From a distance, Malaysia's Forest City looks 3D-printed: a bristle of identical white blocks clustered on an otherwise unremarkable coastline. 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. "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. As it turns out, this is only a golden city for some people – and they're not the ones developers had hoped to attract. The BBC reached out to Forest City and Johor police for comment, but did not receive a response.