A chit fund is an informal or primitive system of micro-financing. It acts as both a loan and deposit scheme in which members are both investors and borrowers. Members put their savings in a common pool, within prescribed or agreed periods. At the end of each period or credit cycle, the pooled funds are auctioned and the bidder with the lowest bid wins. Such schemes were usually operated at a personal level, which meant that the Gemini Chit Fund case of the 1970s was out of the norm where it attracted public subscription and the promise of unusually high returns on investment.
What Mr. Tay's friend and colleague Mr. Foo experienced is based on the real-life Gemini Chit Fund case, down to when Mr. Tay and Mr. Foo went down to its office at People's Park Complex in Chinatown asking for explanations to where were the money like Mr. Foo's had gone. It has since being described as the 'swindle of the century' in the modern history of white-collar crime in Singapore in the 1970s, where its founder Abdul Gaffar Mohamed Ibrahim was charged with three charges of criminal breach of trust and sentenced to life imprisonment.
What Mr. Tay's friend and colleague Mr. Foo experienced is based on the real-life Gemini Chit Fund case, down to when Mr. Tay and Mr. Foo went down to its office at People's Park Complex in Chinatown asking for explanations to where were the money like Mr. Foo's had gone. It has since being described as the 'swindle of the century' in the modern history of white-collar crime in Singapore in the 1970s, where its founder Abdul Gaffar Mohamed Ibrahim was charged with three charges of criminal breach of trust and sentenced to life imprisonment.