uFun investors caught trying to launder funds into Malaysia
Another four uFun Club investors arrested today, after they were caught trying to launder uFun Ponzi funds out of Thailand and into Malaysia.
For whatever reason, it appears Thai uFun affiliates who heavily profited from the scheme believe they’re likely better off in Malaysia.
Niphaphorn Lamee, Theerawaj Phatcharasuyayai, Natthawatra Uttamakaew and Boon Kiat Choo had withdrawn $675,000 USD out of uFun Club related bank accounts in Thailand, and then attempted to cross the border into Malaysian.
The investors were caught red-handed and arrested in Padang Besar, a Thai town on the Thailand-Malaysian border.
In other uFun Club related news, further details of the murky business operations of UDBP bank reveal some insight the business relationships uFun Club management fostered.
Turns out Kevin Lai, the Malaysian manager of the UDBP branch raided last week, pretty much bought diplomatic protection from Vanuatu.
Thai police have raided and blocked access to 13 rooms at a condominium on Ratchadaphisek Road here owned by a Malaysian suspect involved in the controversial UFun investment scheme.
Kevin Lai, who owns the rooms and is under police custody, was the manager of UDBP Management (Thailand), which was promoted openly as a commercial bank but not registered as one with the Bank of Thailand.
The rooms had allegedly been used to host members of the UFun management and diplomats from Vanuatu, of which Lai is reportedly an honourable envoy since April 2014.
Lai appears to be the link between uFun Club management and money laundering through UDBP (with Vanuatu’s blessing):
Suwira said Lai paid a salary to Vanuatu diplomats for conditions he did not specify.
Lai, who also held diplomatic status for the Micronesian country of Nauru in 2005 but was discharged from the post in 2011, continued misusing his diplomatic immunity for things such as importing luxury cars without paying taxes.
Scammers getting into bed with scammers, who’d have thought.
Amusingly, when police began sniffing around Lai’s activities in Thailand, the Vanuatuan government immediately issued a ‘ request to recognize him as a special envoy’.
Thankfully Thai authorities refused the request and Lai was apprehended.
Talk about shonky… As if it wasn’t bad enough uFun Club has been linked to Malaysian politics and royalty, now their bankers are revealed to be shill diplomats who were relying on purchased diplomatic immunity.
To the best of my knowledge none of this has been reported by Vanuatuan media, nor has the government of Vanuatu issued a statement regarding the arrest of Lai last week.
Stay tuned…
justicealwayslate has a video of the arrests, but i cant figure how to get a copy here:
facebook.com/JusticeAlwaysLate
vanuatu has been trying to fight off the ‘passports for sale’ business for decades now, but in a micro economy like vanuatu, the money is obviously ‘too good’ for govt servants to refuse.
also ‘peoples republic of china’ has emerged as a major ‘aid giver’ to vanuatu’s struggling economy. is this why the ethnic chinese involved with ufun/UDBP have been getting special treatment of having banks allocated to them and diplomatic passports handed out?
We covered some background info for UDBP Bank, Kevin Lai, Vanuatu banking laws, BDG Bank (Guinea), PEMF, Kevin Lai’s status as an official representative for Vanuatu, and similar topics in another thread.
behindmlm.com/companies/ufun-club/thai-police-estimate-ufun-club-ponzi-losses-at-1-17-billion/#comment-336431
I stopped checking more details when the topic derailed too much from Ufun / UDBP Bank, e.g. when it derailed into a Free Trade Zone property investment fraud in 2001.
I knew some of it would come up when the Thai police would start to focus on money laundering.
Does anyone know the status of Jamison Palmer ? is he back in U.S. hiding out ?
Or any U.S. high up reps ?
In his FB entry on May 12,he claimed to be in Bali “preparing for world takeover”
rodney burton was very active on the ufun scene. but since he was followed and outed by behindmlm, he has switched to pushing ‘jetbox’, which is probably an illegal streaming TV box MLM opportunity.
it seems kevin lai was bringing chinese construction companies into vanuatu, and assisting vanuatu, in return for the license to run a money laundering ‘bank’.
UDBP signed an MOU with the vanuatu govt as recently as feb, 2015.
according to jason bangayan’s FB page, ufun has started some payment gateway for members in the US, europe and australia, effective ‘may 2015’.
the name of the payment gateway company is not disclosed, but all transactions will be in USD.
wonder if this is true or a delay tactic, as this announcement is coming more than halfways through may.
facebook.com/UFun.Philippines/photos/pcb.1611229905782724/1611229125782802/?type=1&theater
according to an article in ‘the nation’ today, the vanuatu govt sent it’s request for lai to be recognized as an envoy, to the thai foreign ministry.
but the thai police sent the ministry information about lai’s fraudulent activities, and the ministry hence turned down the vanuatu govt’s request:
also, since china is now investigating UDBP bank and the funds it received from chinese ufun investors, all those chinese construction companies, that were following lai around vanuatu, building stuff for the govt there, are going to feel the heat too.
why were these construction companies building govt buildings there? was it in return for being allowed to launder money through vanuatu?
nationmultimedia.com/national/Police-lock-up-rooms-owned-by-key-suspect-four-mor-30260577.html
Um what, they’re getting people to sign up with a “referral link” to “link” affiliate’s accounts with that of uFun?
Sounds like they haven’t told the payment processor what they’re doing.
Instead they’ve just signed up with an account and are going to transfer funds manually. How long’s that going to last before the money laundering filters get triggered?
believe it or not!
the post about the payment gateway has “Disappeared’ from the FB page of ufun philippines [jason bangayan runs that page]!!
these guys are running scared!
all the top recruiters from the western ‘english speaking’ countries have fallen silent about ufun mostly, as far as i could check.
so, how are they going to do their ufun ‘points’ selling without using the internet? and how are they going to share information? by phone and door to door visits?
hey the persons over at FB ‘utoken is a scam’, complaint about lynn summers to the ‘australian securities and investment commission’, ASIC, yesterday.
today, they have recieved a request for more information from the ASIC :
that’s a really quick response, congrats to ‘utoken is a scam’.
please send a concise, clear response to the ASIC, so they have a clear grasp of the matter. thanks!
facebook.com/pages/Utoken-is-a-SCAM/1563826183868449?hc_location=ufi
i suggest ‘utoken is a scam’ also informs the ASIC that some new payment gateway has been organized to steal funds from australian citizens. this should get the ASIC cracking! thanks!
Latest from Securities Commission of Malaysia:
View here: sc.com.my/list-of-unauthorised-websites-investment-products-companies-individuals/
meanwhile, in another world, lynn summers is organizing a second webinar to encourage people to join ufun, by giving halfass jackass looong speeches about the IPO market:
here’s hoping the ASIC also tunes in to that webinar.
Summers had two posts up earlier today which since deleted. Both were basically asking for her “fans” to reply with “you’re awesome” type spam comments.
yeah, she has a bright eyed enthusiasm about herself!
This is kind of hilarious when you consider that it would have been much easier to get across the border as Bitcoin!
PS the new figure is 776 million baht, which is $23 million US.
nationmultimedia.com/national/UFUN-suspects-smuggled-Bt776m-so-far-police-say-30260662.html
On the subject of Lyn Summers. I don’t understand what she is doing.
She MUST know it is a ponzi scam. She is throwing her career away by putting her face on UFUN. She has children, she could face prison for what she is doing. She cant be planning on going into hiding with them surely?
I just don’t get it.
It didn’t feel good reporting her, but the damage she could help cause with UFUN would be far more tragic.
Ponzi schemes ruin lives.
I suggested “Self development gone wrong” as a general explanation for why many could have joined Ufun / Utoken.
Ufun has a focus on “physical appearance”, “big dreams”, “focus on your dreams”, “positive feedback”, “self reinforcement”, etc., etc. (I didn’t manage to identify any details).
It looks like many of them may have read similar books / other sources for inspiration, and that they have been affected in similar ways.
* Dato’ Daniel Tay responded to trouble with even bigger dreams, e.g. recruitment of up to $500K investors (all investor levels x 10), “make Utoken the official coin for a small country”, something about believers and that they eventually would become stronger. But he corrected the earnings potential to a more realistic level.
* Lyn Summers seems to be playing the role as a “financial expert / highly successful investor”, and she seems to have played that role for many years. She doesn’t seem to be very successful in reality, but she’s relatively skilled in that role (“playing the role well”).
* Some of the initial marketing material seems to be “instructions to the subconscious part of the brain” rather than marketing. It simply didn’t make any sense to me when I watched it with “wrong part of the brain”.
“Bigger than Alibaba, Ebay and Amazon combined” may mean something for people if they’re attracted to big dreams and have disabled the logical parts of the brain. Some self development techniques will try to do exactly that.
I didn’t feel good about it either (6 days earlier). That’s why I decided to ignore her.
I checked FACTS, e.g. whether she had a license, and what StockCourse was about. But I decided to leave it there, i.e. “don’t make any decisions about it”.
She’s probably pretty damaging to a group of people, but I wouldn’t have been able to do anything about that. Her marketing efforts seemed to be directed inwards towards a group of followers rather than outwards towards a market, so I didn’t see her as a big problem.
@utoken is a scam, norway
the ASIC is a ‘civil’ investigating agency,i think?
i think if they do take action against lynn summers, it will be like what we see with the SEC in the US. a fine and a promise not to be involved with ponzi schemes again?
she’s not the brain behind the scheme, to get arrested or something!
Don’t need to be. ACCC (ASIC’s non-securities counterpart) prosecuted the three TVI Express (pyramid scheme) reps in the area all the way to jail time and restitution (though last I’ve heard, no restitution had been made).
One of ASIC’s roles is;
Source from asic.gov.au/about-asic/what-we-do/our-role/
My concern was that it didn’t fit my “profile” (the one I stated in a different thread).
Some of us here will need to focus on the factors others seem to ignore. So I mentioned something about “good look and nice personality” among my fields of expertise. 🙂
Oz writes all the articles. K Chang provides some translations. And I’m simply adding some “extra dimensions” to all that. 🙂
asic is primarily dealing with corporations and corporate law and, while useful, its much better to file complaint with the ACCC, which deals with consumer issues and has closed down ponzi / pyramid schemes here in OZ in the past….
the dailypost, vanuatu, had an article about lai and UDBP yesterday ie 25/5/2015.
there is a fair bit of cringing at the arrest of lai in thailand, the embarrassment it brings to vanuatu and questions about vanuatu’s appointing of diplomatic envoys . the article also says that vanuatu is ‘cooperating’ with the thai police.
dailypost.vu/news/article_64d5bfcf-57fa-51ae-98d8-4b4f74d7dec3.html