share in the promised riches.
They check in at 8 am their second floor office at the intersection of streets 205 and 348 adhering to a strict business dress code; no jeans, trainers or t-shirts. Around their necks on a yellow bands they carry their I.D. as employees of U.P.I. – Unique Property Investments. The UPI office is above a Cambodian property company CPL.
But while there are UPI signs on the board downstairs and outside their 2nd floor office – no property work is done there and anyone seeking a property in Phnom Penh will struggle to get through the door.
Whistle-blower George Walker (real name withheld) said:
“The door is kept locked. Nobody can buy or rent a property there. There is a procedure if somebody calls. Henry, the room boss, a short haired Yorkshire man from Leeds, who wears Aviator sunglasses, is the only man allowed to go to the door and when he does will go outside to talk to any caller, locking the door on the way out.
“Unique Property Investments, Henry says, is registered to him. The telephone number registered is linked to a local lawyer. If there are any suspicious phone calls about the company Henry says we will have time to close down the main computer and wipe the data off all our laptops and if necessary evacuate the building.
“There was also an admin guy called Andrew, a South African, with light grey, silvery hair.”
“None of the latest recruits has a valid work permit, except Henry who has one through the company. But they have been told that will be arranged. “
(Historically in neighbouring Thailand work permits have not been necessary as Immigration, Crime Suppression and Metropolitan police were allegedly bribed up to US$800.000 a month and employees had a valid immigration status. Unique Property Investments is not registered under that name with the Cambodian Ministry of Commerce.)
Added Walker: “The offer made to me, and to the others too, was two months free accommodation and US$300 a week for the first month. But after that the cash basic was reduced to US$200 a week.
‘By the end of the first month we were expecting to receive much more in commissions’ and be able to find our own pad.
“In this room eight employees are used as an introductory call and once we qualify that the lead is liquid for cash ( US$5000-50,000) the admin sends an email with BEI TRADING contact details and some info on ANT FINANCIAL.
“After four or five days the team leaders (IAN & LIAM) call the lead and close them . So if one of my fronted clients invests I get 10% and the team leader gets 10%. And from the loads I get 5% and the team leader gets 5%.
Most of us were recruited through ads on Craigslist. (Thailand). We were employed as ‘openers’. The recruiter is a British Asian called Adam but I doubt anyone of them uses their real names.”
‘Openers’ are those those who make the first calls. When they get a bite, the clients will be passed on to ‘loaders’ in another office in Phnom Penh.
The Phnom Penh boss, said David, is Barry John (Wilson) a British Phnom Penh property dealer, who heads-up South-East Asia Property Services. He is originally from Kent.
‘Barry John’ also owns a locally registered Investment Company ICVC Venture Capitalists and bars called ‘Shenanigans’ and ‘Chaplin’s’ bars and rarely visits the UPI office.
‘Barry John’ (he does not use his surname), it is understood has to report to a Bangkok based Briton, who runs boiler rooms in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, and who who has ranchised his boiler room operations and invested millions in the tourist ‘nightlife’ in Thailand.
A Bangkok bar ‘Shenanigans’, just as ‘Shenanigans’ Phnom Penh is today, was a notorious haunt of boiler room scammers. The Bangkok pub has since changed both its name and clientele.
The latest revelations will cause another stir in Phnom Penh. Earlier this year the London ‘Sun’ newspaper carried an investigation ‘Inside the Bitcoin Scammer Gangs’.
A SUN journalist posed as a potential ‘scammer’ to interview the British recruiter and also secured a recorded conversation with his potential boss in Phnom Penh,who was selling fake Bitcoins.
The British recruiter Dan Lea, 37, from Basingstoke, Hampshire told him: “The morals have to be completely turned off, so if you’ve got morals you ain’t going to get it.”
And in a WhatsApp conversation with ‘James’ in Phnom Penh he was told the same – and that ‘We’re making US$750,000 a month’.
“What we do is very unethical, if you have no moral dilemmas you’ll do very well in this business.
“We go after people who have money and are greedy enough and stupid enough to send us their money and that’s how we’re able to pay our brokers 20% on any account they open.”
At the time Barry John Wilson was operating a boiler room from a private house guarded by men in military uniform in Phnom Penh. The villa was under the control of his property company. The scammers who worked there were picked up at Shenanigans bar each morning at 5am and were driven to the villa and told not to bring mobile phones.
After the SUN story was published in June the villa operation was closed down even though it was not connected by the SUN to the Bitcoin scam,
The website beitrading.com is easily exposed as a scam, merely there to convince victims that the company exists – which it does not. But the site does not bear much scrutiny.
BEI Trading shows its chief operating officer as a man called Scott Wilson (above right). But the photo of Scott Wilson they present on the net is in fact of Justin Steele director of the Australian company ‘China Ready Now’, which ‘provides tourism and hospitality businesses with the best quality advice on how to cater to the growing Chinese tourist market’.
The other pictures of their CEO and Sales director appear to be of random Japanese nationals.
Other ‘boiler room’ fake companies running from this address include Capital Invest Solutions and NBR Trading. NBR Trading also uses generic photos of its directors who can be found elsewhere on the net under different names. Both sites are still up (October 7, 2018) which suggests they may still be scamming or about to scam. One of the banks connected these operations as a depositing bank is the Agrzicultural Bank of China, Hong Kong Branch, but it is believed an Australian bank is also involved.
Australian has been plagued by boiler room fraudsters based in southeast Asia since early 2000.
Employees of the illegal share trading Brinton Company hide their faces after a raid on Bangkok City Tower. 84 foreign nationals were arrested in a joint operation between the Thai police, the FBI and the Australian Federal Police against ‘boiler room’ crime..
In a widely publicized operation in July 2001, the Thai authorities, liaising with Australian Federal Police and the FBI raided several office buildings in Bangkok and made hundreds of arrests in raids on boiler rooms including the Brinton Group, Foreign Currency International and International Asset Management. The cold callers, who had allegedly cheated Australians out of some US$200 million, were merely charged with working without permits and deported. Many were back on the next plane.
Fraud charges were dropped by the Thai authorities and the bosses were charged with breaching Security Exchange Commission regulations by share trading without authority and merely fined the equivalent of about AUS$10,000.
Since that date boiler rooms have continued to flourish, and a lot more boiler room cash has gone into Bangkok’s notorious night life establishments – and for a while some even went into an English football club.
Recently, however, there has been an exodus of boiler room men from Thailand to Cambodia. This is not due to any crackdown according to John McCleary, a former paymaster for a major Bangkok boiler room, who is now helping the U.S. authorities.
John McCleary: Under threat
McCleary was jailed for 18 years in Thailand in 2008 for the kidnap of American boiler room boss Mark Hutcherson. Three police officers were also jailed but they received only 12 year terms.
McCleary insists he was set up by other boiler room bosses and had taken no part in any kidnap. But he was a threat as he spoke Thai and had access to their accounts.
He was released on a King’s Pardon in 2016. Mark Hutcherson has since died in Plano, Texas and McCleary believing he is still under threat from Bangkok based boiler room operators has armed himself.
“They are trying to present themselves now as respectable businessmen in Thailand. That coupled with the fact that Thai police were getting more and more demanding has made them distance themselves.
“Now they run fewer rooms but they advise on the setting up of the boiler rooms in neighbouring countries, in particular Cambodia, and take a percentage of the profits,” he said.
Boiler room boys have already hit the UK many times. Recently the Financial Conduct Authority issued began the following television campaign.
Don't let a scammer enjoy your retirement - FCA & TPR 60 Second TV Ad
Brits carrying out this con tell their folks back home that they have secured work as investment brokers. Just like Tony Kenway did before he was gunned down in Pattaya, Thailand.
Footage shows moment South African man murders a British in Thailand
Tony Kenway slumped in his car after being gunned down in Pattaya. South African Abel Caldeira Bonita was named as the shooter, Briton Miles Dicken Turner as the getaway driver. Briton Toby Nelhams, a Cambodian boiler room operator was named in court as the alleged mastermind behind the murder but later released after serving time for fraud in Phnom Penh jail.
Tony Kenway. Although his killers were named, they were never arrested. They fled back across the Cambodian border with Thailand the same day.
The following is the script the Phnom Penh ‘openers’ are using.
Good morning this is (BLANK). I’m one of the equity advisors from BEI Trading in Tokyo.
It’s a quick call and it’s not a sales call.
The reason for my call today is simply to open the lines of communication and I need to make sure you have our correct contact details and briefly outline our services. Now with that being said I’m not going to make any definitive offer today.
So, I’ll keep this call short for both of us. OKAY (pause).We are aware of the current challenges Australians are facing mainly with your banks and super-anuation managers.
We constantly monitor various sectors within the markets and try to provide alternative investments solutions to meet your financial goals.
This company is gearing up for next biggest initial public offering since Alibaba went pubic 2014 successfully raising 25billion dollars to further their expansion. Are you familiar with the Alibaba IPO?
Well, Alibaba opened at US$68 when listed on NYSE and within the first two months the share price was up 75% and is currently trading around US$175-180.
Can I ask do you know what a pre-IPIO is?
It’s when a privately held company raises capital to list on a major exchange. Usually pre-IPOs are exclusively reserved for financial institutes, accredited investors and insiders of the company.
Don’t confuse this with an IPO, that’s when the general public gets the first opportunity buy shares on the day the company goes public in one of the major exchanges.
Let me give you 2 examples of pre-IPOs we were involved this year.
Dropbox went public on the 23rd of March 2018 on the Nasdaq. We got our clients in pre-IPO shares which were issued at US$16 and the IPO was issued at US$21 and first day of trading shares closed at US$28. Now our pre-IPO clients made 80% on the first day.
The other is a Chinese tech company Xiaomi. They are the third largest smart phone manufacturer in the world. Got listed on the Hang Seng (Hong Kong Exchange). We put our clients on pre-IPO at HK$12 and it got listed on 9th July as an IPO at HK$16 and went as high as HK$19 and our pre-IPO clients made 60% on the first day.
Now we are expanding our international client base and we are using the Alibaba Group Holdings affiliate company ANT Financial. They are the financial arm of Alibaba group. ANT Financial is currently at the final stage of raising private equity prior to listing on to the NYSE at the end of October or most probably the beginning of November this year.
Ant Financial has over 870 million active users in Asia and they handled more transactions last year than Visa & Mastercard combined. Ant financial profits are up 65% a year to date making them one of the fastest growing companies in the fin-tech sector.
If I put it into context ……… We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to make a phenomenal profit in one of the largest IPO’s before the general public even gets the opportunity to buy these shares.
Just so that you are aware some of the largest investment banks in the world are involved in this IPO. Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan are the legal underwriters to Ant Financial.
Now due to Chinese laws, mainland Chinese banks are not allowed to own assets in foreign publicly trading companies. And we have signed a number of private placement agreements with these banks involved with this pre-IPO to purchase shares in Ant Financial prior to going public at pre-Ipo prices. Shares are being traded on a primary market on a private platform formerly owned by the Nasdaq but accessible for registered financial institutes, accredited investors and insiders of the company.
(Pause) Just so that I can get a better understanding of how we could potentially be of service to you if at all in the future, can I ask you where do you currently have your money working for you?
I know in Australia you have your super-annuation now as I know the better performing supers yielded around 8-10% how did yours fair against that?
Is your super managed or self-managed?
What’s your profession?
How old are you?
What are your short term financial goals? Maybe save for early retirement? Save for grand kids? Pay off mortgage?
What I’m looking for are sophisticated individuals who can digest information on an average 2-3 times per year and who can make business & financial decisions based upon facts and figures rather than emotions. I believe you are able to make your own financial decisions? You’re the sole decision maker?
Provided you have done your due diligence I believe you are in a liquid financial position to consider what we call a test or trial investments of 10k to 50k US$
Are these funds readily available should you decide to move ahead?
Just so you know we offer all our clients a free online trading account it won’t cost you a thing to sign up. its a free service on our website.
What’s your preferred email which I can use to send this information?
…………….@……………..com
I will send my contact info and some links to independent news articles like CNBC and Bloomberg, so you can familiarize yourself with Ant Financial and their future plans putting you in a position of knowledge, so you can make an educated decision.
Further to that I will give a call back in a few days to hear your feedback and initial thoughts and answer any questions you have and more importantly explain the mechanics of the investment and how to open an account with us in order to build a profitable portfolio and make money.
Any questions for me at this stage before I go?
Ok thank you for your time the email is on its way ……please spend 20-30 minutes and do some research …don’t do it for me do it for yourself. Have a great day -Bye
Typical Hilton pitch. CLID.
C = Control. Can you control the punter?
L = Liquid. Do you have the money?
I = Interest. Are you interested in these kind of returns?
D = Decision maker. Can you make the decision to invest the funds without asking anyone else?
Then call back with "the best thing since sliced bread" deal!!
Remember: 2 reasons why people fall for these scams.
1. Greed. No greed. No need. They appeal to your greed.
If it seems too good to be true, it is.
2. Fear of Loss. Losing out on a good deal. Limited shares available. Limited time to take advantage of it.
Hang up on these losers.
I remember when Shaun and the Hilton lot were raided in Cambodia. I heard Shaun was crying. Maybe I can find the Cambodian Army General's email address again. Stand by.
I just emailed the Cambodian Embassy re: this operation.
My message with some info redacted.
To whom it may concern,
I have been informed of an illegal Boiler Room operation being run in your country.
I was involved in reporting another scam operation in 2003.
"Fourteen Britons were among 20 foreigners facing prosecution in Cambodia after being detained on suspicion of operating a "boiler room" share trading racket and setting up an unlicensed international telephone calling system." https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jul/17/cambodia
Currently there is another operation.
Potential Australian and New Zealand investors should know that Bei Trading is not based in Tokyo but on the second floor at #25 & 63, St. 348/205, Sangkat Toul Say Prey II, Khan Chamkarmorn, in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.
sent this to financial services authorities back home in australia n new zealand.
rumour has it in the Penh that the big bosses from Bangkok, Indo and Malaysia want to carve this Barry and James up into pieces. not to mention a bunch of angry aussies prob gonna fly in!! there is gonna be a few dead bodies floating in the mekong in the Penh!
“The door is kept locked. Nobody can buy or rent a property there. There is a procedure if somebody calls. Henry, the room boss, a short haired Yorkshire man from Leeds, who wears Aviator sunglasses, is the only man allowed to go to the door and when he does will go outside to talk to any caller, locking the door on the way out.
Typical Hilton pitch. CLID.
C = Control. Can you control the punter?
L = Liquid. Do you have the money?
I = Interest. Are you interested in these kind of returns?
D = Decision maker. Can you make the decision to invest the funds without asking anyone else?
Then call back with "the best thing since sliced bread" deal!!
Remember: 2 reasons why people fall for these scams.
1. Greed. No greed. No need. They appeal to your greed.
If it seems too good to be true, it is.
2. Fear of Loss. Losing out on a good deal. Limited shares available. Limited time to take advantage of it.
Hang up on these losers.
I remember when Shaun and the Hilton lot were raided in Cambodia. I heard Shaun was crying. Maybe I can find the Cambodian Army General's email address again. Stand by.
I just emailed the Cambodian Embassy re: this operation.
My message with some info redacted.
To whom it may concern,
I have been informed of an illegal Boiler Room operation being run in your country.
I was involved in reporting another scam operation in 2003.
"Fourteen Britons were among 20 foreigners facing prosecution in Cambodia after being detained on suspicion of operating a "boiler room" share trading racket and setting up an unlicensed international telephone calling system."
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jul/17/cambodia
Currently there is another operation.
Potential Australian and New Zealand investors should know that Bei Trading is not based in Tokyo but on the second floor at #25 & 63, St. 348/205, Sangkat Toul Say Prey II, Khan Chamkarmorn, in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh.
"Britons posing as Tokyo based investment brokers have launched a new ‘boiler room’ scam operation out of the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh seeking more pension victims in Australian and New Zealand."
https://www.andrew-drummond.com/2018/10/07/warning-bei-trading-boiler-room-scam-out-of-phnom-pen/
Regards,
***You can tune in to BBC & CNN to see the results soon . . .
WOW. this is awesome news!!
sent this to financial services authorities back home in australia n new zealand.
rumour has it in the Penh that the big bosses from Bangkok, Indo and Malaysia want to carve this Barry and James up into pieces. not to mention a bunch of angry aussies prob gonna fly in!! there is gonna be a few dead bodies floating in the mekong in the Penh!
shit just got real!!!
There's some chatter on this room amongst expats in Phnom Penh.
https://cambodiaexpatsonline.com/general-chatter/phnom-penh-boiler-room-warning-bei-trading-sells-alibaba-ant-financial-paypal-china-t23728-30.html
And here:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/educational-resources/14154-boiler-room-scams-294.html
ASIC – Australian Securities and Investments Commission also has been alerted.
This should turn up the heat on this Boiler Room.