9M AI has received a securities fraud warning from Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC).

As per SFC’s December 1st 9M AI fraud warning, 9M AI operates as “9M AI Group Inc.” and its

products purport to involve investment strategies related to virtual assets, along with other benefits including referral incentives through a VIP reward system.

9M AI isn’t registered to offer securities in Hong Kong, making it an unregistered investment scheme.

Unregistered investment schemes are illegal as per Hong Kong financial law.

9M AI is a Chinese “click a button” app Ponzi. BehindMLM has documented hundreds of the scams since they first emerged back in 2021.

Since BehindMLM published its 9M AI review in June 2025, someone has been hired to play CEO “Chris Chang”:

Other names we can attach to 9M AI include “Joanne Faith Teo”:

“Tristan Li”:

And “Kevin Sheahan”:

9M AI’s “executives” are assumed to be local actors and/or accomplices hired from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and/or Hong Kong.

Despite efforts to crack down on Chinese scam compounds in south-east Asia, “click a button” app Ponzis like 9M AI persist.

In September 2024, the US Department of Treasury sanctioned Cambodian politician Ly Yong Phat over ties to Chinese human trafficking scam factories.

Through various companies he owns, Phat is alleged to shelter Chinese scammers operating out of Cambodia.

Myanmar claims to have deported over 50,000 Chinese scam factory scammers since October 2023. With “click a button” app scams continuing to feature on BehindMLM though, it is clearly not enough.

In late January 2025, Chinese ministry representatives visited Thailand. The stated aim of the visit was to tackle organized Chinese crime gangs operating from Myanmar.

In early February 2025, Thailand announced it had cut power, internet access and petrol supplies to Chinese scam factories operating across its border with Myanmar.

As of February 20th, Thai and Chinese authorities claim ten thousand trafficked hostages had been freed from Myanmar compounds.

Also on February 20th, five Chinese crime bosses were nabbed in a wider raid of four hundred and fifty arrests in the Philippines.

On March 19th it was reported that, despite the recent raids and arrests, “up to 100,000 people” are still working in Chinese Myanmar scam factories.

As of April 2025 and in response to a crackdown across Asia, newly opened Chinese scam factories have been reported in Nigeria, Angola and Brazil.

Myawaddy is an area in Myanmar along the Thai border. Myawaddy is under the control of the Karen National Army (KNA).

The KNA, led by warlord Chit Thu (right) and sons Saw Htoo Eh Moo and Saw Chit Chit, protect and profit from organized Chinese criminals running “click a button” Ponzi scam factories.

On May 5th the US imposed sanctions on Chit Thu (right).

The Treasury said the warlord, Saw Chit Thu, is a central figure in a network of illicit and highly lucrative cyberscam operations targeting Americans.

The move puts financial sanctions on Saw Chit Thu, the Karen National Army that he heads, and his two sons, Saw Htoo Eh Moo and Saw Chit Chit, the department said in a statement, freezing any U.S. assets they may hold and generally barring Americans from doing business with them.

Britain and the European Union have already imposed sanctions on Saw Chit Thu.

A May 25th report cites Myanmar and Loas as having “towering scam economies”. Cambodia however is reported to be a hotspot for Chinese criminal activity.

Cambodia is likely the absolute global epicentre of next-gen transnational fraud in 2025 and is certainly the country most primed for explosive growth going forward.

Cambodia is becoming the centre of an exploding global scam economy driven primarily by Chinese organised crime.

Chinese gangs are reported to operate in Cambodia under the protection of unnamed local politicians.

In June 2025, Amnesty International claimed Cambodia’s government was

“deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs who have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds.

The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centres and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh.

The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, it said, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement in dark rooms and beatings.

On November 18th, 2025, Alice Guo, a former Philippine mayor, was sentenced to life imprisonment over her role in setting up a human-trafficking scam compound.

Guo helped incorporate Baofu Land Development, which owned an eight-hectare (20 acres) complex in Bamban town, north of Manila, before running for mayor in 2022.

Employees there complained that they were coerced to carry out investment and love scams and were beaten up or electrocuted when they failed to hit their quotas.

Cases against Guo’s Chinese-born business associates, Zhang Ruijin and Lin Baoying, who were convicted in Singapore’s largest money laundering case, and others who were at large had been archived, the court said. These cases would be revived upon the suspects’ arrest, it added.

Guo herself is a Chinese citizen and accused “Chinese government agent”. Due to her nationality, a Manila court retrospectively determining she was ineligible to hold office.

The case emphasizes how organized Chinese crime gangs rely on politicians to facilitate illegal activity.

On November 27th South Korea imposed sanctions against fifteen individuals and 132 entities tied to a “surge” in “online scams … targeting Korean nationals”.

Prince Group and its Chairman Chen Zhi were among those sanctioned.

Regardless of which country they operate from, ultimately the same group of Chinese scammers are believed to be behind the “click a button” app Ponzi plague.