Dutchman Wesley Halbach was arrested last month while attempting to flee the country, and Thai police are searching for another 40 people believed to be involved in the Phuket Ponzi scheme.


Man held for B100m fraud
published : 16 Feb 2021 at 04:00
A Dutch national has been arrested for allegedly tricking people into investing about 100 million baht in a shopping website that never existed.
Police arrested Wesley Anton Dirkjan Halbach, 37, in Phuket as he tried to board a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight to the Netherlands.

Phuket Provincial Court had been trying to question Mr Halbach over financial fraud, said Pol Maj Gen Charin Kopata, commander of the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau's (CCIB) division 5.

The arrest came after several people told police they had been tricked into investing in a hoax online shopping platform. CCIB police launched an investigation and found Mr Halbach was the administrator of the website in question.
https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... 100m-fraud


Dutchman from Phuket arrested for ‘Shopping Mall’ app scam
By The Phuket News

Monday 15 February 2021, 06:30PM
The call for victims to file reports of how much money they lost came today as police announced the arrest of a Dutch national for operating the scam.

The Dutchman, named today by police only as “Mr Wesley”, was taken into custody at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok last Thursday night (Feb 11), said Lt Gen Kanchai Khlaikhleung of the Cyber Crime Investigation Bureau (CCIB).

‘Mr Wesley’ was with his Finnish wife and daughter when he was arrested, Lt Gen Kanchai explained to a press conference held at the Royal Thai Police headquarters in Bangkok today (Feb 15).

“The Shopping Mall scheme had 30 ‘groups’ called ‘All Star’ with about 500 members in each group. Each member had to invest at least B1,000. Some people had invested about B200,000,” Lt Gen Kanchai said.

“At this stage, about 1,000 people have identified themselves as victims. Many of them came with tears on their faces, as they had spent all of their savings on this investment,” he added.
https://www.thephuketnews.com/dutchman- ... -79023.php

LATEST UPDATE:
GoFundMe Launched For Dutchman Arrested Over ‘Shopping Mall’ Ponzi Scam
Published 17 hours ago
on March 22, 2021
By Stickboy BKK
The Finnish partner of the Dutchman arrested last month over his alleged involvement with the “Shopping Mall” Ponzi scam has launched a GoFundMe appeal to pay for bail and a lawyer, claiming he’s been framed.

Sanna Kilpinen, who is apparently “in a happy place” in Lahti, Finland with the couples young daughter, has so far raised just over 1,000 Euro claiming 37-year-old Wesley Anton Dirkjan Halbach is “a victim of a big set up” adding he is accused of “acts which he has not done”.

In February Halbach was apprehended at Suvarnabhumi Airport as he was about to board a KLM flight to his homeland with his partner and daughter.

Halbach is currently on remand awaiting trial where he will face numerous charges over his alleged involvement in the Ponzi scheme.

He was arrested on a warrant issued by Phuket Provincial Court following complaints from over 1,000 people they had been swindled out of vast sums of money they had invested in a scheme called ‘Shopping Mall’.

Unknown to the people who signed up, investing anything between 1,000 and 400,000 baht, the Dutch was operating a Ponzi scheme using Line groups called ‘All Star’ that promised high returns for investors using the ‘Shopping Mall’ app.

The scam began in October 2020 and was spread across 40 or so groups each with around 500 members each, mostly from Phuket and Koh Samui.

All payments were made into 44 accounts at four banks in a neighbouring country. Payouts were made on time every time leading those who “invested” to up the ante and put more money in hoping for higher returns.

However, the scheme all came crashing down last month when all the admins for the ‘Shopping Mall’ app and ‘All Star’ groups disappeared overnight leading many to file police reports.

It is estimated Halbach was about to make off with around 100 million baht from the scheme.
https://www.stickboybkk.com/news/gofund ... onzi-scam/

February 9, 2021
Original Report: “Shopping Mall” Pyramid Scheme Comes to an End
True Crime Thailand

The scheme unraveled on February 8th.
Perpetrator: Shopping Mall App
Victims: 100’s of thousands in Thailand and abroad
What: A few weeks back one of True Crime Thailand’s readers alerted us to a massive pyramid scheme operating under the name Shopping Mall.

Thailand - You may or may not have heard of it, but hundreds of thousands of people across Thailand and even other countries were involved by infusing their hard earned money into the scheme.

I have one source who chose to remain anonymous and I respect their wishes. They were able to provide valuable information about how the pyramid scheme worked.

Shopping Mall launched late last year and took Thailand by storm. People were investing anywhere between a few thousand baht to millions of baht into the scheme.

For awhile it was paying off. My source told me they were able to profit from Shopping Mall when they put 20,000 baht into the platform in December and withdrew 70,000 soon after. They never put any more money in, however, and walked away with their gains.

The Shopping Mall scheme worked like most other pyramid schemes. Big returns are promised and often realized by those who are early, and the gains are funded by those who come in later, often when it’s too late. There’s a critical mass that’s reached where the payouts slow down due to lack of growth in users or capital, and the infusion of cash that funded the high return payouts of early users dries up.

Of course, those who came in late, whose capital funded the payouts of earlier participants, are left holding worthless shares or placeholders in a queue that promise future returns.

The app became very popular in Thailand. While shopping at your local Big C you may have heard the “ching ching ching” of the app giving users notifications of their gains. There’s no actual estimate published yet as to how many were involved in the scheme, but when it’s all said and done, based on figures provided to me and fair estimates, I’d reckon that hundreds of millions of baht will have been squandered when it’s all accounted for — maybe even more.

And it wasn’t just Thais hoping to win a quick baht. One British man put in over 600,000 baht. There are stories on Line groups, which is where the schemes were organized, where people lost millions of baht and are unable to withdraw their money.

Hundreds of Line groups were abandoned over night by the admins when the scheme started to fall apart as of yesterday. Users and other participants on the groups are sharing their stories of the money they lost and details about how they got involved.

Police stations across Thailand, from Phuket to Koh Samui and Bangkok, were flooded by people filing complaints about Shopping Mall. Expect official news from police and the press in the coming days and weeks that account for how many were taken by this scheme and the financial toll tallied.

Our contact was also able to do a bit of legwork in investigating the source code of the app. It’s open source code that was published on a Chinese language website.

The app itself also supported Chinese, Thai, and English.

I’ll go out on a limb with this and say that I’d reckon that Chinese profiteers were involved with promoting the app in Thailand, but that’s yet to be seen — it’s only our speculation.

There are other apps and pyramid schemes that have been running concurrently with Shopping Mall.

One is called Tesco App. Another contact of True Crime Thailand informed us of its existence and popularity.

It works the same as Shopping Mall and is currently running just fine with deposits and withdrawals going smoothly. Of course, there’s never a problem until there is. Any of these apps and schemes should be avoided at all costs. If you do decide to put money in with the hope of short term large returns, then only risk what you are comfortable with losing, as you may wake up without the ability to get your funds out.
https://truecrimethailand.com/original- ... to-an-end/

Trapped in a cage with hundreds of thousands of direct ennemies + families + the rest of this specific country, a move so bad it borders on a conceptual form of art where hope is an useless notion.
Somehow brilliant, unlike his dark new destiny.

There is a good chance he was set up. These types of scams on a large scale, tend to have an unwitting director, or in this case Administrator, that has little or no knowledge of what he or she is getting into, until it's too late, and becomes the fall guy. I know, oblivious, ignorance is not a strong defence, and would be extremely hard to prove. It would seem he's convinced some people according to the thousand Euros accrued on GoFundMe, (where did that come from). I feel for him if he is a super-naive and trusting European nice guy.

Pseudonomdeplume wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 9:28 am There is a good chance he was set up. These types of scams on a large scale, tend to have an unwitting director, or in this case Administrator, that has little or no knowledge of what he or she is getting into, until it's too late, and becomes the fall guy. I know, oblivious, ignorance is not a strong defence, and would be extremely hard to prove. It would seem he's convinced some people according to the thousand Euros accrued on GoFundMe, (where did that come from). I feel for him if he is a super-naive and trusting European nice guy.

------------

Unwitting 37 year old adult? Please. Foreign bank accounts for a Thai enterprise? Chinese registrations? Promising mind numbing financial returns? You could be deaf, dumb and blind and still know something wasn't right.

And there is the small matter of him attempting to run off with 100 million baht.

Real nice guy.

They need someone, who is responsible for the scam.... And he is there..... Thats it!

Guilty or not, it's not looking good for him.

He's fucked to stay long time in prison...1 year or 15, I think he will regret to have smelled the fast money.