They say they haven’t a hope of ever seeing their money again — but the victims of a fraud want everyone to know what happened.
Roysen Chen said his elderly father, Bailin Chen, 76, is out of pocket to the tune of $40,000 after being conned – according to the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) – by Richmond self-proclaimed missionary and charity leader Alan Lau.
Chen said his dad had been volunteering near the end of 2013 at the Richmond-based non-profit Canadian Low Income Seniors Affordable Housing Society (which Lau founded) when he accepted a ride from Lau en route to depositing $50,000 in his bank account.
However, according to the findings of a BCSC hearing released this week, Lau, 90, convinced Bailin, who doesn’t speak English, to, instead, “invest” the money — which was given to him by his daughter in China for living expenses — in his society.
In the six months or so that followed, Bailin’s son grew suspicious of the deal and he and his father started to ask questions of Lau, a former Hong Kong businessman who apparently made millions in overseas investments.
Lau apparently handed back $10,000 in May 2014, but a couple of months later, when it became clear his father wasn’t going to get the rest of his money back, Roysen reported the matter to the BCSC, an independent, provincial government agency responsible for regulating capital markets and investments.
And this week, after investigating the complaint, the BCSC ruled that Lau had committed a “deceit” and had deposited the funds into his own bank account and used them to pay his existing debt.
“It took a few months for us to fully find out what happened and that’s when we started asking questions; I kept telling my father something was wrong about this,” said Roysen, whose parents live with him at his west Richmond home.
“Originally, my father was told it would be used for groceries; but Lau had no intention of giving the money back, as far as we can tell. Lau threw my father out of the society because he kept asking for the money and, quite rightly, kept telling everyone in (the society) about the money.
“When it became clear he wasn’t going to pay the money back, we went straight to the BCSC.”
When the allegation first came to light last summer, Lau told the Richmond News that certain people were out to discredit him and ruin his reputation as a community-minded and charitable “missionary.”
And on Thursday, when contacted again by the News, Lau accused Chen senior and his family of being jealous, having an agenda and he even pointed the finger at the BCSC, which has, according to Lau, stitched him up for “political reasons,” which he couldn’t go into at the time. He further claimed that he has offered to pay back the missing $40,000 to Chen, but he and his family, said Lau, have refused the offer and “would rather seek to ruin his reputation” than take back the money.
As for going out of their way to discredit Lau, Roysen said he’s only met Lau a couple of times and his father had only been volunteering at the Cook Road society for a few months before the deal took place.
“We barely even know him; so how could we be jealous? We just want our money back,” Roysen added.
According to the BCSC findings, when Bailin and Lau (also known as Tin Chao Alan Lau) went to the bank back in 2013, the teller completed the documents authorizing the transfer of the $50,000.
The documentation was in English, a language Bailin could not speak or read, the BCSC said.
“The documents directed payment of the funds to (Lau) personally. The investor could not understand the documents as they were in English and he believed the funds were being deposited to the society,” according to BCSC filings.
On the same day, Lau deposited the $50,000 into his personal bank account, the BCSC alleged, and over the next three weeks spent the entirety of the money on payments to personal credit cards, cash withdrawals, and other expenses.
Lau admitted he used the volunteer’s funds to pay his own debts, according to the BCSC, and he “said that all of the society’s expenses were paid by him personally and that his personal debt included society expenses,” but he “did not provide any evidence to corroborate this.”
Roysen said his family doesn’t see the point in hiring a lawyer to get the $40,000 back, as they don’t believe Lau has any funds or assets worth pursuing.
Lau, however, told the News that he has the money and is still willing to pay up, provided the family admit to apparent “wrongdoings.”
He also said he will fight the BCSC findings, even if “it takes years and years.”
Any appeal would need to wait until after a sanctions decision is made on the matter, and Lau will have until July 27 to make submissions to the BCSC about possible sanctions.
In 2014, Lau was celebrated by the Canadian Race Relations Foundation with the “Community Champion Special Award.”
In the summer of 2015, Lau, also launched the “Richmond Community Publication Society,” a monthly auction of Chinese collectibles to apparently pour millions of dollars into local charities. The lavish launch at a Buswell Street office was attended by Mayor Malcolm Brodie and Coun. Bill McNulty.
It’s unclear from that society’s Chinese language website if the organization is still up and running.
With files from the Vancouver Sun
