Not guilty plea entered in Samoan uFun Club Ponzi case
Following a series of delays, a final preliminary hearing was held today in the Samoan uFun Club Ponzi case.
Three individuals were arrested earlier this month, who now face “at least 7 charges of obtaining by deceit” in a case before the Samoan Supreme Court.
After heavily promoting uFun Club in Samoa throughout May, funds invested by locals and businesses were marked for transfer out of Samoa. The total amount of funds Samoans have invested into uFun Club is believed to be close to a million dollars.
This caught the attention of the Central Bank of Samoa, who promptly began an investigation.
That lead to the arrest of Nicolas Giannos, Rosita Stanfield and an unidentified seventy-four year old local pastor.
The trio plead not guilty earlier today, with a hearing seeing questions about the case against them raised.
(Chief Justice) Patu pointed out to the prosecution, that they need to provide evidence to support their argument.
Proving uFun Club is a Ponzi scheme is easy enough on paper, but presenting evidence in court will likely see Samoan authorities rely on evidence collected by their Thai counterparts.
Much of the uFun Club fraud has been and continues to be orchestrated from Malaysia, with authorities there yet to lift a finger against the scheme (at least publicly, as of the time of publication).
Should Samoan authorities fail to present enough evidence that uFun Club is a Ponzi scheme, they run the risk of having charges filed against Giannos, Stanfield and the Pastor being dismissed.
This would likely see the suspects board the first plane out of Samoa, along with the million or so dollars locals invested into uFun Club.
Surprisingly, those who invested appear to have yet to realize they’ve been scammed:
The Chief Justice also questioned how the police are proceeding with this case if all their witnesses are denying any act of deceit by the defendants.
“The people genuinely believed the business advertisement but were not aware of the deception behind the scheme,” said the Prosecutor
She said if the Central Band of Samoa did not identify the scheme, people would still be in the dark.
“Part of the deception is not knowing they were being deceived,” argued the Prosecutor.
There seems to be a conflict of information in the case, as police reported only a few days ago that at least eight victims had filed complaints.
Authorities in Thailand filed a criminal case report with the Attorney General’s Office late last week, with Public Prosecutors expected to announce criminal charges against uFun Club executives any day now.
Meanwhile in Samoa the case was adjourned till Thursday. Following any unexpected developments, Thursday will see another hearing date set as the case proceeds towards trial.
Stay tuned…
the world over, ponzi schemes are prosecuted on the basis of their compensation plan and actual functioning.
if regulators receive complaints, they can proceed to prove their case on the modus operandi of the business, and not on the basis of what witnesses have to say.
i think the preliminary questions of the judge of the samoan supreme court, are in the interests of justice and fairness, since the prosecution has yet to lay out its case at trial.
A victim that doesn’t realize s/he had been victimized, is nonetheless a victim.
This is sometimes known as “The Matrix Argument”. If you never realized you’re in the Matrix, it doesn’t mean you were never a victim of the Machines’s deception.
The question is if the Samoan justice system is more of the reactive type that requires on FIR (much like Indian system) or can the prosecutors, acting for the public (rather than a specific complainant) can initiate lawsuits on his/her own (more like the American system).
The Samoan prosecutor needs to line up some expert witnesses ASAP, else they risk of letting there 3 get away.
Recall a criminal case in Texas back in 1990’s where a certain company sold bogus bomb detectors to cops, and none of the cops that was deceived recanted their belief that they saw the device work (even when challenged by skeptic James Randi).
The jury acquitted the company despite FBI warning that the detector’s bogus.
Is Lyn Summers getting cold feet? Apparently the excuse is that the nickel mine is to be prospected by Australian investors or something of that nature and that is the cause of the delay.
Lyn Summers get cold feet??? No not cold feet, but she is hiding and is afraid of being exposed as thief and fraud. Lyn Summers is a liar, con woman and total fraud!!! Don’t give her money or get caught by her…
She has no money, lives off credit and clients commissions, spending investors money in Get Rich Quick Ponzi schemes. She is a get rich quick merchant at her best. Just ask to see all her profitable trading receipts and the so called millions of $$$ she has made! Poof…gone…
Its all lies and this woman needs to go to JAIL!!!
She has ‘NEVER’ been involved in listing IPO’s ‘EVER’, just spruiking her B/S from the internet to her paying clients. She could not list a new company for IPO if she tried.
She is broke and doesn’t have the connections or licencing to do so!!! Apart from her best friends and fellow crooks Daniel and Nick.. haha..
She claims she is a “Licenced Financial Adviser”, but this is big fat lie. She has NEVER held a full financial licence, (only as a sub representative) and she still is UNLIENCED!!! Look it up on ASICs web site. She is not allowed to give Financial Advice!!
She makes false claims about her trading, say’s her courses are Accredited with the NTA (National Training Authority), another big lie, as her accreditation ran out in 2010 when she couldn’t pay the regulatory fees of less that $10K. (Easily proven).
She’s been involved in Ponzi Schemes for years and puts her naïve database of clients into them. They all have or will soon loose their money.
Her last Ponzi was in a property trust investment with scammer John Lewington at (JRL Consortium), then it was G1E (Global 1 Entertainment), now its (UFun) and Unaico.
Her investors can kiss their million $$$ UFun investment goodbye, and hundreds of other innocent people have and WILL loose their money.
She doesn’t trade shares as she claims and has no money. Just ask her for “PROVE” by providing statements and her trading receipts!
Lyn Summers is well aware of what she does. She doesn’t care, is not naïve and she is defiantly not innocent!!! She is a liar, a fraud from day 1 and needs to be “STOPPED”!!!
Don’t be caught out by this woman and if everyone reports her to the ASIC and the ATO her in Australia as a fraud then these government bodies will act….
I got the same impression when I checked it in the first half of May. She seems to be playing a role as a “Financial Advisor / highly successful investor”, and she seems to have done that for several years. She probably plays that role well, but she doesn’t have much “substance”.
A summary:
behindmlm.com/companies/ufun-club/daniel-tay-admits-ufun-club-illegal-11th-arrest-in-thailand/#comment-338768
Some more details about license (post #4, different thread):
behindmlm.com/mlm/regulation/ufun-club-affiliates-who-intimidated-their-victims-arrested/#comment-338218
I didn’t exclude that she might have had some successful investments in some companies in the past. I only looked at some “role-playing signs”.
That last link has some additional information in post #7. I haven’t seen that post before, I got my impression from my own research.
I based my “playing a role” impression on several factors, e.g. StockCourse’s “About” page (the vagueness in her description)
stockcourse.net/about-us/lyn-summers-trader-a-mentor
The 2009 version had even more “fairytales”:
People write stuff like that when they try to motivate themselves, or when they’re following some selfdev ideas, e.g. “focus on the person you want to become” ideas, or some self suggestion ideas (they have many fancy names).
But I actually checked the license issue first. She (StockCourse Pty Ltd) actually had a Financial Advisor Representative license until August 2014, a representative for a real financial advisor firm.
the malaysian high commissioner to samoa, is currently visiting samoa :
i wonder whether the matter of nicolas giannos, rosita stanfield and another, will be discussed.
after all, these two met the highest authorities in samoa [the PM/the head of the samoan central bank] to get their backing for the ufun ponzi scheme which runs from malaysia.
talamua.com/malaysia-samoa-continue-development-on-trading-opportunities/