22-04-2025
- Business
- New Straits Times
Tedy Teow's long history of brushes with the law
KUALA LUMPUR: Tedy Teow Wooi Huat, who was arrested in Thailand more than two years ago and extradited to China last year, is in the spotlight again after the police launched Op Northern Star.
Teow is the founder of Mobility Beyond Imagination (MBI) Group International, a company which authorities said served as a front for pyramid schemes and Macau scams.
Dubbed "Jho Low 2" in several media reports, Teow is infamous for schemes that have landed him in hot water with authorities in several countries, including Malaysia, Thailand and China.
In 2009, he founded MBI Group International, a property company purportedly involved in luxury residential and retail spaces in Malaysia and Danok, Thailand.
Three years later, MBI Group International introduced a pyramid scheme called MFC, which was presented as a platform for a digital currency called M-Coin.
The scheme began in Malaysia and was expanded to other countries, including China, Taiwan, Japan and New Zealand, The Edge reported last year.
In 2017, Bank Negara led raids on MBI Group International's headquarters in Penang and the Klang Valley, arresting Teow, his son, Ee Meng, and several others.
Authorities also froze 91 bank accounts holding RM177 million.
The following year, Teow, MBI Marketing Sdn Bhd, MFace International Sdn Bhd and its director, Kau Fong Seng, were charged with offences that include making illegal electronic payments, promoting pyramid schemes and money laundering. They were fined RM20 million.
In August 2011, Teow and his son, Chee Chow, were sentenced to a day in jail and fined RM160,000 for cheating and misleading investors in the Island Red Cafe franchise scheme between 2008 and 2010.
It is unclear what happened to Teow after he was fined in 2018, but two years later, he was placed on Interpol's global wanted list.
Thai authorities arrested him at his company's headquarters in Danok in 2022. Teow, who also goes by the name Zhang Yufa, was extradited to China last August.
He is said to have deceived two million people in China into investing billions.
