A mob of angry PRCs flew in specially from China and showed up at a Seng Kang flat yesterday afternoon to demand their money back from a Singaporean, who used to work for a company that caused thousands of investors to lose millions of dollars in investments.
The scam has allegedly cost PRC investors US$1.2 billion (S$1.6 billion).
The 7 PRCs, most of whom hailed from Beijing, flew in last Sunday. After finding out the address of one of the Singaporean employees of the fraud company, they turned up at his Seng Kang flat banged on the doors for over 2 hours. Although there were signs of activity within the house, the people inside the flat refused to show themselves.
They eventually left, but not before leaving a note demanding the owner return them their money.
The Singaporean allegedly worked for API Premiere Swiss Trust AG, a fraudulent finance company that has allegedly cheated almost 30,000 PRCs of their hard-earned savings.
In January this year, API sent out an email informing investors that their servers had been hacked. Investors were told that they could not access their accounts and that their money was gone.
According to one of the PRCs, Zhao Guangcai, a group had went to Switzerland and found out that the company was a shell.
Another confided that investors were duped by this Singaporean employee, who had invited PRC investors to all-expenses-paid trips to Switzerland and Dubai, where they met with traders. There, they were shown forex trading rooms, where traders worked and made deals online.
Street protests were held in Beijing and Hong Kong earlier this year after investors realized that they had been cheated by the company.