A former finance manager who oversaw a large scale multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme targeting the Japanese community has been found guilty on charges brought by the Serious Fraud Office.
Yuko Hanyu was found guilty by a jury in the Auckland District Court late Monday afternoon of four representative charges of false statement of a promoter, two representative charges of obtaining by deception and one charge of theft by a person in a special relationship relating to her role with East Wind. She was also found guilty of three representative charges of theft for stealing more than $800,000 from East Wind.
East Wind Company Limited was part of the East Wind Group, which marketed itself as offering financial services and immigration support to New Zealand’s Japanese community.
The group collapsed in February 2019 and was placed into liquidation, following the death of director Masatomo Ashikaga (also known as Tom Tanaka).
Financial products offered by the company – the Group Term Deposit, Waterloo Fund – operated as Ponzi schemes, and Ms Hanyu was found guilty of making false statements as a promoter in relation to those so-called investment products.
She was found guilty as a party in relation to a representative charge involving more than $6.5 million of new investments in the Group Term Deposit product, and as a principal offender in relation to a representative charge involving more than $12.5 million of reinvestments. Ms Hanyu was also found guilty in relation to using $1 million that should have been invested in the Restaurant Fund, a different investment scheme offered by the company, but instead was used to repay one of the Waterloo fund investors.
Finally, Ms Hanyu was found guilty of three representative charges of theft. Two of these were for transferring approximately $430,000 from East Wind’s company accounts to her personal credit card. The remaining charge related to more than $400,000 that she arranged to be paid into an account associated with her to repay her mortgage.
Ms Hanyu was the manager of the company’s finance department from 2004 to December 2017.
She worked together with Mr Ashikaga to obtain funds from investors, relying on false statements about their financial products and promised returns.
In reality there were no legitimate investments; the incoming funds were being used to make repayments to other investors.
Ms Hanyu also made unauthorised payments from the East Wind accounts of over $400,000 to her mortgage account, and over $430,000 to her personal credit card.
“This was an incredibly complex case involving the analysis of substantial detailed financial records, many of which were in Japanese, and a large number of mostly overseas-based investors. The decisive jury verdicts reflect the quality of the investigation and the strength of the Crown case,” says SFO Director Karen Chang.
“Ms Hanyu and Mr Ashikaga exploited their connections to the Japanese community to deceive investors out of millions of dollars. Many of the investors did not get their money back.
“Offending such as this threatens New Zealand’s reputation as a safe place to do business, undermines legitimate investment markets and dissuades foreign investors from putting their money into our economy. Our purpose is to protect New Zealand’s economic and financial wellbeing, and this work is particularly critical in challenging economic times. We will continue prioritising cases which pose a threat to this wellbeing.”
Ms Hanyu will be sentenced on 3 July 2026 at 2.15 pm.
