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They knew Dr. Tin-Jon “T.J.” Syiau as a prestigious kidney specialist with a gift for real estate investment.
For years, the San Gabriel Valley physician ran a side company called RAC Development, whose website enticed clients with the question, “Looking to maximize your passive income?”
At gatherings hosted at a relative’s home, Syiau convinced hundreds of people to invest nearly $60 million, and told them he would buy up homes, hotels and distressed properties across Southern California and “flip” them for profit, federal court documents say.
By all appearances, Syiau looked the part of a successful Taiwanese American businessman. On Facebook, he bragged about golfing in the Bahamas near the homes of Oprah Winfrey and Johnny Depp. He posted a photo of a bottle of Dom Pérignon’s Rosé Vintage 2006 champagne, which retails for hundreds of dollars, and threw an Easter egg hunt for his toddler son in Maui.
But the doctor’s reputation as a shrewd property investor began to crumble in April of last year.
A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge was admonished after entering other judges’ chambers and going through their papers and computers, according to a state commission.
When clients tried to call the company about delayed payments on their investments, they found disconnected phone lines. When they tried to visit in person, they found the Monrovia business park office dark and locked.
Amid mounting pressure, Syiau gathered his investors in a Zoom meeting and said he was unable to repay them any of their funds, according to a lawsuit filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California.
Eventually, Syiau fled the country for Taiwan and has “informed investors that he was on the run to avoid being arrested,” the lawsuit says.
Now, Syiau’s former clients are accusing the kidney doctor, in the suit, of running a sophisticated Ponzi scheme that preyed on local Chinese Americans who lacked investing experience. Instead of using contributions to buy and flip properties, Syiau and close relatives allegedly diverted the money for their own personal gain.
Many of Syiau’s investors are retired and elderly, and some told The Times that they invested their entire savings or retirement funds into the company, only to see all of it disappear. Some have had to return to work during what they thought would be their golden years.
“I just feel so much regret,” one 65-year-old investor told The Times. “All of the savings are gone.”
The woman, who requested anonymity because she fears reprisals for speaking out, heard about RAC from a college roommate and decided to invest nearly $350,000 of her and her husband’s life savings.
When RAC gave her a $3,000 check seven months later, she thought the business must be doing well.
But the lawsuit says RAC simply paid claims from older clients with “sham” investment funds they collected from newer clients.
A Texas man was sentenced to 35 years in prison after kidnapping a 13-year-old, driving her to California, threatening her with a firearm and sexually assaulting her.
According to the lawsuit, Syiau has allegedly threatened his investors and destroyed financial records. When a court-appointed trustee searched RAC offices, they discovered that the company’s computers had been wiped clean, and all desk and cabinet drawers had been emptied. Some records that could be found suggested that Syiau was directing investor funds through other entities in order to hide the money, according to the lawsuit.
The trustee has filed a petition to force RAC Development into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, in an effort to recover the money that the investors lost. In court documents, the trustee has also accused Syiau’s wife, Erica Chen; his mother-in-law, Hui Mei “Amy” Cheng; his wife’s brother, Benny Chen; and others of aiding and abetting fraud, breach of fiduciary duty and negligent representation.
Neither attorneys for the trustee nor representatives for Syiau or his family members would respond to questions from The Times.
Several local residents who said they were victimized by the alleged scheme said they had long been friendly with the family.
One woman said she knew Syiau’s mother-in-law Amy Cheng for more than two decades; they lived near each other and Cheng would sometimes make lunches for her and her husband.
Cheng would brag about her son-in-law, saying he was extremely wealthy and had been doing business in Taiwan for years, the woman said.
In December 2018, Cheng allegedly invited the woman over to her home and explained that Syiau was “flipping” properties across Los Angeles, adding that the minimum return profit was 5%. The woman said she trusted Cheng and agreed to invest $100,000 of her and her husband’s money in what Cheng presented as a lucrative business opportunity.
The woman, who requested anonymity from The Times because she fears reprisals from Syiau’s family, claimed that she and her husband eventually invested and lost more than $5 million over about six years. The couple, who are in their 70s and retired, had to return to work after losing their entire life savings.
After Judy Zweig lost her home to the Palisades fire, someone stole her husband’s identity and applied fraudulently for FEMA assistance.
“Our loss is already affecting our life,” she said. “My husband has been complaining to me every day because he blames me and said that my friend defrauded us. We don’t have a peaceful life. We are fighting all the time and can’t sleep.”
Court documents list 40 properties — including locations in Santa Catalina, Desert Hot Springs, Fort Bragg and Orange and Los Angeles counties — that Syiau allegedly told investors he had purchased, yet never appeared to own. They included numerous single-story suburban homes; a Victorian-style hotel in Avalon, and a sprawling desert spa with a barrel tile roof.
Although investors were led to believe the properties were generating modest returns on their investment over time, they were only receiving money that new investors gave to RAC, according to court documents. These payments encouraged the alleged victims to invest even more.
One 63-year-old investor, who also requested anonymity, accused Syiau and his associates of scamming her and her husband out of $1.55 million over several years, echoing claims in the lawsuit.
“We started with $10,000 and then gradually, we felt more confident and we put more and more money,” she said.
Earlier this spring, Syiau told the woman that all of her money was gone and he couldn’t pay her back. She was dealing with Stage 3 cancer at the time.
“This has created a tremendous difficulty for me personally because it’s not only financial, it’s also mental shock. We couldn’t sleep,” she said. “I’m afraid to tell my son. He lives in NorCal and he works very hard; we thought we could help provide him some financial help. We feel so guilty about that.”
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