A man who was previously convicted of fraudulently selling Google stocks has pleaded guilty to a similar scam where he posed as representatives from a billionaire family’s investment office.
On Feb 22, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said in a statement that Singapore resident Shamoon Rafiq had pleaded guilty to soliciting millions of dollars of investors’ money by lying that he could offer stocks from firms like Airbnb before these were made available to the public.
In 2021, the Dutch national was charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with defrauding investors by offering to sell them about US$9 million (S$12 million) in such fictitious securities.
The 50-year-old, who also goes by the names Shamoon Omer Rafiq, Omar Rafiq and Omer Rafiq, was previously convicted in 2004 for fraudulently offering investors access to “friends and family” shares in Google.
He was subsequently deported from the United States after serving a 41-month sentence for his crime.
In or about 2020, Rafiq launched a scheme from Singapore to dupe investment firms in New York and elsewhere into paying for alleged investment interests in various stocks in privately held companies that had not yet conducted an initial public offering (pre-IPO).
Under this scheme, he impersonated two senior officials of an investment firm of a “prominent billionaire family”, the statement said.
This involved creating a fake website, which automatically routed users to the investment firm’s official website, and creating e-mail addresses that resembled the senior officials’ genuine e-mail addresses.
Among investors that fell for the scheme was an investment firm based in New York and one of the firm’s foreign institutional clients, which wired about US$9 million in mid-August 2020 to an account in New York for anticipated release to a bank account in Singapore to pay Rafiq.
To perpetuate the scheme, Rafiq created and sent e-mails from the fake addresses, as well as fake contracts and deal documents purported to have been signed by the senior officials on behalf of the billionaire family’s office.
Rafiq also received about US$1 million from an investment group located in California in late 2020 after he had pretended to be a representative of the family office that was offering pre-IPO stock for sale.
He has agreed to pay restitution and forfeiture of the sum from the California investment group as part of his guilty plea.
For conspiring to commit securities fraud and wire fraud, Rafiq can be sentenced to up to five years in prison.
Said US attorney Damian Williams: “Shamoon Rafiq ran a brazen scheme from Singapore to defraud US investors who wished to invest in well-known private companies before they went public.
“This prosecution demonstrates the continued efforts of this Office and our law enforcement partners to pursue those who defraud American investors, no matter where the perpetrators are located.”
Rafiq was extradited from Singapore with the assistance of the US Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs, Interpol, Singapore Police Force and Attorney-General’s Chambers of Singapore, according to the statement.
The Straits Times has contacted the authorities with further queries.
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