When a group of customers of respected Singapore watch dealer Dominic Khoo sued, claiming his watches were overpriced, every fraud claim was thrown out by the courts. The same investors then sold the watches at a Hong Kong auction house, without Khoo, the owner’s, knowledge, for well above the estimates they had cited as excessive.
On 30 November 2025, a handful of rare watches went under the hammer at Antiquorum in Hong Kong. A Girard Perregaux Skeleton Minute Repeater Piece Unique in platinum. A Daniel Roth Ellipsocurvex. A Maîtres du Temps Chapter 3 Piece Unique. The kind of pieces that attract specialist collectors: out of production, hard to find, made in tiny numbers or as one-offs.
Several sold well above their estimates. The Daniel Roth, estimated at HKD 350,000 to 700,000, fetched HKD 2 million. The Girard Perregaux, at the same estimate, went for HKD 1.75 million. The Maîtres du Temps, estimated at HKD 150,000 to 300,000, sold for HKD 800,000. In total, at least five lots from the sale were connected to two lawsuits in Singapore. Their combined hammer prices came to approximately HKD 6.2 million.
But the people who sold those watches did not own them. According to two Singapore court rulings, the watches belonged to a company called Clients Investors Partners Limited, or CIP. Dominic Khoo, the Singapore watch dealer behind CIP, was not told they had been sold. His lawyers discovered it months later, in February 2026, while reviewing auction catalogues.
By then, the complainants had already been offered more than HKD 29 million to return all the disputed watches at full court-ordered prices. They had not accepted.
And in April, the New York Times ran a front-page investigation under the headline “Was It a Ponzi Scheme?”, presenting the complainants as victims of fraud and Khoo as the man who had cheated them. The article did not mention the court’s findings, the offer that went unanswered, or the auction sales.
So what is really behind the story of “the ghost watches”?
Khoo founded WatchFund in Singapore in 2013. His background was in watches before it was in anything else: a passion that started in his early twenties, led him into a career as a celebrity photographer, and eventually pulled him back to the watch trade full-time. Trained and certified by Antiquorum, one of the world’s leading watch auction houses, he built a dealing business sourcing rare timepieces for international collectors: tourbillons, minute repeaters, pieces uniques, spanning more than a hundred brands from established Swiss manufactures to independent watchmakers. WatchFund’s model was that of a specialist dealer. Clients received physical watches and held them. There was no pooled fund, no shared pot of money. Each transaction was a specific, identifiable watch. For over a decade, the Singapore operation served thousands of clients.
The disputes that led to the disputed Times article have nothing to do with that business. They involve CIP, a separate Hong Kong company set up in 2018 after Khoo was approached by Fung Ka Lok Adams, known as Jowin, the CEO of Innovest Financial Group, a Hong Kong financial advisory firm. Jowin wanted to bring Khoo’s model to his own clients. CIP had approximately seven investors, all drawn from Jowin’s network: business partners, associates and MCA Limited, a wholly owned Innovest subsidiary with Jowin as its CEO. This was not a group of strangers who independently discovered WatchFund and were taken in. It was a small, connected circle, introduced through one man, with their own commercial interests in the luxury watch space. When the disputes reached the courts, a single lawyer, Raymond Lye of CNPLaw, represented multiple members of the group across different cases.
Under their contracts, CIP was obliged to offer to buy back each client’s watches at a minimum of 11% above cost. CIP made those offers. The clients said they would accept. The process then stalled when CIP’s bank account at DBS Hong Kong was closed without explanation, shortly after the bank had raised compliance questions about transactions involving members of the client group. Khoo proposed alternative payment arrangements; the clients insisted on a corporate account. After a month without resolution, during the period of the Hong Kong protests and early COVID disruptions, CIP cancelled the repurchase offers on legal advice. The clients sued.
What followed was an eleven-day trial before the Singapore High Court. Justice Teh Hwee Hwee’s judgment, delivered on 30 April 2024 and running to more than 100 pages, examined every allegation in detail. Every claim of fraudulent misrepresentation: dismissed. Every claim of negligent misrepresentation: dismissed. The application to pierce the corporate veil: declined. The judge found that the plaintiffs had “failed to prove” that any representation made to them was false.
The plaintiffs’ case on pricing fell apart under cross-examination. They had produced two spreadsheets that they said proved the watches were overpriced, claiming the documents had been prepared by Connie Siu, the managing director of Antiquorum Hong Kong. Under questioning, it emerged the spreadsheets had been prepared by Jowin Fung’s own staff. Siu was never called to testify. The judge ruled them inadmissible hearsay and noted that the figures were auction estimates designed to attract bidders, not formal valuations. Auction estimates routinely differ from the prices watches eventually sell for. No proven loss was established. Nominal damages of S$1,000 were awarded on a single narrow contractual breach: the cancellation of the repurchase offers.
On appeal, the court confirmed that legal title to all the watches remained with CIP. The complainants had physical possession but not ownership. The watches were to remain with them pending a structured repurchase: appointment of an independent expert, inspection at Antiquorum Hong Kong as custodian, and formal exchange.
That process was never completed. In a separate case brought by Kyle Tse Siu Hang, another member of the Hong Kong network, Khoo’s defence was struck out on procedural grounds before it could be heard on its merits. The court ordered a mutual exchange: CIP and Khoo were to reimburse Tse HKD 12.8 million, and Tse was to return the three CIP watches in his possession. The exchange was never completed. Despite that, in August 2025, Tse filed a bankruptcy petition against Khoo as the sole petitioning creditor and succeeded. Khoo lost his directorships. His assets were frozen. Safety deposit boxes holding watches belonging to WatchFund Singapore clients, who had no connection to the Hong Kong disputes, were locked. WatchFund Singapore was placed into liquidation. The person who was supposed to resolve the repurchase could no longer act.
Through all of this, the complainants still held the watches. In January 2026, a group of investors from Khoo’s wider client network engaged Senior Counsel Abraham Vergis of Providence Law Asia to make a formal offer: to buy every disputed watch at the full court-ordered prices plus interest, totalling more than HKD 29 million. The terms mirrored the court’s specific performance directions exactly. The complainants’ lawyers acknowledged receipt and raised questions about escrow and inspection costs. They indicated a counteroffer would follow. None came.
A month later, the lawyers found the auction records.
Among the lots in the Antiquorum Hong Kong sale of 30 November 2025 were watches from both lawsuits: the Girard Perregaux and a Moritz Grossmann Benu Tourbillon Piece Unique from Suit 532, a Daniel Roth Instant Perpetual Tourbillon and an HD3 Raptor PVD from the Tse case. At least five watches in total. CIP was not informed and did not consent.
The prices are worth dwelling on. The auction estimates the complainants had cited in court as proof the watches were overpriced were the same kind of estimates Antiquorum sets to attract bids. The judge threw that evidence out. Several of the watches then sold at the same auction house for multiples of those estimates. These were specialist watches with niche collector appeal: rare, unusual, out-of-production pieces that WatchFund had identified years earlier, and which would find higher selling prices over time. The complainants’ position in court was that the watches were essentially worthless. The auction results suggest otherwise.
This was not a sudden decision. WhatsApp messages from December 2019, well before the litigation, show members of the complainant group in a group chat with an Antiquorum contact. The chat was called “Timepieces auction.” It contained estimates for specific watches from the Suit 532 portfolio, including a Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Antoine LeCoultre Minute Repeater and a Ulysse Nardin Forgerons.
When the lawyers wrote to the complainants asking them to confirm the watches were still in their possession, Kyle Tse discharged his legal team. Wong Ben, a Suit 532 plaintiff, left the litigant group. CNPLaw confirmed it no longer acted for him. Nobody confirmed anything.
Khoo has filed a police report for criminal breach of trust: the disposal of property by a person entrusted with it in a manner inconsistent with the terms of that trust. The offer of HKD 29 million remains open.
The New York Times presented the complainants as victims and Khoo as a fraudster. It did not report the court’s findings, the offer that was not accepted, the auction sales, or the connections between the complainants through a single financial advisory firm and its subsidiaries. Khoo’s representatives say they raised these points with the newspaper before publication. None of them were published.
The court settled the question of whether the watches were overpriced. What it could not settle is what happened to them. So they remain at the centre of the mystery of “the ghost watches”.
