Great frauds in history: Hannu Kailajärvi

Kailajärvi claimed to have discovered a way to make huge returns from foreign-currency trading. For a fee, investors could join the club.

Hannu Kailajrvi was born in Finland in 1972 and went on to complete a computer science degree at a technical college before dabblingin various entrepreneurial schemes with his wife. These included a restaurant, a music bar and then an internet marketing firm.

All of these ventures ended in bankruptcy. Undeterred, he set up WinClub in 2005, an investment club based on foreign-currency trading. Its name was later changed to WinCapita when the media started to query what was going on. At its peak, the scheme had 10,000 members with more than €100m (£93m)invested in it.

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Dr Matthew Partridge
Shares editor, MoneyWeek

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

Follow Matthew on Twitter: @DrMatthewPartri