UPDATE: North Carolina Investigators Demanded Info From Zeek On July 6; State Says It Has Not Taken Shutdown Action
UPDATED 10:58 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Two new details have emerged in the mysterious shutdown yesterday of the office and websites of Zeekler/Zeek Rewards: The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper told the PP Blog this morning that it has taken no action to shut down Zeek, the operator of an MLM and a penny-auction site.
“We have not taken action to shut the company down and are currently working to get more information so we can pass that along to consumers who may be impacted by this,” said Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for Cooper.
But Cooper’s office did say that it had issued a Civil Investigative Demand (CID) to Zeek on July 6. That’s weeks earlier than initially believed and leads to questions about whether Zeek had known for five weeks that it had been under investigation and did not inform participants.
Without providing details, Zeek announced on its Blog yesterday that it had canceled its Aug. 22 “Red Carpet” event. By early evening, the Zeek Rewards and Zeekler sites began to publish this message: “Zeek Rewards is currently unavailable. More information will be available shortly on this website.”
Earlier in the week, Zeek announced that “there won’t be any training, recruitment or leadership calls for the next few days while planning is going on.”
With Zeek leaving affiliates in an information vacuum, many of them took to the Web. At least two petition drives appear to be under way demanding the government to reopen Zeek. As of the time of this post, the PP Blog has been unable to confirm that an action by any government agency — state or federal — was responsible for Zeek’s sudden absence.
The Blog still is in the process of trying to piece together events in what has emerged as a bizarre and fluid situation. Sensing Zeek affiliates were vulnerable, some MLM opportunists raced to various sites such as The Dispatch newspaper in North Carolina and YouTube with offers to join their “programs.”
Zeek fans on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum almost immediately blamed critics for Zeek’s problems, with one poster declaring he’d already mined his profits from Zeek and was confident they could not be attached by prosecutors in the United States.
The Better Business Bureau said this morning that it was aware of reports that the doors at Zeek’s office in Lexington, N.C., were closed. The BBB added that it would publish more information as it became available.
Zeek is a purported arm of Rex Venture Group LLC, led by Paul R. Burks.
[…] down its offices. Some reports say Zeek let go of all employees. An article on the Patrick Pretty blog says the AG did not closed down the business, which raises many other questions. In another Zeek […]
This is really strange. Why would Paul & company fire everyone, change the locks on the doors, shut down all websites as well as close its Facebook account, and leave all affiliates out in the cold?
[…] 11:20pm August 17th, 2012 – Patrick Pretty just dropped a bombshell revealing that the NC AG’s office were not responsible for yesterday’s closures: The […]
Interesting… If it wasn’t the AG’s office, that pretty much leaves two choices:
Zeek themselves…
or the Feds
I can’t think of a third choice, and frankly neither choice sounds good.
There’s a new article on The Dispatch:
http://www.the-dispatch.com/article/20120817/NEWS/308179988/-1/sports?p=1&tc=pg
It confirms what Patrick said about the CID being issued July 6th.
Now what is truly funny is my poor math skills and the RS Crew were responsible for this happening, according to the global moderator at MMG. I think he owes an apology to behindMLM and KS Chang for slighting them in giving credit for this accomplishment.
Also interesting to note that MMG’s global moderator was the one who introduced and started the Zeek thread at MMG. The MMG Zeek thread was closed last night and still remains closed. No explanation given for the closure of the forum.
What about the conflict of interest of Zeek insiders?
If a CID was issued on July 6, and only Zeek insiders knew this, the these same Zeek insiders were also affiliates with large account balances…
If I were a Zeek insider, I would cash out my balance aggressively, while the sheep continue to compound. I read on RealScam this may be considered “insider trading” if Zeek is deemed as an investment. There seems to be a lot of potential criminal charges that could stick beyond just the Ponzi scheme, wire fraud, credit card factoring, etc.
It gets grimmer. The Secret Service and SEC are investigating according to this news article just updated:
http://www.the-dispatch.com/article/20120817/NEWS/308179988/-1/sports?p=1&tc=pg
Can someone explain how and why the Secret Service gets involved in a situation like this? What attracts their attention? I’m new to this so please provide some info.
Now there’s an article saying Secret Service is involved and a picture of guy with a badge. http://www.the-dispatch.com/article/20120817/NEWS/308179988&tc=email_newsletter?p=1&tc=pg
It would be nice to think that anything that Ken Russo, Faith Sloan and others like them would automatically attract the correct attention. It would be nice to think that anything promoted on the ponzi forums talkgold & MMG would attract the right attention. However:
Hi Patrick,
If the NC AG didn’t shut down Zeek, then who did? And will you let us know as soon as you find out…thanks!
I do not believe it was Secret Service, I think it was Security Exchange Commission SEC… that shut them down. Also as part of the NCDOJ CID it was to let all members know it was under investigation…. Supposedly it only let insiders know that may have cashed out in hopes of opening offshore. IF so that is Why the SEC came in….. Big felony charges could happen if it is True lets hope that it is not….
I hope they come away clean and if not I Hope people can get their money back. It has been stated by SEC if people profited from the scam they will have to pay back the money and it will be tracked by thier IRS income statements and if they do not claim it they will face two felony charges at that point. Lets hope they can fix it and come clean.
The Secret Service shut down Ad Surf Daily.
Tbone, Zeek is beyond fixing and coming back… It’s a pipe dream..
Zeek did not inform people it had been issued a CID for five weeks? It came out because a worker in the NC AG office posted a reply on the FaceBook page and Al commented it was there. How can Troy and Laggos not know about this before each made their “predictions”
I don’t think the SEC has those sort of powers. The fact they do is a ponzi myth, a ponzi operators excuse for running away with the money & blaming the “evilgovernment”.
The SEC does not have the power to bring criminal charges, and they cannot compel a business to shut down, although they can petition a court to issue an injunction to shut a business down.
The Secret Service, on the other hand, can bring criminal charges, shut a business down immediately (but have to get an approval within a time limit to keep it shut down, IF the business in question objects) and as a general rule, they don’t piddle around about it. Their venue is protection of the US monetary system and their joint involvement with the SEC is only done in conjunction with a criminal investigation. As I said, the SEC can’t put you in jail so when they think you ought to be in jail, they bring friends. If it’s garden variety fraud, they bring the FBI, if it involves banking, credit cards or overseas accounts, they bring the Secret Service.
Troy Dooly keeps going on and on about penny auctions. When will he realize Zeek getting shut down has very little to do with the penny auction industry and almost everything to do with being a Ponzi, pyramid, fraud, etc.?
It’s almost comical watching him make one optimistic excuse after another. The Zeek Ecosphere repeats it as if it is gospel. Just amazing.
Secret Service probe confirmed:
https://patrickpretty.com/2012/08/17/urgent-bulletin-moving-u-s-secret-service-confirms-probe-of-zeek-under-way/
Patrick
Secret Service grew out of the Treasury agents (i.e. Revenu-ers) and has always retained their powers to investigate financial crimes and anything to do with US currency such as fake money and so on. They are simply best known for their protective service of the president and such.
The task force responsible for bringing down AdSurf Daily is known as the Presidents’ Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.
It is a multi agency group which includes the Secret Service.
Personally, I can see no reason to assume the Zeek case is being handled any differently than that of ASD and, in fact, have been pointing out the likelihood of the task forces’ involvement for some time now.
You can see which agencies are involved here: http://www.stopfraud.gov/members.html