Thai regulators seek extradition of uFun Club fugitives
Following the arrest of four uFun Club insiders last Friday, three Malaysian nationals and one Thai national remain at large.
They, along with other uFun Club insiders are believed to be currently hiding out in Malaysia.
Arrest warrants have been issued for
the three Malaysians, Tae Kim Leng, a shareholder and director, Lee Kuan Ming, a director, and Wong Ching Hua, a shareholder and director.
Another Thai Arthit Pankaew who is said to be owner of the company is still at large.
As efforts continue to bring uFun Club’s ringleaders to justice, Thai PBS are reporting that Thai authorities are seeking extradition of the culprits.
The three Malaysians have left the country and Thai police are seeking their extradition to face the fraud charge.
The news comes after yesterday it was revealed two additional arrest warrants were issued in connection with the case.
Police are currently hunting down retired General Athiwat Soonpan (sometimes spelt Athiwat Sunpan) and his wife, Jirapimon Soonpan.
Soonpan is believed to have fled Thailand on April 10th, the same day Thai authorities made their initial arrests and raided uFun Club offices.
uFun Club’s Thai business license had been revoked two days earlier on the 8th, possibly tipping Soonpan off.
Commenting on the General’s apparent fleeing of the country, Thai Police commissioner Pol Gen Somyot Phumphangmuang
said that the UFun chairman Lt-Gen Athiwat could leave the country because he was not a suspect in the case or has a warrant for his arrest.
However after the warrant was issued, the police would arrest him immediately if he is in the country, or seek his extradition if he flees to any country.
The current whereabouts of Soonpan are unknown, but he is believed to be hiding out with fellow uFun Club executives in Malaysia.
Two days ago another uFun Club ringleader, Daniel Tay (real name Tay Kim Leng), appeared in a video and professed his and the company’s innocence.
He said the company is willing to comply with the laws, cooperate with Thai authorities, and provide necessary information to prove its innocence.
Although the company’s business in Thailand has been temporarily suspended and its bank accounts frozen pending the police investigation, the company will do all it can to make payments to members who…
Despite Tay’s pledge, he remains a fugitive on the run and is believed to be currently hiding out in Malaysia.
Whether or not Tay plans to return to Thailand to face the charges against him remains to be seen. Given Tay and his fellow insiders refusal to face charges in Thailand, any claims of legitimacy ring pointedly hollow.
Pol Lt-Gen Suveera said the police have gained substantial evidence to charge UFun executives of deceiving the people in operating the so-called Pyramid scheme.
To date, Malaysian authorities have yet to issue a public statement on the $300 million dollar Ponzi scheme.
Meanwhile in response to the ongoing regulatory action targeting uFun Club and its executives, Thai police claim
the company has threatened to file counter-lawsuits against anyone who filed police complaints against it.
Stay tuned…
Care to translate this clip. Tq.
youtube.com/watch?v=CWrXYUUwW5I
didya see that ruby necklace at min .59? if those are ‘real’ rubies, that necklace will be worth a Bomb.
hmmm, general soonpan&family appear to be connoisseurs of ‘stuff’.
is it just me or does their home seem to be overly littered with ‘stuff’.
it also appears they scrammed in a hurry , leaving everything behind. but i’m pretty sure they have offshore accounts at brunei, or someplace else.
I highly doubt that Tae and associates are hiding in Malaysia. I’m thinking Seychelles or Guinea in Africa, or maybe Vanuatu in the Pacific.
That comes after Malaysia cracks down :).
Translation is sketchy but this Thai news source seems to suggest cooperation with Malaysian and Thai police.
There’s also a line that looks to be claiming that uFun Club are based out of Malaysia is false, seeing as it’s just as illegal there as in Thailand.
A more accurate translation from one of our Thai readers would be greatly appreciated:
now26.tv/view/41446/%E0%B8%9A%E0%B8%B8%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%88%E0%B8%B1%E0%B8%9A-%E0%B8%9E%E0%B8%A5%E0%B9%82%E0%B8%97-%E0%B8%99%E0%B8%AD%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%8A%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%B2%E0%B8%A3%E0%B9%82%E0%B8%A2%E0%B8%87%E0%B9%81%E0%B8%8A%E0%B8%A3%E0%B9%8C%E0%B8%A5%E0%B8%B9%E0%B8%81%E0%B9%82%E0%B8%8B%E0%B9%88-UFUN.html
(Note the above link looks screwy because it’s in Thai. Worked when I copy and pasted it though to test.)
what ozdelphi! you just poured a bucket of cold water over all the above^^ Grand Plans! 🙂
unless, the ufun management is talented enough to conduct these programs in handcuffs.
@Oz’s report contains the address of Athiwat Soonpan’s home, so I looked it up Google Maps. Streetview images are dated January 2012, and is missing the sign in Thai that reads “Lt Gen. Athiwat Soonpan”
NOLINK://https://www.google.com.au/maps/@13.870334,100.577141,3a,75y,166.56h,87.26t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sP4AqSipWBKmadBCsF68ThQ!2e0?hl=en
by thai standards, soonpans home could be considered upscale?
he may have purchased it after he started making money from ufun, from 2013 onwards?
this would explain why his nameplate sign is missing in 2012?
@Oz, my Thai is limited, but it appears to say that Soonpan is in the USA.
@Oz, both your report and a report i’ve just watched on YouTube claims that the UFun head office is in Malaysia.
UFun is a trans national operation, so it wouldn’t surprise me. It has been my impression that Thai police didn’t really understand the UFun business when they started their investigation. They’re learning fast now.
They must now know about “BDG Bank” in Guinea and “UToken Reserve Limited” in Seychelles. An awful lot of money was wired to NSIA Bank in Guinea, where mickey mouse “BDG Bank” has its account.
BTW, Thai language reports are still saying 20 Billion Baht in losses – not the 10 Billion reported today in English language news.
@OzD Thanks for the translation.
Can we confirm the report states Soonpan has fled to the US?
ufunstore.com is down citing maintenance.
@anjali,
Very downscale for a Lt. General. But it is close to Bangkok’s second airport. Maybe he wanted to keep a low profile?
@anjali, that website has been down for a year or so. It was UFun’s original ecommerce site launched June 2013. Nowadays it’s NOLINK://ubtmall.com, which has been going nowhere in terms of sales.
if it is true, it will be bloody interesting to see what the US does!
ufun’s tentacles have spread to the US too. the US is the ponzibuster of the world, how can they take soonpan in, and give him refuge?
soonpan is not dumb, he would not walk into the US and hope to be protected.
maybe he went to the US first, and then caught a flight out to someplace else?
commonsense says he won’t hole up in the US.
oops. thanks for the correction.
@Oz, will confirm within 4 hours, and will have more to report.
Thanks for the effort. Portuguese I can make out auto-translated but Thai doesn’t work too well :(.
Jamison Palmer appears to be a major player in UFUN.
Will Jamison and the other UFUN promoters be forced to repay their ill-gotten gains as was the case with Zeek Rewards?
Well Jimmy Hoh is at it again. Here’s the latest missive he sent to the members:
Hmm, protect him? Guess they want to hide him from the authorities. Delusion in all its glory.
palmer actually Moved to asia [thailand?/malaysia?] to build his ufun business.
his blog spot is quiet since news of thailand ufun arrests broke.
his personal ufun team was 600 members strong.
winners masters academy or WMA lists its ‘headquarters’ at the same address as UBTmall in serdang perdana, kuala lumpur, malaysia:
so, in the current situation ,with jimmy hoh and danial tay etc all expected to be in malaysia, one could say this message is an ‘inside job’.
Why kelvin cho is not on the wanted list? I thought he is also one of the key person.
If im correct he is now incharge of Unispace tv (Part of Ufun).
Probably because the Thai police are still learning about the operation and many people involved.
Today the police brought in the lock pickers to open Soonpan’s 4 safes. Let’s hope the many documents within help them in their inquiries.
Your days are numbered. If Ufun is a legit billion dollar company then get your CEO or Dato Daniel Tay to sue the authorities if Ufun Malaysia is raided with top mangement arrested.
To in denial & greedy Ufun investors, you can’t handle the truth because the truth hurts!
the head office of ufun is the bangna tower office, in bangkok, thailand.
the head office of UBT mall [u barter trade], is in Taman Serdang Perdana, selangor, malaysia.
so, one could say they had a head office in both thailand and malaysia. if danial tay is a malaysian, it is possible he lived and ran the operations out of malaysia
i think it has to do with technicalities.
the police cannot get an arrest warrant, for a person, from a court, on the basis of — his name is all over the internet, he attends and speaks at ufun functions, etc.
to get an arrest warrant they have to show some documented connection.
after the raids on ufunstore and other places, the police may have found material which helped them get an arrest warrant issued for gen soonpan and his wife.
kevin cho, eddy tan, will all get their names on arrest warrants too, as the investigation progresses.
this is why the company had a corporate board which was unofficially known to participants, but was never formally incorporated on the company websites etc.
when the complaints came in thailand, the police had to first arrest relative ‘unknowns’, who’s names may have been on property registration forms or something.
the net result of this, is that everyone had time to catch the first flight out.
so, the top henchmen of ufun, had planned an escape route, right from the beginning.
and jimmy hoh of WMA is telling everyone there was ‘no intention to cheat’!
“Appear” was the operating word. And UFUN appears to have created 5,000 millionaires or billionaires. And Rippln appeared to be highly successful, until people had a closer look at it.
here’s some fresh balm for broken ufunner hearts.
first they were told it was ‘jealous competition’ that had brought about the thailand investigation. however they failed to disclose who this ‘jealous competition’ was.
second they were told members had gone berserk on the net, exaggerating ufun earnings, and this brought about the thailand investigation.
now, they’re saying- ‘hey all the big guys get in trouble! we’re not alone!’. then they want to say ‘ufun’ in the same breath as amway, avon, herbalife, to get some respectability to rub off on them. they should have said zeek, telexfree, instead?
hello mr excuses, where is gen soonpan? where is danial tay?
did amway, avon, herbalife bosses Ever Run away??
Legitimacy by association. It never works.
uFun Club have already dragged how many company’s names through the mud with their bogus partnerships now?
Why not a few MLM companies too…
just so that it is clear.
india till date, has no regulations/regulator in place for MLM.
the actions against amway were based on an outdated prehistoric act.
amway operations were never shut down in india.
comparing the arrest of the amway CEO in india, to the ufun thai investigations and arrests, is misdirection, misinformation and a blatant misexcuse.
@Oz, confirming Thai media reports that Soonpan and wife fled to USA.
i would be very surprised if they are still in the US. the US may have been their first stop, to take a breather and plan ahead.
Well, the fun and delusion of the UFun members never stop. Here’s their latest attempt to quell the discontent of the members:
Anyone want to place bets on how long this will stay up before it is taken down? I think these people live in a parallel universe.
IMHO, probably some Judas Goat trying to buy time so he and family can flee rather than lynched / hounded by his minions.
Wonder why Jamison Palmer is not taking that blogspot down. Look on the facebook comments..people are asking how to purchase packages and join. They don’t know about the arrests?