Wham Bam Thank You Scam

[Boo Radley]

Wham Bam Thank You Scam

Came across this documentary of an Australian who travels to Thailand in an attempt to find the people who conned him out of US $ 110,000 in a boiler room scam.

 

From the blurb:

Despite its constant political unrest, Bangkok is still a very popular tourist destination, but the main character in this documentary is not there as a tourist. He’s not even there as a business traveller.

To be honest, he really doesn’t want to be there at all, so why he is, Keith Jones, waiting at Bangkok station for an overnight train to Chiang Mai?

Well, this story is one of deceit, theft, police incompetence, international loopholes and the apathy of a major corporate bank. It is also his story of how almost entirely on his own he tracked down a sophisticated gang of fraudsters.

This is his second time in Bangkok in two years, and exactly as before, he’d rather not be there, but unfortunately, sometimes, there are things that you just have to do whether you like it or not. He’s about to board an overnight train to Chiang Mai, a 14 hour journey to the north of Thailand. He’s making this film as a record of the atrocious and ridiculous events that have lead him to this point. He’s also making it as some sort of catharsis. Finally, he’s making it as a stark warning to others.

Life can be strange sometimes. One minute, you can be travelling along thinking that everything is okay, and almost out of nowhere, the malicious actions of another person can affect your life forever.

His story begins back in Australia. He was working from his office one day, when the phone rang. It was the company calling themselves Humphrey Capital Investments, a global financial services group with offices in California and Singapore. Over the coming weeks, he had several informal conversations with their senior portfolio manager John Thompson. One of his recommendations was to invest in Nokia shares. This seemed to present a good buying opportunity.

Humphrey Capital Group sent him client forms, and after processing his application, they bought Nokia shares on his behalf. He subsequently paid the invoice by bank transfer to their company account at an HSBC bank in Hong Kong. Over the coming weeks, John Thompson rang him several times to discuss his portfolio, but at the end of the month, he rang to tell him that his company had been bought out by a group called Wellnic Investments. His new advisor would be Edward Martin, the Vice Chairman of Wellnic Investments. Wellnic’s credentials looked similarly impressive, and their website showed detailed information on the company.

A few days later, he had a call from Edward Martin, and like his predecessor, Edward had an American accent and came over as professional and friendly. He explained that he’d be his new advisor, and he looked forward to a long and profitable relationship, and that’s exactly how it turned out to be. Over a very long period, Keith Jones purchased a variety of low-risk US stocks, trusts and deposits. All trades were paid for through account at a HSBC Bank in Hong Kong.

Subsequently, like the proverbial lamb to the slaughter, he continued to make investments through the Wellnic Group. Within 12 months, he’d invested over $110,000 US dollars. Even saying it now makes him feel quite sick. You often hear that people are scammed through greed, and where unrealistic returns are involved, but most of his investments with Wellnic were supposed to pay around 10 to 12 percent per annum; good, but at the time, not unrealistic. In fact, it was only when things started to sound too good to be true that he became suspicious.

 

Full documentary here:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HbvY1ZDhwg

[baa99]

... so he sent money to an overseas company that was not licensed to do securities in Australia.

[Flashermac]

The people who scammed him are very unlikely to be in Thailand. They moved on long ago. And what would he do if he did find them, besides possibly end up dead?

[JaiRai]

From perusing his website and the web it looks like it was a boiler room geographically based in Thailand and working through some sort of shell company set up in Hong Kong. What's interesting is these scammers didn't promise returns that were outrageous but were somewhat in line with what is possible with legitimate investments. Note: I took a significant hit in 2008 from the collapse/actions of the 'legit' financial workings of the big banks, with what I thought was safely invested through my company's 401k management (Vanguard - though they weren't responsible).

 

Wouldn't be in a rush to criticize this guy (though I do like Bangkok and want to be here, unlike him), he's attempting to seek resolution and educate others, good on him. Watched a little of the piece will probably take a look at the rest later.

[khunsanuk]

Hi,

 

"And what would he do if he did find them, besides possibly end up dead?"

 

Was wondering the same thing. The guys that ran these scams were hardly the nicest of people.

 

Sanuk!

[JaiRai]

If you watch the video you get the sense that this guy isn't the biggest risk taker in the world and isn't stupid either, hardly seems that he was in a life-threatening situation. Now stiffing your cabbie for a fare on sukhumwit - different story altogether. These boiler room guys aren't Thai mafia.

 

Putting a documentary on social media is covering his ass in a clever way, if something funny were to happen - there will be a lot of attention. Ultimately it's his decision and a moot point, he sheds a light on the activity and drops hints on the scammers, but they're never revealed. There is no resolution, but it's not bad work - especially for some random amateur. The one thing that irked the shit out of me is the fact that he didn't recruit someone fluent in the language to assist him - instead there are these constant recurrences of miscommunication and 'no understand' on both sides. Dumb.

[Flashermac]

Reminds me of a friend's experiences with a Thai "private investigator". He found him in the yellow pages, billed as speaking fluent English. Lie - he had to struggle along in Thai with the guy (after having been away from LOS for 30 years). Anyway, he told the PI the name of an old colleague from years ago that he wanted to find. The PI wrote it down. Then the PI asked what the colleague's address was. "I don't know." So he asked for the phone number. "I don't know." The PI got angry and asked how he was supposed to find somebody if he didn't have his address and phone number!

[buffalo_bill]

I have received this type of phone calls many times in the past , always listening to a guy with US accent introducing himself as XYZ securities from Singapore, Hongkong an so forth . In the background you hear what must be hundreds of people talking to somebody over the phone . They wish to give you the impression that they are in in a trading room . I believe that they receive the numbers of potential clients from hotels in China or people that collect your business cards at the Guangzhou Fair for example because it always starts again when I am back from China . Normally I just finish the conversation after the guy starts talking " Good afternoon Siegfried this is William from Flashermac Securities in Singapore " . I once offered the person to meet him in Singapore personally next days but he said he would be too buzy travelling .

 

It is useless to warn mankind not to send them money , they always find new victims . Everybody should know now about the Nigeria scams but they keep on going . I recommend to invest into Pam's Massage Soi 7/1 instead .

[The_Munchmaster]

......I recommend to invest into Pam's Massage Soi 7/1 instead .

 

Or even better, Munchies Retirement Fund.

[Dexi]

Basically cold call = scam,simple as that.Reputable brokers/agents don`t need to call people out of the blue and in fact never do so.I used to get various calls trying to sell me stuff such as kitchens,life insurance etc - quite annoying but I managed to put a stop to it - got rid of my landline