Jail for man who posed as forex trader, cheated 13 people of $4.6m

A businessman posed as a successful forex trader – and even published books and magazines to establish his credentials – to dupe 13 people into handing him more than $4.6million in total.

Kenneth Kam Boon Hee, 57, ran a Ponzi scheme where his victims were promised a monthly interest of 3 per cent on their loans to him but were paid with monies from other victims, instead of forex trading earnings.

Kam was sentenced to 10 years’ jail on Dec 16.

After a trial, District Judge Eddy Tham convicted him in August of more than 60 cheating charges involving the 13 people.

Deputy public prosecutors Hon Yi, Jordon Li and Jonathan Tan stated in their submissions that Kam had dishonestly induced the victims to enter agreements and deliver loan monies to him.

He cheated each victim of between $160,000 and $800,000 from 2016 to 2019.

Kam still has more than 200 pending charges and these will be dealt with at a later date.

The prosecution said that, in all, he solicited about $94 million of loans from various individuals.

Stressing that Kam’s representations that he was a successful forex traders were false, the DPPs told the court: “The accused was in fact not an active forex trader at all, much less a successful one.”

According to the prosecution, Kam had two trading accounts and he was the only person who had access to them.

Records show that, between 2017 and 2018, he conducted a total of five trades using these two accounts.

“The accused did not engage in any significant scale of forex trading as he had represented, and in fact, had used the loan capital from the victims to pay the promised monthly interest,” the DPPs said.

At the time of the offences, Kam was a director at two firms, Kenn Capital and Kenn Organisation International.

The offences came to light when one of his former employees alerted the Commercial Affairs Department about Kam’s activities through an anonymous whistle-blower email.

The employee, identified in court documents PW2, then made an official police report in January 2019.

PW2 had earlier testified that none of the accused’s companies were profitable, with no known income sources.

In their submissions, the DPPs stated that Kam ran a loan scheme for around five years.

According to court documents, Kam started out with intimate presentations to small groups, before progressing to large, well-attended events held monthly.

Kenn Capital and Kenn Organisation were part of a group of companies

Kenn Capital was incorporated to carry out trading activities, while Kenn Organisation was the administrative arm of the group.

Kam had funded the firms with money obtained under the loan programme that he offered between November 2014 and April 2019.

The DPPs said that under the loan programme, he entered into two different types of agreements with individuals, whom he referred to as “benefactors”.

The court heard that they could either choose to receive monthly interest of 3 per cent to be paid monthly or compounded 3 per cent monthly interest to be paid at the end of the tenure of the loan programme.

Court documents stated that the term for both types of agreements was three years and the benefactors were promised their loan capitals at the end of the term.

There was also an arrangement under the loan programme where existing benefactors could sign up to be an “introducer”.

Under this agreement, Kam paid the introducers referral fees of 0.7 per cent of the fresh loan amount from each new benefactor that the introducer brought in.

On some occasions, he would also purchase insurance policies with the benefactors stated as the beneficiaries.

These insurance policies would be for the duration of the loan agreement entered into with the benefactors.

Kam first started promoting the loan programme in Singapore in 2014.

To reach more prospective benefactors, he promoted it to prospective benefactors during meetings termed as “Monthly Client Meeting” or “Knowing Kenneth Kam”.

Referring to them “MCM/KKK meetings”, the prosecutors said that during such gatherings, he claimed that he started trading forex in the late 1990s before eventually doing so full-time.

In 2016 and 2017, he published two books where he claimed to be a forex trader. The first one, titled The Equilibrium – Training The Money Mindset, recounted his purported experience as a full-time forex trader.

In the second, titled The Success Manifesto, he described himself as a “traditional conservative forex trader”.

Copies of the first book were given to prospective benefactors who attended the MCM/KKK meetings.

In 2017 and 2018, Kam also published two issues of a lifestyle magazine titled Kenn Magazine, which contained articles about his purported forex trading experience.

Lawyers Thong Chee Kun, Josephine Chee and Ng Pei Qi from Rajah & Tann Singapore represented Kam.

Among other things, the defence said that Kam was not dishonest and had not induced the victims to part with their money.