DEVELOPING STORY: New Mystery Emerges: North Carolina/Nevada Entity ZeekRewards.com Was Served With California Cyberpiracy, Infringement And Unfair Competition Lawsuit In Flushing, N.Y.
Screen shot of page from November 2011 lawsuit that named ZeekRewards.com a defendant. (Red highlight by PP Blog.)
ZeekRewards.com was accused of cyberpiracy, unfair competition and benefiting from copyright infringement in a trademark-dilution and defamation lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Nov. 7, 2011. The action demands an accounting, disgorgement of alleged ill-gotten gains and treble damages.
The PP Blog was unable to reach Zeek immediately by phone this morning for comment on the lawsuit, which may involve the actions of a Zeek affiliate. The Blog followed up with an email and is awaiting a response.
The docket of the case shows a summons was issued to ZeekRewards.com and several co-defendants on Nov. 7, the same date the lawsuit was filed.
A process server served the complaint on ZeekRewards.com at 136-20 38th Street, Suite 9H3, Flushing, N.Y., 11354, on Nov. 21, 2011, at 7:28 p.m., according to court filings.
An individual who accepted process for ZeekRewards.com at the Flushing address stated “they are authorized” to do so, according to court filings.
But Zeek says it is an arm of Rex Venture Group LLC, an entity registered in both Nevada and North Carolina. In North Carolina records, Paul Ray Burks is listed at the registered agent of Rex Venture at an address in Lexington, N.C. In Nevada records, meanwhile, Nevada Corporate Planners Inc. of Las Vegas is listed as the registered agent of Rex Venture.
The docket of the case strongly suggests that neither ZeekRewards.com nor any of the other defendants has entered a defense to the claims and that an attorney for the plaintiff has moved the court for a default judgment to be entered. No attorney appears to have filed an appearance notice for ZeekRewards.com or any of the other defendants. On Jan. 26, 2012, the clerk of courts recorded an “ENTRY OF DEFAULT” against all of the defendants.
Here are the named defendants: Lewis Liu, also known as Wei Liu; www.eadgear.ca; www.zeekrewards.com; Xinzheng Wire Mesh Co. Ltd.; Xinzheng Companies (America) Inc.; and “DOES 1-10, inclusive.”
The plaintiff is eAdGear Inc., which does business as www.eadgear.com.
eAdGear contends that Liu, a former eAdGear affiliate, copied eAdGear’s .com website to a top-level domain in Canada and used the site to promote ZeekRewards.com and to defame eAdGear.
“In early October 2011, [Liu] published written defamatory statements on ‘www.eadgear.ca,'” the plaintiff alleged. “As shown in Ex. 3, [Liu] stated that plaintiff was not an accredited business by [the Better Business Bureau] and that BBB would soon publish an extremely low rating on Plaintiff. [Liu] further asserted that Plaintiff’s holding company in Hong Kong had never existed. All [Liu’s] statements are false. [Liu] started to use ‘www.eadgear.ca’ to promote his own online advertising business ‘www.zeekrewards.com.’ He asked all his customers under his Plaintiff account (eAdGear ID #127264) to transfer business to ‘www.zeekrewards.com.’ He promised with a low monthly service fee and other incentives to customers who were willing to transfer to ‘www.zeekrewards.com.'”
The PP Blog also sought comment from Zeek today on why auctions for sums of U.S. cash appear to have been removed from Zeekler.com, the penny-auction arm of Zeek. Zeek Rewards is the MLM arm.
Zeek Rewards plants the seed that a return of between 1 percent and 2 percent a day is possible, although it claims it is not offering an investment program and has preemptively denied it is a pyramid scheme.
Too bad it doesn’t list the Zeek subdomain the guy gets so we can look up whether he’s still with Zeek or not…
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In other news, searching foreign websites and Non-English websites shows that they don’t seem to be affected by Zeek Squad compliance cops. They are still using terms like “interest”, “dividend”, “compound”… just not in English.
The lawsuit does not allege a Zeek subdomain was used; it references only zeekrewards.com. That’s why the story above reports only that a Zeek affiliate “may” be involved. The complaint accuses zeekrewards.com itself on “information and belief” and says zeekrewards.com “is an alter ego of ‘[].eadgear.ca,'” the Canadian domain that allegedly illegally copied eAdGear Inc.’s .com domain and used it to smear eAdGear while promoting zeekrewards.com.
Mr. Liu, an individual defendant, is the person who appears to have accepted process as the “AUTHORIZED AGENT” of zeekrewards.com in Flushing, NY.
Patrick
Quick note: There is an exhibit mostly in Chinese of content that appeared on the []eadgear.ca domain. Some words are in English, including ZeekRewards, solidtrustpay, Zeekler.com and Rex Venture Group LLC.
And, intriguingly, inetglobal.
But I do not understand the context.
Patrick
I can’t seem to access the exhibit, but I do read Chinese.
If you want to forward me a link I’ll take a peek and translate it for you. Or post it over on RealScam or something.
Kindly check your inbox, K. Chang.
Thanks.
Patrick
Just a hunch but the reason Zeekler is no longer offering cash auctions may be two fold. First it generates too many kinda embarrassing questions about why someone would spend more money on the bids to win an auction than the value of the auction prize. Second, quoting Troy Dooly ZR’s “crack pot compliance team (sic)” surely told them that they were on firmer legal footing against lottery laws if they did away with the cash auctions. But someone correct me if I’m wrong but Zeekler still allows you to accept the retail cash value of an auction you won in lieu of the item it’s self so it really doesn’t change anything.
It may well have something to do with the fact that eAdGear is a cross between ASD and iNetGlobal. Obligatory MMG link:
http://www.moneymakergroup.com/Eadgear-Eadgearcom-t378289.html&p=6547609#entry6547609
I love it when ponzies sue each other. Is there any way both can lose?
Reply was sent.
I checked the Justia website and the exhibits were not included.
Seems it’s a pretty sad turf fight… ZeekRewards was compared to eAdGear and inetGlobal, all three were shady opportunities, AFAIK.
The exhibit is a comparison among ZeekRewards, eAdGear, and iNetGlobal as “income opportunities”, where the owner of this cybersquatting site did his best to discredit eAdGear, like “we don’t really know if they exist in Hong Kong”, and “they may be falsely advertising their BBB credentials because we know BBB don’t rate MLMs”.
First half is lambasting eAdGear, with enticement to downlines that basically says “join me in ZR and I’ll post your ads for you for a tiny fee”. The other half is a translation of how ZR works, copied from the main website, albeit translated to Chinese.
Thank you K. Change, it confirms (in part) what I’m suspecting.
I am not an attorney and I didn’t even stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night but I don’t think Rex Ventures have anything to worry about from this suit and they might not even be aware of it in the first place. eAdGear dot com was (yet another) failed to launch ponzi scheme and it looks like Lewis Liu (or Wei Liu) was a disaffected affiliate. Mr. Liu registered a domain in Canada named eadgear dot CA and was using it to disparage eAdGear dot com and promote his Zeek Rewards link at the same time.
Mr. Liu may have claimed that he was authorized to receive summons for Zeek Rewards behalf but there is no evidence to support his claim. There is also no evidence that Rex Ventures Group was noticed either through their registered agent in Nevada or in North Carolina. It seems very plausible that Zeek Rewards only involvement here is they were the ponzi scheme Mr. Liu left eAdGear to join.
(And a humble apology to Mr. Chang for misspelling his name.)
OK. Over at BehindMLM.com — http://behindmlm.com/companies/zeek-rewards/nc-ags-office-deny-saying-zeek-rewards-is-legal/#comment-80289 — which is doing a great job informing the public about Zeek, poster M_Norway has posted this link:
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/california/candce/3:2011cv05398/247433/22/
As the first order of business, M_Norway notes he tried to post the link here but the PP Blog’s form would not accept the input. My apologies to M_Norway for that. It happens from time to time; I’m thinking I’ve received about four or five complaints about it over the years, but never have figured out precisely what causes the problem. Folks who’ve experienced that problem have told me that it goes away.
Now, to the link to the court document on Justia.com above. It was not on the official court docket yesterday afternoon, so it must have been posted later in the day.
What it is is a recommendation from a magistrate judge on how the case should be adjudicated. A U.S. District Judge will make the final ruling.
It does seem entirely possible that Zeek Rewards did not even know about this lawsuit — but that’s not entirely clear because Zeek hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
Patrick
I’ll translate a chart Mr. Liu prepared for his prospective members comparing ZeekRewards, eAdGear, and iNetGlobal.
Inetglobal needs no further introduction: it was raided by American authorities a while back.
More garbage that means absolutely nothing to zeekrewards. but i see the realscam morons are all over it. total morons!
The fact that income opportunity seekers consider ZeekRewards to be directly comparable to proven scams apparently does not alarm you.
Thank you for the kind mention sir. I’ll give your opinions the notice they deserve just as soon as I can figure out how to load my printer with toilet paper.
One more data point: ZeekRewards claims to only allow links and ads in English, but fan sites all over advertising Zeek are in bazillion languages:
http://i.imgur.com/CpqUG.png
Update: eAdGear appears to be launching their own penny auction website called Go Fun Rewards.
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[…] Re: Zeek Rewards !! How to get to $3K a month, starting as a free member ! Go Fun Rewards is a clone of Zeek Rewards (needless to say) that was launched by eAdGear, which was previously involved in a lawsuit against an affiliate who went over to Zeek. There's a preview on BehindMLM MLM penny auction opportunity prelaunch roundup | BehindMLM and PatrickPretty has a short report about eAdGear and its lawsuit DEVELOPING STORY: New Mystery Emerges: North Carolina/Nevada Entity ZeekRewards.com Was Served With … […]