Trolling the investment scammers (video)

Last month, we wrote about a new financial investment scam involving Olympus International Limited in Hong Kong. This is a real company selling ceramic and stainless plate, but victim of corporate ID theft by a group of individual trying to scam investors through escrow agents (aka money mules) by discounted shares on the NASDAQ for FireEye (FEYE) before the announcement of a yet-to-be-made public contract with Facebook, and an expected return of at least 40% within three months.

You'll find out more about the scam details in the earlier post, but today, we'll share a photo montage from an audio call with one of the financial advisor, the escrow website is reveals, a Feng Shui "incantation" is performance (just because), and we ask a few questions to validate, or in this case, invalidate the company's claims, before sharing a copy of a passport that's truly a work of art....

Fraud alert: Olympus International Limited's Facebook and FireEye (FEYE) scam

Scammers never seem to take a break with the latest fraud going through "financial advisors" claiming to work for a small Hong Kong based company called Olympus International Limited. They are using the same expats database as the Brookfield Investment Funds Plc scam, and call potential investors telling them about inside information about FireEye (FEYE) having signed a large contract from Facebook, yet to be publicly announced, and expect the stock to go up at a minimum of 40% in three months.

Getting a call from an investor survey company

It all start the same way as the Brookfield scam, with a cold call from an investor survey company asking some details about you and your investor profile that takes about 5 minutes. Shortly later you'll received an email summarizing your answers from "clientform@www.dq-datamanager.com".

They ask about your job, experience in investing, budget to buy stocks, and whether you could be interested in opportunities if they present themselves.

First Olympus International Limited Calls

Then a couple of weeks later, you may received a call from an investment company in this case: Olympus international Limited based in Hong Kong.

 

The financial advisor may speak your native language or English, and they'll offer you short term investment opportunities with close to guaranteed returns. The offer we were made aware for FireEye, listed in the NASDAQ with the sticker FEYE, and claims of inside information about a contract having been signed with Facebook. They claim to be an institutional investment firm, but also work with individual when opportunities arise. They also explain they can purchase the stock as a cheaper price since they buy in large blocks, and ask you to confirm over the phone.

The call we were told about involved Ms. Olivia Martel, Senior Financial Advisor. That's likely a fake name. The website is https://olympusintltd.com/ and telephone: +852 5803 7265. 

 

Olympus International Limited is real... 

 

 Hong Kong keeps a company registry so it's easy to check if a company exists.

 

The company was registered in 2003, so it's been doing business for over 17 years. The company registration number is 0846150 and matches the number used in the emails with seen from the scammers.

 

But cracks can be found pretty quickly...

This almost looks legit, but when we look at the website WHOIS data, it was only created in August 2020, that's a long time for a company to operate without a website. 

 

They optimized their costs too by going with one of the cheapest domain registrar, and the free Let's Encrypt TLS certificate service. But at least everything is under a secure connection contrary to what's we've seen with Brookfield website...

If we look for Olympus International Limited Hong Kong on the web, we can find what types of products they offer: namely ceramic and stainless plates or other kitchen utensils.

 But who am I to judge. Time are tough, and it's possible the company decided to change the direction of the business. But if you're going to offer financial services in Hong Kong you need to register with the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) which again keeps a database of registered companies.

The only registered company with "Olympus" in the name is "Olympus Partners Asia Limited". But I'm sure Ms. Olivia Martel would not have lie about her status to the face of her client.

No matched record for "Olivia Martel" or even just "<artel"? How is that possible? That's because it's a total scam, and a group of individuals likely using fake names are using the name and CR number of a real, completely unrelated company.

Let's invest in FireEye/Facebook scam!

Most sane people who figured out this was a scam, would just block the number of ignore. So are we still interested? You bet! One Ms. Martel called back, our source said due-diligence was done, and he/she was ready to go ahead with the proposal start with a small $5,000 investment. Once the number of share was agreed upon, price (around $1 cheaper than live quote at the time), and it was explained payment would have to be made through an escrow company and was due within 3 working days. A call from an "SEC compliance officer" called Mr. Michael Winters soon followed double-checking the transaction details and requiring an audio signature by simply saying the full name. 

The purchase was confirmed the following day, and the investor was given a receipt, an account opening form, and a W8 form for US taxes. 

 

 

 

The procedure is pretty similar to the one used by Brookfield Investment Funds Plc so far, but there's a twist as this time around a proof of address and copy of address is being asked first, before the payment details of the escrow company are provided. That's probably to avoid all those leaks that have happened on this website and others in the past. The escrow company (aka money mule) takes a central part in the scam so they only want to limit the distributions of the information to the minimum. Since our source did not use his/her real name, the use of a fake passport copy and proof of address, and filling a W8 form with falsified information would have been required. We did advise against it.

If you've been scammed, or managed to obtain the money mule information, please let us know in the comments section.

Scammer Alert: Wells Capital Fund LLC

Here's another money mule related to Brookfield Investment Funds Plc company that scams people investing in non-existent shares such as pre-IPOs or "reverse liquidations": Wells Capital Fund LLC.

Here are the bank details of the company:

Account Name: WELLS CAPITAL FUND LLC

Account Address:

2375 East Camelback Rd.

Suite 600 Phoenix,

AZ 85016

USA

Account Number: 15266430

Bank Name: GREAT WESTERN BANK

Bank Address:

1721 N Arizona Ave.

Suite 1 Chandler,

AZ 85225

USA

Swift Code: GTWBUS44XXX

The website for the company is wellscf dot net with claims of being in business for many years:

For over 20 years Wells Capital Fund LLC has been securing transactions and providing a protected payment process to allow our clients to work more efficiently and secure.

But as usual for this type of company, the website was just registered recently, namely in November 2019.

They can't operate the company for too long, as one year is about the time it will take before it's closed and the scammers move on to another company.

If you have been victim of the fraud make sure to fill a police report against the company in the jurisdiction where the scam occurred. Note they usually only work with expats to make tracking phone calls that much more difficult and costly for the victim and law enforcement.

People behind Brookfield Investment Funds Plc and Kaloca Inc Investment Fraud

We first wrote about Brookfield Investment Funds Plc when covering AirBnB and Virgin Hyperloop One Pre-IPO scams. This is a non-existent company that claims to be based in Ireland and the United Kingdom and receive payments through "money mules" that are recently incorporated financial companies such as Singapore based Vipco Holding Pte and WELLINGTON YORK PARTNERS PTE. LTD.,  John Jennings law office in Germany, or Kaloca Inc in the US.

Somehow, the scammers are still free to operate but at least the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK and Ireland has finally written warnings about Brookfield Investment Funds Plc "clone firm" that mislead investors by claiming to be an already authorized firm.

Derek Nguyen - Kaloca Inc. CEO

But we have now received more information from a victim of Brookfield Investment Funds Plc scam, who paid to Kaloca Inc., and hired a private detective to look into the matter.

Amazingly Kaloca Inc. company has been registered by a recidivist, Mr. Derek Nguyen, who previously another scam company under the name Kaloca Holdings Inc. He is now CEO at Kaloca Inc, and both companies point to the same, non-loading website kaloca dot com.

Based on investigative work, Brookfield scammers are mostly working out of Northern Virginia with Carl Bryce likely being a scammer on the West Coast, and others are using fake names. Gregory Ellis, who is allegedly working with them, had been arrested in Thailand in 2013, then jailed by the DOJ, but was eventually released from prison and went back to his old trade.

While the walls are closing in on the scammers, various authorities are involved, victims are often taken in a circular loop, where each agency point to the other one to solve the issue. We'll keep you posted if more information comes out. Feel free to contact us if you are a victim, as if more people come together there's a better change to recover the funds.

Fraudulent Company Warning: WELLINGTON YORK PARTNERS PTE. LTD.

A coupled of months ago we wrote about AirBnB and Virgin Hyperloop One Pre-IPO fraud where victims would receive cold calls from native English-speaking, apparently financially savvy "financial investors" proposing them to invest in pre-IPO offerings from popular companies that had yet to be listed in the stock market.

They work for fake companies and instead ask victims to invest through escrow companies "for your safety". We previously mentioned Kaloca Inc (USA) and Vipco Holdings (Singapore) used by Van Gossum Consult, Brookfield Investment Funds Plc, and others, but we were informed about another company helping scammers: WELLINGTON YORK PARTNERS PTE. LTD
.

Victims who contacted us receiving an invoice with the following details:

WELLINGTON YORK PARTNERS PTE. LTD.
68 Circular Rd.,
Suite 02‐01,
Singapore 049422
Account Number: 348 903 0630
Bank Name: UNITED OVERSEAS BANK LIMITED
Bank Address: UOB Plaza
80 Raffles Place,
Singapore 048624
Swift Code: UOVBSGSG

Make sure not to make any payment to this company, and if you've received an invoice you can contact the police, and/or the Commercial Affairs Department in Singapore to report the company.

The company has a website which we will not publicize here, but while they claim to operate since 1986, they only thought of registering the website in 2018...

Since the company is registered in Singapore, there's a searchable business registry, and we can see the company was only incorporated on the 7th of June 2019.

Peak Oil: Interview with Colin Campbell - February 2011

Peak Oil will be one of the main issues of this decade, and although likely to be volatile due to more frequent recession, how high the price of oil will go will probably to surprise most people, maybe including myself.

Colin Campbell is a retired petroleum geologist who is an expert on peak oil.
He has been interviewed in February 2011, see the four parts video below for his insights on peak oil and the consequences it may have.






If you plan to invest in crude oil, avoid most ETF such as USO or UCO based on crude oil futures as those have terrible long term performance due to contango.

RJI (ELEMENTS Rogers Intl Commodity ETN) is much better to follow the price of oil, although it only has 40% invest in crude oil (WTI and Brent) and the rest being industrial commodities, precious metals and agriculture commodities.

Another way is to invest in company in the oil sector which can be done via OIH ETF which tracks the performance of the 18th largest oil companies in the world. The main risk here is that those company will not be able to increase their reserves and it may spook the market, even if the price of oil goes up.

It may not be the best timing to invest in oil at the moment, since high oil price usually trigger a recession, but longer term it should perform relatively well.