Page 22 - Islands Business October 2023 edition

Special Report Special Report

and scammers who wanted to appear associated with the years in prison for his role in the scheme. Yan, however, had
global body. Ensconced in a flashy office on Manhattan’s Third already moved abroad and beyond the reach of Chinese law
Avenue, the duo and their associates met with officials and enforcement.
even heads of states from at least 17 countries.
Reporters also found that, by the time their schemes ‘Abusing the NASA Name’
culminated in the Marshall Islands plan, the couple was Yan arrived in Silicon Valley looking to hype the product
also openly promoting Chinese interests in the increasingly internationally. There, he met Zhou, who had first come to
contested Pacific. the U.S. as a student and was employed at a company working
Eryn Schornick, a Washington, DC-based transnational on a quixotic bid to build high-speed rail in the state.
financial crime expert, said Yan and Zhou are part of what The pair soon struck up a romance, according to former
appears to be a growing trend of Chinese criminals and colleagues who worked with them in the U.S. Elegant and
scammers who seek to associate themselves with the U.N. and more than a decade, Yan’s junior, Zhou also spoke fluent
the NGOs that surround it. English. She soon became her partner’s international right
Yan and Zhou did not respond to reporters’ questions. hand.
In April 2014, the couple opened a spa in a strip mall in
‘A Good Man’ Santa Clara. Known as Immortal Float Center, the facility’s
As Yan stood for sentencing at a U.S. federal courthouse centerpiece was a treatment that combined Yan’s Chinese
in mid-May, his Defence team attempted to paint the portly, miracle water with spells inside a sensory deprivation tank
fifty-something convict in a sympathetic light. dubbed the Immortal Digital Life Cube. The resulting effect
Born into a poor family in China’s eastern Anhui province, was marketed as being “like the amniotic fluid of the uterus,
Yan had been given up as a baby to a family of beggars, his flowing around the human body and regulating… its organs
lawyers told the Southern District Court of New York. and systems.”
A harsh winter killed both Yan’s adoptive parents when But Yan was ambitious, and a suburban business next to a
he was 10, forcing him to scrounge out a life on the streets coin-operated laundry was not enough. To give his healing
before he finally returned to his biological family. water more cachet, Yan sought to attach it to NASA, with its
Later proving himself a gifted student, he began a world-renowned scientific credentials.
successful career as a business consultant with an interest He did this with the help of Wing Kan Nip, a Malaysia-born
in international philanthropy. Yan’s lawyers described his entrepreneur who worked on the same rail project as Zhou.
Marshall Islands bribery scheme as a slip-up in an otherwise Nip shared documents and recollections of his time with the
spotless life. couple after being contacted by reporters.
“For Cary, charity and giving back is a deeply felt At the time, Nip had his own alternative medical business
obligation. It’s a fundamental part of who he is,” said one of at a rented space at the NASA Ames Research Center in
his lawyers, Jonathan Bolz. nearby Mountain View. Its centerpiece was a device called
But there was a lot about Yan’s background—including a a “quantum resonance spectrometer,” which purported to
history of fraud back in China—that went unmentioned by measure “frequencies” given off by people or materials.
either side during his trial. (Prosecutors at the Southern Nip said Yan asked him to use his device to test the water,
District of New York turned down OCCRP’s requests for and issue a report explaining its miraculous properties.
comment). Marketing materials obtained by reporters show that the NASA
Reporters found that Yan’s journey to the U.S. courtroom brand soon became key to selling the bogus product. Bottles
began in China a decade earlier, with a business based on the of the water also carried labeling that implied they were
sale of a purported miracle water cure that a Chinese court manufactured at the NASA research park.
later found to be fraudulent. Nip said he had noticed that Yan and Zhou were “abusing
Marketing material from Yan’s company describes the story the NASA name” not only in the U.S., but also in China, where
as starting at a potassium salt mine owned by his family in he told investors that his product had been endorsed by the
China’s central Hubei province. As the story goes, a mishap space agency.
one day in 2011 unleashed torrents of hot, briny water from “I think his direction was trying to sell this product at a very
the depths of the earth into the surrounding fields. After a high price, like a pyramid scheme,” Nip said. Nonetheless,
local cowherd was supposedly cured of lupus after floating in he stuck with Yan and Zhou for another three years until they
the floodwaters, Yan and his brother began selling the liquid finally had a falling out.
as a healing medicine under names including SSG Mineral NASA officials confirmed the use of the NASA logo for
Water and Genesis Life Raw Water. commercial products is a trademark violation, and said that
But this $150-a-bottle miracle water was in fact a multi- they had been unaware of the unauthorized use.
level marketing scam. Promising investors that they could
resell the water for a profit, the brothers defrauded nearly ‘An Incredible Amount of Fraud’
20,000 victims out of more than $18 million, the Chinese Yan and Zhou soon set their sights on building connections
court eventually found. at the United Nations.
Yan’s brother was arrested in 2020 and sentenced to seven In early 2015, Nip was tasked with making this happen, he

22 Islands Business, October 2023