10+ uFun Club arrests in China, $4.1 million USD seized
As part of an ongoing investigation that began back in September 2014, news out of China today that ten uFun Club suspects have been arrested.
In addition to the arrests, Chinese regulators are also claiming to have seized bank cards, laptops and other electronic equipment, along with $4.1 million USD.
The apprehended ringleader behind uFun Club’s Chinese operations is Aaron Lee (full name Lee Guang Chen Aaron), who had been evading Chinese authorities for some time.
The Chinese investigation into uFun Club, codenamed “Operation Foxhunt”, had been declared a “number one priority” by the country’s Public Security Investigation team.
Lee (referred to as Mr. Chen is Chinese news reports), is a Malaysian citizen and had entered China numerous times previously. Police had been tracking where he’d stayed previously.
Lee was finally arrested on April 30th, at an airport in China’s Shenzhen Province by police from Jiangsu Province. Attempting to enter China on an alternate passport number, police were tipped off any waiting for Lee on his arrival.
Lee’s exact role within uFun Club has yet to be disclosed but he’s been referred to as a “high level manager”.
Lee’s arrest brings the total number of uFun related arrests in China to ten, with earlier arrests taking place in January.
On the 10th of January sufficient intelligence had been obtained about the top leaders of the scam.
Lianyungang Police dispatched 80+ members to various jurisdictions around China, including Guangzhou, Zhenzhou, Baoding, and so on and executed simultaneous arrests.
On the 14th of January, after learning that one of the other leaders, Mr. Kai, who was missed in the raid had entered Shenzhen, Kai was arrested along with 10+ other high level leaders, and frozen 45 accounts totalling over 26M RMB.
In addition to seizing $4.1 million USD in stolen investors funds, Chinese authorities also recovered ATM cards and various electronic equipment.
Chinese investigators claim uFun Club’s local operations spanned thirty-one Chinese provinces, ripping off around 36,000 investors to the tune of $80.5 million USD.
Thai police previously estimated uFun Club’s global operations have taken in $1.17 billion dollars.
Please be advised this is a breaking story and we’re working off of translations of Chinese-language police and media reports.
Stay tuned as more information comes to hand…
Shoutout to Justice Always Late for breaking this story, and to Predator for a translation!
there may be something wrong with the number of investors. ufun members claim they have around 500,000 members. this was reported on may 7th, 2015:
anyway a bulk of members must be from china. these chinese arrests must be known to many ufun chinese members, how have they manged to keep it under wraps?!!
Could be. Or they might have been downplaying their Chinese pillaging.
Same reason we’re only learning about an arrest two weeks ago, language-barriers.
There’s no “MAY” about it.
Ufun is a multi billion dollar ponzi / pyramid scheme disguised as a real business.
Why would anyone choose to believe they are lying about the business while telling the truth about the number of members ??
FYI, the Chinese action is called “(Operation) Foxhunt 2015”. China had been on the case since January 2015.
I’m giving you a translation of js.people.com.cn/n/2015/0511/c360305-24805916.html
because ponzi people generally INFLATE their member numbers as a show of their ponzi strength.
take it easy, thse numbers are from a chinese translation, lets wait for a more dependable report.
So, correction, Oz. The guy was arrested in Shenzhen, by police from Jiangsu, who had apparently taken the lead in the national investigation.
36K members ONLY?
now that number seems DEFLATED!
Err, of course they do.
That’s the whole point.
Quoting anything the fraudsters say is pointless.
In any event, Kaseys’ translation specifies 36K members, not 3.6 million.
so, i was Right. there was something Wrong with the number 3.6 million. Right?
@chang
thanks for the translation chang. this means china is into ufun investigation Big Time.
say ta ta to ufun now. it’s OVER!!
First Thailand, then China….
So which country will be next to take action??
Thanks for the additional translation Kasey. I’ve amended the article and I think we’re good to go now.
So we can keep an eye out for it, what do they refer uFun Club as in China? Obviously not “uFun Club” or it would have come up in the search results…
Similar issue in Thailand but they do tend to put the English “UFUN” in their reports so it’s not too bad.
malaysia? 🙂
Hi Oz,
In China, the refer to UFUN as 优趣
Thanks, I’ll add it to my watchlist.
I betting on Indonesia or Australia to take action. Malaysia will be the last country to take action.
UFun Group is 优趣集团
So the kept the U, transliterated into 优, translated FUN into 趣, and group is 集团
Chinese renders numbers slightly differently. The exact terms used is 拥有会员3.6万余名, or “Has members 3.6 x Ten-thousand” , or 36000.
Oops, typo, Oz. Should have been “totalling 45 million”, not “totally”. You even quoted it that way. Ooopsie!
GOV link for that news report (appears to be original source): cac.gov.cn/2015-05/11/m_1115248432.htm
One more correction. Operation Foxhunt is a nation wide anti-scam sweep. it’s NOT only aimed at Ufun, but UFun is the largest target taken down so far in Foxhunt 2015.
Given this is only being published now, I’m thinking undercover ops till they had everyone they wanted + seized assets.
Like when the SEC do their thing in the US and we find out a week later.
Meanwhile Malaysia has nationals arrested in both Thailand and China now, and still nothing but “hay guys, tell us what’s going on in our own country” meetings.
No. In the upper left you’ll see they referred to 人民网 which is the people.com.cn website I referred to earlier.
Here’s the official announcement of Operation Foxhunt 2015 directly from Ministry of Public Security of China
mps.gov.cn/n16/n1237/n1342/n803715/4364956.html
According to the article, they are after corrupt officials and scammers that had escaped to other countries, as well as various types of economic crimes including illegal investment solicitation (such as Utoken/Ufun), illegal money transfers, esp. using companies located outside of China.
I hate trying to make sense of stuff in Chinese 🙁
According to various news, China managed to nab a Chinese scammer that escaped to Greece and he was sent back to China on 10-APR.
What’s significant is Greece does NOT have an extradition treaty with China. China had issued a red notice through Interpol and the suspect Mr. Hu was arrested in Athens airport, and after a few days in local court decided to remand him to Chinese custody.
According to a short blurb I found Mr. Hu basically illegally solicited investments into something called BaiTai Group 百泰集團, over 40 million RMB from people, emptied the bank of the 4 million RMB loan he got as well, went to Cyprus “on business” in late 2013, and never showed his face again.
I’ll spare you the PR parts of Operation Foxhunt, but the stats are somewhat interesting… In the past 5 years (there’s a Foxhunt every year) China had arrested 680 fugitives (total) that had escaped the country.
390 turned themselves in. 208 involved amount over 10 million RMB, and and 74 involved amounts over 100 million RMB. Fugitives have been retrieved from over 69 countries and territories.
uFun Club affiliate chatter (12th May):
Lolololol:
This Chinese report in English has different figures again:
Is it $806 million USD or $80.5?
english.jschina.com.cn/TodayJiangsu/201505/t2156041.shtml
500 million chinese yuan = 80507520.00 USD ie 80.5 million USD.
That’s what I got. So even English Chinese news has trouble dealing with Chinese translations :).
As speculated by JusticeAlwaysLate, they suspect this person Aaron Lee to be UFUN CEO Bright Lee.
Bright Lee Guang Ming left Malaysia on 23 April, this Aaron Lee Guang Chen was captured in China on 23 April.
We suspect Bright Lee is using fake passport to enter China as Aaron Lee.
Name similarity 80% same. Time of depart / time of captured match. And both is Malaysian.
If they’ve indeed nabbed the CEO then this is well and truly over.
The Chinese are going to grill him until they locate the rest of the money and then Dato Dan’s going to do a runner (because Malaysia are incompetently slow).
And you don’t want to be convicted in China, they shoot you in the back of the head for stuff like this in China….
hey, bright lee looks kindof youngish to be heading this 1.17 billion dollar scam?
Bright Lee is 38 years old. Still young ?
I consider him going through mid life crisis, maybe chronic mid life crisis if he is the one that is caught in China.
Great news 🙂
JusticeAlwaysLate has relayed that Thai Police has issued 3 more wanted warrants, targeting the top recruiters for UFUN, all Thai citizens. However, so far no wanted warrants for Warren Eu (UMatrin) and Kelvin Cho (Unispace).
Supposedly Bright Guan Ming Lee had ran a scam before in China that went by the name “Angel Fund”.
The only thing that seems to fit is a scam that was hot back in 2012 that goes by “MC Angel Fund by MC International Investment Group”… ran by a Malaysian National by surname of Cheng (成)
NOLINK://www.xinxindai.com/tags-1/article-24683.html
JusticeAlwaysLate had previously alleged that Warren Eu was involved in this MC Angel Fund scam as “Edwin Eu” and got kicked out of China for it.
So he went back to Malaysia, changed his name, got a Dato title, and relaunched the scam with Dato Dan as UFUN. No idea how true that would be.
I found an old MC angel fund video on Todou. MC = Midlands Capital International, and was at mcangel.net. Supposedly it’s ran by a Richard Gordon and Michael Synn.
Needless to say, MCangel.net is proxy-registered, and still is today. The photos don’t match to anything, and the whole thing is obviously made up.
Well, Lyn Summers is still a believer as she posted this total BS on her FB page:
Guess she is trying to recoup her $500K she dumped into this Ponzi. This woman needs to be arrested and taken off the street for the good of the public.
That’s in India. Lyn Summers is in India?
Here’s a line by line translation of jsga.gov.cn/www/jsga/2010/jwdt-mb_a3915043014188.htm
Lianyungang Successful in First Salvo of Operation Foxhunt, chasing down scammers that had escaped the country
Recently, “Lee Guang Chen Aaron”, who’s wanted by Lianyungang Public Security, and had previously escaped to Malaysia, has been apprehended.
This marks the first success in Lianyungang’s participation in Operation Foxhunt in chasing down economic crime fugitives that had left the country.
In Sep-2014, Lianyungang Public Security Investigations group came upon clues of this foreign pyramid selling organization “UFun Group” using virtual market “UMarket” to make presentations in Lianyungang and recruit victims.
This was made a top priority by the city leadership, and the party secretary Wong chaired several meetings about updates on the investigations, and formed clear action plans.
Vice Secretary Jiang was assigned task force leader and the task force was convened on 10-10-2014, with participations from Economic Crimes Group, Technical Crimes Group, and Internet Security Group in Lianyungang Public Security. (Trans. Note: So that’s why the other article called this the 10-10 crime…)
Public Security has made this scam number one priority. In Jan-14 this task force, with prior hard work, executed raids in Guangzhou, Zhenzhou, Shenzhen, Baoding, Lianyungang, and other locations, and successfully broke the number one priority 10-10 Gigantic Pyramid Selling Scam, arrested 10 high level leaders, froze related funds over 29 million, and confiscated large number of ATM cards, “cryptocurrency U Shields” (UToken Physical tokens?), notebook computers, and other crime tools.
The crime involved 30 different jurisdictions (states, cities, and self-governing areas) with 36000+ members and possibly 500 million+ RMB.
The organization’s core member Malaysian (citizen) Lee Guang Chen Aaron had been outside the country.
The task force has traced all related people in China, as well as any signs of prior travels, to find this individuals, and finally arrested him at Shenzhen’s BaoAn airport on 23-APR-2015.
Public Security Investigations formally confirmed this as its success in Operation Foxhunt 2015.
No, she is from Australia, but she had it posted on her FB page trying to get people to send more money. Just like the nonsense she posted about meeting with Danial Tay and all the wonderful new thing he showed her that is “coming” to UFunClub members. You know the one where she said the promo must have cost $1000K.
It is just strange that with all this news buzzing around with arrests and the freezing of assets everywhere you look, she is still pimping the heck out of this dead jackass.
@Kasey
Malaysia.
Her FB updates says she’s in India.
“lyn.summers.568” is the account she pimps uFun from. Geo-location is Pudu, Dakshina Kannada in Kuala Lumpur.
Alright now I’m confused.
FB says there’s one in Malaysia: facebook.com/pages/Pudu-Dakshina-Kannada/104010816301123
Google has a town in India. I’m going off FB’s page (not disputing there’s one in India) seeing as that’s where the geo-location data is coming from.
Wikipedia:
I’m going with Malaysia.
You may be right. India really makes no sense in this particular context.
Anyone knows what happened to those investors from USA and the rest of the world? Do they not feel suspicious?
It seems to me that their affiliates are still promoting Ufun itself. Dangerous.
Well, Lyn is not the only spreading a bunch of BS. Now comes Jamison Palmer and Casey Tan with these choice comments:
I don’t think either one of knows what reality truly is.
^^please be patient, we are relaunching with a ‘brand new idea’, now its not about utokens or unit trusts, now its all about pre IPO shares!
so, you have some signing ceremonies, with no documents about what was signed made public, and suddenly ufun is the billion dollar IPO business. note : as on date there is no IPO released, its all based on future probability!
They have been very quiet. Only a few people can be said to be “very visible online”.
Ufun Club and Utoken can be said to be “excitement driven” = “the more excited people feel the more likely they will buy into it”. So local offline “Hallelujah meetings” of different types will work better than online marketing.
“Signing ceremony videos” only seem to have short term effect. People don’t seem to build up the same degree of excitement when they watch videos.
Jamison can run for the US if things get rough.
Tan knows it’s sink or swim, and he’s too chicken to swim. He was way too loud and way too public, so now, as the Chinese cliche goes: “riding a tiger, can’t get off (safely)”. He’s “not going down without a fight”, even if he had to invert reality.
Those pre-IPO shares were always a part of the various Asian scams. It’s been also rendered as “virgin stock”, “original stock”, pre-shares, and so on, but the Chinese term is 原始股.
The idea is your purchases before they IPO entitles you to these virgin stocks now, which can be traded for real stocks when they do go through with the IPO.
Phil Ming Xu’s “Vantone” scam had this too: pyramid selling in China of crap to qualify to buy pre-shares. Then periodic “please buy more crap so IPO will be successful” sales drives.
Interush’s scam in Hong Kong runs very similar: sell this IRIS Comm Suite to members who can also get these pre-shares if they buy a whole year at a time, get almost 10x back when IPO in 3 years.
The MC Angel Fund scam (also ran by a Malaysian) mentioned earlier added another wrinkle: concept shares 概念股。
Basically it’s simulated shares on a simulated market. Its absolutely worthless, but it can be sim-traded, and it fooled some noobs.