The private equity tycoon has fallen from grace, the figure Ye Fei has stepped into the public eye, is the "King of Scams" always soaring right at the peak of the prevailing hype wave?

Exposing huge dark secrets of the financial circle, the former private equity tycoon Ye Fei, who was sentenced to 4 years in prison for manipulating the market to harvest retail investors, completely switched to the entertainment industry after being released, becoming an actor and screenwriter. 

Ye Fei started his stock market journey back in 1994 when he was only 15 years old. In 2003, he began to engage in institutional private equity investment, earned his first bucket of gold by participating in the "Five Golden Flowers" market rally, and won the first prize in the China Stock Market Folk Masters Competition in 2007. In 2010, Ye Fei co-founded Yitian Investment and served as its general manager. The "Yitian Yali No.3 Fund" under his management once recorded a return rate of 351%, causing a huge stir in the capital market. 

However, in 2021, Ye Fei suddenly shocked the entire financial circle. He posted publicly on Weibo breaking the news that listed companies illegally carried out market value management but refused to pay the final payment. He exposed 18 listed companies one after another. Eventually, some of the executives or actual controllers of these companies were arrested, while others faced huge fines. Ye Fei himself did not escape the trial and served a total of 4 years in prison. 

Last September, Ye Fei was released. He announced that his first plan was to shoot the movie Black Market Trilogy, saying he would bring his personal experiences to the screen. Up to now, although the movie has not been completed, at least one short drama has been launched first. 

The latest news shows that although Ye Fei is enthusiastically acting as a newcomer in the entertainment industry, the short drama was taken down only half a day after its launch due to its high popularity and other reasons, and Ye Fei is currently appealing. Can his dream of being an actor continue?

Post-release Movie Trilogy, Short Drama Fraud King Premieres First

The latest news says that the short drama Fraud King shot by Ye Fei has been launched on Hongguo Short Drama platform. It has a total of 10 episodes and belongs to the urban crime genre. Although it is a short drama, its plot is adapted from real cases, including pig-butchering scams, cashback fraud through fake order brushing, nude chat extortion, false investment reporting, pension fraud and other types of scams. Ye Fei plays the role of a swindler named Li Jinhu in the drama.

▲

During the 4 years Ye Fei spent in the detention center and prison, everyone around him was a "talent" and he heard many real stories: "For the purpose of legal popularization, I will tell some special cases I encountered in prison to teach everyone to know and abide by the law." Now he has turned these scam routines into short dramas to warn the public.

This drama is produced by Shanghai Feihu Film & Media, which can be regarded as Ye Fei's first key work after his comeback. He takes on both the roles of screenwriter and lead actor, and deeply participates in the whole process of creation and polishing. 

The drama originally had 62 episodes during preparation. Due to some overly realistic plots and excessive content scale, after multiple rounds of review and deletion, it was finally reduced to a 10-episode positive energy version. Ye Fei admitted that the revised plot is more focused, retaining the most core and real breakdown of scam routines, without redundant gimmicks to grab attention, just to sound a real alarm for the audience. 

One short drama is not enough for Ye Fei. He has two movies under preparation, one is called Chasing Evidence, the other is The Turbulent History of Shanghai Stock Manipulators. It sounds that the role of the Shanghai stock manipulator is more adapted from his personal experience. Ye Fei said that as the film industry is relatively sluggish, he will shoot short dramas first before making movies. 

When he was released last September, he lost a total of 60 pounds and got in better shape:

Right after being released, Ye Fei high-profilely announced his first plan to switch to the entertainment industry. At that time, he said he would make the stories of himself and Xu Xiang into three movies called Black Market Trilogy or Black Manipulation Trilogy. The outline of the script had been finished, and he also asked someone to pass it to a well-known director. 

Among the three movies, the first one Market Rescue Storm tells the market fluctuations in 2015, the second one The Whistleblower tells his own story from a private equity champion to a prisoner, which is also adapted from real events, and the third one Global Game tells the financial war between China and the United States, which is fictional. Ye Fei also said he hopes to cooperate with regulatory authorities on the shooting to "educate practitioners to know and abide by the law". 

It is an extremely huge career span for a financial person to become an actor and screenwriter, but it is also a last resort. He owes a large sum of money to investors. Even if he wanted to go back to do private equity, not to mention whether clients are willing to invest in him, the village committee would not allow it. When he tried to be an internet celebrity, his Weibo and Douyin accounts were all banned, so the reality does not allow him to make a living on the internet, and only the job of film and television screenwriter is available for him. 

The Stock Market Genius Who Entered the Market at Age 15

Ye Fei entered the stock market back in 1994 when he was only 15 years old, still a teenager, while most people at that time had not even heard of the word "stock". 

In 2003, Ye Fei began to engage in institutional private equity investment, participated in the "Five Golden Flowers" market rally and earned his first bucket of gold amid the sharp price rise, and won the first prize in the China Stock Market Folk Masters Competition in 2007. 

In 2010, Ye Fei co-founded Yitian Investment and served as its general manager. The "Yitian Yali No.3 Fund" under his management once recorded a return rate of 351%, winning the first place in the stock strategy group of sunshine private equity funds in the first half of 2016. At that time, he was full of pride and shouted in front of the camera: "I am the special forces in the stock market." 

However, in 2020, Ye Fei resigned from the position of general manager of Yitian Investment, and also stepped down from the position of legal representative and the filing of the company's senior management. But whether he left the job or not never affected Ye Fei's passionate speech on the internet. 

When the circuit breaker mechanism was triggered in early 2016, the fund managed by Ye Fei had a large drawdown, but he did not get discouraged. He began to spend all day on social platforms such as Weibo, analyzing the market for investors online. 

"I am the strongest in a bull market, even Xu Xiang can't beat me." Ye Fei was never modest when posting status updates. His physical age has increased, but his mentality is still as frivolous as when he was young. 

Teaching stock investors how to trade online is nothing special. He also high-profilely enrolled students for training in the name of "Private Equity Champion", charging high training fees from EMBA class students, and also went to TV stations to do stock commentaries: 

At the end of 2020, Ye Fei's friend Liu Jinye, a "post-80s super retail investor", was taken into custody by Qingdao police for manipulating the stock of Nanling Civil Explosive. When the incident happened, Ye Fei commented on Liu Jinye's trading techniques on Weibo, and said he would "wait for him to come out all the time, good brothers for a lifetime". 

Liu Jinye's family runs a real estate business, but he does not like the real economy himself, only loves stock trading. He used leverage from the very beginning, and in addition to his own capital, he also used over-the-counter capital allocation. 

According to Ye Fei's statement, Yitian Investment is one of the "outsourced" investment institutions of Liu Jinye. The two parties jointly provided stock capital accounts, and Liu Jinye's side tracked and monitored Yitian Investment at any time to adjust the asset allocation plan in time and obtain profits. The cooperative account of Yitian Investment never bought the stock of Nanling Civil Explosive, so it was not involved in the case. 

However, the investigation eventually found that he was still involved in the case. 

After Ye Fei began to expose listed companies, he also announced on Weibo that he launched a "paid interview" service. From that day on, all media that wanted to interview him needed to pay appearance fees and interview fees, and the consultation fee was 16,666 yuan per hour. 

He is truly worthy of the title of a madman who broke into the capital circle bravely at the age of 15.

Huge Fines Failed to Warn Him, The Shocking Case Finally Sent Him to Prison

In fact, Ye Fei's amazing champion return rate back then did not rely on superb trading skills, but on manipulating stock prices to control the market and harvest retail investors. 

In September 2015, the China Securities Regulatory Commission announced that from May 13 to June 30, 2015, Ye Fei manipulated the prices of 5 stocks including Xinwei Group, Jinxi Axle, Jianghuai Automobile, Autoways and ZQGame by concentrating capital advantages and continuously buying in the late trading stage, with a total fine and confiscation of more than 26 million yuan. 

The reason why he was only fined more than 20 million yuan is that the penalty at that time was based on the old regulations, which were much looser than the current rules, usually only a fine of 600,000 yuan. After paying the money, he still made huge waves in the stock market. If according to the new regulations in 2020, all illegal gains will be confiscated, and a fine of no less than one time and no more than ten times the illegal gains shall be imposed. Earlier this year, there was even a major case with a total fine and confiscation of 1 billion yuan. 

He seemed to behave honestly for several years, but in 2021, Ye Fei once again shocked the entire financial circle. He posted publicly on Weibo breaking the news that listed companies illegally carried out market value management but refused to pay the final payment.

He exposed 18 listed companies in this incident, causing a huge shock across the entire financial circle. Everyone stared at Ye Fei's Weibo every day, waiting for new updates. 

Take Zhongyuan Home Furnishing as an example. Ye Fei said that as an intermediary, he facilitated a deal. The Zhongyuan Home Furnishing side wanted to carry out market value management and turned to him, asking the next party, public funds and securities asset management, to take over the stocks. It was agreed that the stocks would be locked and held on behalf of others, with guaranteed margin provided, and the trader Pu Feidi would raise the stock price by more than 30%. As a result, the trader defaulted. After the capital side took over and bought 15 million yuan worth of stocks, the stock price kept hitting the limit down. The public fund and securities asset management lost millions of yuan in this deal, and Ye Fei's agency fee was not obtained either. The upper party defaulted, the lower party pursued responsibility, and the trading side and the intermediary all shirked their debts. Isn't this a case of black eating black? So he simply exposed everything publicly, fighting to the bitter end. 

There is also Haizhi Electromechanical. Ye Fei directly named it: "Haizhi Electromechanical, you are the next cannon fodder. Why did you plummet so badly last December? Don't I know who was arranged to take over the stocks?" 

The listed companies named by Ye Fei began to plummet collectively. Many market software directly launched the "Ye Fei Concept Stock" portfolio, capital fled frantically, and the regulatory authorities filed a case quickly. 

According to Ye Fei's introduction, there are two main modes of market value management. The first mode is that listed companies conspire with public funds or securities asset management to raise stock prices, and give a 3%-5% rebate based on the increased market value. The second mode is that fund managers sell the stocks in their stock pools, and the trading side selects targets from them. The trading side buys first, then the fund manager buys, and the trading side sells before the fund manager sells. He and the capital side were mostly scammed in the first mode, where the trading side or the listed company violated the agreement, sold the stocks to them and ran away. 

This self-exposure was extremely fierce. He did not show any mercy after being betrayed, and publicly criticized 18 companies one after another, including Visionox, Oriental