An Australian couple who lost over $1 million to scammers eerily came face to face with one of the criminals while they were vacationing in China.
Roxy*, who did not want to use her real name, was distraught after learning that scammers had kept her on the hook for nearly a year through a fake online trading platform, before finally severing ties with her after draining her of everything she was worth.
In another hammer blow for the woman, who lives in Melbourne, she encouraged her friends to invest in the fraudulent scheme and also borrowed money from them and now has to find a way to pay them back.
Roxy speaks English as her second language and her husband relayed parts of her story to news.com.au, and the rest was pieced together from her police statement.
Her husband lamented that he “should be retired” and added that Roxy was “ashamed” of what happened.
It was a normal day in July last year when Roxy received a text message that would change her life.
A man called Wei Chen messaged Roxy out of the blue, asking how she was.
Although at first Roxy didn’t think she knew him and questioned who he was, it wasn’t that alarming or strange for her as she runs a Chinese immigration and education business.
“I thought my friends or clients introduced him to me,” she said to news.com.au.
She got talking to this mysterious man and they ended up getting on well, messaging each other over WeChat and WhatsApp about food and how they had both moved to Australia.
The man told her he was a permanent resident who ran a furniture shop and he lived in the expensive Sydney suburb of Rose Bay in a house worth $12,747,700.
Eventually, the conversation progressed and Wei Chen mentioned that he had staked his $12,747,700 fortune on an investment trading website called SpreadEx.
A legitimate company exists by that name in the UK as a sports betting and financial trading company, regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Convinced, Roxy was coaxed into putting some of her money in. She had $191,215.50 in savings and over a period of time put all that in, and then some more.
Unfortunately, the SpreadEx business she was dealing with was masquerading as this company and was actually run by a group of scammers on a separate website.
In December last year — six months after Roxy had invested — the UK financial watchdog put out a warning, flagging that the scammers were using an extra “S,” using the domain spreadexs.com instead of spreadex.com.
Australia’s government website Moneysmart also put out a warning about the fraudulent site.
After Roxy used up all her savings investing on the platform, she borrowed a further $286,823.25 from friends. She also redrew the mortgage she shared with her husband to keep investing.
Some of her school friends also invested as well after she encouraged them.
She wired the transactions to half a dozen different Australian business accounts, all of which had been registered just a few months, and in some cases a few days, before Roxy made the transfers.
The people listed as directors originated from Malaysia and Hong Kong although they are registered to current residential addresses in New South Wales and Victoria.
These people are suspected money mules, recruited to launder the money and then send it on to someone higher up the chain of the scamming syndicate.
One of the mule accounts had $480,588.29 deposited in it.
Victoria police confirmed to news.com.au that no one has yet been charged over the matter and that they are still investigating Roxy’s case.
Roxy went overseas to China on vacation and wanted to keep investing while she was there.
The scammers told her she could hand cash over to them while she was in mainland China.
She convinced a friend to withdraw $126,202.23 in cash and accompanied them to a meeting point on a cool November night.
They met a man near an office along a highway, in what she described as a “remote dark place.”
“We handed over 500,000 yuan in cash,” she said.
While overseas, she left her SpreadEx trading account in the hands of Wei Chen, who at this point she considered a mentor.
When she returned, she tried to withdraw some of her money but her trading account was suddenly suspended.
The scammers told her she had to pay a risk fee for withdrawing her cash.
They then charged her a $281,724.17 penalty because she had let someone else take over her account.
She was then left borrowing more money.
The last contact she had with Wei Chen was in April this year, meaning he kept the ruse going for nearly a year.
After multiple unsuccessful attempts to contact him, Roxy and her husband concluded it was a scam and alerted police in September this year.
She says she still owes the money she took from friends and from the mortgage. She and her husband will have to continue to have to work well into their 60s and 70s.
