STATUS QUO CHANGE IN ‘PROGRAM’? Conference-Call Recordings Of ‘Carl Pearson’ Go Missing From JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid Website; Development Explained Away As Response To Potential ‘Hackers’ — Although Frederick Mann Recordings Remain

It sometimes is the case in the corrupt universes of HYIPs that a change in the status quo signals panic or devastating news. It’s also sometimes the case that significant developments get explained away as meaningless or part of a plan that had been in place all along in response to explosive growth.

It is almost always the case that HYIPs such as JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid and their various purveyors reveal incongruities and internal inconsistencies — and a few big ones now are in play at JSS/JBP.

Within the past several days, audio recordings of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid “conference calls” featuring pitchman and purported COO “Carl Pearson” have gone missing from the JSS/JBP website. The recordings previously had been embedded on the site below the embedded recordings of Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS/JBP. Although Mann’s recordings remain, the recordings of Pearson have vanished.

No recording from Mann was added to the site last week, meaning the last embedded Mann recording carries a date of March 15. No recording was posted for March 22, meaning that the streak of posting a recording of every Mann Thursday conference call dating back to Feb. 16 had been broken.

In the March 15 call, Mann told members that JSS/JBP was paying them with money from “new members” and that it was OK to call JSS/JBP an investment program. Using money from new members to pay old members is the central element of a Ponzi scheme. And because Mann himself described JSS/JBP as an investment program, promoters could find themselves confronting assertions they are selling unregistered securities as investment contracts.

JSS/JBP members who identified themselves of residents of the United States or Canada were on the March 15 call (and also on previous calls). Their nationalities and citizenship are potentially important because JSS/JBP has no known securities registrations, meaning that regulators from either the United States or Canada could move against the enterprise and perhaps even some of its promoters.

Mann has declined on multiple occasions to identify JSS/JBP with a nation-state — and promoters still are pushing the scheme, despite the fact they appear to have no clue about the internal workings of JSS/JBP and how they (and their recruits) ever could recover their investments in the event of a collapse or a government intervention.

In January, the Italian securities regulator CONSOB announced a JSS/JBP-related action — and affiliates still promoted the program, with JSS/JBP itself claiming it was posting record numbers of new members daily.

At least a few JSS/JBP members have noted the removal of the Pearson calls. Earlier today, the PP Blog viewed an affiliate’s Blog for JSS/JBP in which an assertion was made that Pearson had become too busy with other duties to host calls.

“Due to the unprecedented growth of JBP, Carl Pearson will no longer be doing the weekly conferences,” a comment from a reader asserted. “He is prioritising now full time in the back office operations of JBP.”

The comment was dated March 21. A follow-up comment dated March 22 suggested the recordings had been removed for security reasons and that other information also might be removed.

“From the conference room yesterday at around 8pm Dominick got on the mic and announced it,” the post claimed. “He also said that staff members could have their pictures and information removed from the site if they wanted to and Carl as well as other staff members decided it would be best to have that information removed. He said that they are growing so fast that they could be targeted by crooks and hackers.”

But what the explanation did not reveal is why Mann’s recordings remained on the site if concern about crooks and hackers was great enough to trigger the removal of the Pearson recordings.

As often is the case in the HYIP sphere, the information was posted anonymously, meaning it could not be verified. Even so, the information is potentially disturbing in the sense that it defaults to well-known HYIP clichés such as introducing the prospect of hackers  — while ignoring the potentially damning information contained in the jettisoned material as a factor in the removal decision and the obvious fact that information that remains on the site may be equally damning.

With a straight face, for example, JSS/JBP purports to pay a daily return of 2 percent and a monthly return of 60 percent.

In 2007, when the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme stopped making payments to members (even as its operator allegedly was making political donations with Ponzi money), ASD President Andy Bowdoin allegedly blamed the halted member payouts on script problems and “Russian” hackers who’d allegedly taken $1 million.

Bowdoin never filed a police report about the purported theft of $1 million, federal prosecutors said.

In 2008 promotional materials attributed to Mann, Mann was identified as an ASD pitchman. As the ASD prosecution moved forward, it became apparent that certain ASD members either were “sovereign citizens” or sympathizers. Some “sovereign citizens” hold extreme antigovernment views and have an irrational belief that laws do not apply to them.

In November 2011, ASD figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming was arrested by an FBI Terrorism Task Force in Washington state on charges he had filed false liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD case, including a federal judge, three federal prosecutors and a special agent of the U.S. Secret Service.

On Feb. 27, the PP Blog reported that a website linked to Mann included links to 11 videos concerning Francis Schaeffer Cox, a purported “sovereign citizen” under indictment in an alleged murder plot against public officials in Alaska.

One poster on the JSS/JBP-related Blog from which the “hackers” explanation was advanced had a different take on conference-call-related developments.

“Heat is also the REAL reason why Carl Pearson has moved off the conference calls,” the poster speculated.