East Wind $53m Ponzi scheme: Former finance manager Yuko Hanyu guilty of overseeing investment scam

The Serious Fraud Office said the East Wind Ponzi scheme was an incredibly complex case. Photo / SFO

A former finance manager has been found guilty of overseeing the $53 million East Wind Ponzi scheme – one of New Zealand’s largest investment scams.

Yuko Hanyu was found guilty by a jury in the Auckland District Court yesterday afternoon of 10 charges brought by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), including theft and obtaining by deception.

Hanyu was the manager of East Wind Company’s finance department from 2004 to December 2017.

East Wind had operated as an unlicensed immigration consultant and investment adviser from 1996 until its collapse in 2019, targeting mainly Japanese nationals and immigrants to New Zealand.

The giant Ponzi scheme came to light in 2019 when Auckland-based businessman and East Wind Company director Masatomo Ashikaga,60, died, leaving nearly 200 investors in his companies in the lurch.

Hanyu had worked with Ashikaga to obtain funds from investors, relying on false statements about their financial products and promised returns.

However, in reality there were no legitimate investments and incoming funds were being used to make repayments to other investors.

In court yesterday, Hanyu was found guilty of four representative charges of false statement of a promoter, two representative charges of obtaining by deception and one charge of theft by a person in a special relationship relating to her role with East Wind.

She was also found guilty of three representative charges of theft for stealing more than $800,000 from East Wind.

Details of those charges include:

• Hanyu was found guilty of making false statements as a promoter in relation to financial products offered by the company – the Group Term Deposit and Waterloo Fund – which operated as Ponzi schemes.
• She was found guilty as a party in relation to a representative charge involving more than $6.5m of new investments in the Group Term Deposit product, and as a principal offender in relation to a representative charge involving more than $12.5m of reinvestments.
• Hanyu was also found guilty in relation to using $1m that should have been invested in the Restaurant Fund, a different investment scheme offered by the company, but instead was used to repay one of the Waterloo fund investors.
• Hanyu was found guilty of three representative charges of theft after making unauthorised payments from the East Wind accounts of more than $400,000 to her mortgage account, and over $430,000 to her personal credit card.

SFO director Karen Chang said it was an incredibly complex case involving the analysis of substantial detailed financial records involving a large number of mostly overseas-based investors.

“Hanyu and Ashikaga exploited their connections to the Japanese community to deceive investors out of millions of dollars,” Chang said.

“Many of the investors did not get their money back.

“Offending such as this threatens New Zealand’s reputation as a safe place to do business, undermines legitimate investment markets and dissuades foreign investors from putting their money into our economy.”

Hanyu is due to be sentenced on July 3.