THE activities of Ploutos Coins from Freedom Traders Club (FTC), which is under probe in the Cagayan de Oro City Council, may have reached to as far as the Visayas and Southern Mindanao regions with over 40,000 members, the FTC's legal adviser said Friday.
FTC founder Mark Freeman snubbed again the committee hearing launched by the city council's committee on commerce and trade on Thursday, but it sent a legal representative, lawyer Ramil Acol.
Acol requested for a reset of the hearing as Freeman was in South Korea to attend a block chain summit.
Committee chair councilor George Goking rescheduled anew the hearing on Friday, August 3. This will be the third hearing to accord Freeman due process so he can shed light on the alleged “investment scam.”
“Naay istorya akong nadunggan nga moabot og (I heard it reached) Davao, General Santos, Zamboanga ug sa (and) Visayas and I heard he has 42,000 members I don't know if they are investors,”Acol said.
Acol did not comment when asked if he had invested in Ploutos Coin.
He said Freeman has other lawyers expediting the registration of FTC with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Central Bank in Manila.
The SEC-Northern Mindanao earlier maintained that FTC did not even apply for registration, prompting the commission to issue a red flag advisory warning the public to be cautious in dealing with the FTC or its representatives.
Subsequently, some investors surfaced and filed complaints against Freeman in court and before the commission.
Lawyer Chemene Nacua, agent of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI)-Northern Mindanao, said an investor complained Freeman to their office last July 10.
But, she said the complaint was not elevated in court because the FTC settled to return the investment of around P200,000.
Nacua added another three investors also sought help from the NBI-10 to inquire on how they can get their investments back.
She said one had invested P9.4 million while the other two invested P700,000 and P150,000, respectively.
All investors who went to NBI-Northern Mindanao were from Cagayan de Oro City.
“We will wait for complaints kay (because) it should be voluntary. If dili sila mo-file kay gusto sila makuha lang nila ang ilang kwarta (if they don’t want to file and just want to get back their money) it's up to them,” Nacua said.
Geo Paulo Burdeos, an investor who charged Freeman with estafa in a court in Butuan City said he is also open for settlement.
Burdeos said he would withdraw the charges against Freeman should the latter meet all his demands and return his investments from the earlier FTC's auto trading offering to Ploutos Coins.
“If FTC is legit, I don't have problem with that. For me, I just want to end my business with them. If he meets our demands we will settle,” Burdeos said.