By Liew Hanqing

MIS-SELLING is a buzzword most Singaporeans associate with Minibonds, High 5 notes and banks pushing for a quick sale.

But Mr Lee Hoe Siong, 60, may now lose $60,000, half his retirement savings, because of alleged mis-selling, not by a bank relationship manager but by his own brother.

In March last year, Mr Lee, a company driver, was urged by his younger brother to invest in the US oil and gas industry through OilPods, a local company which has links to oil and gas projects in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas.

Never mind that he could not read English or really understand what he was in for.

He told The New Paper in Mandarin: 'At the time, bank interest rates were low, and my brother told me I could get a much better return from investing in OilPods than putting the money in the bank.'

'Absolute trust'

He said: 'I had absolute trust in my brother because he has always been responsible for handling our family's financial matters.

'I had bought about eight insurance policies from him earlier,' he added.

Mr Lee's brother, an insurance agent, also worked as a consultant for OilPods, but has since quit.

He declined comment for this report, but had insisted his brother knew the risks involved in the investment.

However, Mr Lee, who has Secondary3 education in Chinese, said he knew he was investing in US oil and gas projects, but was under the impression that his OilPods investments were somehow linked to the insurance company his brother works for.

At the time of his first investment, Mr Lee had just undergone heart surgery.

He received an insurance payout of about $30,000, which he used to invest in Powder River Petroleum International.

But this year, it got into legal trouble.

This could wipe out the entire value of Mr Lee's investments.

An OilPods spokesman told The New Paper that more than 2,000 of its investors, mostly Singaporeans, had invested in Powder River.

About US$46 million ($68m) worth of working interests in the company were purchased by OilPods investors over the last four years.

The spokesman added that a temporary injunction has been placed on Powder River, and if there are sufficient assets available, 'some level of recovery work' can start and 'investors will be paid accordingly'.

It is unclear how much of investors' capital can be recovered, if at all.

Mr Lee said after his first investment, he received about $150 in investment yields from OilPods, which was deposited to his bank account.

He continued receiving such deposits for about nine months.

'I was receiving returns on my investments, so I believed everything was going to be fine,' he said, leafing through a thick stack of OilPods-related pamphlets and documents, which he said he did not read in detail.

In October last year, Mr Lee invested another $30,000 through OilPods in Biamante Texas, a US natural gas project, after attending an investment talk at OilPods' office in Suntec.

OilPods' investment offerings were even featured in SmartInvestor, a local investment magazine, three years ago.

The magazine report said these investments 'could potentially create multiple cash flows and generate attractive returns'.