Charges filed against 27 in alleged pyramiding scam

By Tina Santos
Inquirer
Last updated 07:31pm (Mla time) 08/18/2007

MANILA -- The National Bureau of Investigation has filed charges against 27 officers and investors of Francswiss Investment, one of the "Ponzi" pyramiding scams proliferating on the Internet.

Charged with syndicated estafa at the Department of Justice were Michael Mansfield, chief financial officer; Kurt Sandelman, risk management team leader; Rupert Benedict Da Vinco, investment team leader; Julia Rodriguez, international banking team leader; Hector Willem Sidberg, marketing and international affairs; and Fernando Munoz, customer service leader.

Also charged were Francswiss Investment officers in the Asia-Pacific region. They were identified as Roger Smith, the British chief operation officer of FS Investment in the Asia-Pacific region; Bensy Fong, the Singaporean system operation officer; Raymond Chua, Singaporean marketing officer; and a certain Michelle and Mike, Filipino secretaries and collectors of money from investors.

Apart from the officers, the NBI also filed charges against at least 16 investors, including arrested suspect Eleazard Castillo, who allegedly enticed others to invest in the Internet-based scheme.

Castillo, 26, a native of Cabuyao, Ilocos Sur, allegedly one of the financial advisers of Francswiss Investment, was arrested by agents of the NBI National Capital Region in an entrapment operation in Baguio City last month.

The case stemmed from the complaints of at least 41 investors who claimed they lost a total of $75,000 to the investment scheme.

Francswiss, which started operating in March, was believed to have gypped unsuspecting investors in the Philippines of P1 billion, the NBI said earlier.

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying abnormally high, short-term returns to investors out of the money raised from new investors, rather than from profits generated by any real business undertaking.

The respondents allegedly lured unsuspecting victims over the Internet using the website http://www.francswiss.biz and http://deutchfrancs.com.

Investors were asked to invest $1,000 in francswiss.biz and $10,000 in deutchfrancs.com that promised to double their money in 22 days.

They were told that their investment would earn daily interest of 4.5 percent of $45 which they could encash through Internet-to-bank transactions.

The investors were likewise promised additional 10 percent commission as "e-points" for every investor they recruited.

"Francswiss Investment promised interests bigger than those offered by banks," said director Ruel Lasala, head of the NBI-National Capital Region. "This type of investment scheme usually collapses as fast as they are created while investors are left unable to recover their investments."

Lasala said the investors were also told that their money would be re-invested in other lines of Francswiss Investment like overnight casino and pawnshop, foreign exchange trading, sports betting, and mutual funds.

"But we found out that all of these do not exist," Lasala said.

He said the NBI has been coordinating with their counterparts in other countries to locate the respondents, particularly the Francswiss Investment officers.

"We're also conducting record check to get the addresses of the investors engaged in the recruitment," Lasala said.


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