Forest City: How a ghost town in Malaysia became a Trojan horse for scammers

From a distance, Malaysia's Forest City looks 3D-printed: a bristle of identical white blocks clustered on an otherwise unremarkable coastline. When it was unveiled by Chinese developers in 2016, the $100bn mega-project was pitched as "a dream paradise for all mankind": a special financial zone that could house some 700,000 residents. But a decade later, this 14-sq-km (3,400-acre) artificial island on Singapore's doorstep is thought to be inhabited by less than 1% of that. Rows of eerily vacant skyscrapers loom over quiet streets. Inside empty apartments, benchtops and windows are filmed with dust. "In 2016 they described it here like the golden city; very, very beautiful," says Jason Deng, a 56-year-old investor who was among the first to buy in Forest City, paying "a lot of money" for five properties. "If I had known it was not so good I would not have bought so many apartments," he says now. "I thought it would be much, much better." As it turns out, this is only a golden city for some people – and they're not the ones developers had hoped to attract. In mid-July, Malaysian police raided two alleged scam operations spread across 32 premises in Forest City, arresting 335 people ‌

Aug 11, 2026 → Aug 11, 2026