According to Foresight News, former Chinese tycoon Yang Bin has been sentenced to six years in a Singapore prison for operating a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme disguised as a cryptocurrency investment business. Yang, who was once ranked as China's second-richest person by Forbes in 2001, was found guilty of eight charges, including conspiracy to commit fraud and operating without a valid work permit. He was also fined 16,000 Singapore dollars (approximately 12,200 USD). The 61-year-old Dutch national of Chinese descent admitted to the charges on August 26.
Yang conducted his fraudulent activities under the name A&A Blockchain Innovation, attracting over 700 investors who invested a total of 6.7 million Singapore dollars between May 2021 and February 2022. However, investors lost around 1.1 million Singapore dollars. The company falsely claimed to own 300,000 cryptocurrency mining machines that could generate a daily return of 0.5% for investors. In reality, no such machines existed. Instead, Yang used funds from new investors to pay returns to earlier investors and for personal expenses, a hallmark of a Ponzi scheme.
This is not Yang's first encounter with the law. In 2003, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison by a Chinese court for tax evasion and was released in 2016 after serving his sentence.
