China extradited from Thailand Tedy Teow, a Malaysian fugitive businessman accused of leading a fraud syndicate in a case involving more than 100 billion yuan (US$14 billion), on August 23. - Photo: CCTV / SCMP
BEIJING/KUALA LUMPUR (SCMP): Slick conferences, new offices and tales of riches spun from smart investments were enough to persuade Randy Ang to move a five-figure sum from his savings into a high return financial product hawked by MBI Group International – the vehicle of prolific Malaysian con man Tedy Teow.
Ang, now 35, from Kuala Lumpur, handed over the sum – which he did not want to specify to This Week in Asia – to an investment agent representing MBI in 2016. It was only their second meeting.
At the time, he had no way to know he had just joined thousands of other Malaysians ploughing money into pyramid schemes, spanning property to cryptocurrency, that would lose them millions of ringgit.
The man behind MBI Group, Tedy Teow Wooi Huat, was extradited to China by Thai authorities last week on charges that he had masterminded a fraud empire that reeled in millions of victims across Asia.
The risks, Ang says, were carefully whitewashed by sales agents during an impressive investor conference organised by MBI, the company authorities in Malaysia and China say was behind billions of dollars of fraud.
Officials escorting Tedy Teow upon his extradition from Thailand. Photo: Ministry of Public Security / SCMP
“I listened to the testimony from one of their top speakers at the conference, sharing how he made his money and went from owning a regular car to driving a Ferrari, going from a zero to hero,” Ang said. “I was just amazed at how they managed to invest to make a living.”
The scale and elaborate nature of MBI’s scamming has earned its founder the nickname ‘Jho Low 2’ – after Low Taek Jho, the alleged mastermind behind the multibillion dollar 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal.
Teow, who is believed to have also gone by the name Zhang Yufa, is accused by Chinese authorities of leading a fraud syndicate that had stolen over 100 billion yuan (US$14 billion) from more than 10 million investors in an operation that began in 2012.
Malaysian authorities have said that MBI Group International was used as a front for numerous scams and pyramid schemes, including what police called the Macau Scam, through which Teow and his two sons are believed to have laundered 336 million ringgit (US$70.9 million).
Teow and his associates crafted MBI’s image as a legitimate conglomerate with interests in property, including high-end residential and retail spaces across Malaysia and Danok in neighbouring Thailand.
“They were very professional. They had many teams of agents who managed investor accounts. The agency leaders rented a block of offices, owned restaurant chains and had multiple cars ... I was impressed,” Ang said.
One common tactic, Ang said, was for the agents to claw more money from investors by offering “free” holidays to destinations like Italy. All it took was to top up their investments by up to 100,000 ringgit (US$23,000), he added.
Agents went so far as to encourage investors to take up personal loans to join in their schemes. Ang said he knew of at least one person who took up a 400,000 ringgit loan to invest with MBI.
How Teow, a pudgy 58-year-old from Penang, managed to operate for nearly a decade after falling afoul of authorities remains a mystery.
He was slapped with a 160,000 ringgit (US$33,800) fine as far back as 2011 for misleading investors yet rebounded to find a “second chance” in China, he said in a 2013 video biography he released on YouTube.
The man behind MBI Group, Tedy Teow Wooi Huat, was extradited to China by Thai authorities last week on charges that he had masterminded a fraud empire that reeled in millions of victims across Asia. - The Star/ANN
But Teow’s empire began to crumble in 2018 after news broke that he, MBI Group International and its subsidiary Mface International, had been charged for multiple offences including issuing electronic payments that were not recognised by Malaysia’s central bank, promoting pyramid schemes and for being involved in money laundering.
Teow and the two entities were fined a total of 12.5 million ringgit for selling unlicensed and unrecognised cryptocurrency that was used at MBI-linked establishments, including a shopping centre called M Mall in Penang that was popular with Chinese tourists.
The conviction did not stop MBI from pushing its Malaysian victims to start investing in its cryptocurrency offering. Agents claimed that the crackdown was the act of a corrupt government trying to shake down a successful and legitimate business, Ang said.
Then in 2019, a group of about 100 Chinese nationals went to Kuala Lumpur to stage a protest demanding reparations from MBI, which they accused of offering fraudulent investments that wiped out their life savings.
Authorities in China’s southwest city of Chongqing launched an investigation into Teow the following year and, just months later, he was placed on Interpol’s global wanted list.
Police eventually caught up with Teow, who they said had caused over 580 million ringgit in losses for more than 1,500 victims in 2021, the year that he is believed to have absconded to Thailand. Thai authorities arrested Teow in July 2022 and handed him over to China last week under an extradition treaty to tackle financial crimes.
Malaysian social media has celebrated Teow’s extradition to China.
“He destroyed many people’s lives. Like Madoff, he deserves to be whipped, tortured and suffer in prison before dying,” read a Facebook comment by one Danial Yusuff drawing parallels with American financier Bernie Madoff, who ran a multibillion dollar Ponzi scheme that US prosecutors described as the largest financial fraud of all time.
Ang hopes his experience will serve as a cautionary tale to anyone tempted by the promise of investments offering too much, too fast.
“Now if you think about it, huge companies like the EPF offer reasonable returns at around 6 per cent,” he said, referring to Malaysia’s largest private retirement fund.
“If EPF can’t promise anything more than that, what makes you think much smaller companies can guarantee returns that are much higher?” - South China Morning Post
