Unmasking the “Crime Boss” behind millions of US dollars in missing customer deposits, sovereign junk bond speculation, and an international money laundering network stretching from Asia to Puerto Rico.

Our recent coverage of Hamilton Reserve Bank Ltd (Nevis, hereafter “HRB“) has finally pierced the veil of secrecy and exposed the trail of destruction left by HRB and its affiliates from Labuan (Fintech Bank Ltd), through Nevis (HRB itself), to Puerto Rico (Hamilton International Reserve Bank LLC now known as Acelera International Custodial Bank LLC).

In Hamilton Reserve Bank Gambled Customer Deposits On Junk Sri Lankan Bonds and The Misadventures of the Hamilton Racketeers in Puerto Rico: Part One, we exposed two critically important members of the Hamilton Racketeers:

• Yingmao “Mao Mao” Wei (AKA “Cutout #1”), a self-described technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist, identified in multiple regulatory filings as the ultimate owner of Fintech Holdings Ltd (but in reality, he’s a cutout for the “Crime Boss”).
• Warren Angelo Raiti (AKA “Facilitator #1”), the namesake attorney of Raiti PLLC in New York, CEO and Board Member of HIRB (but in reality, he’s the Crime Boss’ legal whiz).

These are certainly both important figures in their own right. But neither is the “man behind the curtain.”

All regulatory filings we’ve previously published dead end with Yingmao Wey as the ultimate beneficiary of HRB, its affiliates around the world, and all of its multi-layered parent companies.

Warren Raiti is the legal wunderkind who enables the Crime Boss to create various structures that provide anonymity.

But neither Yingmao Wey nor Warren Raiti have the funds nor motive to build an international money laundering and racketeering operation stretching from Asia to the US.

But they both lead us directly to the Crime Boss himself.

Yingmao “Mao Mao” Wei

Just looking at Yingmao Wei’s LinkedIn resume, it simply doesn’t make sense that he would step out of Columbia Business School with no relevant work experience and have sufficient funds, connections, and knowledge to become the ultimate owner of a network of global banks.

Where did Yingmao Wei get US $10 million to significantly overpay to acquire State Trust International Bank & Trust in Puerto Rico (renamed to Hamilton International Reserve Bank LLC) in early 2022?

How did Yingmao Wei find, attract, and afford “prominent lawyers and bankers” in New York and London to create a network of banks around the world?

While there is very little publicly available information on this apparently successful young banking entrepreneur, we can find him featured on pages 17 and 23 in the Fall 2010 issue of the Cardigan Chronicle, the semiannual magazine of Cardigan Mountain School, the elite boarding and day school for boys in grades 6 through 9 located in Canaan, New Hampshire, USA.

Annual tuition for middle schoolers at Cardigan runs more than US $73,000 per year.

It is Yingmao Wei’s mention on page 23 that provides insight into where his money comes from and how he came to be “Cutout #1” in the Hamilton Racketeers.

Printed thirteen years ago in the magazine of an elite boarding school for boys nestled in the serene mountains of New Hampshire is the familial relationship that will eventually tie Yingmao (Mao Mao) Wei to “prominent lawyers and bankers” in New York and London and a significant amount of money that needs to be laundered: his uncle, the Crime Boss himself, Benjamin Tinbiang Wey aka Benjamin Wey aka Ben Wey.

Yingmao “Mao Mao” Wei is identified here in the Cardigan Chronicle as “Ben’s nephew.”

Warren Raiti

Our first report mentioning the namesake attorney of Raiti, PLLC in New York was in our recent The Misadventures of the Hamilton Racketeers in Puerto Rico: Part One which catalogs the disastrous year the Hamilton Racketeers had in Puerto Rico while Warren Raiti was purporting to play the role of CEO of Hamilton International Reserve Bank LLC (HIRB).

As we previously reported, the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions of Puerto Rico (OCIF) expressed significant concern about “a managerial group with knowledge of banking operations and working experience in the banking industry” led by Raiti and OCIF even conditioned their approval for the Yingmao Wei’s Fintech Holdings Ltd acquisition of STIBT on the appointment of “a managerial group with knowledge of banking operations and working experience in the banking industry.”

While Raiti obviously isn’t a very good banker, he is a really good attorney – for Yingmao Wei’s uncle Benjamin Wey.

In the Delaware Court of Chancery, Warren Raiti is linked to Benjamin Wey as early as January 2015 when he was identified as the Assistant General Counsel to Benjamin Wey’s New York Global Capital:

Since that time, Raiti has emerged as counsel of choice for Benjamin Wey in his appearances for securities fraud in US federal court and Raiti is listed as a director or attorney on regulatory filings for many of the Hamilton-affiliated companies.

Uncle Benjamin Wey aka The Crime Boss

In 2015, US federal prosecutors indicted Benjamin Tinbiang Wey for a long-running fraudulent stock manipulation scheme that netted tens of millions of US dollars and charged him with eight counts of securities fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering in United States v. Wey (1:15-cr-00611).

In at least one of the filings in this case, we find mention of “Yingmao Wei” on page 11 as one of the search terms authorized in the US Government’s January 25, 2012 search warrant used in the above-mentioned case against Benjamin Wey.

In 2015, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also announced additional civil fraud charges against Benjamin Wey in a cross-border scheme to secretly control and manipulate stock of Chinese companies after reverse mergers.

Importantly, the SEC alleged that Wey “and other family members secretly obtained ownership interests of more than five percent of the newly listed companies. To avoid detection and evade SEC reporting requirements as beneficial owners, they divided their shares among a vast network of foreign accounts and generated tens of millions of dollars in illegal profits as they sold the securities into artificially inflated markets.”

There is, of course, much more to these cases against Benjamin Wey that is beyond the scope of our immediate interests as Victims of Hamilton Reserve Bank and its affiliates. Ultimately, all charges were dropped in both the criminal case and the SEC’s civil case against Wey due to overly broad search warrants used to obtain the mountains of evidence against him.

Despite the setback in the US government’s prosecution of Benjamin Wey, he still netted tens of millions of US dollars that need to be laundered back to the US.

Given Benjamin Wey’s modus operandi of using family members as cutouts or “nominees” to hide his hand, as detailed in the US government’s criminal and civil indictments, his recent Columbia Business School graduate nephew Yingmao Wei was a natural cutout to use while setting up and running his own global banking network. Benjamin Wey could keep his name off all regulatory filings yet move his ill-gotten gains from Asia back to the US.

And that is exactly what Benjamin Wey has done with Hamilton Reserve Bank Ltd in Nevis and its network of affiliates around the world.

Despite Hamilton Reserve Bank’s claims that they’ve been around since 1994, the bank was originally incorporated in Nevis on October 29, 2018 as Nevis International Bank & Trust Ltd (NIB&T).

NIB&T changed its name to Hamilton Reserve Bank Ltd (HRB) on March 03, 2021.

Benjamin Wey did his best to hide his hand on regulatory filings by using his nephew as a cutout, structuring ownership through multi-layer shell companies, and setting up shop in notoriously opaque jurisdictions like Labuan, Nevis, and Puerto Rico.

However, Benjamin Wey got into a relatively petty dispute with a contractor for Hamilton Reserve Bank (named NIB&T at the time) in June 2019 and subsequent litigation has publicly exposed his hidden hand in a case before The Court of Appeal in the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court.

“…attributed the breakdown of the relationship between the parties to the Bank and/or its representative, Mr. Benjamin Wey. The defence also alleged that Mr. Wey, who negotiated the Agreements for the Bank and was generally responsible for managing and coordinating the works contemplated by the Agreements..”

-The Hon. Mr. Paul Webster, Justice of Appeal, Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court in The Court of Appeal.

While his nephew Yingmao Wei may have been a suitable fig leaf to hide his direct control of the bank from regulators, Benjamin Wey has controlled all aspects of the day-to-day operations of the bank from its inception.

The significant role the affluent Benjamin Wey played in this relatively minor contract (only worth US $42,000) for the installation of a security system and wireless internet access at the bank’s headquarters in Nevis demonstrates his micromanagement and actual control of Hamilton.

Writing for the court, The Hon. Mr. Paul Webster, Justice of Appeal notes:

“It is common ground that Mr. Wey acted throughout as the Bank’s representative and, as a matter of law, it is not necessary for him to be a director or officer of the Bank to make binding contracts on its behalf. He was held out by the Bank as its agent and his authority as such was never disputed. He was the person responsible for managing and coordinating the works contemplated by the Agreements on behalf of the Bank.”

DIGITAL SECURITY SERVICES LTD v. NEVIS INTERNATIONAL BANK & TRUST LTD. THE EASTERN CARIBBEAN SUPREME COURT
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL. NEVHCVAP2021/0003.

In January 2022, while HRB was pouring hundreds of millions of US dollars into junk Sri Lankan bonds, the bank publicly touted its expansion into Sri Lanka by tweeting this January 20, 2022 photo featuring HRB’s Ghassan Nasr and the Central Bank of Sri Lanka Governor Ajith Nivard Cabraal.

But with everything “Hamilton”, the bank’s version of events is only partially true.

From the small contract to install a security system in 2019 to the major decision to gamble customer deposits on junk Sri Lankan sovereign bonds, Benjamin Wey is at the center of it all.

Benjamin Wey is the man behind Hamilton Reserve Bank’s curtain.