Investor notes the sheer 'glamour' of UFUN trading

Defending his investment in UFUN Thailand, Weerawit Kengkajphaisal said “the glamour” of managing his account was that the value would increase when there was an increase in members.
“Like Buddha amulets when they are newly produced their [the U-Token] value is minimal, but increases when having |more UFUN members creates high demand for them,” he |said.
Weerawit likens a UFUN investment to using coupons in food courts that were bought with real money.
He said UFUN members were required to contribute 10 per cent of their total investment value on management of the token fund through both an online UBT Mall trade and an offline U-Barter operation.
Members could trade U-Tokens with other U-Tokens or with actual products, ranging from expensive items such as homes, cars and land plots to handbags, watches and shoes, he added.
For the U-Barter exchange, members were required to pay 0.1-1 per cent for each trade to UFUN management.
Weerawit said a key factor that made investments increase was the UFUN policy that U-Tokens were not traded with other tokens or products at lower values.
He said UFUN investments comprised three modern business formats – e-commerce, digital tokens and network marketing – with members making profits through their mutual agreements to trade among themselves.
With these conditions and UFUN’s policy against trading U-Tokens at lower values, this made an investment increase based on both its virtual |value and its monetary value when traded with actual products.
The Department of Special Investigation has handed over the UFUN case to police. More than 200 UFUN investors have filed complaints with police.
Before a crackdown on UFUN Thailand, the Finance Ministry submitted a report late last year to the DSI about its legitimacy.
There are reportedly more than 30,000 Thai UFUN investors who have paid billions of baht in membership fees.
A senior DSI official, Worranan Srilam, said several illegitimate investments based on multi-level marketing, or a pyramid scheme similar to the UFUN investment, had been suppressed in Thailand.
Worranan said those schemes had used products ranging from funeral funding to noodles as the front median in barters or tokens to attract members.
He said an investment continued as long as there were new
 members taking part at the base of the pyramid.
They realise they have been conned when people stop applying to become members, or when |top-line members or the management halt the operations and, |in most cases, flee with their money.
“It’s difficult to persuade new members to come to the realisation that they are part of a fraudulent investment until it’s too late,” he said.
The DSI has handled 99 pyramid-scheme cases in the past 11 years, 75 of which were completed. Worranan said there were another 50 cases being investigated by the DSI to determine if they became special cases.