Celebrity chef Wong Wing-chee, senior executives of Hong Kong-listed companies among 10 arrested over HK$176 million stock market scam

A celebrity chef and five other senior executives of Hong Kong-listed companies have been arrested in an unprecedented joint operation by local and Singapore authorities targeting a HK$176 million (US$23 million) stock market scam involving hundreds of victims.

A police source said television star Wong Wing-chee, 62, was among the 10 people detained on Wednesday for alleged money laundering in connection with “ramp and dump” investment fraud – and that he alone was accused of pocketing HK$48 million.

Popularly known as “Chee Gor” or “Brother Chee”, Wong regularly appears on cooking programmes in Hong Kong and was formerly CEO of restaurants operator Dragon King Group Holdings.

Its current chief executive, a 48-year-old man, was among the eight men and one woman aged between 25 and 62 who were arrested in Hong Kong. In Singapore, a woman believed to be a puppet investor was detained with authorities freezing HK$25 million of her assets.

Senior Inspector Leung Ka-yeung, of Hong Kong police’s financial intelligence and investigation bureau, said detectives and stock regulators in both cities had joined forces to break a cross-border syndicate tied to money laundering and manipulating share trading.

“The scammers allegedly colluded with six senior executives of three listed companies in Hong Kong to engage in the ramp-and-dump scams,” he said.

“They arranged some puppet investors to snap up the companies’ shares to push up their stock prices while at the same time offering ‘insider tips’ on social media platforms to induce victims to buy the stocks at high prices.”

Leung said the companies’ share prices shot up this year by two to six times before fraudsters offloaded their stock to pocket HK$176 million in profit.