Asia Times: LAND OF SMILES: You, too, can impoverish friends and relatives



	February 23, 2000	atimes.com

Southeast Asia

LAND OF SMILES
You, too, can impoverish friends and relatives
By Bradley Martin

Bangkok newspapers' help-wanted ads have long been full of ads from ''network-marketing'' companies that want people to pester all their friends and relatives and persuade them to buy stuff and become members of sales schemes. In hard times, such as those that have prevailed since the financial crisis hit in 1997, many people have responded.

All the pressure has gotten to prospective customers to the point many people are pretty sure they know what it means when they get calls out of the blue from highschool classmates they haven't heard from for decades and who want to ''get together for a cup of coffee''. Lately many network marketers have been noticing that their old friends cross to the other side of the street when they see them coming.

So it was about time for someone to dream up a new twist. And someone did, as evidenced by a quarter-page ad that the Bank of Thailand placed in Sunday's edition of the leading Thai-language newspaper Daily News. Roughly translated, the ad said:

''Warning: Gangs of cheats promote investment in buying and selling foreign exchange to get profits from the differences in exchange rates. Now there are businesses using the English term 'forex'. Customers are told they can make profits from differences in exchange rates, but we have already proved that these companies are mainly defrauding people. They hire recent graduates to solicit investments in amounts of 300,000 baht and more.

''They use their company registrations from the Ministry of Commerce to trick both salespeople and customers into thinking they have licenses from the Ministry of Finance and they lie to investors, saying they make high profits investing in pounds sterling, German marks, euros, Swiss francs or Japanese yen.

''We have proved that companies of this kind have defrauded people. The Ministry of Finance never allowed a license for this kind of company to start such a business. This kind of company never buys or sells foreign exchange as they claim. They simply transfer your investment to the directors' personal accounts. Now there are many people who have lost savings of between 300,000 baht ($8,000) and 10 million baht to these liars.

''If you get cheated by this company, you can call the police or the Ministry of Finance or hire a lawyer to sue them. The Ministry of Finance telephone number is 273-9114, extension 3723. For more information call the team of Bank of Thailand, 253-5151, 283-5152.''

The ad didn't mention the names of any such companies, but consider the following true story: a few weeks ago a Bangkok friend who had been underemployed since the financial crisis hit saw an intriguing ad in a local English-language newspaper offering the following positions: Economic Management, Assistant Manager, Marketing Development, Economic Analyst, Secretary, Public Relations.

Millenium 2000 Global Econ. Group, the advertiser was called, and its slogan was ''Smart Vision Smart Think''. ''All Freelance are Invited with the Greatest Deal $$$,'' it added. ''Qualifications: 'If you think you're no. 1 you are welcomed' (negotiable)''.

That friend, who works as an independent consultant in management and marketing and always needs more clients, figured the advertiser might be some new consulting firm with which she could join forces. Although the ad seemed a little peculiar, especially with those dollar marks, in fact there are a lot of peculiar English-language ads placed in Bangkok papers by people whose English is imperfect.

So the friend faxed in her resume with a note saying she assumed this was a consulting firm and, if she was right about that, there might be something to discuss. The response was very fast: a phone call that same afternoon in which she was asked to go in for an interview. She did, and the first thing she noticed was that the receptionist was reading a newspaper - a sign of inefficiency that no good consultant could miss and fail to rectify. One mark against the company, if indeed it was a consultancy.

When she got to meet her interviewer, she learned that this was not a consulting firm at all but, she was told, a foreign-exchange trading business. ''I have no experience with foreign exchange trading and know nothing about it,'' she said. No problem, said the interviewer. ''I'll train you.''

A quite pleasant foreigner of indeterminate nationality who spoke English with an American accent, the man then explained that the company needed both full-time and part-time employees. Even people without experience could learn the job in two or three days of training, he said. Once trained, the new employee would start calling acquaintances, or maybe in come cases people introduced by the company, and ask them to invest. There would be a commisson to the salesperson, and the company then would invest the money for the client.

The man explained that the company was counting on the eagerness of Thai people to earn higher rates of interest. Many people had withdrawn savings from fixed accounts to try to invest in new Thai government high-interest bonds, but after waiting in line at the Bank of Thailand they had found those scarce bonds sold out before their turns came. High-return foreign exchange trading accounts would be attractive to such people.

The man gave her a brochure and his business card and she agreed to go home and think about it. The brochure turned out to be a photocopied document in such poor and often nonsensical English as to be largely incomprehensible. The illustration on the front cover showed three moneybags fairly bursting with dollars under the title ''Foreign Exchange Investment''. The company on the brochure was identified not as Millenium 2000 Global Econ. Group but as B.I.C. Group. The interviewer's business card gave his e-mail address at Microsoft's free Hotmail service, not exactly powerful testimony to his own company's stature and stability.

On the advice of a friend, the woman didn't call the company back. After she saw the Bank of Thailand ad in Sunday's paper, she phoned the central bank's special team dealing with forex scams. The bank official who answered explained that although new graduates are the usual salespeople, companies such as the ones the bank was warning of would be delighted to get experienced, high-powered business people like her - people who have both marketing knowhow and Rolodexes full of high-net-worth contacts who could be sales prospects.

The team member also explained that in some cases such companies - without having actually made forex trades - have given back to customers their original investments plus proportionally large ''profits'' the first time to lure them into ''investing'' higher amounts after that and to inspire them to spread the word among their friends and relatives and make ''investors'' of them, too.

Such companies, of which the team member said there are many, often have foreigners to front for them as that gives the impression they are big, important firms, the bank team member said.

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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