He preyed on wealthy women, large companies and the gullible. After being deported from Canada for fraud, the Malaysian predator conman returned to his homeland and set up companies that ripped off the country's poorest people.

By Asian Pacific News Service

An international conman, who was deported after being jailed in Canada, is in the centre of an embarrassing multi-million dollar government scandal in Malaysia. Ooi Kee Siang, 44, is alleged to be behind a scam that ripped off millions of dollars meant to improve the living conditions of Malaysia's rural folk and hardcore poor.

He is also being sought by Malaysian police for running a fake credit card racket.

Ooi, a Malaysian national, has been around the world as a conman and a jailbird.

In addition to having been jailed in Canada and Belgium, Ooi was arrested in Thailand for fraud and is also wanted in Germany and Holland.

But despite his international criminal resume, Ooi managed to land lucrative contracts with the Malaysian government.

Malaysian police, have so far arrested four high ranking government officials in connection with the scandal after Ooi vanished last month.

The arrested government officials and Ooi are prime suspects in a case where more than C$14.5 million has gone missing from Malaysia's poverty fund.

The money meant for rural development projects was granted to Ooi-run companies by Malaysia's Rural Development Ministry to help the poor.

Malaysia's Commercial Crime director Maizan Shaari confirmed police are looking for Ooi in relation to the investigation.

In one of the cases being investigated, Ooi was the director of a company which obtained a M$16 million (about C$6 million) contract to operate a fish farm.The project was abandoned.

The fish farm project and other government jobs alleged to have been ripped off were part of Malaysia's Very Poor People's Development Programme.

These projects were to help Malaysia's hardcore poor, defined as those in households earning less than RM250 (C$121) a month.

About 1.4 per cent of Malaysia's population or about 71,000 people fall into this category.

While government money meant for the poor was being siphoned, Ooi at the same time was also alleged to be running a fake credit card syndicate through a pharmacy he had set up in the northern Malaysian state of Penang.

Police have arrested three members of the syndicate and seized equipment used to duplicate credit cards.

Ooi's life of crime spans the globe and Malaysian officials are hard pressed to explain why his background never surfaced when the lucrative national contracts were awarded.

Ooi was first charged in 1986 in Kuala Lumpur with luring influential women to hotel rooms, administering drugs, shooting nude and pornographic pictures and then blackmailing them.

One of his victims was a government official's wife and local police dubbed him the 'Casanova conman'. Ooi jumped bail and fled to West Germany with his wife and four children, where he was charged with frauds totalling $280,000. He is still wanted on eight counts of fraud in Germany.

In September of 1987, Ooi and his family arrived in Oakville, Ontario where he rented a small house.

Although he drove around in a battered van and wore jeans and running shoes, Ooi convinced people he was worth $50 million.

Court and police records show Ooi had forged letters from two companies stating he received $80,000 a month in salary. One of the fake documents was on letterhead from a German company he'd bilked. As part of the illusion to lure his victims, Ooi leased two BMWs worth $100,000 and $80,000 and a $46,000 Volvo.

Later, Ooi bought a $990,000 house in Stouffville outside Toronto flipped it back to himself for $1.6 million and managed to get financing on the real price.

The Toronto branch of the Overseas Union Bank of Singapore which financed the house deal later said: "We have been taken to the cleaners."

The 15,000 square-foot house boasted a pool and Ooi decorated the monster home with $48,000 worth of furniture, bought on a deferred payment plan which he didn't pay.

He also hired an Ontario police officer as an assistant and bilked him of $50,000 in an investment scam.

Another Canadian victim was conned into buying a partnership at a golf course. He gave Ooi a $200,000 line of credit, which he drained.

When Canadian police was closing in on Ooi in February 1989, he cashed a $100,000 cheque, bought a four-carat diamond ring, drove to Buffalo, New York and bought a ticket to England with a credit card.

In Europe he continued his criminal spree in Britain, Holland and Belgium, where he was arrested in 1991 on another string of fraud charges, and later sentenced to a 2 ½-year term. Ooi was extradited to Canada in May of 1993 from Brussels, after serving less than 10 months of his sentence.

In May of 1993, Ooi then 35, was charged in Ontario for defrauding Canadians - one of them a police officer - of at least $2.3 million.

At that time he also had $860,000 in unpaid debts owed to Toronto-area companies.

On July 27, 1993, an Ontario judge jailed Ooi for 30 months and ordered him deported. After the sentencing, Ontario Provincial Police Det. Staff-Sgt. Joe Milton, who hunted Ooi around the globe for four years described the man as an 'international criminal,' "He's a predator who goes out like an animal after people."

On being deported back to Malaysia, Ooi laid low for a while before surfacing as a director of several Malaysian companies including Tasek Puteri, Nishikigoi and Ecogen Pharma.

In 1998, another of his companies, Wisma Esteem Sdn Bhd, was praised by Malaysia's Rural Development Ministry for introducing new technology and genetic engineering to upgrade fish culture and orchid cultivation.

As the latest scandal involving Malaysia's poverty fund began to unravel, Ooi was detained by police recently for 28 days and then released on bail. The international con-artist, who speaks six languages, has not been seen since.