Organization

The 18 defendants now face a total of 20 charges, namely 2 of conspiracy to defraud and 18 of conspiracy to launder crime proceeds, involving 478 insurance policies and commissions totalling about HK$50m.

The huge alleged scam involved 478 applications for "high commission rate insurance products".

It always amazes us how much commission is paid up-front in this industry. Ms Lo Yin Wa was working for another, unnamed firm, and allegedly procured 6 "dummy agents" to receive commissions from Sun Life, into bank accounts she controlled. 208 "high commission rate" products were involved, and the policies lapsed after subsequent premiums were not paid.

She twice impersonated a scheme member to get account details from an MPF trustee.

In a typical life insurance sales scam, 8 policies were booked to his underling in order to maximise the commissions - an average of HK$80k per policy, which again underlines what an inefficient savings method this industry is.

She cut-and-pasted a scheme member's signature onto a transfer form to transfer funds without the member's consent.

He arranged for a third party to impersonate a client to get account details from 2 MPF trustees, then got the client to sign 7 incomplete forms to transfer her MPF funds.

That's 2 in 2 days for ex-Sun Life staff. They both used scheme members' information without authorisation and photocopied signatures onto forms.