Almost a year after the Performance Investments Products Corporation (PIPC) scam broke out, there seems to be less news now from the media or the investigators. That does not mean, though, there are no developments happening in the background.
Here’s what we know so far, based on the latest report by financial fraud investigation firm Ferrier Hodgson.
Cyrus Hao, chief executive of Royal Manchester Five (RMF) — a foreign currency investment program that duped investors billions of pesos, is still at large.
Hao, who hails from Pilar, Sorsogon, and Renato San Juan, company vice president for marketing, are feared to have already fled the Philippines on Tuesday, March 4. If you have any information on their whereabouts, please contact the following offices or approach your local police:
National Bureau of Investigation
NBI Building, Taft Avenue, Manila, Philippines
Tel. No. (+632) 523-82-31 to 38
Securities and Exchange Commission
Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Department (SEC-CED)
Tel. No. (+632) 724-7650 or (+632) 727-2267
Pictures of Cyrus Hao and other RMF agents are in the article Wanted: Cyrus Hao of Royal Manchester Five Trading Corp.
More pictures are shown below.
Also shown is a copy of the contract of RMF with the Abba-Deo Prime Express Corporation, an organization that invested P1.1 million in RMF. The investment was supposed to earn 3.5% per month for 6 months, with the first interest to be paid in March. Unfortunately, the RMF scam unfolded even before Abba-Deo saw a single cent of interest.
Update: Sources tell us that, actually, Abba-Deo was a marketing arm set up exclusively for RMF. Whether they were victims or contributors to the scam is currently part of the police’s investigation.
Discuss RMF in the following threads:
Earlier last week, a news reporter from a major TV channel emailed Pinoy Money Talk and asked if we can recommend people who would be willing to sit for an interview to talk about their losses in the online investment program FrancSwiss.
Our reply, at that time, was that it might be difficult to find those people because FrancSwiss is technically still not a scam because it has not stopped paying yet. Our opinion was that investors would not badmouth a program they think has not done anything wrong.
Fast forward several days later, and FrancSwiss was declared a Ponzi and a scam-waiting-to-unfold by the Philippine SEC, BSP, and media channels. No sooner than that, all FrancSwiss websites went down, the operators were nowhere to be found, and no investor received payment in the last few days.
FrancSwiss being officially declared a scam is now starting to sink in to most people. Investors have started telling their own FrancSwiss stories — including stories of financial losses, of distrust in the people who referred them to the program, and of deception, hopelessness, and confusion.
Here are some of these stories, taken from the Comments section of the article Is FrancSwiss a scam? and the HYIP: FrancSwiss discussion thread. True or not, these stories are surely something FrancSwiss investors can relate to.
Read on.
