The US Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Illinois said Malaysians Cedric Lim, Ko Sen Chai, King Sung Wong, Siong Wee Vun and Kok Wah Wong, along with Taiwanese nationals Ming-Shen Cheng and Chien Lung Ma are being indicted with wire and securities fraud charges.
The office said in a statement released on the US Department of Justice’s website the group allegedly engaged in the misleading promotion and coordinated share trading for China Liberal Education Holdings Ltd, a company incorporated in the Cayman Islands that purportedly provided educational services in China.
“The scheme, known as ‘pump and dump’, allegedly involved individuals in China posing as US-based investment advisers on social media and messaging platforms and falsely promising significant returns from investments in the company,” the statement read.
Once the stock price rose artificially, the group sold out the shares in bulk to reap millions of dollars in profit, leading to the plummeting of the stock prices at the expense of other investors, some of whom lost almost the entirety of their investment, it said.
It said the US federal law enforcers seized about US$214 million (RM946 million) of alleged proceeds from the fraud scheme.
“The funds are currently in US custody and we had on Thursday filed a civil complaint seeking to have the money permanently forfeited to the United States, which would allow the government to return the money to victim investors,” it said.
According to US laws, securities fraud is punishable by up to 25 years in prison, while the maximum sentence for wire fraud is 20 years, upon conviction.
Victims of or the public with information on the indicted fraud scheme had been urged to notify the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). - FMT
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.