*"The lesson from all these cases is simply this – always be wary of investments that are too good to be true if you want to avoid the nightmare of losing your money."*
https://www.straitstimes.com/business/invest/why-it-s-hard-for-scam-victims-to-recover-their-money
2024-05-12
Tan Ooi Boon
Invest Editor
The Straits Times
If you fall for a scam, your money is as good as gone because it is often impossible to get a cent back even if you can file a lawsuit in Singapore.
Most of these anonymous crooks are based overseas and often use money mules to do their dirty work. Even if they are arrested, chances are the funds have already been depleted or are hidden elsewhere, beyond the reach of the victims.
The High Court here has heard at least four cases over the past two years involving fraud victims but only one succeeded in getting his money back.
The sole victor was lucky because he did not deal with the scammer directly – he merely gave a $2.6 million loan to a business partner who was duped into paying fake fees in an inheritance scam. The court ordered the partner to repay the loan as he had made various false statements in his haste to earn his own “profits”.
Here are the other three cautionary tales involving victims who lost everything.
Tussle over a $13 million bank account
A foreign businesswoman lost $34 million after falling for a Swiss-based Ponzi investment scam. The culprit was arrested, but it was pointless to sue him as the money had dissipated.
But her legal team discovered a money trail that led them to Singapore: More than $13 million of her funds had gone into a French couple’s DBS Bank account here.
The French couple were also unwitting participants in the same Ponzi scam but were luckier because they cashed out before the scheme went under.
The businesswoman sued the couple here and showed that the money that went to their account came from her.
But the Singapore International Commercial Court dismissed the suit as the couple had acted in good faith and were wholly innocent in this saga.
International Judge Simon Thorley said: “While one has sympathy for any party who loses money as a result of a Ponzi scheme, in the circumstances of this case, the law does not entitle the plaintiffs to recover from the defendants, earlier investors, who had the good fortune to be repaid before the scheme collapsed.”
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Over $6 million lost in a “sure-win” scam
Investors in this scam had been sold a script that seemed like the Hong Kong blockbuster movie God Of Gamblers, with the crooks claiming to have uncovered the secret of always winning at casinos, especially in the card game baccarat.
Instead of being favoured by Lady Luck, they lost all their money when the perpetrators of the “SureWin4U” fraud – Malaysian brothers Peter and Philip Ong – vanished in 2014 after multiple police reports were lodged against them.
A victim, who lived in Hong Kong, lost $6 million. She took three early investors to the High Court here in 2023 because she was taken in by their claims of how they earned over $30 million by investing in the scheme.
But just like the foreign businesswoman, she did not recover her money because she failed to prove that the other investors had deliberately deceived her into investing.
*$130 million oil investment went up in smoke*
About *1,000 investors* banded together to file a novel class action suit here after their investment in a Canadian oil company turned to dust.
They were told that they would reap “risk-free” annual returns of 12 per cent because the money invested would be refunded at the end of each oilfield project. Good times rolled for a while – three of 17 projects were a success, and everyone was happy.
But after the price of crude crashed in 2015, the Canadian oil company went bust and the investors could not get back $130 million that was still invested.
They sued the marketing agents as the Canadian companies were no longer viable. They claimed the agents had fraudulently misled them into investing in crude oil trading when there was no actual business.
Singapore’s highest court found in 2022 that the investors had no case, ruling that they were not defrauded by the agents because there was indeed such an oil business.
*The lesson from all these cases is simply this – always be wary of investments that are too good to be true if you want to avoid the nightmare of losing your money.*
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