UPDATE: PowerPoint Presentation For Club Asteria Says ‘Passive’ Income ‘100% GUARANTEED’: Is ‘Ken Russo’ Tone Deaf? Promoter Brags About $321 Payment Sent By Wire While Another Laments Payment Of 30 Cents; Members Say They’ll Contact AlertPay
Screen shot from a PowerPoint presentation on Club Asteria. The presentation is attributed to Andrea Lucas and is accessible online. (White highlights in screen shot added by PP Blog.)
UPDATED 9:09 A.M. EDT (June 14, U.S.A.) A PowerPoint pitch titled “Asteria Corporation” raises serious questions about the nature of the business “opportunity” and may undermine Club Asteria’s own claims that members alone are to blame for the company’s apparent troubles.
The document is slugged “[ClubAsteriaPresentation]” and attributed to Asteria Corp. and Andrea Lucas. It describes the “program” as one that enables “passive” income and provides a “25% Matching Bonus” — and claims Gold and Silver members are “100% GUARANTEED to Make Money.”
Screen shot: The "Properties" of this Club Asteria PowerPoint pitch identifies Andrea R. Lucas as the author.
The PowerPoint presentation leads to questions about whether Club Asteria is selling unregistered securities as investment contracts. Meanwhile, it casts doubt on Club Asteria’s claim that members are uniquely responsible for positioning the program as a passive investment opportunity with guaranteed earnings.
Virginia-based Club Asteria identifies Andrea Lucas as its managing director. The program, which members say has slashed payouts and sends money via wire from a Hong Kong company known as Asteria Holdings Limited, is being investigated by Italian authorities. Club Asteria acknowledged last month that its access to PayPal had been blocked, blaming the development on misrepresentations made by members. Member payouts plunged after the PayPal development.
Promoters of Club Asteria routinely trade on the name of the World Bank.
Separately, promoter “Ken Russo” — posting on the TalkGold Ponzi scheme and criminals’ forum as “DRdave” weeks after the PayPal freeze and the developments in Italy — noted he has received by wire $1,632 from Club Asteria since June 2. In separate posts, “Ken Russo” claimed to have received $1,311 on June 2 and $321 on June 12. Both payments came from “Asteria Holdings Limited (Hong Kong),” according to the posts.
Other Ponzi-forum posters claim they were less fortunate than “Ken Russo.” A poster on MoneyMakerGroup, for example, lamented a payment this week of only 30 cents.
“my astrios (sic) stand at almost 1000 and you will be shocked to know that i earned only 30 cents this week, thats (sic) like 4 cents per day for an investment of $1000,” the poster complained.
Another MoneyMakerGroup poster said this: “I made 80 cents from my 2,500 asterios.”
Even TalkGold, which provides the cyberspace criminals and hucksters use to fleece hundreds of thousands of people globally in one Ponzi or fraud scheme after another, is questioning why Russo appears to be doing so well while others have been left holding the bag.
“Something unreal compare[d] to others cashouts amount (sic),” a TalkGold Mod wrote on June 10 about “Ken Russo’s” June 2 claim of a $1,311 Club Asteria payout.
Other forum posters say they plan to retaliate against Club Asteria by filing disputes with Alert Pay, an offshore processor used by Club Asteria.
“This worked for me with genius funds,” wrote one TalkGold promoter, referring to Genius Funds, an international scam promoted on the Ponzi boards that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) said last year stole $400 million.
And the TalkGold poster who’d previously been ripped off in the Genius Funds scam and filed an Alert Pay dispute said he’d do the same thing with Club Asteria — and encouraged others to do the same.
“Yesterday I filed 3 complaints for myself and family and if enough people do it, maybe they will block their alertpay account and share it out to us,” the poster claimed.
He found a receptive audience, and a TalkGold poster who responded to his plea to contact Alert Pay suggested Andrea Lucas was trying to stop members from filing disputes.
“I have contacted to Alertpay too just some days ago,” the TalkGold poster wrote. “Andrea Lucas contacted to me and started whine. Whaiting (sic) message from Alertpay.
“I think their PayPal account was blocked in the same way as it’s going to be with their Alertpay account,” the poster wrote. “Some smart guys did it before us.”
Some Club Asteria members have offered inducements for prospects to join the program, including partial reimbursements of monthly fees. Such members now potentially find themselves in the position of having locked in their own losses by bribing prospects up front and expecting to recapture the expense as the program expanded.
In 2010, “Ken Russo” — while promoting the MPB Today “grocery” program on the Ponzi boards — said one of his downline members was offering up-front payments to incoming prospects to drive business to MPB Today.
So According to You Talkgold is a criminal Ponzi promotion forum, but at the same time it’s a forum that is being used to spread the word about this scam, helping others avoid it. Did you think that maybe, just maybe, the forum is just that… a forum, used for open discussion related to these programs, and perhaps the mods of the forum do not have some conspiracy to promote these things? 9 times out of 10 the moderators and even administrators of Talkgold and other related forums are the ones posting information helping members avoid these schemes. You seem stuck on the idea that it’s the opposite. There are topics for each program and members are permitted to give their opinions and feedback, positive or negative as long as the basic forum guidelines are followed.
– Moderator at one of these “Criminal forums”
Actually, it’s not according to me: It’s according to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which exposed the alleged $70 million Pathway to Prosperity Ponzi scheme and identified Talk Gold and MoneyMakerGroup as forums from which Ponzi schemes were promoted.
I’d encourage you to read the affidavit in the P2P case — and also the court documents in the Legisi Ponzi case. You might also want to read some of the files from the CFTC Forex sweep earlier this year.
No, I have no confusion at all about what TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup do and spend no time thinking that “maybe, just maybe,” the forums provide some type of public service.
What the forums do, precisely, is set the stage for people across the world to be scammed by the hundreds of thousands. They do it with as much disingenuousness as they can muster, of course — you know, by doing things such as planting the seed that “maybe, just maybe” something wholesome is occurring.
If they weren’t so sad, the “scam” folders at TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup would be among the most comical things on earth — given the fact the forums provided the platform for the scams, the cheerleaders dutifully posted their “I got paid” posts, the shills arrived to assist/assure that the scams could mushroom to the widest possible audience, the naysayers got heckled for telling the truth — and the “opportunities” collapsed one by one to meet their final fates in the “scam” folders.
Ever see this:
https://patrickpretty.com/2010/06/02/pathway-to-prosperity-case-a-subject-of-discussion-in-washingtons-highest-power-corridors-website-of-u-s-attorney-general-includes-link-to-case-info-as-part-of-mass-marketing-fraud-educational/
Or this:
https://patrickpretty.com/2010/07/15/go-finra-regulator-tackles-online-hyips-issues-warning-on-social-media-linked-ponzi-schemes-references-p2p-genius-funds-con-artists-and-bizarre-substratum-of-internet/
Or maybe this:
https://patrickpretty.com/2011/06/07/kaboom-web-based-ponzi-pitchmen-for-legisi-hit-with-judgments-totaling-more-than-2-5-million-receiver-hires-law-firm-to-collect-against-matthew-j-gagnon-scheme-was-promoted-on-talkgold-moneymake/
And your source for “9 times out of 10” is . . .?
And the reason for all the naysayer bannings is . . .?
It is virtually impossible for a “naysayer” to be ruder than, say, a serial promoter of Ponzi schemes on TalkGold/MoneyMakerGroup and the organized crime figure or terrorist or criminal huckster into whose pockets millions of dollars are flowing.
What’s it going to take before the kindly and public-spirited Mods wake up?
A detonation? A shoe bomb or toner bomb that knocks an airplane from the sky? A poisoned water supply?
Patrick
Actually,
the people at Talkgold are too clever to just “ban” naysayers.
Instead, they employ a series of different strategies to achieve the same result.
For example:
they issue “warnings” without attaching the name of the specific moderator to the complaint
They issue warnings for every post.
It doesn’t take long for the subject/s of the warning/s to work out further posting is futile.
By making the grounds for the issue of warnings so broad, every post becomes subject to a warning:
“You have been warned for one of your posts, which violated Talkgold HYIP, Investment & Money Forum Rules. The reason you have been warned is because:
Mischievously manufacturing inflammatory opinions in an attempt to stir up disharmony and discord. Posting up a stream of off-topic drivel or being clumsily provocative.
(Warning Type = Trolling)
For this violation, you have been given : 1 point(s).
The point(s) will remain in your account for 45 days.
After that, they will be removed automatically”
It’s not by accident “naysayer” activity on Talkgold has virtually ceased.
Fair enough, I say.
It’s “their” forum to do with as they wish.
HOWEVER,
it’s a bit rich when “they” come out into the real world and play the dumb innocent
Mind you, if being prevented from posting on a HYIP ponzi forum like Talkgold is the worst thing that happens this year, 2011 is gonna be a bloody good year for a lot of people.
At a profit. Talkgold and MMG (and others) provide “advertising” space for obvious ponzi schemes, and are therefore profiting from criminal activity. The ponzi criminal forums like Talkgold have been accepting “dirty” money from ponzi schemes for many years.
Hilarious. Was the talkgold admin helping to avoid obvious ponzi schemes such as “maxsurf.biz” or “Proshare.biz”? Both threads on talkgold started by the owner of the site.
I expect the numpties at talkgold will try to sell a MLM magic fruit juice that can cure a poisoned water supply.
And they’ll probably plant the seeds that Oprah or Warren Buffett — or maybe even the World Bank — is on board, Tony.
Patrick
<<<>>>>
There is a major major difference between a mod or admin posting a program for opened discussion, and “Promoting”. Both in a legal and moral standpoint. Making a forum post about a program and then allowing members to discuss it is beneficial in my opinion because open fair discussion can take place. There are dozens of people posting against these programs all over the various Forums like MMG TG and DTM, and way more program fans are banned than naysayers are, at least at the forum I moderate at.
Knowingly promoting a scam could be illegal. But promotion is what Mathew Gagnon was charged with. It involves directly benefiting from attracting people into a program you know is a scheme, and directly vouching for, or being involved in the inner workings of the said program. There has to be incentive involved, for instance, 50% of all profits brought in, or $10 per investor. If a website is charging a fixed rate for an ad, and is paid a fixed price regardless of how many people join, click on, or invest into that site, there are currently no laws forbidding that. I’m not 100% sure how the ad models of TG MMG and other forums work, however if in fact they are not earning referral commission, or any other incentive from ads they sell at a fixed rate, they are not taking part in any criminal activity, and hence the reason why these forums remain active and up for years. Members of the forums may be promoting schemes, however the management is not. Individual members may be prosecuted, but an open forum is permitted to host discussions, and there has never been a case where a forum owner was charged for members posting their opinions.
As previously stated on Corporate Frauds Watch, the bosses of the US-based criminogenic organization known as ‘Club Asteria’ have used the trusted name of the ‘World Bank’ to promote a classic, self-perpetuating, closed-market swindle dissimulated as a lawful ‘Income/Business Opportunity.’ Months ago I took the trouble to report this alarming situation to senior officials at the World Bank in Washington DC, to FBI agents and to various, interested third-parties whose legitimate businesses have also appeared on the illegitimate ‘Club Asteria’ Website.
In brief, the instigators of the ‘Club Asteria’ swindle (including Andrea Lucas, a former employee of the World Bank) have been cheating a growing number of ill-informed and vulnerable individuals (particularly, African and Asian immigrants to the USA and Europe) by persuading them that, simply by buying around $20 of products, and/or services, each month from ‘Club Asteria,’ and recruiting more and more persons to do the same, eventually all members can achieve ‘financial freedom.’In simple terms, since the money flowing into ‘Club Asteria’ has come largely from its own members, the victims of this swindle have actually been peddled infinite shares of their own finite money. So long as more and more ill-informed victims keep joining, the swindle can be sustained. The bosses of ‘Club Asteria’ already claim to have 300 000 members, and their reality-inverting propaganda has been posted all over the Net. This has been aimed at convincing the world that ‘Club Asteria’ is a purely philanthropic organization run by financially competent and ethical persons who are associated with international companies and major financial institutions. Sadly, ‘Club Asteria’ is the unoriginal creation of an absurd gang of exceedingly greedy, but otherwise mediocre, little racketeers who most-probably suffer from severe and inflexible Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
It has recently been reported that PayPal (one of the trusted names that has featured prominently on the ‘Club Asteria’ Website) has frozen the funds of ‘Club Asteria’. Although it has not been revealed how much cash this involves, tens of thousands of people a have been giving ‘Club Asteria’ around $20 per month via PayPal and receiving derisory, net-loss payments in return.
According to the company’s terms and conditions, PayPal reserves the right to withhold its clients’ funds, and to restrict access to accounts, for 180 days, if unusual or fraudulent activitiy is detected. Although the bosses of ‘Club Asteria’ have already broadcast propaganda which attempts to blame a few of the organization’s members for using PayPal to commit fraud, this news confirms that the ‘Club Asteria’ racket is now under investigation in the USA and elsewhere.
The ‘Club Asteria’ racket could be about to collapse. Corporate Frauds Watch looks forward to the day when we can report the arrest of Andrea Lucas and her criminal associates.
David Brear (copyright 2011)
Tony posted two examples above of the TalkGold admin “helping” the marks: “maxsurf.biz” and “Proshare.biz.”
The admin apparently also was “helping” the marks when he opened a thread on StreamlineGold.net, which later was referenced in a forfeiture complaint in the AdSurfDaily case. ASD ALSO was promoted on TalkGold and other Ponzi forums.
The ASD member who allegedly hawked the now-collapsed StreamlineGold.net “opportunity” funded at least one of her ASD accounts with money from E-Bullion.
E-Bullion’s operator now faces the death penalty for the murder-for-hire execution of his wife, a potential witness against him. She was brutally slashed to death on July 28, 2008. About four days later, on Aug. 1, 2008, the Secret Service seized tens of millions of dollars in the ASD case.
Dozens? Only dozens in this worldwide sea of despair that is contributing to bank failures and a record number of foreclosures — all while stealing the retirement savings of senior citizens and even fleecing the deaf?
Of course, there is a forum deflection for those realities, too: Don’t invest more than you can afford to lose, perhaps accompanied by a deflection that the opportunity is not really a “security” or “investment” — along with various claims of “slander” aimed at those “dozens” of naysayers.
The USDOJ specifically issued a warning about mass-marketing fraud last summer. FINRA essentially did the same thing, calling the HYIP sphere a “bizarre substratum of the Internet.” I believe a fair reading of the signals the government/regulators are sending is that the USDOJ is serious about putting lawyers in jail for enabling these schemes by providing cover for the schemers — and then moving against the promoters and other enablers, when appropriate.
A typical TalkGold scam works like this:
* A promoter announces he or she is not the “admin” of a “program.”
* Shills and other promoters, perhaps hiding behind bogus legal cover provided by a corrupt attorney, flog and flog and flog.
* “I got paid” posts are used to sanitize the scheme and loosen the purse strings of the doubters.
* The promoters work in teams to bury search engine results that raise serious questions about the “program,” in some cases by seizing on the keyword “scam” and then explaining that the program isn’t really a scam. A person researching a “program” may have to wade through dozens if not hundreds or thousands of search-engine results to find legitimate information about the “program.”
* The forums limit the dissension to “dozens” of posters across the sordid sphere, and the critics are ostracized, heckled or banned to keep dissension at a minimum.
* Someone says the program has passed “due diligence” and describes it as one of the best he or she has ever seen.
* Someone says the lack of law-enforcement action is proof that the program is not a scam, perhaps pointing to the “I got paid” posts from all the happy campers.
* The scammers tap into the U.S. money supply — and the money supply of other countries — at the local level across the nations and world.
* The program collapses, and some of the early cheerleaders and vets disingenuously recommend that the participants file disputes with the offshore payment processors and the credit-card companies.
* The offshore processors, which operate with e-Gold’s pre-indictment, see-no-evil approach, gorge themselves on fees and then are forced into an examination after the fact — if at all.
* The credit-card companies have to assign staff to deal with the chargebacks and the cost of investigating individual complaints, which affects their bottom lines.
* Someone hijacks a thread consisting of people fretting that their money is gone, and the hijacker says he or she has a “program” that will help the fleeced make up their losses. The program operator is positioned as an “honest admin.”
* A new cycle of stealing begins.
* Someone claims/suggests the forums are providing a valuable public service.
* Someone suggests this is all part of a free market, that adults don’t need the help of government or regulators — and that the government is evil.
Patrick
P.S. It sometimes ends up being the case that the “programs” were under investigation even as the corrupt promoters and their shills were doing what corrupt promoters and shills do to fleece the masses — and even as the payment processors and forum owners were turning a blind eye to the fraud because acknowledging it is bad for profits.
Patrick, all I’m saying is that Just because someone makes a post on a forum doesn’t mean they are promoting a program. If you make a post on a forum asking people their opinions on making pipe bombs, or perhaps even going as far as posting how to make one , does that mean you are promoting the making of pipe bombs, and should be legally or civilly responsible for any deaths caused by people making pipe bombs??
The admin of Talkgold sometimes posts new programs in the forum. He doesn’t say “This investment is a must,” or “This investment is guaranteed,” or “I highly recommend this investment. Like any forum owner he likely wishes to attract traffic to the forum, as more topics being discussed the better.
Did you read the bottom of all his posts, “Any Posts I make, are for discussion purposes only. I am not vouching for any programs. One should invest in HYIPs with Extreme Caution.”
There are no laws preventing freedom of speech. If he wants to make a new topic for the discussion of a program, whether it’s a scam or not, there is nothing illegal about that. If, on the other hand, he was promoting the program by recommending it, and directly benefiting from the post via a referral link, that is an entirely different story. I don’t believe the admin ever posted his referral link, and never recommends or makes positive statements about any program in question.
Patrick, you forgot to mention
* someone posts a “test spend”. Normally low/minimum value, the ponzi admins love these. Keeps the ponzi “active”, only needs a little payment to generate a “it’s paying so it’s real” post.
* the “paid for” posts. Some scams employ users with multiple identities to post positive statements.
Really? Are you sure? Have you checked? I’m not going to do your work for you, but does accepting advertising for obvious criminal activity sound a bit dodgy to you? (I did check a few years ago and found various laws that state that the person allowing advertising has some responsibility).
Are you sure? Have you checked? Are you saying that the ponzi forum owner truly thinks that the obvious ponzi scheme he is posting might be real?
No, he never states he thinks its real. He doesn’t state that he thinks its a scam or a legitimate program. He just posts the info of the program in order to bring about an open discussion. By making a post on a forum in order to get discussion about it (Positive, negative, or neutral), there is absolutely nothing illegal. Ask any Lawyer outside of North Korea lol
Here’s an example of how the mods and admin over at TalkGold deal with critics of any program paying them protection money:
Dear Joe Hill,
You have been warned for one of your posts, which violated Talkgold HYIP, Investment & Money Forum Rules. The reason you have been warned is because :
Mischievously manufacturing inflammatory opinions in an attempt to stir up disharmony and discord. Posting up a stream of off-topic drivel or being clumsily provocative.
(Warning Type = ‘Trolling’)
For this violation, you have been given 1 point(s).
The point(s) will remain in your account for 45 days.
After that, they will be removed automatically.
The post for which you are warned can be seen here:
=======================================
I can’t say for sure that C-A has absolutely no revenue other than peoples membership fees but I think it’s an overwhelmingly safe thing to say that [i]almost[/i] all of the money C-A takes in is either members monthly fees or money they trade for extra Asterios. Gee, what ever could be the problem with that? Well quite simply the promise is that you can take more money out than you put in but if the only (or near only) money available for those pay outs comes from what people pay in, some people, perhaps a great number of them, have to lose money in order for a few to make that profit.
Some people enjoy playing ponzi games and God bless them, they know the deal, they pay their money and take their chances. It’s little different than a casino to them, granted a real casino gives you free drinks and in a real casino you very seldom have to worry if the building will disappear before you can cash in you chips. How many veteran Internet ponzi players had cash in a program when the admin up and vanished like a fart in the wind? I bet you wished you were sitting in a real casino sipping free drinks when that happened, am I right?
To someone joining C-A the question isn’t if C-A will be paying next month or even the month after. Look at the pay plan. If you join as a gold member today and pay your $19.95 each month it will be what, better than 11 months before you break even? Math isn’t my strong suit so please correct me if I’m wrong and accept my thanks for having done so. So it isn’t so much an question of will C-A be up and running next month, for many, if not most the question is will it be up and running next year?
The answer to that weighs heavily on my previous questions, outside of inclusion in the pay plan what of marketable value is Club Asteria selling? The E-Books are crap, coaching and mentoring, at least in this context are almost always a scam and if Mr.Needham could sell his capture pages and auto responders on the open market, he wouldn’t be giving them away as a gold member perk. Hell, even such an experienced and veteran internet marketer as DRdave never mentions any of C-A’s “ancillary services” in his recruiting posts. Correct me if I’m wrong, and I really mean that, but C-A is only selling the opportunity to join a money game and these games always seem to end at some point. And as a wise man once said in his forum signature they usually seem to end just after you put your money into them. All newcomers please take note!
=======================================
The admin/moderator who warned you, entered this comment:
=======================================
Mischievously manufacturing inflammatory opinions in an attempt to stir up disharmony and discord. Posting up a stream of off-topic drivel or being clumsily provocative.
=======================================
Your total Warning Level at the moment is: 6 point(s).
If you reach the maximum of 5, you will be banned from the Forums, for 60 days.
To see details about all the warnings you have received, until now, please click here:
—————————————————————————
I don’t think I got off more than 3 or 4 posts before they banned me and all of them were like the one quoted above. I didn’t spam or flame I only said what anyone with half a brain knew was going to happen, what in fact is happening. Yet Mr. Forum Mod or one of his cohorts banned me. I’m not sore about it, hell I expected it. C-A was one of the “big programs” and anyone pointing out that it was neither legal nor sustainable was unwelcome on TalkGold so long as Ken Russo and his army of imitators were still cleaning up on referral commissions.
The jig is up now, the halleluiah course of “I got paid” has been replaced by the cold hard facts of mathematical reality. Which is something all the banned and warned nay sayers at TG could have told Mr. Forum mod is exactly what will happen, but he (or someone very much like him) banned us.
Hello Glim,
First, just plain “hi.”
This is an important point, perhaps at two levels.
First, lots of CA promoters appear to have provided recruits inducements to join — and then instructed their recruits to do the same thing. Lots of people could have built in their own losses on the theory they’d make up the cash in the long term.
And, as you point out, there may be no long term.
Second, I’d say it is highly probable that CA’s cash flow after it became popular was a mirage created in no small part by the inducements. The payouts plunged after the PayPal freeze. Absent the inducements — and it seems likely they’ll vaporize now because of the “low” return — CA may be stuck in No Man’s Land.
And, at least occasionally, bids to sell Asterios and to cherry-pick recruits for new scams.
The “poof” penalty.
Patrick
There are WAY more negative posts on TG than there are positive ones recently in the C-A thread. To claim mods are deleting negative posts because C-A paid protection money is hilarious.
….the operative word of course being “recently” Too bad CA was a blatantly obvious Ponzi from Day 1, right?
[…] account had been suspended, has described itself as a “cause” marketing company. A PowerPoint presentation for Club Asteria claimed the program offered a 25 percent “matching bonus,” along […]