Day: September 6, 2011

  • UPDATE: Club Asteria Pitchman And TalkGold Promoter ’10BucksUp’ Declares That Filing An AlertPay Dispute To Recover Money From Yet-Another Tanking HYIP Scheme ‘Drastic’ Measure That Will Cause ‘All’ Members To ‘Suffer’

    You can’t make this stuff up . . .

    A Club Asteria pitchman flogging multiple HYIP schemes on the TalkGold Ponzi forum says that late-entry members of a teetering “program” known as “JustBeenPaid” are engaging in hurtful and “drastic measures” if they file disputes with AlertPay.

    Filing a dispute means that “all members will suffer,” according to serial HYIP pitchman “10BucksUp.”

    “10BucksUp” rose to Ponzi-board prominence earlier this year in his shilling for ClubAsteria, a U.S.-based company that traded on the name of the World Bank, had its PayPal account frozen, became a subject of an investigation by Italian regulators and suspended member cashouts.

    Screen shot: From a government evidence exhibit in the Legisi case. Legisi, an HYIP Ponzi scheme promoted on TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup,made members certify they were not government spies. JustBeenPaid, a hybrid HYIP scheme now in an apparent state of collapse, sought to do the same thing, according to its member agreement.

    Undaunted, “10BucksUp” — like other Club Asteria pitchmen — turned his promotional attentions to JustBeenPaid, which appears to feed itself through something known as “JSSTripler.”

    JustBeenPaid claimed it was a “private association.” The “program’s” member agreement called for participants to “affirm that I am not an employee or official of any government agency.”

    Participants also had to certify that they were not “acting on behalf of or collecting information for or on behalf of any government agency.” Meanwhile, they had to certify that “I am not an employee, by contract or otherwise, of any media or research company, and I am not reading any of the JBP pages in order to collect information for someone else.”

    A Ponzi forum uproar began when JustBeenPaid’s website recently began to malfunction. A person who identified himself as a recent registrant threatened on TalkGold today file a dispute with AlertPay.

    “10BucksUp” counseled the JustBeenPaid member to “[p]lease just calm down.”

    “I am pretty sure they are doing their best to make the new system work,” 10BucksUp continued, without describing how he’d arrived at his notion of being “pretty sure” and whether being “pretty sure” constituted legitimate due diligence and proper consumer advice.

    “I just think that the priorities are screwed as the logging in right now even without the member id thing should work within this week,” 10BucksUp opined. “New members like you are becoming restless I know, but try to understand if you do such drastic measures then all members will suffer.”

    Whether the late-entrant enrollee, who also is pitching multiple schemes on Talk Gold, will file a dispute is unclear. What is clear is that AlertPay enabled both Club Asteria and JustBeenPaid and that both “programs” are in a state of decay.

    Among other things, JustBeenPaid announced last month that it was “moving to new offshore servers” and that the transition could take weeks.

    “10BucksUp” did not explain why a dispute to a payment processor by a late entrant in JustBeenPaid who is apt to have joined a global Ponzi scheme constituted a “drastic measure.” Nor did he explain his apparent belief that late-entry registrants had a duty to suffer their Ponzi losses gladly so the early entrants had a chance to continue getting paid.

    In 2010, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority called the HYIP sphere a “bizarre substratum of the Internet.”

    Club Asteria was widely promoted on the Ponzi boards, which led to questions about whether the Virginia-based firm with a purported Hong Kong subsidiary was selling unregistered securities on a global scale and collecting tainted proceeds from other HYIP schemes. The firm’s offer was targeted at the world’s poor.

    A collapsed HYIP Ponzi scheme known as Legisi also was promoted on the Ponzi boards. Like JustBeenPaid, it sought to have registrants certify they were not government spies.

  • Federal Judge Orders Sale Of Helicopters, Houseboats, Vintage Cars And Real Estate Linked To Alleged $275 Million Online Scam Operated By Jailed Utah Internet Marketer Jeremy Johnson

    A federal judge has ordered the sale of helicopters, airplanes, houseboats, vintage cars and real estate allegedly linked to a massive fraud scheme engineered on the Internet by Utah resident Jeremy Johnson and dozens of corporations, including at least 51 shell companies.

    Johnson, 35, has been jailed in the United States since his June arrest at a Phoenix airport at which federal agents allegedly found him in possession of $26,400 in cash and a one-way ticket to Costa Rica.

    The FTC charged Johnson and the companies in December 2010, alleging they hatched a government-grants and continuity-billing scheme that defrauded consumers of $275 million. A federal judge ordered an asset freeze and appointed a receiver, and the receiver’s request to start selling off assets linked to the scheme has been granted.

    These are among the assets ordered sold by U.S. District Judge Roger L. Hunt of the District of Nevada at the request of receiver Robb Evans. (This list is not all-inclusive):

    • 1978 Cessna P210N.
    • 2008 Robinson R44 Raven II helicopter.
    • 1968 Piper Navajo.
    • 2005 Robinson R44 Raven II helicopter.
    • 2009 Piper Malibu Mirage.
    • 1978 Beech C24R.
    • 1957 Chevrolet Belair Convertible.
    • 1972 Chevrolet Nova SS Clone.
    • 1952 Ford O Matic.
      1968 Oldsmobile.
    • 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle SS 454.
    • Honda Pilot Dune Buggy.
    • Custom made snow plane. (Not airworthy. Used for travel over snowy terrain.)
    • Two Skipperliner houseboats, one a 75-foot craft, the other 74 feet in length.

    Office furnishings, fixtures and equipment also were ordered sold:

    • 82 West 700 South, St. George, Utah.
    • 575 East 30 North, Ephraim, Utah.
    • 11 West 700 South, Ephraim, Utah.
    • 302 West Hilton Drive, St. George, Utah.
    • 147 North 100 West, Mendon, Utah.
    • 392 West 400 South, Manti, Utah.
    • 575 S. Main, Richfield, Utah.
    • 127 Hollister Avenue, Santa Monica, Calif.
    • No. 91 North Front Street, Belize City, Belize.
    • Five parcels of adjacent and/or related parcels of raw land identified as Parcel #4200-B-HV, St. George, Utah, Parcel #4201-A-HV & Parcel #4201-B-HV, St. George, Utah and Parcel #4203-HV & Parcel #4150-B-HV, St. George, Utah.
    • 750 South Main, Highway 89, Ephraim, Utah.

    Chad Elie, a Johnson business associate implicated in a probe into illegal gambling, told a magistrate judge in July that Johnson had stockpiled caches of gold and cash and hid it in Utah, according to the Salt Lake Tribune.