Pinoy in HK jailed for boiler room scam

HONG KONG (AFP) — A Filipino man was sentenced here yesterday to seven years and four months in jail over a "boiler room" scam that defrauded investors of about HK$13 million ($1.7 million).

Renato Tandoc, 27, pleaded guilty to setting up companies in Hong Kong and opening bank accounts to collect the fraudulent proceeds amounting to $13 million.

The money was then moved on to the Philippines where bank secrecy laws prevented further tracing of the funds. The "boiler room" operation and salesmen were based in the Philippines.

Police said Tandoc was part of a syndicate that called potential investors and induced them to buy shares in a company that they claimed was listed or about to be listed in the United States.

Victims were traced in Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and Britain, police said.

"These boiler room syndicates deliberately base themselves in one jurisdiction, call victims in other jurisdictions and launder the proceeds through a third, making it difficult for law enforcement agencies to tackle them effectively," a police spokesman said.

Other members of the syndicate are now on the run, Hong Kong press reports said.

The syndicate kept the investors’ stocks and they were eventually told that their investment had fallen through.

In the second stage of the scam, the syndicate offered to "swap" the stocks purchased by the investors for US blue-chip shares.

The investors were then persuaded to pay an advance fee to cover the difference between the value of the stocks they had purchased and the current value of the blue chips.

Once the investors had paid the advance fee, their "investment adviser" disappeared with the money.

"Boiler room" scams were named after a US film of the same title which has a storyline about unsuspecting investors being sold fraudulent shares.