LVM succeeds in obtaining judgment for SGD 6 million for a victim of a Ponzi scheme from uplines

In 2024, our Lok Vi Ming S.C., Joseph Lee, Jonathan Muk, Qabir Sandhu and Clara Lim successfully represented Chan Pik Sun (Sandra) to recover approximately SGD 6 million from her uplines, Wan Hoe Keet (Ken) and Ho Sally (Sally). Ken and Sally were prominent founding members of a Ponzi scheme called SureWin4U and had made fraudulent misrepresentations to Sandra such that she invested a significant amount of money in SureWin4U.

While the Firm did not succeed in the General Division of the High Court, a majority of the Appellate Division of the High Court allowed Sandra’s appeal against the High Court’s decision and allowed her claim with interest. Critically, the Appellate Division disagreed with the High Court’s view of the facts for 2 major reasons – Ken and Sally’s destruction of their correspondence with the ultimate fraudster and their conduct post-collapse of SureWin4U.

The Appellate Division held that it was particularly troubling that Ken and Sally could not produce correspondence that would have shed light on their relationship with SureWin4U’s founders and their knowledge of whether it was a fraudulent scheme. They also gave contrived reasons for why they were unable to produce such correspondence.

There was also independent evidence that Ken and Sally had met up with the masterminds of SureWin4U after the collapse of SureWIn4U and filed a police report which contents were carefully crafted to give the impression that they were assisting their downlines with recovering money from the founders of the Ponzi scheme.

As the Appellate Division was able to draw an adverse inference as to any fact which was likely to have happened even if it was the most serious or damning inference against the other party, it proceeded to draw an adverse inference against Ken and Sally that the missing correspondence would go towards showing that they were aware of SureWin4U’s fraudulent nature.

The full judgment can be found here.