Discuss padding your resume.
A Hong Kong-based insurance broker lobbied to get onto Forbes Billionaires list by claiming he held a stake in a Formula 1 racing team, and owned a $250 million Champagne collection and a five-star resort hotel — to go together with his half-dozen luxury homes all over the world.
He’s also supposedly a Harvard Business School graduate besides.
However the boasts made by Calvin Lo were a far cry from the reality, Forbes found after a radical investigation.
Lo relentlessly marketed himself as a mogul with a 10-figure net price — regardless that his family’s fortune is estimated to be lower than $200 million combined, Forbe reported.
As a part of his campaign to be included on the list of billionaires, Lo presented himself to Forbes as CEO and owner of R.E. Lee International, “the world’s largest life insurance broker” with some $1 billion in premiums.
Lo also reportedly claimed to be the founding father of R.E. Lee Capital, an asset manager with between $8 billion and $10 billion in assets.
He told Forbes he was “said to be Asia’s largest investor and collector of champagnes and one in all the primary owners of a Gulfstream G650 private jet in Asia.”
Calvin Lo, the CEO of R.E. Lee International, lied about owning a Formula 1 racing team in an try and get on Forbes Billionaires list, in accordance with the magazine.REUTERS
Lo also claimed to the magazine that he was one in all the owners of the distinguished Williams Formula 1 racing team.
As an alternative of checkered flags, Lo only raised red flags.
Forbes pored over Lo’s financial statements in addition to his claims that he bought the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Taipei for $1.2 billion in 2018.
Lo reportedly claimed that he bought the five-star hotel through an entity often known as R.E. Lee Octagon, his private investment vehicle.
But Forbes reported that it found no evidence that R.E. Lee Octagon exists as a registered entity in Hong Kong, Singapore, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, or some other jurisdiction.
The magazine reported that it found a one-page website with a single email address. The web site has since been taken down, in accordance with Forbes.
Lo’s family is claimed to be price lower than $200 million — and never $1 billion as he claimed, in accordance with Forbes.REUTERS
Lo claimed to Forbes that he attended Harvard Business School, though there are not any records confirming anyone by that name attended the institution, in accordance with the report.
He also told Forbes that he owned property in Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, London, Vancouver and Los Angeles.
But when pressed on the matter, Lo revised the number to 5 properties and provided addresses to 4 homes in Hong Kong and one in Singapore.
In keeping with Forbes, public records indicate that two of the properties are listed under his parents’ name while the others belong to other people.
Forbes did confirm the existence of R.E. Lee Capital, whose chairwoman is Lo’s mother, Regina Lee.
Forbes said it found no evidence to back up Lo’s claim that he held a stake in a Formula 1 racing team.AP
But R.E. Lee Capital told Forbes that his mother’s involvement “shouldn’t be misconstrued as an association between Mr. Lo and our company.”
R.E. Lee Capital also told Forbes that it doesn’t have anywhere near the sum of between $8 billion and $10 billion in assets that Lo claimed.
While Lo claimed that R.E. Lee International brokered some $1 billion price of insurance sales, Forbes estimated that the corporate is definitely price around $60 million.
In keeping with Forbes, it’s unclear who owns the corporate, which was bought out by his mother in 2015.
Lo also claimed his company sold $1 billion price of insurance, but Forbes said the firm is definitely price closer to $60 million.REUTERS
Regina Lee and her husband, Francis Lo, own at the least two apartments in a ritzy a part of Hong Kong in addition to a condo in Vancouver and an office constructing housing the insurance company.
However the family isn’t anywhere near as wealthy as Lo claims, in accordance with Forbes.
A law firm representing Lo told Forbes that “all insinuations that our client has been dishonest, untruthful or otherwise unethical are hereby categorically denied by him.”