MANILA -- The National Bureau of Investigations has filed charges against eight officers and employees of Royal Manchester Five Trading Corp. (RMF), an alleged Ponzi scam.

Charged with estafa at the Department of Justice were Cyrus Hao, RMF board chair and president; directors Edwin Rosas, senior vice president; Rowena Uy, treasurer-chief finance officer; Joseph Bualoy, chief operations officer, and Joesedev Colina, executive vice president, and sales agents Cyril Alexander Digo, Estrella Digo and Clarence Lao.

The NBI said what RMF was running was clearly a Ponzi scam, a fraudulent investment operation that involved paying investors abnormally high short-term returns with money raised from new investors, rather than from profits generated by a real business.

Twenty-eight people claiming they fell victim to the scam to the tune of P19.5 million complained to the NBI Anti-fraud and Computer Crimes Division (AFCCD).

The scheme reportedly attracted some 3,000 people, including celebrities and retirees, the NBI said earlier.

The investors said they were promised three- to five-percent interest each month and were told their money would be placed in high-end money markets abroad, particularly in Hong Kong, the United States and Europe, as well as in futures trading, including government securities, treasury bills and foreign exchange trading.

“(The respondents) even flaunted and represented that we would absolutely lose nothing even if the futures trading should fail,” the complainants told the NBI in a sworn statement, adding that the minimum investment was P200,000.

They said they were issued six-months’ worth of post-dated checks, which included the interest earned, with the option to cash the checks or roll them over for a bigger investment.

More people were enticed to invest when the company conducted a raffle that offered luxury cars, such as BMWs, as prizes. To qualify, an investor had to shell out P500,000 which was considered an investment, they said.

The investors said things were going smoothly until news broke out in March that Hao had fled to parts unknown allegedly with their money.

Soon the RMF checks began to bounce, they said.

The NBI has said it was informed by the Bureau of Immigration that Hao left for South Korea on March 2.

The complainants said they became more suspicious when the other RMF officials and employees became evasive whenever they inquired about maturing investments, until one day the company office at One San Miguel Building in Pasig City was closed and the respondents could not be found.

A check at the Securities and Exchange Commission showed RMF was authorized to engage in car, not currency, trading.

“The personalities involved in the corporation were not licensed to solicit funds from the public in the guise of investment contracts for foreign exchange or futures trading,” the NBI said in its complaint.