Suspected E-Creator founder, Zhao Jiaotong, along with his alleged accomplices Trymore Tapfumaneyi and Judtin Kutekenya, was denied bail by a Harare magistrate on Friday. The trio is facing fraud charges totalling US$1 million, for allegedly swindling thousands of people in a botched investment deal known as E-Creator.
They are also facing money laundering charges. The magistrate, Marewanazvo Gofa, ruled that the three were likely to abscond if granted bail, given the amount of prejudice involved.
Prosecutors claim that the Chinese national fleeced unsuspecting clients by operating a fake investment project. Another suspect, an Ivorian national named Billy Thomas Syedou, is yet to be accounted for.
It is alleged that Jiaotong hatched a plan to defraud unsuspecting Zimbabweans through an online investment Ponzi scheme, which led to the registration of a company with the Zimbabwean Registrar of Companies, styled E-Creator Electronic Commerce [Private] Limited. The suspects misrepresented to unsuspecting Zimbabweans that if they invested with the company, they were going to enjoy huge monthly profits proportional to the amounts invested.
Many Zimbabweans joined and invested up to US$1 million in total through various Ecocash subscriber lines supplied on the platform by the suspect.
To make the company more attractive and appealing to unsuspecting clients, Jiaotong used media outlets, including the national television broadcaster, ZTV, social media, and popular Zimbabwean socialites to advertise the business on their social media platforms. The suspects also employed various agents in major towns and cities throughout the country to market the business. Prosecutors allege that as a result of Jiaotong’s actions, clients suffered an actual prejudice of US$1 million, and nothing was recovered.
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