368 nabbed for involvement in Ponzi-like Nanning investment scheme

CHINA’S Public Security Bureau arrested 368 people, including 82 “executives”, believed to be involved in the Ponzi-like Nanning investment scheme in a Labour Day swoop on money games in Nanning.
According to a report in Sin Chew Daily today, Wisma Putra has not received any notification from the Chinese embassy whether there were Malaysians arrested in the operation, code-named “Shen Jian” (god’s sword), in the capital of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China.
According to the report, four million renminbi (about RM2.51 million), 57 cars, unspecified number of computers, bank cards and account books were also seized in the operation, which involved more than 1,000 public security officials and personnel.
The bureau said the Labour Day operation was the 105th carried out in its crackdown on pyramid schemes in the country this year, and it has so far arrested 2,323 suspects.
Nanning Investment Scheme, which is nothing more than a pyramid scheme started in 2008 to make use of the name of “Nanning development investment opportunity” to scam gullible “investors”, is popular among Malaysians, particularly businessmen in the southern peninsula state.
There was a lull in 2011 when it came under scrutiny by the Malaysian government but the scheme made a strong comeback the following year.
In 2015, it came under the media spotlight when five Malaysians from Johor Baru who went to Nanning to explore investment opportunities were found dead due to a gas leak from a water heater in an apartment unit in the fast-developing border city.
However, the incident did not deter Malaysians from joining the almost daily “investment missions” to Nanning.
Following the latest operation in Nanning, it is learnt that the local organisers of these investment missions have stopped planning new trips for the time being.