Internet Fraud Casebook

Chapter 21. The Sherwood Boys

PAOLO BOURELLY

A small group of British fellows decided to apply their knowledge of information technology, the financial markets and their sales skills to establish a large and difficult-to-penetrate criminal organization dedicated to collecting money from victims and washing it through offshore banks. A stock exchange crisis years ago — and an understanding of investors' desire to make up their lost assets — was the catalyst that led these criminals to create such an organization. The founding members were British, but the group later expanded to include fraudsters from many different countries. They called themselves Sherwood Last, Ltd.

John Yeung was a young man from Singapore who ran the Asian arm of the organization. As general manager of Asian Health Global, Ltd., a ghost company of Sherwood Last based in Singapore and Hong Kong, he received funds from "investors" and moved them to bank accounts in other countries. Peter Wolf, a British man in his thirties, felt safe in Southeast Asia, where he was assumed to be living and from where he had been moving funds out of banks in Caribbean paradises to others in emerging Asian countries. Chris Green, a British IT consultant, was one of those criminals who liked to depict himself as a hard worker, good father and loving husbands. Chris told Peter Holm, one of his victims, "I live in Jakarta with my family. I am working very hard to sort out your account situation, and will do all I can to resolve this ...