Greed not paying for Zhang

 The ‘future richest man in the world’ – the alleged mastermind behind several get-rich-quick schemes in the region – is set to face legal action in China. 

ZHANG Jian, founder of money game scheme YSLM and the self proclaimed “future richest man in the world”, was arrested in Indonesia, finally.

Zhang has enjoyed a demigod status among his followers ever since he first started the business. He was uplifted as an ultra-smart man who went to the university at the age of nine and decoded bank passwords at 12. He was also said to be well versed in six languages.

But the question is whether he is no better than a master con man.

Zhang is well known in Malaysia, and the YSLM that made a landfall in this country three years ago almost turned the country upside down.

In the pretext of charity, he and his team made generous donations to local Chinese primary schools and independent high schools to win the hearts of the public and for their own publicity. He once offered RM350,000 to a single Chinese primary school in Negri Sembilan.

End of the road: Zhang being taken away by the police in China.

Zhang and his team recently brought a virtual currency called wuxingbi into Malaysia, and in the name of Zhang Jian Jewelry, continued with its donating spree that subsequently triggered the controversial question whether his donation should be accepted by independent Chinese high schools in the country.

After his release from a Phuket prison, Zhang went on with his usual tactic of bribing government officials and counterfeiting identification documents to move around South-East Asia. That nevertheless would not stop him from running his money game business by manipulating the wuxingbi scam through WeChat, smartphone and the Internet while staying largely out of the public eye.

His YSLM has sucked up 600mil yuan (RM380mil) of public funds in China, while his wuxingbi is actually another virtual coin scheme operating on a people-get-people model.

He knew how to command public attention, spending 30,000 yuan (RM18,834) each on young women to get them to shave their heads and act like nuns to promote wuxingbi at various functions and events. He even organised a “nun wedding party” in China.

He promised anyone purchasing a 5,000 yuan (RM3,139) wuxingbi to bag in 4mil yuan (RM2.5mil) of returns within a year. The unimaginable 800-fold returns were way higher than what recently collapsed money game schemes could think of offering their investors. Unfortunately, many have chosen to believe in him, especially in China.

Even as money games has become so rampant in this country, our enforcement authorities appear to be always a few steps behind in their actions.

Extensive coverage in Sin Chew Daily has doubtlessly killed the get-rich dreams of many avid investors. These scammers are never short of cash, and are always ready to hire well-known law firms to send us legal letters in an attempt to gag the media.

With Zhang now escorted back to China to face legal action, perhaps it is time for wuxingbi investors here to wake up. — Sin Chew Daily/Asia News Network

Pook Ah Lek is Editorial Director with Sin Chew Daily. The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.