"If God wants a man to perish, he will first make him crazy!" Zhang Yufa perfectly verified the correctness of this sentence.
Zhang Yufa, known as the first giant fraud in Malaysia, is known as the godfather of Chinese pyramid schemes.
For decades, he has repeatedly used deceptive means to collect wealth, playing the trick of the golden cicada to get out of its shell again and again, and escaping the punishment of the law.
In just over seven years from 2012 to 2019, he used pyramid schemes to defraud the trust of more than 2 million people in China, defrauding an amount of up to 500 billion yuan.
Even after the East Window incident in Malaysia, there was no intention of stopping, and after fleeing Thailand in 2019, he continued to use deceptive means to collect money.
On July 25, 2022, Thai police released information that they had captured Malaysian Zhang Yufa.
The people cheered.
(Zhang Yufa)
A foreigner, what means did he use to deceive Chinese trust and defraud such a high amount of money?
Take you inside Zhang Yufa and see what clever means the scammers have used.
The café line cheated the family
Zhang Yufa, 56, was born in Malaysia in 1966 to an ordinary family, the third generation of Chinese in Malaysia, with ancestral home in Guangdong.
Because the family conditions are not very good, he has a business mind since he was a child, and when he was in elementary school, he knew how to make money from his classmates.
He went to the wholesale market to buy pencils, exercise books and small toys, etc., and took them to the school to sell and make a difference.
When he grew up, he has been groping for various small businesses, but he has not made any achievements.
In the 90s, mobile phones developed rapidly as a new thing, and Zhang Yufa thought that the opportunity had come and started a mobile phone business.
Although the mobile phone business made some money, in 2008, the financial crisis collapsed again.
The crisis has swept the world, and it is difficult for all walks of life to be affected, many companies have closed down, and stores have closed.
But at this time, Zhang Yifa chose to swim against the storm and opened a Red Island Café in Malaysia.
(Red Island Coffee Chain)
Unlike other café business models, he does not pay attention to the café environment, does not make specialty coffee, and does not require the quality of service of the waiter.
He took a different approach and developed a fresh consumption mechanism, the shareholding system, in which everyone only needs to spend RM6,000 (about 10,000 yuan) to get the so-called original "shares" of the Red Island Café and become shareholders.
Shareholders are entitled to a 100 RINGGIT (equivalent to RMB150) coffee voucher and a 5% rebate per month.
After investing for 5 years, you can get 3 times more money than the original stock you invested.
In other words, you can drink coffee for a few years and make a lot of money.
Is there such a good thing in the world? Initially there were a lot of people who didn't believe it.
If you want to hook the fish, there will always be bait. If you want to make people hooked, of course, you must also come up with enough attractive interests.
Soon, one "Red Island Cafe" after another appeared on the streets of Malaysia, and Red Island Cafe became a large chain of enterprises.
At this point, the skeptics and the people who were watching believed.
How can such a large enterprise deceive people? How can you open so many homes without making money?
As a result, more and more people are investing in The Red Island Cafe.
In less than a year, Zhang Yufa attracted more than 3,000 "shareholders" and made a profit of more than RM30 million, nearly 50 million yuan.
However, deception is deception, just as if you lie in a panic, you need countless lies to forgive, there is always a time when it cannot be forgiven.
When the person who bought the "stock" came to the store with the coffee coupon, he found that the café environment was not good and the waiter was scattered.
The most important thing is that there is nothing you want to order, and there are only a small number of things you can order in the store.
People who have been to the coffee shop said: "When the waiter put a menu card in front of us, he couldn't believe that 10 of the 17 kinds of food on a menu card were forked and not provided." ”
At first glance, it is the kind that can't be managed.
At this time, the media began to reveal that this was a scam, Zhang Yufa took the money of the previous investors to open a lot of Red Island coffee chains, and the purpose of opening so many coffee shops was to attract more people to invest in becoming "shareholders".
Shun took the front to give some people rebates, and so wave after wave attracted people to invest.
Zhang Yufa is smart, he knows that sooner or later he will be discovered, so he finds himself a seamless way to get rid of the golden cicada, take advantage of the financial crisis, and declare the company bankrupt.
The investor realized that he had been deceived and quickly called the police.
Zhang Yufa and his son, as well as a partner, were arrested and imprisoned by the local Malaysian police.
Surprisingly, the court's verdict was bizarre:
Zhang Yufa threw the main responsibility to his partner, admitted that he and his son had defrauded RM1 million, and was eventually sentenced to a fine of RM160,000 and a day in prison.
This time, it was a lot of money, and investors lost everything.
The result of a perfect escape, the cost of making mistakes is too low, causing him to become more and more lawless and slide towards deeper sin.
Packaged after the MBI Group
Zhang Yufa has always had a knot in his heart about his being arrested, and he feels that he is unlucky and has "lost his money and credibility."
In 2009, the year after the Hongdao Cafe accident, Zhang Yufa found a partner to set up the Dream Group and began to get the so-called "light assets".
The business model is to let investors spend money to buy virtual currency, known as the rate of return of up to 70% to 90%, and make money by eating virtual interest.
After purchasing the projects of Dream Realization Group, investors will be divided into 5 different levels according to the amount of investment, such as gold, silver and silver, and can get the corresponding proportion of rebates every month and pay in the form of virtual currency.
What you invest is money, what you earn is virtual currency, which is actually a push code, a string of numbers.
Investors who want to improve their level need to develop the downline, and if they want to earn back the principal, they must also develop the downline, and the development of the downline will get a generous reward from the company.
In fact, this way is the marketing routine of MLM at first glance, but it is only a virtual commodity that is bought.
However, after Zhang Yufa's careful packaging, it has won the trust of many people.
(Zhang Yufa and friends)
In 2012, he continued to expand his business by setting up the MFC Game Wealth Creation Platform and the MTI Network MLM Platform, with many people investing in Malaysia and Taiwan as well as China.
It is also these two platforms that pit tens of thousands of Chinese of hard-earned money.
In 2013, the East Window incident occurred, and Zhang Yufa's partner was arrested by the police.
Coincidentally, Zhang Yufa just happened to be separated from his partner, studying in Hong Kong, and once again luckily hid in the past.
Zhang Yufa, who studied in Hong Kong, learned more advanced and scientific deceptive means.
That was SMI, the "tech company" that he came into contact with by chance.
SMI is a Singaporean Chinese company huang yanqing established in May 2007 as an investment and wealth management technology network company in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong.
Huang Yanqing, the founder of "Finnciti", a Singaporean Chinese, is 70 years old and has his ancestral home in Fujian.
He is an expert in finance, a master of success studies, and is known as the originator of the split disc in the MLM industry.
Because of his rich financial knowledge and financial master, he has become a millionaire at the age of 27 and a multi-millionaire at the age of 31.
Therefore, how to play this piece of finance is well understood by him.
SMI is ostensibly doing game finance, but in fact it is investing in the token market.
There are virtual currencies online, offline physical stores, which on the surface look like an ordinary company, but in fact, it is also a kind of pyramid scheme in disguise, but it is a more advanced and more hidden way to deceive people.
Zhang Yufa, a man of many clevernesses, saw a business opportunity from it, entered the company and began to learn from Huang Yanqing and became his apprentice.
(Huang Yanqing)
In 2012, after He Zhenqiu, Gu Xiping and others met Zhang Yufa, they introduced the pyramid scheme into the mainland.
However, the Chinese police are not vegetarians.
It was found that there was a problem with SMI's operation, and after visiting and investigating, it was confirmed to be a pyramid scheme organization.
At that time, He Zhenqiu and others had developed more than 200,000 people in the mainland, and the amount involved was as high as more than 29.53 million yuan.
On May 26, 2015, Huang Yanqing was also listed as a fugitive by the mainland on suspicion of illegal business operations.
If it hadn't been discovered early, I don't know how many people would have been tricked into investing.
Ji Xianlin once said a passage:
"According to my observation, bad people, like all poisonous animals and plants, do not know that they are bad people and are poisonous.
I also found that bad guys don't change for the better. ”
Because the bad guy doesn't think he's bad, what he does, he will continue to do.
Zhang Yufa did not restrain himself in the slightest after the SMI accident, and after returning to Malaysia from Hong Kong, he packaged the company comprehensively.
In 2015, he founded MBI Group, which involves hundreds of projects such as film and television, real estate, supermarkets, hotels, etc., with business scope in more than 20 countries and regions in Asia.
Zhang Yufa is a business tycoon, and his business has reached 10 billion, becoming Malaysia's premier large enterprise.
The streets of Malaysia are full of advertisements from MBI, the momentum is huge, Malaysians believe in his business, foreigners are even more foggy, can not distinguish between true and false.
He made a comeback with such fanfare that he was said to have a backer behind him.
He is rumored to be the cousin of tunku Abdul Rahman, the father of the Malaysian nation, and has brought in the director of the Malaysian General Department as a consultant to the company.
The endorsement of these people has made Zhang Yufa and his MBI Group increase the public's trust in him.
(He Zhenqiu)
In 2015, Bitcoin swept the world, taking advantage of this east wind, MBI mainly promoted a "only up and not down" virtual currency - barter coins, commonly known as M coins, this currency can be issued and circulated on the "game management platform" set up by Zhang Yufa.
It is declared that M coin is issued in a limited amount worldwide, a global stock, funds are concentrated, and token trading can form an internal virtuous circle, so it will only rise and not fall.
Attract users in the form of developing members, and members implement a hierarchical system.
If you want to become a member, you need to pay an entry fee ranging from 700 yuan to 35,000 yuan, buy virtual currency of equal value, and implement a hierarchical system for members to obtain membership levels from one to six stars.
The advantage of becoming a member is that you can get an annual return ranging from 10% to 200% of your investment. And the more money you put in, the higher the profit.
Of course, if you develop the downline, you will also get additional rewards.
In order to attract more people to join, Zhang Yufa came up with a water-free method and opened various physical stores under MBI, where users can use M coins for shopping, accommodation, beauty and other physical consumption.
Zhang Yufa also used the name of MBI to do charity marketing for his "philanthropist", claiming that "a thousand charity activities must be held every year." ”
He also used sponsoring celebrity concerts to expand his influence and visibility.
At that time, no one knew that Zhang Yufa, who was beautiful, was cloaked in the cloak of charity, but he was doing the evil thing of "drinking human blood".
Hundreds of billions of Chinese swindled
As the old saying goes: There will be a mistake in a hundred secrets, and there will be a mistake in a thousand worries.
In the world, no matter how carefully and perfectly you plan, there will be some flaws.
If you don't know, you can't do it unless you don't do it yourself.
Over time, the user found the problem. On the surface, the funds in his account are rising, but he wants to withdraw cash out of many restrictions.
Some deceived users said that if you invest 1 million in it, the system will pass in seconds; But if you want to withdraw 1 million, the operating system is always busy and slow, and you can only mention up to 10,000 a day.
Some people have questioned whether this is a lie if this is only in and out?
Whenever there is such a voice, there will be people who oppose and deny, this is a large international company, there are businesses all over the world, teaching people how to invest and make money, the world is famous, how can it be deceitful?
However, the large amount of money inflows, coupled with the disruption of financial markets by virtual currencies, has caused Bank Negara Malaysia to be vigilant and put MBI on the financial warning list.
But Zhang Yufa made an excuse to say that this was because his company had great influence, and he would be targeted at a little wind and grass.
As soon as he said this, investors really believed what he said.
(Zhang Yufa)
This actually gave Zhang Yufa a wake-up call, and he could take advantage of this to end it.
But the greedy Zhang Yufa did not have the slightest idea of giving up, and the MBI continued to issue the virtual currency WCG (Jokkin) in the guise of blockchain, and continued to circle money madly.
In late June 2017, Mr. Zhang, who had long been targeted, was arrested by Malaysian police for investigating the huge liquidity involved.
At the same time, 98 bank accounts under his name, up to 209 million yuan of money, were frozen.
I thought that this time he had finally planted this time, who knows, he had great supernatural powers, and it didn't take long for him to regain his freedom, as if nothing had happened.
At this point, some investors are more convinced that his MBI company has no problems.
Despite constant news reports that MBI is a pyramid scheme, it continues to invest money.
As early as August 2015, Jiangsu police arrested 41-year-old He Zhenqiu in Bali, Indonesia, and then escorted back to China.
He is the leader and organizer of MBI in China. He Zhenqiu has been doing stocks in the capital market for a long time, and has rich returns, known as the "god of stocks".
It is precisely because of him, the trust of the Chinese people in him, that more people have been deceived.
In the end, He Zhenqiu was sentenced to eight years.
(He Zhenqiu)
However, even if so much information is fed back, there are still many people in China who do not believe it and still believe in Zhang Yufa and believe that he is the person who led them to make a fortune.
In 2018, Bank Negara Malaysia was fined RM3 million for not recognizing electronic payment currencies, while the two companies under his name were fined RM2.5 million and RM7 million respectively.
At this point, MBI is not far from collapse.
On October 17, 2019, more than 100 Chinese citizens came to the Consular Department of the Chinese Embassy in Malaysia to report the case, crying that they had been cheated of huge sums of money by the Malaysian "MBI" group and asked the embassy to intervene.
These people also collectively knelt on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and wept and petitioned for the Malaysian government to make a decision.
It turned out that they had come from China to the headquarters of MBI Group in Malaysia to ask for money, and found that it was already empty.
According to reports, the number of people defrauded in China participating in MBI investment has reached more than 2 million people, and the defrauded funds have reached 500 billion yuan.
However, as a foreign enterprise, MBI's Police cannot afford to recover losses for the victims.
The Chinese, and even secretly went to Zhang Yufa with knives and guns and explosives, trying to blackmail his son to force him to spit out the money.
From October to November 2019, the Chinese Embassy in Malaysia issued five statements urging the Malaysian police to pay attention to the case and help the people involved legally and rationally defend their rights.
These news have dominated the headlines in Malaysia and have had a very big impact across asia.
The Malaysian government is under intense pressure to freeze the RM177 million (265.5 million yuan) property linked to the "MBI" group and issue a wanted notice to it.
While people were waiting to see the news of his arrest, news came from Thailand:
He ran to Thailand to become a monk!
He escaped to Thailand in an attempt to turn around and was eventually caught
How Zhang Yufa escaped to Thailand is unknown.
Others have a wide network and clever means, and it is not difficult to escape.
Besides, he has a business in Thailand.
After the Thai government designated Danno in southern Thailand as a free trade zone, he invested in the development of an Asian cultural village project here, threatening to build an "oriental version of Las Vegas" here.
At the end of 2014, the second phase of the Asian Culture Village project he invested in has begun construction, including theme parks such as Sleeping with Pigs, Wuxia World, and Baitu Garden.
So, his ordination in Thailand was fake, he only worked as a monk for 7 days, and then he began to relax again.
(Zhang Yufa)
His career in Malaysia has collapsed, but his "ambition" is still indelible, and he still wants to make a comeback in Thailand.
Taking the hard-earned money of the deceived, he bought an entire street in Songkhla province on the southern border of Southern Thailand, with a total area of about 240 acres and worth tens of billions of baht, equivalent to 1.8 billion yuan, and then entered the real estate and entertainment industry.
He opened hotels, entertainment venues, amusement parks, shopping malls, etc.
His life is still a pleasure, a luxury.
Later, he repeated the same tactics, bribing and bribing Thai politicians and local government officials to use them to stand for his business.
In 2020, Thai police discovered that Zhang Yufa and his son were suspected of money laundering, and they entered the police's sights.
At the end of the year, Malaysian police also found him, and his son used illegal fund-raising to buy 100 luxury apartments worth RM336 million.
In addition to that, they continue to invest in Bitcoin with the money.
The police in China, Malaysia and Thailand began to tighten their nets.
Zhang Yufa, who was moved by the wind, wanted to flee when he closed the net like the one in Malaysia.
However, a fluke, it is impossible to be a fluke, hurt so many people, his good luck has been taken back by God.
On July 22, 2022, Zhang Yufa was successfully arrested by the Thai police when he tried to flee Thailand by boat.
Today, there is no exact information on whether Zhang Yufa will hand it over to China or be extradited back to China.
However, the news of his arrest is good news for those who have been deceived, and I believe that no matter what country he is in, he will get the punishment he deserves.
The ancients once said: "If the son wants to do things, he must first learn to be a man."
Character is a person's biggest hole card. Your talent determines how high you can stand, and your character determines how far you go.
A person's small victory can rely on wisdom, if you want to win a big victory, you must rely on virtue, and your character is not passed, even if your ability is strong and your IQ is high, the future road will not go far.
(Photo of Zhang Yufa's arrest)
Zhang Yufa himself agrees with this statement, and he once said in an interview:
"Personality is like gold, the higher the purity, the higher the taste." Be a person for a lifetime, and character is the foundation. Morality can make up for intellectual deficiencies, but wisdom can never make up for moral deficiencies. ”
However, he walked in two ways, and his words and deeds were different. Say one set, do one set.
He took advantage of the weakness of human nature, the desire to get rich, lured people to the bait, and finally harmed tens of thousands of people, but also harmed himself.
Although the money was earned, he was not blessed to enjoy it.
And those who are deceived, the reason why they are deceived in addition to credulous trust in others, in fact, the biggest problem is to take shortcuts.
Li Ka-shing once said: "There is no shortcut to entrepreneurship, because there is no good money in the world." ”
The pyramid is made of stones, the road is step by step, and the money also needs to be earned little by little.
After all, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and someone always needs to pay the bill.
The money you make so easy, who is paying for you?
When you understand this truth, no matter who says what can easily make money, you will not be easily deceived.
Author: Zhu Xiaolu & Sanyan Gongzi
Follow me @ Zhu Xiaolu to read more million-level explosive articles.
Hello, I am Dr. Zhu Xiaolu, is a post-90s, also a Ph.D. from Wuhan University, and a postdoctoral fellow at the National University of Singapore.
The main business is to engage in scientific research, and the side business uses fragmentary time to write.
With moving brushstrokes, write a true story that moves the heart.
Follow me @ Zhu Xiaolu. Or like, comment, private message me, discuss and learn from each other, work together to transform, and become a better person.