Dominic Khoo exuded wealth and success.
He lived in a colonial bungalow in Singapore, cycled through luxury cars and hobnobbed with people like Dennis Rodman.
He was a celebrity photographer who had become rich dealing in luxury watches, like ones made by Audemars Piguet and Girard-Perregaux. He told potential investors that he bought the timepieces well below retail prices, sold them to clients and eventually bought them back at a higher price. Then he would sell them at an even higher price, making money for himself as well.
“He came across as someone you could trust,” said Edmund Liew, an emergency room doctor in Hong Kong who invested hundreds of thousands of dollars with Mr. Khoo.
Mr. Khoo’s business, called The WatchFund, seemed to flourish for years. He won investment awards, was featured in The New York Times, Bloomberg and CNBC, and at one point said that he was managing $38 million in assets.
Now Mr. Khoo, 48, is bankrupt. He is also accused of fraud; claims that he denies.
Some investors, including Dr. Liew, say the watches they got from Mr. Khoo were sold to them on the premise that they were “investment-grade” but were actually worth far less. At least nine complaints have been filed with the police in Singapore about Mr. Khoo, which have not been previously reported. They accuse him of luring customers with promises of high returns but never returning their principal.
One investor told the police that he believed Mr. Khoo was running a business that was characterized by “Ponzi-like operations.” The police said they were looking into the complaints but declined to give details.
Mr. Khoo denies wrongdoing. In multiple phone interviews, he challenged the independent estimates his clients had received. He said “there’s no possibility of fraud” because his clients got to keep and own the watches.
“Anyone in this world who is in this level of investing is not a guy with nothing in his pocket, and it’s not his first rodeo, right?” he said.
The Rise
Born and raised in Singapore, Mr. Khoo attended a prestigious elementary school in the city, graduating from college in Perth, Australia. He became a celebrity photographer, taking portraits of people like Cate Blanchett and the Dalai Lama.
He soon made a name for himself in Singapore. But in 2013, he announced that he was retiring, at age 35, as a photographer and starting The WatchFund, saying he had trained with Antiquorum, an auction house that focuses on watches.
It appeared to many of his friends that he had entered the world of the rich, flashing the exclusive American Express Centurion credit card and wearing Hermès shoes.
Mr. Khoo flaunted his connections publicly, displaying on his company’s website that he was a watch expert “by appointment of” Prince Hakeem Jefri Bolkiah of Brunei. He told an investor that Forrest Li, the Chinese-born Singaporean tech billionaire, and Massimo Ferragamo, the youngest son of the shoe magnate Salvatore Ferragamo, had invested in his business, according to messages reviewed by The Times.
(Spokespeople for the prince and Mr. Li said Mr. Khoo had misrepresented their professional relationships. The younger Mr. Ferragamo declined to comment but is among the creditors of The WatchFund, according to one of his lawyers.)
Some of Mr. Khoo’s earliest clients were friends from school, and soon he expanded to Hong Kong.
One aspect of his business that gave investors confidence — even though watches are considered by some as an opaque investment — was Mr. Khoo’s base of operations. Singapore is a top global financial hub known for its strict laws to combat financial fraud, even announcing at the end of last year that it would punish scammers by caning.
“I had the impression when he was in Singapore that it was reliable,” Dr. Liew said, adding that if the business were based in Dubai, New York or London that he “would not have even thought about it.”
“In the beginning, he did everything right,” said Jay Samathivathanachai, another client, whose son was a schoolmate of Mr. Khoo’s. He said he invested the equivalent of $100,000 with Mr. Khoo in 2017 and made a profit.
But when he wanted to cash out in 2022, Mr. Khoo told him that the buyer he had found for Mr. Samathivathanachai’s watch had pulled out of the deal. Mr. Samathivathanachai kept pressing Mr. Khoo for months to sell the watch, even offering a discount.
That year, Tse Siu Hang, an investor in Hong Kong sued Mr. Khoo for misrepresentation in Singapore, saying he had been promised seven luxury watches from Mr. Khoo for roughly $1.6 million but received only three.
Soon after, a group of Hong Kong investors, including Dr. Liew, sued The WatchFund and Mr. Khoo in Singapore for misrepresentation and breach of contract. They said Mr. Khoo, who largely ran the business on his own, had reneged on agreements made in the years before the pandemic to repurchase 17 watches.
‘Crazy or What?’
In 2024, the court found that Mr. Khoo’s company was in breach of contract and ordered it to buy back the watches for about 2.5 million Singapore dollars, or $2 million. But the judge dismissed the personal claims against Mr. Khoo, ruling that the investors had signed the agreements with the WatchFund Hong Kong, his company, and not Mr. Khoo himself.
Around the same time, Zubin Daruwalla —- a primary school friend of Mr. Khoo’s and a client who had made money with him — was having trouble redeeming his investment.
Desperate, he sought out Vincent Perriard, the co-founder of luxury watchmaker HYT to appraise a piece made by the company that he had bought from Mr. Khoo. Dr. Daruwalla said he told Mr. Perriard that he had committed to buy the watch “at a ridiculous price” — 150,000 Swiss Francs, or $191,000.
“You have paid that money? You’re crazy or what?” Mr. Perriard responded, according to a recording of the conversation provided by Dr. Daruwalla.
Mr. Perriard later told Dr. Daruwalla that he could sell the same watch to him for 20,000 Swiss Francs, according to messages viewed by The Times. Mr. Perriard did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Samathivathanachai had a similar experience with an independent appraisal. Sotheby’s estimated that a watch he bought from Mr. Khoo was worth less than a fifth of the $128,000 he had paid.
Bankruptcy
The accounts from Mr. Khoo’s clients suggest that his business was struggling. He told some clients that the Hong Kong protests in 2019 and the pandemic had prevented potential buyers from traveling, according to court documents.
In the broader market, investors had started turning away from luxury watches as an asset class starting in 2022, with interest rates rising after the pandemic.
Then, Mr. Khoo lost the case against Mr. Tse, the Hong Kong client. The court ordered him to pay Mr. Tse 12.8 million Hong Kong dollars, or $1.6 million. He never did. In an email, Mr. Tse said he had filed a bankruptcy claim against Mr. Khoo in August. in a bid to get his money back. Mr. Tse declined to discuss the case further, but a court declared Mr. Khoo bankrupt.
In the first interview, Mr. Khoo said that he has left Singapore but asked that The Times not make public where he lives now because he feared for his safety. He said his home in Singapore had been broken into, his website had been hacked and that his father has been harassed by the group of Hong Kong clients who have sued him.
Jowin Fung, one of those clients, said a fellow investor had hired a licensed debt collector to try to get his money back.
The group of Hong Kong clients that includes Mr. Liew said it has not received a penny from Mr. Khoo. It is still pursuing its claims in court.
Mr. Khoo failed to turn up in court last year and did not provide the documents the court requested, according to Raymond Lye, the lawyer for the plaintiffs. In addition to the Hong Kong group’s claims, Mr. Khoo said he is facing a charge of contempt of court, which could result in a fine or imprisonment. He is due back in court this month.
Sui-Lee Wee is the Southeast Asia bureau chief for The Times, overseeing coverage of 11 countries in the region.
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