uFun Club accountant caught fleeing, arrested
Following a warrant issued for the arrest of retired General Athiwat Soonpan and his wife, news today that another uFun Club executive has been arrested.
The latest executive of UFun Store arrested today was Ms Namanaphan Tarabundit. She was arrested in Nong Khai while trying to flee into Vientiane.
Vientiane is the capital city of neighboring Laos, which borders Thailand to the north.
Royal Thai Police commissioner Pol Gen Somyot Phumphanmuang said the woman held 9,000 shares in UFun Store valued at 900,000 baht.
But she was the sole executive who could sign off bank transactions.
Within six month time, she has signed off more than 80 transactions value over 116 million baht ($3.5 million USD) to affiliates of UFun Store, he said.
I’m guessing 9,000 shares corresponds to 9000 uTokens, or whatever fractional method was being used by the company to track the coins.
Tarabundit’s arrest brings the total to five, with more expected over the coming week.
Thai authorities have formally requested Malaysia extradite uFun Club executives currently believed to be hiding out there.
Thai police have now sent warrant to Malaysia seeking its cooperation to hunt down Arthit Parnkaew and extradite him back to Thailand to face charges.
Reports out of Thailand suggest Athiwat Soonpan fled to the US last Friday. Whether or not Thai authorities will request the US extradite him remains to be seen.
Meanwhile the other uFun Club executives with warrants issued against them remain at large.
Of note is that Thai police have discovered Parnkaew, who is credited with being the owner of uFun Club, is of Malaysian nationality but used a Thai ID card to register the business.
Police revealed Parnkaew had previously been arrested and charged for dealing in counterfeit goods.
Also revealed was the assets police have seized over the past few days. A raid on Athiwat Soonpan’s residence was particularly fruitful, with police seizing ‘several land title deeds in several provinces and many cars‘.
The number of assets that were previously seized were so substantial that authorities had to find alternate holding facilities in order to accommodate all of them.
Looking forward,
As to whether the DSI will be accepting the case to investigate, further consideration of the evidence will have to be considered in order to decide if the case warrants special investigations.
Meanwhile Department for Special Investigations (DSI) deputy secretary-general Pol Col Paisit Wongmueng revealed that he will be calling a meeting tomorrow with authorities for a progress report on the ongoing investigation.
The meeting will also be looking into the legal charges being filed against the company and the circumstance leading to the arrest of the suspects.
He stated that this was to ensure that all parties were on the same page and efforts will be coordinated.
Stay tuned…
tarabundit, may prove to be a treasure trove of information about the financial transactions of ufun/ustore.
how the money came in and flowed out, who were the chief beneficiaries, will all be very important for the thai police to unravel the ufun fraud.
unlike the US, where ponzi/pyramids are charged under wire/mail fraud, or india where they are charged under the PCMC act, thailand has a different head under which it charges ponzi/pyramids:
That’s because prosecutors or agencies must use existing laws, they can’t invent their own laws.
In the U.S., securities laws will cover the civil side of investment frauds, e.g. a company can be halted by a court. Wire fraud and mail fraud will cover the criminal side (for many different types of frauds).
The existence of securities isn’t really an issue in the criminal case against Paul Burks. The existence of a fraud is essential.
in thailand, it seems there is no ‘civil prosecution’ of ponzi/pyramid fraud. the ufun business was not stopped by a court order, but by revoking the business license of ufunstore/ufun.
it became a criminal case immediately, there is no chance of a civil case, no chance settling with fines and an injunction etc.
you do ponzi – you go jail.
Seems Thai follows the Chinese model: large scale fraud are criminal in nature as they are regarded as “crime against the economy”.
Not that I know any Thai law, of course. 🙂
1. The most important person that is the sole accountant will be interrogated by the authorities and soon more information will leak-out.
2. More arrest warrants will be issued with information gather from the interrogation.
3. With the information gather, the authorities will follow the trail of the money, locally & oversea.
4. Malaysian perpetrators will be extradited to Thailand to face the charges.
5. Then Ufun Malaysia will face the same scenarios like counterpart in Thailand.
6. The court case will take 4 to 6 years before the final verdict is reached.
7. Only by then the in-denial & greedy investors might be able to get their money back if there any left after the trial.
8. Like most cases there nothig left because the money untraceable, used for promoting expenses, operating expenses, court & legal charges, etcs.
9. But sometimes the greedy investors might get a small percentage (below 15%) on the amount they invested.
Folks, money is the root to all evil. The truth hurts!
facebook.com/UtokenLatestNews/posts/1612066995676382
Saw this on Facebook, “Thai UFUN members takes legal action against the government in retaliation”. Is this true?
Blaming game has started! The license revoked & this group are wasting their time & money blaming the authorities.
After receiving official complaints, the authorities raided & conficated evidents & documents in order to bring the perpetrators to court before more greedy investors sucked into this scheme.
The group of 50 do have their own agenda but sadly they are fighting a losing battle.
The truth hurts!
Police searched a house belonging to Lt-General Athiwat Sunpan, a retired Army officer who was named as a suspect but reportedly fled the country, and found eight title deeds and some valuables in four safes.
Four of the deeds were for parcels in Prachin Buri that were transferred to U-Fun.
Hmmmmm……must be selling the land to Ufun at a very high price. Park the money oversea under different name. The truths hurts!
The police should also investigate the group of 50 if any of them are involved actively in recruiting new member or helping with the scam!
The truth hurts!
Standard blame game, i.e. the government didn’t act fast enough to save my money (but if the government didn’t act they’ll still be giving away their money to the scammers).
Generally lawsuits against the government like this, unless they can prove that the government was actually negligent (i.e. someone “looked the other way”) will be dismissed, or the judge will stay the case pending outcome of the prosecution of the perps.
In the US, I recall that many investors tried to sue the SEC for not catching Madoff earlier. (Madoff was only caught because he confessed when he ran out of money) They were all dismissed.
I see a guy talking on his phone, some women flipping through papers, some guy playing on his iPad and two women holding a bit of paper.
I didn’t see any “action” taken against the Thai government or anyone else.
Sometimes. Not all frauds involve securities.
apparently, eddy tan is holding a ufun seminar in manila tomorrow.
meanwhile ufun affiliates are selling ‘confidence and hope’ in ALL CAPS:
rahrahrah.
That’s why I used the term “investment frauds”.
“Consumer frauds” will be a different cathegory, a type of “commercial fraud”. Robert Craddock’s “oil spill compensation fraud” will belong in a different cathegory. “Internet dating frauds” will be a different cathegory.
anjali: not all investment frauds are ‘securities’.
a franchisee investment fraud, will be a commercial fraud, not a ‘securities’ fraud.
Correct. It may belong in a different cathegory even if it involves some type of investment.
You and Hoss have probably added some “additional meanings” to the initial statement.
Hoss added an “all frauds” idea, and you seem to have added an “all frauds that involve some type of investment of money” idea.
Both of you have probably failed to look at the initial statement, i.e. whether ideas like those easily can be constructed from the statement (when you read it in context with the rest of that post).
Not all investment frauds involve securities either. This was fully discussed previously.
I believe I already have covered that one in my reply to Anjali?
You have probably added some “additional meaning” to the initial statement, e.g. you added an “all frauds” interpretation in post #12.
Since the initial post didn’t contain anything about “all frauds” or “all frauds that involve some type of investment of money”, I will be unable to recognize the logical reasoning for ideas like that.
To make it become more understandable, you will need to point to the initial post and explain WHY you interpreted it in a specific way.
I already did.
Your statement ” Securities laws will cover the civil side of investment frauds” is often, but not always true.
I don’t think there has been any disputes about that either?
You have probably added the idea “always” or “always true” (or some other ideas) to the initial statement as some type of “extended meaning”.
That “extended meaning” simply isn’t there. It will be rather meaningless to add ideas like “always” or “only” to that post, e.g. the idea that the civil side of investment frauds will be covered by securities laws only.
Post #2 is organized like this:
You seem to have ignored the main part of the answer.
In the latest developments, the Thai authorities announced that they have 12 arrest warrants with 5 of them being arrested.
They have added more investigators to handle the extra work on this case and they are working with the Anti-Money Laundering Office to retrieve assets sent to other countries.
Namonpan Thara-bundit, who was arrested at the Thai border, told police that she had invested Bt 1 Million in the scheme last year until she recouped the investment.
Then she heard the Consumer-Protection Board was investigating the firm last October so she pulled out and told her sub-distributors to get out too.
She said she didn’t know she was wanted and was just visiting Laos for a vacation. Yeah right, vacation my assets.
Namonpan has told police that she tried to quit the business after noticing alleged irregularities in UFUN Thailand and claimed she told UFUN Thailand members in her team of her suspicions.
“UFUN Thailand management then got angry. My account at UFUN Thailand has been suspended. I can no longer conduct any transaction or withdraw any money,” she claimed.
She has now advised UFUN Thailand members to lodge complaints with police to try to get their money back from the firm.
Read more here: nationmultimedia.com/national/Police-seeking-to-recoup-funds-from-UFUN-30258229.html
To Ufun greedy investors the truth hurts!
In the statement, he said he and his wife had travelled to the US to visit their son who is studying there. They will return to Thailand soon and turn themselves in to police and fight the allegations against them.
Read more here: bangkokpost.com/news/general/532259/cops-raid-ponzi-suspect-s-house
yeah right, as soon as the thai police began it’s raids, they upped and ran, on The Same Day.
sudden overflow of parental love? ha.
the chances of soonpans returning to thailand are as believable, as the chance that he went to the US to meet his son.
soonpan has released a video of his statement. shorn of his uniform, and in an ill fitting tshirt, he is sans all the pomp and grandeur and respectability that his uniform represented.
just another greedy man, in search for a quick buck. petty thief.
facebook.com/UtokenForum/videos/vb.906118826095460/948390091868333/?type=2&theater&_rdr
I almost got involve in UFUN. I was in the process of sending funds to my sponsor.
Earlier today I came accross this site. Here is a video that my to be sponsor just sent out where supposedly the Ufun CEO responds to Thai raid.
(Ozedit: Link to video removed, already posted here – https://behindmlm.com/companies/ufun-club-investors-in-denial-over-shutdown-spread-lies/ )
Well, the members just keep on coming up with more and more BS trying to quell the discontent of UToken members.
Here is the latest, which sounded just like the members of ASD and Zeek:
Meanwhile the authorities just keep on arresting more people and exposing this Ponzi.
but according to ufunners the DSI had ‘cleared ufun’ a while back?
the DSI at this point, is probably only considering whether to take the case over from the thai police, or not.
with 12 arrest warrants and the extensive material recovered by the police, the ponzi is obvious. investigations do not stop because there aren’t enough ‘complaints’.
@Oz, 9,000 company shares – nothing to do with UToken, which do not outside of the trading system.
Well what are the shares then. uFun Club isn’t listed on a stock exchange?