A woman who pocketed $100,000 more in lawsuit damages than she paid in fines for running a massive pyramid scheme is now running another one.

Jessy Lai—known as Lai Chai Shuang—has rebooted her collapsed Monspace Ponzi scheme as MetaSpaceX, a "play to earn" crypto grift targeting investors across Southeast Asia.

The pattern repeats itself. Lai's scamming resume starts with Zhang Jian's Yun Shu Mao pyramid scheme, where she served as a top promoter before it evaporated and left $233 million in losses. She then launched Monspace in 2016, a virtual shares Ponzi that promised returns to investors in China and Malaysia while layering in a cryptocurrency component called MSCoins.

Monspace imploded in 2017. Malaysian authorities froze RM5.867 million tied to the scheme in July 2018. They arrested Lai and accomplices in May 2019.

Here's where things get weird. Lai faced charges under Malaysia's Direct Sales and Anti-Pyramid Scheme Acts—penalties ranging from $120,462 to $1.2 million or five years in prison. She pleaded not guilty. Malaysian authorities arrested her again in August 2019, this time on money laundering charges tied to Monspace.

But no prison sentence materialized. Instead, Malaysia's Anti-Corruption Commission seized RM1.5 million from Lai in 2021—about $324,640 USD. That was the sum total of her punishment for running a scheme that destroyed people's savings.

Then Lai sued a Malaysian MP who had publicly stated she was running an illegal business and cheating investors. The MP's statements were factual. The Malaysian High Court still awarded Lai RM2 million in damages in March 2023—roughly $432,000 USD. She pocketed more in that defamation judgment than she lost in fines.

With that legal breathing room secured, Lai launched MetaSpaceX in late April 2022. The operation controls multiple domains: mx-space.com was privately registered March 23, 2022, while metaspacex.co followed on February 27, 2023. An official Facebook page appeared in April 2022.

The pitch was standard metaverse boilerplate: "the world's first prosperous world that combines physical construction and metaverse," promising integration of finance, entertainment, leisure, medical care, media, tourism, and "international exhibitions."

The concept failed to gain traction. MetaSpaceX couldn't hold investor attention with vague metaverse promises.

So the operation shifted strategy. Today MetaSpaceX operates as a straightforward "play to earn" token scheme—the crypto world's repackaged version of the same pyramid structure that made Lai rich the first time.

One person's slap on the wrist is another person's startup capital.

🤖 Quick Answer

Who is Jessy Lai and what is her history with pyramid schemes?
Jessy Lai, also known as Lai Chai Shuang, is a Malaysian operator with an extensive involvement in fraudulent schemes. She initially promoted Zhang Jian's Yun Shu Mao pyramid scheme, which caused $233 million in losses. Subsequently, she launched Monspace in 2016, a virtual shares Ponzi offering cryptocurrency returns in China and Malaysia before its 2017 collapse.

What is MetaSpaceX and how does it relate to Monspace?
MetaSpaceX represents a rebranded iteration of the collapsed Monspace Ponzi scheme. Operating as a "play to earn" cryptocurrency investment platform, it targets investors throughout Southeast Asia. The scheme maintains comparable fraudulent mechanics to its predecessor while adopting modern blockchain terminology to attract new participants.

**What legal consequences

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