Did MPB Today Have Predecessor Company Known As ‘MyPremierBiz’ In 2009? Wellness, ‘Apps’ Programs Pitched From Ponzi Boards Last Year Prior To Birth Of ‘Grocery’ MLM
This video promo from June 2009 hawks "My Premier Biz," a site now associated with the MPB Today "grocery" program. My Premier Biz was pitched on Ponzi forums more than a year before promos for MPB Today began to appear on the Ponzi forums. MyPremierBiz was a purported opportunity for distributors to pay up to $3,456 to have wellness products associated with MPB Today operator Gary Calhoun placed in retail stores.
A website known as MyPremierBiz.com was hyped on Ponzi boards last year and videos were produced to drive traffic to a confusing “opportunity” that included both a straight-line and a 2×2 matrix cycler and a hard-to-decipher sales and compensation program.
Affiliate links were created for the program, which was purported on the MoneyMakerGroup forum to gather between $312 and $3,456 from distributors to place “Pro Packs” — cases of wellness products — in retail stores. The more a prospect sent in to acquire purported retail space for “Pro Packs,” the more he or she purportedly would earn. As of yesterday, some of the links redirected to the website of the purported MPB Today “grocery” program, research shows.
The product line-up for the MyPremierBiz opportunity is associated with products offered by Gary Calhoun of MPB Today. One promoter on a Ponzi board claimed MyPremierBiz had lined up “outlets” that are “independent nutrition and health food stores, specialty wellness shops, holistic or independent pharmacies, spas, salons, etc.
“We have a certain number right now, but NOT ENOUGH members to cover the sales! Talk about a GROUND-FLOOR OPPORTUNITY!” the affiliate exclaimed. “As this gets rolling, you will be a part of a small, elite nucleus of people who will have THOUSANDS of STORES in your downline within 12-36 months!”
Incongruously, a video on YouTube displayed photos of several retail outlets, but included a disclaimer in tiny type that “Stores shown are for example only and are not affiliated with our company.”
The root of the domain — MyPremierBiz.com — displayed this message this morning: “MPB Today is off-line for site maintenance.” However, other URLs at the site served pages, including a page that included a link for the MPB Today “grocery” program. The fate of the “Pro Packs” offer first advertised last year was not immediately clear.
The development strongly suggests that MPB Today, which itself is being promoted on the Ponzi boards, had a predecessor site more than a year ago that also was pitched from the Ponzi boards. Receipt of any revenue from Ponzi schemes or criminal business opportunities is potentially catastrophic for MPB Today because the company could be paying members with proceeds from other online schemes.
Separately, MPB Today Inc. has canceled its Florida incorporation, according to documents on file in the state. The company now is known simply as “MPB Today” — without the “Inc.” designation — according to a filing dated Sept. 24. MPB Today is operating as a fictitious entity owned by Le330 Inc., another entity associated with MPB Today operator Gary Calhoun.
Whether MPB Today Inc. actually ever was incorporated in Florida is unclear. A filing by the firm in July suggests the fictitious entity assigned itself a corporate designation under Le330’s designation. Checks recently received by MPB Today members no longer have the “Inc.” designation. Earlier images of checks posted online by affiliates included the “Inc.” designation. New checks simply list “Mpb Today” as the account-holder.
Like promos for MPB Today, promos for MyPremierBiz were filled with hype and began with a proposition.
In March 2009, a poster at MoneyMakerGroup wrote, “Would you spend $312, ONE-TIME ONLY, to EARN at least $360 in PROFIT, from Retail Store sales, year after year?”
MPB Today uses a similar pitch to plant that seed that a $200, “one-time” purchase can lead to free groceries for life.
MyPremierBiz was positioned last year as “a new division of a six-year-old company that is turning heads both on and off the internet,” according to a promoter writing on the MoneyMakerGroup forum. MoneyMakerGroup is referenced in court filings in the Pathway To Prosperity (P2P) case, amid allegations that P2P was an international Ponzi scheme that fleeced more than 40,000 participants across the globe.
Writing about MyPremierBiz on MoneyMakerGroup in June 2009, a promoter said that “I am the #2 person in the company. I’m building the TOP Team and I want you to have the same success. Together, I KNOW we can do it!
“We have SO MANY ways you can get paid and I am going to get you off to an INCREDIBLE START with my MPB Team Build,” the promoter continued. “Here’s what I will do for you. I’ll put two people under you and that will get you off to a ROCKET START! If you join MPB, you will pay $11.50 for the annual website fee, plus $20 for your first monthly order, plus a little shipping for that order, and you can also purchase your way right into our 2 x 2 matrix for only $50 (just one part of our comp plan, but a VERY exciting and rewarding part). So your total expense, to get started is only $89. And you will now be part of several PASSIVE RESIDUAL Compensation Components, and you will be earning a check the very NEXT week!”
One of the Ponzi-forum references to MyPremierBiz included a tie-in to a program known as “Froggy Apps,” which purported to be a downloads service.
“FROGGY APPS are HERE!” a pitchman roared on the MoneyMakerGroup forum on July 9, 2009. “APPS are just getting started. People are downloading them at an ASTOUNDING rate, and iPhones, and other ‘Smart Phones’ are selling at a PHENOMENAL CLIP!”
Links to the MyPremierBiz promos placed in the MoneyMakerGroup forum during the summer of 2009 redirect to the current MPB Today grocery program. So do links to the FroggyApps program.
All three websites — MyPremierBiz.com, MPBToday.com and FroggyApps.com — are registered behind proxies. When the PP Blog visited the FroggyApps site, it was redirected to the MPB Today site.
Not all affiliate links formed under the MyPremierBiz domain, however, appear to resolve to an MPB Today affiliate site. The PP Blog clicked on an old MyPremierBiz affiliate link yesterday, and was sent to a page that said, “The page or associate name was not found on this server. Please click the link below to continue.”
The link below led to the MPB Today site.
Quick note:
In one of the MoneyMakerGroup threads that reference MyPremierBiz, an ad for an HYIP appears near the top of the first post in the thread.
In July, FINRA called the HYIP universe a bizarre substratum of the Internet. The ad at MoneyMakerGroup might be one of the reasons.
“250% After 5 minutes!” it screams. “950% After 1 Hour! 3200% after 10 Hour! 7500% After 1 Day! 18,500% After 2 Day!”
A “Bonus” also is advertised. The opp says on its webpage that it will take from $2 to $20,000 from investors.
Yep. Really.
Patrick
Patrick, where do I send my money?? $18,500 in 2 days?? Where do I sign up??
P.S. !!!!!!
LOL, Don. :-)
Patrick
You really do need to get out more, Patrick.
The HYIP ponzi “scene” is cyclical, with each “cycle” starting with a big one which draws in a whole lot of fresh blood and ends when logic finally prevails or people have been burned enough times to realize they’ve been had.
We’re currently at or near the end of the cycle in which AdSurf Daily was the first “biggie” and the usual suspect forums are filled with “opportunities” such as the one you’ve described. “Playas” are desperately trying to squeeze the last dollar out of this cycles’ remaining “players”
HYIP forums are way, way down, both in numbers of visitors and new ponzi games.
As hard to believe as it seems to those with even a small amount of common sense, the example you have given is not at all unusual.
Hi LRM,
I did a quick calculation on the annualized rate — something on the order of 2.73 MILLION percent. I also noticed some fantastic numbers quoted in the Imperia case, which fleeced thousands of people with hearing impairments.
Even though I agree with you that I need to get out more, it’s still hard not to be stunned when someone bandies about a return of 2.73 MILLION percent. :-)
Another way of looking at this is that the remaining pushers of Ponzis/pyramids on the boards are just plain criminals and/or the surrogates of just plain criminals. If this were the drug trade, they’d call the surrogates “street-level” dealers.
And, speaking of the money-laundering pros and their surrogates, the Justice Department had something to say about that today:
http://www.justice.gov/criminal/pr/speeches/2010/crm-speech-101019.html
Patrick
IM(very)HO,
that’s not “another” way of looking at the “scene” at all.
That’s how it is.
Please believe me, there are some outrageously STUNNING amounts of money being made in this business.
Anyone who has observed the HYIP ponzi arena for more than five minutes could relate stories such as the forum owner who openly boasted he’d made enough to pay cash for a house in Las Vegas, simply by allowing the forum to appear to support the scam.
Or the low level “mule” who received $25,000 overnight for their part in a “sting” carried out in conjunction with the 12Daily Pro autosurf.
Or the 30+ HYIP and autosurf sites, all with the same owner, parked on the servers of a well known webhosting company, all the while gaining “legitimacy” WRT length of existence and waiting to be made “live” when the owners’ other HYIPs collapsed
I am in no doubt we are discussing a multi BILLION dollar international black economy here.
There already is advertising there will soon be an autosurf similar to ASD, Megalideo, and 12DP; not counting all the other autosurfs trying to get traction that have already launched.
They seem to be relying on law enforcement not having enough time and personnel to get them all. It remains to be seen just how many suckers they can real in to their program. Some never learn.
I do believe you, LRM. I think these things are among the most dangerous things ever invented, posing an untenable security risk.
I agree. Genius Funds alone reportedly clipped $400 million. P2P, Legisi and ASD add on the order of another $240 million. Throw in 12DP, Phoenix Surf and CEP, and you have perhaps another $100 million. Add in OLINT — and you’ve crossed $1 billion — from just eight operations.
Lynn, I believe, estimates that there are up to 7,500 such schemes.
Patrick
Lynn wrote: “There already is advertising there will soon be an autosurf similar to ASD, Megalideo, and 12DP.”
I wrote: I’ve received one report on this, but haven’t had time to check it out yet. I got a bit sidetracked today doing some cursory research into an HYIP that appears to be promoting an annualized return of 2.73 million percent.
It never really stops — as you know, Sir.
Patrick
I have got to check that out. Now I know how I can fund Eagle, and it will only take a week to do it. LOL!
<a =href"http://www.justice.gov/criminal/pr/speeches/2010/crm-speech-101019.html"http://www.justice.gov/criminal/pr/speeches/2010/crm-speech-101019.html
This link provides very interesting reading. In this statement of intent by the Justice Department it is reassuring to see more attention being paid to the compliance by the banking system in their reporting of suspected breaches of the law relating to money laundering and fraud.
The creation of the Money Laundering and Bank Integrity Unit within the Criminal Division’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section and the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative are welcome additions to the presentinitiative against financial fraud which has financial and political ramifications that are so far reaching.
Wow – thanks for posting the DoJ link Patrick. Reading it only goes to confirm the suspicion I had that the Suspcious Activity Reporting and compliance with the Bank Secrecy Act was not always 100%.
There are a whole new set of ponzi “revenue share” programs that have recently come out because a cheap off the shelf script is now available.
So, everyone with $67 and a hosting account is opening up an advertising revenue share site with all the big promoters salivating over the sheep to be fleeced.
One of the worst is a program called Power2share.net and purports to share 97% of the revenue from all advertising purchases. (Sound familiar?)
The difference here is that, unlike ASD, etc. there is no daily cap on revenue share payouts so these burn out fast.
That’s why unscrupulous promoters like Jane Mark push them so fast and hard. They are able to earn direct referral commissions in addition to the revenue share.
The sad part is that the big promoters promote how much revenue share they are getting in the early days when there are few people/shares but don’t mention how their $2 earnings per share quickly drop to pennies per share as the number of people/shares increase.
The good thing is that this type of model will crash and burn faster than an ASD which won’t give them the inertia to suck multi-millions out of the public.
This P2S is at about $1MM, still a big number but nowhere as big as the ASD/12DP, etc.
But, still, terribly bad for those who let greed get the better of them and get sucked in.
It’s simple math. The blackbox won’t even be needed on this one, it (the black box) will just laugh at the model. LOL
ARWR
Hi ARWR,
I don’t want to overstate what I’m about to say — and I want to make it clear that I’m still shaping my thinking on these matters — but my inclination is to believe what we’re actually seeing is a sort of slow-motion coup d’etat, under the banner of “patriotism” and the “sovereignty” of individuals and a bastardization of the Constitution.
These “opportunities” are clearly frauds of the five-alarm variety. They are so clearly frauds that one necessarily must ask if the puppeteers are simply taunting the U.S. government. There is so much wink-nod going on among the various players — basically a chronic reshaping of the story to achieve what they must view as plausible deniability.
I wrote this fantasy post for a reason:
https://patrickpretty.com/2010/07/31/fantasy-post-president-cuts-short-vacation-to-address-nation-on-grave-threat-to-national-economic-security-government-targeted-with-taunt-from-purported-mlm-operators-amid-sea-of-incongruity/
I more or less look at most of these programs as a probing for vulnerabilities. “They” — and it’s unclear who “they” are — are inflicting thousands of tiny cuts on the U.S. financial infrastructure. The human targets are the disaffected and the ignorant — i.e., people who are unwilling or unable or disinclined to consider the impossibility of it all.
“They” have two major advantages, as I see it: an unpredictable economy and the predisposition of lots of people to make government the bogeyman. Those messages resonate. Throw in financial desperation and an appeal to faith, and otherwise rational people become the “voices” for criminal puppeteers.
I do believe the street-level players understand what is going on and are engaging in willful blindness on the theory their plausible deniability will hold up.
There also is an element of suggesting that “real Americans” understand the big picture — i.e., that the evilGUBment is suppressing commerce and running roughshod over the Constitution. That “plays” — but only until people take some time to peel back layers of the onion.
I keep thinking about Surf’s Up, a place at which onion-peeling was not permitted. Surf’s Up provided a laboratory of sorts, acting at once as an enemy of “Big Brother” and an unabashed supporter of the Thought Police. Those messages cannot be reconciled.
Criminality is becoming institutionalized under the banner of legitimate MLM or direct-selling. I believe it also is working its way into the political process. Obama is being depicted as both a Nazi and a Socialist, another message that cannot be reconciled.
I remember earlier this year when some INetGlobal supporters could not seem to agree whether the PP Blog was a Nazi or Socialist rag. As I recall, the Blog was accused of both Nazism and Socialism in the same week — from within the same household.
These are strange and worrisome times indeed.
Patrick
I have, in the past, advanced the theory that it is, in fact, a well considered strategy of the steroidal puppeteers to deflect attention away from the inherently faulty nature of the HYIP ponzi “business” and onto other possibilities for what is certain collapse of all HYIPs. Preserving their “market” requires that their victims are left with some type of “doubt”
What better scapegoats could a puppeteer ask for than 2 of the most universally disliked institutions, banks and politicians ???
Even now, faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary, including the evidence gathered by a multi agency taskforce, many otherwise sensible people are STILL apportioning at least some blame for their situation on banks.
Anyone around at the time of the 12Daily Pro saga at time find themselves in some strange “deja vu” world where the puppeteers were singing from the same hymn book, only substituting “Stormpay” for “Bank of America” at the time.
How on earth people fail to read the signs pointing directly at the fact the banks/payment processors were, in fact, the source of much of the information used to bring down the fraudsters, is a fascinating study of human nature.
Patrick, I seem to recall “Uncle Saint Andy” also having a ‘trial run’ of a scam prior to the birth of ASD. Guess some scams need a bit of fine tuning in order to rip off the most people possible before the law dogs close in on them.
But then, it’s always someone else’s fault if things go badly, Has nothing to do with them being a crook and greatly felonious. It’s the evil law enforcement community stepping on their right to be thieves !!!! (emphasis added)