Joined: 9/20/2013 Posts: 1
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This company claims to offer 2 options: fixed 12% returns per year, or fluctuating returns averaging about 30% per year. The salesperson was convincing me to let Pacific Tycoon purchase containers on my behalf, lease them out for me, and he said high returns is possible due to huge demand for products manufactured from China, that China is the manufacturer of the world, and that there are huge traffics at the ports of Hong Kong and Shanghai, etc.
Sounds attractive, but anyone has any idea about this company? All I know so far is they are based in Hong Kong, their parent company is Moritzclear Research S.A. based in Belize. If I go ahead and buy containers through them, I'll need to wire the money to their account in a Taiwanese bank called Shanghai Commercial and Savings Bank, and the lease contracts are under the law of Singapore. Besides, he always called me from a strange number which he said it's voice-over-ip phone technology to save the cost.
To be fair, he did assure me that I'll receive by post ownership certificates with serial numbers of containers that I own, that Pacific Tycoon is part of some associations, and that there are client references in my area for me to contact and get advice.
It sounds interesting, but still I'm not from this container/shipping industry, so not too familiar with what s going on and which companies to choose... So, anybody ever heard of Pacific Tycoon?
Thanks for advice
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Joined: 9/23/2013 Posts: 1
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Be super-cautious!!!
Pacific Tycoon is a Ponzi Scheme based in Saigon, Vietnam.
It does have an office in HK to meet clients, which is at a different
address from the virtual address published on the website. PT staffs pick
up clients at the airport or hotel and take them to that office. They
always ask clients the exact date and time they are coming to visit Hong
Kong, so as to book flight tickets to get there from Vietnam and fill up the empty
office. There are also two part-time local Hong Kong
staffs. Hong Kong staffs are innocent, staffs from Vietnam
have to tell them that they come from Shanghai
office, and Hong Kong staffs believe that.
There’s probably nobody in Shanghai.
Pacific Tycoon does have Hong Kong phone numbers (land and mobile)
beginning with 852, which are just SIMs they bought in HK and bring the
phone to Vietnam.
Salespeople call clients using voice-over-IP (Skype) to save costs and to hide
where they are calling from.
Ted Mallory (just an alias) runs the boiler room in Vietnam, about
30 staffs. They get telesales leads from email campaign in Viral
Planet, The Executive Club, Adalsa, Investor Guide, Galvan, etc. The
biggest markets are UK
and Australia. Since
the beginning of 2012 until now, revenue per month is about 1 million
US Dollars, I estimate that after deducting costs, Ted makes about 400 to
500K per month for himself.
Ted is paranoid about his identity. Staffs don't know his real name. All
we know is he's an old British guy, tall, brownish blond. He may also have
a Filipino passport. The apartment to run the office is always rented
under his Vietnamese mistress' name Nguyen Thi Ngoc Thanh. Moritzclear
Research S.A. and its company bank accounts are under his Filipino female
friend’s name Michell Empleo Dela Cruz. Once your money is wired to the
Taiwanese bank Shanghai Comercial and Savings Bank, it will then be wired to
Michell’s account in Cambodia,
and then transferred to her Vietnamese bank. Once the money comes to Vietnam,
Michell will fly to this country to withdraw the cash. Thanh will escort her
all the way to the banks, and take the money back to the boiler room office.
As a rule, client leads from USA,
France, China (including Hong Kong), Vietnam, and
a few other countries are immediately taken off the list. Regarding USA and France, Ted
is scared off because there were offical warnings against PT; regarding China and Vietnam, he is
smart enough not to create any noise in the local market, so that the police
don't pay attention. If a client has British nationality, but live and work in Hong Kong, he'll be taken off the list, because Ted
doesn't want him to visit the HK office randomly and finds nobody. In
addition, clients are told not to send and receive funds from a US bank account, regardless of his/her nationality.
A powerful sales pitch is to tell potential buyers to
contact client references; i.e. those who already invested in PT, for opinions.
In total, there are only 10 client references, who are victims themselves. They
are kept happy, receive their returns from this scheme, and they are paid a
flat fee each time someone agrees to buy after emailing/talking to them.
Another sales tool is to mention that you will receive
container ownership certificate, with a container number (BIC code). Well, you
may want to go into this link and check if the last digit is correct: http://www.bic-code.org/calculate-the-check-digit-online.html.
A client told me he checked and the last digit doesn’t match, or that further
investigation about the correct code shows that the container doesn’t belong to
PT. Anyway, I have seen a junior staff printing out a lot fake ownership
certificates in the Vietnam office, from a
template file. All she needed to do is to insert the details like numbers and
owners and then print them out.
Another tool to convince clients of PT is to mention that it
is a member of Hong Kong Shipowners Association and Container Owners
Association; and that is is ranked platinum by Dun & Bradstreet. The truth
is, it is only listed as an associate member, NOT full member, in HK Shipowners
Association and Container Owners Association by paying those websites a fee.
The same apply for Dun & Bradstreet website, it paid that website for the
platinum ranking thing. On the other hand, one should question why this company
is not listed in The Institute of International Container Lessor: http://www.iicl.org/about/members.cfm.
Another way to be extremely cautious is how this company is created:
_Parent company Moritzclear Research S.A. was incorporated
in Belize
_Pacific Tycoon registered in Hong Kong, contracts with
clients under Singapore law
_The bank to receive clients’ money is in Taiwan
_Website registered in The Phillipenes: http://www.showsiteinfo.us/sites/pacifictycoon.com
(scroll down to About Site, click on the tab Whois)
In Vietnam, PT advertises job vacancies
under various fictitious names (San Severino Holdings, Cloisters House, DataFlow,
etc.), since the company itself doesn't have any business registration,
and staffs don't have any real labour contracts with the company. In
February 2012, Vietnamese police raided PT office in district 4, but
then were bribed to ignore PT. I think it was only the poor local
policemen who raided, not police at higher level like Economic Police or
anything like that.
It is important to note that Ted Mallory has been hiring an IT company to
hack and bring down websites with bad publicity about PT, and he
successfully brought down www.absoluteinvestor.co.uk and www.boiler-room.orgs.
At the moment this comment was written, www.absoluteinvestor.co.uk is
up again but the discussion thread about PT being scam is still
inaccessible, while www.boiler-room.orgs is still down.
When it s impossible to bring down a website, PT lets its lawyer to
contact the investment forum requesting comments to be removed, saying it
is libel. Thus, many comments about the truth of PT by ex-employees on,
for example, The Motley Fool were removed.
There is a Facebook profile about this Ponzi scheme, you can
see photos organized into albums, with detailed description. You can find Ted’s
photo, too. https://www.facebook.com/ted.mallory.9
To re-affirm that Pacific Tycoon is ponzi. Please see that
this company is listed in a couple public warnings and alerts:
_Warning against Pacific Tycoon by the FMA: http://www.fma.gv.at/de/verbraucher/investorenwarnungen/internationale-warnmeldungen/detail-internatwm/article/warning-against-pacific-tycoon.html
_Warnings against Pacific Tycoon by the French authority: http://www.amf-france.org/documents/general/10449_1.pdf
_Investor Alerts at Finance Inspection: http://www.fi.se/Folder-EN/Startpage/Register/Investor-alerts/A-list-of-all-investor-alerts/
_Scam fraud alert reports: http://scamfraudalert.org/2013/03/08/economic-frauds-www-economicfrauds-com/
_Even in German, Pacific Tycoon is warned against: http://www.afm.nl/nl/consumenten/risico/waarschuwingen/waarschuwingenlijst-buitenland/p.aspx#{5D9E6A38-E392-4F67-8F1D-F0D1EE0FAF67}
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