Editor's note: This story is a collaboration between the Investigative Journalism Foundation and Â鶹´«Ã½.
A Richmond, B.C., business says its address was used fraudulently by the masterminds of an alleged pyramid scheme that resulted in financial losses for hundreds of thousands of people in South Asia.
Raydwell Consulting, located in a sleek office building in central Richmond, describes itself as a "business service provider" whose services include "virtual addresses" and dedicated phone services for companies.
That company’s address — 150-10451 Shellbridge Way — appears in corporate documents related to Metaverse Foreign Exchange Group Inc., or MTFE, a Canadian company alleged to have swindled as much as US$2.7 billion from investors in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
And documents filed in the B.C. Supreme Court claim the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) had scrutinized Raydwell in the past for its role in incorporating"several offshore investment service companies that were being investigated by the BCSC for suspicious activity."
De Wang, Raydwell’s director, said in an email that his company had no relationship with MTFE or its directors. He said companies and individuals sometimes use Raydwell’s address "without our consent or awareness."
He confirmed the BCSC had investigated Raydwell, but said it was about an unrelated matter. The BCSC, citing its privacy policy, would not confirm nor deny that.
The Raydwell connection is another mystery in the story of MTFE, a Canadian company that foreign governments claim was leveraged to pull off an epic fraud.
MTFE, which purported to offer an online foreign currency trading platform, gained massive popularity in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka over the course of 2022 and 2023.
In August 2023, the scheme collapsed and investors’ money disappeared.
The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has since described MTFE as a pyramid scheme.
In court filings in that country, the bank’s Financial Intelligence Unit has said the software used by victims never actually invested money on their behalf.
Instead, the bank said most of that money — sent in the form of cryptocurrency — was pocketed by local scammers, with the rest being kicked up to the "parent company" in Canada.
That "parent company" has proved elusive. MTFE’s registered address in Markham, Ont., was an office suite where the company does not appear to have done any real business.
One of the company’s two directors, Hongbing Wang, had a registered address in China.
The other, Randy Mathieu Lane, used Raydwell’s address on Shellbridge Way.
Lane, who the IJF and Â鶹´«Ã½ have not been able to find, used that address in six total corporate filings for companies he incorporated in 2021, all of which purportedly offered foreign currency trading and other financial services.
Five of those companies had another director based in China. Four have since been dissolved by the federal registry for "non-compliance."
The Markham address used by MTFE was home to 75 money services businesses for whom a listed director used Raydwell’s address. Most also had a second listed director in another country, most often in mainland China or Hong Kong.
The IJF tried to contact those companies through phone numbers they provided to a federal agency, all of which had a British Columbia area code.
The IJF and Â鶹´«Ã½ provided Wang with a list of those companies.
He said Raydwell does provide a service wherein it allows registered companies to use its address for the purposes of incorporation and receiving mail. But he said his company had not done business with any of those companies related to the Markham address.
"Raydwell is also a victim of those fraudulent investment companies who must have found our mailing address services online and have taken advantage of the services without letting us know about it," Wang said.
Some of Raydwell’s services had landed it in hot water with the Law Society of British Columbia, according to documents filed in the B.C. Supreme Court.
In 2017, the Law Society of British Columbia contacted Raydwell and alleged the company had engaged in the "unauthorized practice of law" by charging clients money to incorporate companies on their behalf.
Raydwell’s director at the time signed an undertaking to cease offering that service.
But the society went to court again in 2022 after it obtained documents showing Raydwell's then-director had apparently violated that agreement dozens of times.
The society, according to court filings, also obtained translated versions of Chinese-language advertisements that showed Raydwell openly advertised "company incorporation" services.
In 2022 court filings, the law society said they were tipped off by the B.C. Securities Commission, which complained that Raydwell had incorporated a number of offshore investment companies engaged in "suspicious activity" — something the BCSC declined to confirm.
Wang, for his part, said the BCSC had investigated his company in relation to a single business, which he did not name, and said the matter was resolved through the agreement with the Law Society. The BCSC would not confirm nor deny that.
Sasha Caldera, a director of the advocacy group Publish What You Pay, said the services offered by "corporate service providers" like Raydwell can be leveraged by bad actors like money launderers, who use them to incorporate shell companies with Canadian addresses and phone numbers.
Caldera, whose organization lobbies for tighter transparency and finance rules in Canada, expressed fears that Canada has become a "haven" for such shell companies.
"Typically, what we see is that if you are a money launderer, you want to incorporate in the safest, most stable jurisdiction, legally, for the purposes of setting up your company," Caldera said. "That’s Canada."
With files from Adrian Ghobrial
