A group of tourists and residents are claiming 'Thailand's own Bernie Madoff' robbed them of their retirement dreams
Gold fever sinks a posse of investors
A group of tourists and residents are claiming 'Thailand's own Bernie Madoff' robbed them of their retirement dreams
According to his Friendster profile, Lance Frederick Shaw is "a young 60". He likes travelling, making money on the internet, going out, fine dining, dancing and having fun. His occupation is listed as "lobbyist".
He has lived in Thailand for five years, and says he "comes and goes". His business card lists phone numbers in the UK, Singapore, Thailand, Spain and Africa.
A group of Pattaya tourists and residents, however, claim this freewheeling 63-year-old is a "con man", "a criminal" and "Thailand's own Bernie Madoff", and also allege that collectively they've lost several million dollars to him in what they now believe was a Ponzi scheme.
But while Madoff swindled his billions through a decades-long financial investment operation that targeted the world's wealthiest citizens and was cloaked in an air of legitimacy, those who claim to have lost money from their association with Mr Shaw appear to have been taken in by a much less sophisticated scam.
Known investors - who claim to be victims - are largely men from the UK and Australia, and include a Pattaya school teacher, an oil rigger and a number of business people and retirees in the Canary Islands. Between late 2005 and early 2007 - when Mr Shaw informed them their money was gone - they invested between US$10,000 and $250,000 (341,000 to 8.5 million baht) each in the scheme.
The men say they have lost their homes, savings, wedding funds and dreams of an early retirement. One man who sold his home and invested the money with Mr Shaw is said to have become a suicidal alcoholic. Those I spoke with expressed emotions that ranged from embarrassed, to depressed, to very angry.
The alleged scam used an online gold investment vehicle known as Hiperfinance.com (High Performance Finance), which had an office on Pattaya Driving Range, 3rd Road. Investors were attracted to Hiperfinance by advertisements in the Pattaya Daily Mail as well as endorsements from one another (investors received a 5% commission on referrals).
The ads were small, colourless and not completely coherent ("double security your capital in property and gold") promotions for gold internet trading, an investment opportunity that promised a 10-20% monthly profit and which gave as points of contact the web address http://www.hiperfinance.com and the email address, phone number and office address of Mr Shaw.
Philip Shields, a British businessman who works in the Canary Islands and invested $90,000 in Hiperfinance, responded to the advertisement in November, 2005, while holidaying in Pattaya. He called Mr Shaw, who according to Mr Shields, met him within minutes at a Pattaya coffee shop.
Mr Shields says Mr Shaw shuffled in with a noticeable limp and spoke in an affected tone, which in hindsight he alleges was an example of Mr Shaw's disarming con man theatrics. (He has since seen Mr Shaw walk and talk normally). He was initially convinced and made a cautious $1,000 investment.
Mr Shields watched the returns in his online account grow, and with the constant encouragement of Mr Shaw, gradually increased his investment. He says Mr Shaw was constantly in touch and attentive during this period, providing rides, food and at one point, paying him a house call (with one day's notice) in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands.
"He actually comes into your life," said Mr Shields, noting the last instance of this was an unwelcome visit in which Mr Shaw acted in an "uncouth" manner, eating with his hands and insulting Mr Shield's wife and daughter.
In July, 2006, more than six months into the endeavour, Mr Shields invested a further $70,000. By September, 2006, his balance had grown to $133,442. Although he never successfully accessed any of this money, he promoted the scheme to friends and acquaintances, a number of whom also invested. It was at this point that he learned all his money was gone.
Investments were made by transferring cash to one of several of Mr Shaw's personal bank accounts, including one at a Bangkok Bank branch in Pattaya and another in Singapore. Mr Shaw then invested the money in Hiperfinance, setting up an online account for each of the investors, through which they could monitor their investments and theoretically make transactions.
Investors were not permitted to withdraw capital for the first six months, though they were permitted to withdraw interest and commission earnings.
Not a single investor interviewed for this story ever succeeded in accessing their account or collecting the money that was reflected on Hiperfinance balance sheets (they speak of one man that did, who they believe was in on the scam). Mr Shaw's clients describe the transaction process as complicated, as it required chanelling money to Hiperfinance.com through one of two intermediary internet payment websites - E-Gold and IceGold.
Both sites provided means for unregulated international exchange of money and have been notorious for unscrupulous traffic. An FBI operation led to the 2007 indictment of E-Gold's proprietor and the site's temporary shutdown, while IceGold, an Estonian copycat site, has since been closed in compliance with the country's new anti-money laundering laws. Because of such difficulties, investors allowed Mr Shaw to make the investments for them and simply monitored their online Hiperfinance account, where they could track their debits, credits and balance on what appeared to be a basic and hastily designed Excel spreadsheet.
For many months, investors' statements swelled at the promised 10-20% return rate, and Mr Shields, and two other investors, Graham Mitchell and Alan Burnside, all concede they grew excited and moneystruck by the results they tracked online. Mr Burnside, a British national who works on oil rigs in Indonesia and spends his off months in Pattaya, decided to use the profits for a lavish retirement. Mr Shields said "We were getting very excited. I thought I'd wait until I reached a million and then get out."
All 12 investors interviewed for this story said they had repeatedly tried to withdraw their money, but were unable to do so for all sorts of reasons, including technical complications with the Hiperfinance website, the closure of the E-Gold site, and general confusion.
'I AM NOT A CROOK'
High Performance Finance (HPF), according to literature found on its now-defunct website, and provided to Spectrum by investors, was a registered company in the Republic of Panama. It explains that HPF is a group of experienced traders and investment analysts, headed by a Richard Hinton living in Hong Kong and operating with over 20 years of "investment acumen".
In an email interview, Mr Shaw maintained he too was merely a Hiperfinance investor who lost his own $20 million in the deal, and that while he promoted the scheme to others, he was not behind the operation nor did he force anyone's involvement with it. Mr Shaw, who estimated the number of his Hiperfinance clients to be in the hundreds, also said he had instructed each of his clients on how to withdraw their earnings, and told them to do so every month.
"My response is simple and the same as it's always been, I showed them an opportunity to earn money. Most of the people complaining are now the people who did not follow the simple instructions I gave them.
"I am not a thief as people have branded me, just a simple investor who has also lost money. Hiper may have been a scam, it may have been a Ponzi, who knows? The only thing for sure is that people, including the complainers and myself, made money from it while they were paying out, which they were doing for over two years - so how can it really have been a scam?"
While most of the Pattaya investors believe that Mr Shaw was the prime mover behind Hiperfinance, others speculate he may have been one of a team of con men in the guise of experienced investors who hail from Australia's Gold Coast and have a prolific history of such scams. Nearly all believe they are only the tip of the iceberg. Mr Mitchell, using an email tracking device, says he has discovered that Hiperfinance's banking system leads to North Cyprus, Dubai and Bogota, in Colombia.
These men, and a few other victims with whom they have met and commiserated on the internet or in Pattaya bars, now form a band of Mr Shaw's most zealous pursuers. Mr Shields has returned to Thailand, vowing to stay until he tracks down Mr Shaw and his money. He now carries around a folder of papers which he considers evidence, and a tattered newspaper clipping telling of Madoff's comeuppance, which he seems to regard with a passionate sense of shared suffering and hope.
But unlike Madoff, and his recently-confessed conspirator Frank DiPascali, those claiming to be victims of Mr Shaw say he has been allowed to run free.
There has been a warrant out in Thailand for Mr Shaw's arrest since July, 2008. Even so, Mr Shaw - as he often boasts in correspondence - has travelled in and out of the country frequently.
He is said to have last left Thailand on May 8, and the 10-year warrant for cheating and fraud charges has since been filed with the Immigration police. It is unclear why this was not done before.
Mr Shaw also faces charges in Spain filed by one of the Canary Island investors, who succeeded in having his bank account there frozen.
Mr Shields and Mr Burnside have hired a lawyer to represent them, and say they have paid the police 10,000 baht. But they believe the investigation is going nowhere because of connections Mr Shaw has within the department, as well as sabotage by their own lawyer. Their lawyer does not speak much English and did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
A SHADY TRAIL
Few of the Hiperfinance clients I spoke with had prior investment experience. They acknowledge the deal sounded too good to be true, but they also said they had asked around and searched the internet and found nothing to prove that was the case.
Graham Mitchell, an Australian school teacher who invested $10,000, also had his suspicions, particularly over the unprofessional nature of the Hiperfinance website and transaction log. "Anyone could have made that on their home computer," he said.
But Mr Shaw presented himself as an experienced investor, and the men say his large home, many properties and the considerable wealth he showed in Pattaya were also convincing.
Many call him "cocky", and say he won them over by showing them a Hiperfinance statement valuing his account at US$46 million. He told them he operated a company called MoneyPS (Money Problems Solved), and invited them to a seminar in which he spoke about financial prudence and sold his book on the subject. Later they discovered it was really a copy of someone else's book.
Ironically, the seminar made Mr Mitchell certain he'd been scammed. "He told inappropriate jokes and stories the whole time. He was clearly a phoney."
Mr Shaw told Spectrum he still operates MoneyPS, and told me earlier this month to visit the website. I did, and came to a blank screen which said the site had been non-operational since July 15 and was pending renewal or deletion.
While Mr Shaw portrayed himself as a skilled investor, he also sold himself as a shady operator with connections that could make investors rich.
He told Mr Mitchell and Mr Burnside that he had worked for the Australian government and as a lobbyist in Iran. To others he claimed to be a successful African diamond smuggler and a gangster with connections to the local police and "Muslim circles".
Australian investor Rob Taylor claimed he was hustled by Mr Shaw while the latter was "drunk and spitting peanuts on a Pattaya beach".
In few places other than Pattaya would these methods and claims have been given currency.
With the benefit of hindsight, Mr Shields and others who claim to be victims of Mr Shaw, ruefully describe him as a marvellous con man. They say that during the course of the Hiperfinance saga he convincingly used multiple personas and manipulated people with various online identities, and that they believed his lies and lost a lot of money.
They also claim to have since uncovered a trail of Mr Shaw's scamming that dates back at least a couple decades and proves they haven't been his only victims.
In an October, 1986, Sydney Morning Herald article, Mr Shaw is identified as the bankrupt proprietor of a petrol-supply company called the 200 Club, who was awaiting trial regarding 17 breaches of the Crimes Act related to cheating, defrauding and obtaining money by deception that he had allegedly committed as proprietor of the Rentamower Priority company.
Google also reveals that in 2000, Mr Shaw was bankrupt again, and along with five others, subject to an injunction by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (Asic) for affiliation with Singapore Liason Priority, which ran a fraudulent and Ponzi-esque property scheme. Fifty investors in Queensland were cheated in the scheme, according to a press release by the Asic.
Mr Shaw had no comment for Spectrum on the charges, but the revelations did nothing to dampen his spirited taunts to unhappy investors. He frequently signs off correspondence with them by saying he is "soaring with eagles".
He wrote to one investor in January, 2009: "There is nothing new there you idiot, besides that, any publicity is good publicity. Thanks for your help in making me more millions to live on and enjoy!"
The men say that Mr Shaw's claims have become even more cavalier since they confronted him about the alleged scam.
Mr Shaw says that Mr Mitchell acted in a similar manner when with him, and provided emails that did contain nasty insults if not serious death threats.
In correspondence with Spectrum, Mr Shaw was straightforward and claimed to be blameless.
By contrast, emails to those claiming to be his victims (some sent as recently as June) are unrepentant, arrogant and don't reflect the mood one would assume of a man who had just lost $20 million, and they interpret them as solid admissions of his guilt.
To Mr Mitchell he wrote in August, 2008: "I am too rich and known to be anywhere I don't want to be, plus they have got to catch me first!"
To Mr Burnside in November, 2008: "Greed is good! There is no police or lawyers that money can't buy."
He seems pretty sure he won't get caught, and maybe even believes that he didn't do anything wrong.
He told Spectrum, "I come and go," and wrote to an investor in late 2008, "In 10 years, I will be back in Thailand, after that warrant ... is over. Your money was transferred to Hiper. Investments are risky things, you know. I have enough money to last me two lifetimes and with it I can go where I want when I want and fly with the eagles."
www.BahtSold.com
Connecting People · Connecting Thailand
A group of tourists and residents are claiming 'Thailand's own Bernie Madoff' robbed them of their retirement dreams
According to his Friendster profile, Lance Frederick Shaw is "a young 60". He likes travelling, making money on the internet, going out, fine dining, dancing and having fun. His occupation is listed as "lobbyist".
He has lived in Thailand for five years, and says he "comes and goes". His business card lists phone numbers in the UK, Singapore, Thailand, Spain and Africa.
A group of Pattaya tourists and residents, however, claim this freewheeling 63-year-old is a "con man", "a criminal" and "Thailand's own Bernie Madoff", and also allege that collectively they've lost several million dollars to him in what they now believe was a Ponzi scheme.
But while Madoff swindled his billions through a decades-long financial investment operation that targeted the world's wealthiest citizens and was cloaked in an air of legitimacy, those who claim to have lost money from their association with Mr Shaw appear to have been taken in by a much less sophisticated scam.
Known investors - who claim to be victims - are largely men from the UK and Australia, and include a Pattaya school teacher, an oil rigger and a number of business people and retirees in the Canary Islands. Between late 2005 and early 2007 - when Mr Shaw informed them their money was gone - they invested between US$10,000 and $250,000 (341,000 to 8.5 million baht) each in the scheme.
The men say they have lost their homes, savings, wedding funds and dreams of an early retirement. One man who sold his home and invested the money with Mr Shaw is said to have become a suicidal alcoholic. Those I spoke with expressed emotions that ranged from embarrassed, to depressed, to very angry.
The alleged scam used an online gold investment vehicle known as Hiperfinance.com (High Performance Finance), which had an office on Pattaya Driving Range, 3rd Road. Investors were attracted to Hiperfinance by advertisements in the Pattaya Daily Mail as well as endorsements from one another (investors received a 5% commission on referrals).
The ads were small, colourless and not completely coherent ("double security your capital in property and gold") promotions for gold internet trading, an investment opportunity that promised a 10-20% monthly profit and which gave as points of contact the web address http://www.hiperfinance.com and the email address, phone number and office address of Mr Shaw.
Philip Shields, a British businessman who works in the Canary Islands and invested $90,000 in Hiperfinance, responded to the advertisement in November, 2005, while holidaying in Pattaya. He called Mr Shaw, who according to Mr Shields, met him within minutes at a Pattaya coffee shop.
Mr Shields says Mr Shaw shuffled in with a noticeable limp and spoke in an affected tone, which in hindsight he alleges was an example of Mr Shaw's disarming con man theatrics. (He has since seen Mr Shaw walk and talk normally). He was initially convinced and made a cautious $1,000 investment.
Mr Shields watched the returns in his online account grow, and with the constant encouragement of Mr Shaw, gradually increased his investment. He says Mr Shaw was constantly in touch and attentive during this period, providing rides, food and at one point, paying him a house call (with one day's notice) in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands.
"He actually comes into your life," said Mr Shields, noting the last instance of this was an unwelcome visit in which Mr Shaw acted in an "uncouth" manner, eating with his hands and insulting Mr Shield's wife and daughter.
In July, 2006, more than six months into the endeavour, Mr Shields invested a further $70,000. By September, 2006, his balance had grown to $133,442. Although he never successfully accessed any of this money, he promoted the scheme to friends and acquaintances, a number of whom also invested. It was at this point that he learned all his money was gone.
Investments were made by transferring cash to one of several of Mr Shaw's personal bank accounts, including one at a Bangkok Bank branch in Pattaya and another in Singapore. Mr Shaw then invested the money in Hiperfinance, setting up an online account for each of the investors, through which they could monitor their investments and theoretically make transactions.
Investors were not permitted to withdraw capital for the first six months, though they were permitted to withdraw interest and commission earnings.
Not a single investor interviewed for this story ever succeeded in accessing their account or collecting the money that was reflected on Hiperfinance balance sheets (they speak of one man that did, who they believe was in on the scam). Mr Shaw's clients describe the transaction process as complicated, as it required chanelling money to Hiperfinance.com through one of two intermediary internet payment websites - E-Gold and IceGold.
Both sites provided means for unregulated international exchange of money and have been notorious for unscrupulous traffic. An FBI operation led to the 2007 indictment of E-Gold's proprietor and the site's temporary shutdown, while IceGold, an Estonian copycat site, has since been closed in compliance with the country's new anti-money laundering laws. Because of such difficulties, investors allowed Mr Shaw to make the investments for them and simply monitored their online Hiperfinance account, where they could track their debits, credits and balance on what appeared to be a basic and hastily designed Excel spreadsheet.
For many months, investors' statements swelled at the promised 10-20% return rate, and Mr Shields, and two other investors, Graham Mitchell and Alan Burnside, all concede they grew excited and moneystruck by the results they tracked online. Mr Burnside, a British national who works on oil rigs in Indonesia and spends his off months in Pattaya, decided to use the profits for a lavish retirement. Mr Shields said "We were getting very excited. I thought I'd wait until I reached a million and then get out."
All 12 investors interviewed for this story said they had repeatedly tried to withdraw their money, but were unable to do so for all sorts of reasons, including technical complications with the Hiperfinance website, the closure of the E-Gold site, and general confusion.
'I AM NOT A CROOK'
High Performance Finance (HPF), according to literature found on its now-defunct website, and provided to Spectrum by investors, was a registered company in the Republic of Panama. It explains that HPF is a group of experienced traders and investment analysts, headed by a Richard Hinton living in Hong Kong and operating with over 20 years of "investment acumen".
In an email interview, Mr Shaw maintained he too was merely a Hiperfinance investor who lost his own $20 million in the deal, and that while he promoted the scheme to others, he was not behind the operation nor did he force anyone's involvement with it. Mr Shaw, who estimated the number of his Hiperfinance clients to be in the hundreds, also said he had instructed each of his clients on how to withdraw their earnings, and told them to do so every month.
"My response is simple and the same as it's always been, I showed them an opportunity to earn money. Most of the people complaining are now the people who did not follow the simple instructions I gave them.
"I am not a thief as people have branded me, just a simple investor who has also lost money. Hiper may have been a scam, it may have been a Ponzi, who knows? The only thing for sure is that people, including the complainers and myself, made money from it while they were paying out, which they were doing for over two years - so how can it really have been a scam?"
While most of the Pattaya investors believe that Mr Shaw was the prime mover behind Hiperfinance, others speculate he may have been one of a team of con men in the guise of experienced investors who hail from Australia's Gold Coast and have a prolific history of such scams. Nearly all believe they are only the tip of the iceberg. Mr Mitchell, using an email tracking device, says he has discovered that Hiperfinance's banking system leads to North Cyprus, Dubai and Bogota, in Colombia.
These men, and a few other victims with whom they have met and commiserated on the internet or in Pattaya bars, now form a band of Mr Shaw's most zealous pursuers. Mr Shields has returned to Thailand, vowing to stay until he tracks down Mr Shaw and his money. He now carries around a folder of papers which he considers evidence, and a tattered newspaper clipping telling of Madoff's comeuppance, which he seems to regard with a passionate sense of shared suffering and hope.
But unlike Madoff, and his recently-confessed conspirator Frank DiPascali, those claiming to be victims of Mr Shaw say he has been allowed to run free.
There has been a warrant out in Thailand for Mr Shaw's arrest since July, 2008. Even so, Mr Shaw - as he often boasts in correspondence - has travelled in and out of the country frequently.
He is said to have last left Thailand on May 8, and the 10-year warrant for cheating and fraud charges has since been filed with the Immigration police. It is unclear why this was not done before.
Mr Shaw also faces charges in Spain filed by one of the Canary Island investors, who succeeded in having his bank account there frozen.
Mr Shields and Mr Burnside have hired a lawyer to represent them, and say they have paid the police 10,000 baht. But they believe the investigation is going nowhere because of connections Mr Shaw has within the department, as well as sabotage by their own lawyer. Their lawyer does not speak much English and did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
A SHADY TRAIL
Few of the Hiperfinance clients I spoke with had prior investment experience. They acknowledge the deal sounded too good to be true, but they also said they had asked around and searched the internet and found nothing to prove that was the case.
Graham Mitchell, an Australian school teacher who invested $10,000, also had his suspicions, particularly over the unprofessional nature of the Hiperfinance website and transaction log. "Anyone could have made that on their home computer," he said.
But Mr Shaw presented himself as an experienced investor, and the men say his large home, many properties and the considerable wealth he showed in Pattaya were also convincing.
Many call him "cocky", and say he won them over by showing them a Hiperfinance statement valuing his account at US$46 million. He told them he operated a company called MoneyPS (Money Problems Solved), and invited them to a seminar in which he spoke about financial prudence and sold his book on the subject. Later they discovered it was really a copy of someone else's book.
Ironically, the seminar made Mr Mitchell certain he'd been scammed. "He told inappropriate jokes and stories the whole time. He was clearly a phoney."
Mr Shaw told Spectrum he still operates MoneyPS, and told me earlier this month to visit the website. I did, and came to a blank screen which said the site had been non-operational since July 15 and was pending renewal or deletion.
While Mr Shaw portrayed himself as a skilled investor, he also sold himself as a shady operator with connections that could make investors rich.
He told Mr Mitchell and Mr Burnside that he had worked for the Australian government and as a lobbyist in Iran. To others he claimed to be a successful African diamond smuggler and a gangster with connections to the local police and "Muslim circles".
Australian investor Rob Taylor claimed he was hustled by Mr Shaw while the latter was "drunk and spitting peanuts on a Pattaya beach".
In few places other than Pattaya would these methods and claims have been given currency.
With the benefit of hindsight, Mr Shields and others who claim to be victims of Mr Shaw, ruefully describe him as a marvellous con man. They say that during the course of the Hiperfinance saga he convincingly used multiple personas and manipulated people with various online identities, and that they believed his lies and lost a lot of money.
They also claim to have since uncovered a trail of Mr Shaw's scamming that dates back at least a couple decades and proves they haven't been his only victims.
In an October, 1986, Sydney Morning Herald article, Mr Shaw is identified as the bankrupt proprietor of a petrol-supply company called the 200 Club, who was awaiting trial regarding 17 breaches of the Crimes Act related to cheating, defrauding and obtaining money by deception that he had allegedly committed as proprietor of the Rentamower Priority company.
Google also reveals that in 2000, Mr Shaw was bankrupt again, and along with five others, subject to an injunction by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (Asic) for affiliation with Singapore Liason Priority, which ran a fraudulent and Ponzi-esque property scheme. Fifty investors in Queensland were cheated in the scheme, according to a press release by the Asic.
Mr Shaw had no comment for Spectrum on the charges, but the revelations did nothing to dampen his spirited taunts to unhappy investors. He frequently signs off correspondence with them by saying he is "soaring with eagles".
He wrote to one investor in January, 2009: "There is nothing new there you idiot, besides that, any publicity is good publicity. Thanks for your help in making me more millions to live on and enjoy!"
The men say that Mr Shaw's claims have become even more cavalier since they confronted him about the alleged scam.
Mr Shaw says that Mr Mitchell acted in a similar manner when with him, and provided emails that did contain nasty insults if not serious death threats.
In correspondence with Spectrum, Mr Shaw was straightforward and claimed to be blameless.
By contrast, emails to those claiming to be his victims (some sent as recently as June) are unrepentant, arrogant and don't reflect the mood one would assume of a man who had just lost $20 million, and they interpret them as solid admissions of his guilt.
To Mr Mitchell he wrote in August, 2008: "I am too rich and known to be anywhere I don't want to be, plus they have got to catch me first!"
To Mr Burnside in November, 2008: "Greed is good! There is no police or lawyers that money can't buy."
He seems pretty sure he won't get caught, and maybe even believes that he didn't do anything wrong.
He told Spectrum, "I come and go," and wrote to an investor in late 2008, "In 10 years, I will be back in Thailand, after that warrant ... is over. Your money was transferred to Hiper. Investments are risky things, you know. I have enough money to last me two lifetimes and with it I can go where I want when I want and fly with the eagles."
www.BahtSold.com
Connecting People · Connecting Thailand
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