BULLETIN: Zeek Receiver Establishes Website: ZeekRewardsReceivership.com
“On August 17, 2012, Judge Graham C. Mullen of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Charlotte Division, entered an order appointing Kenneth D. Bell of McGuireWoods LLP as temporary receiver of ZeekRewards for the purposes of marshaling and preserving all assets of ZeekRewards and those assets (a) held or possessed by ZeekRewards; (b) held in constructive trust for ZeekRewards; and (c) fraudulently transferred by ZeekRewards.” — From a statement by the receiver
The website URL for the receiver appointed to handle the SEC’s Ponzi- and pyramid-scheme case against Zeek Rewards, Rex Venture Group LLC and Paul R. Burks is ZeekRewardsReceivership.com.
Kenneth D. Bell, a highly experienced attorney who has served both as a federal prosecutor and as defense counsel, is the receiver.
Bell rose to national prominence as a recipient of the U.S. Attorney General John Marshall Award for Trial of Litigation. He received that award from the U.S. Department of Justice after successfully prosecuting a Hezbollah terrorist cell operating in North Carolina.
The receivership website is not yet fully operational. Visit the site.
Hi Patrick,
The link you’ve provided is to a website that looks to be owned by Gilardi & Co, LLC out of CA. I cant find any reference to them anywhere in the SEC, NC AG or McGuireWoods offices.
How exactly are they related to this case and were can we find out if they are legitimately linked. My initial reaction is that they are a non-related firm that is simply trying to build a group to represent?
Just Curious.
Thank You,
Chris
Hello Chris,
The URL to the Zeek receiver’s website is the correct one. At this time, I do not know why there is a link to Gilardi at the bottom of the site.
What I do know is that receiver’s sometimes employ third parties to assist in claims administration and website maintenance.
Patrick
Quick note: I should add that the office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper confirmed the URL for the receiver’s website this morning.
Patrick
Thanks Patrick I Found it on the AG site! Man the Wolfs are out in full force on this one.
Thanks Again,
Chris
http://myfox8.com/2012/08/21/zeekrewards-assets-appointed-to-temporary-receiver/
The Cashier check i put in Zeek Rewards for 7,000.00 dollars just cleared on August 15, 2012 ,just 2 days before ZEEK was shut down. Do i have a good chance on getting it back it was just deposited into there bank, Per my Bank i called them today to see if it had gone through i wanted to stop payment but it was too late.
Who exactly was their ‘bank’?
Whether or not you receive a full or partial refund depends entirely in how successful the receiver is in recovering funds.
Your cheque is now part of the pool from which refund will be made.
I think it’s highly unlikely such cheques will be returned to their sender.
Judging on similar past cases, it could take up to 2 years before any refunds can be made and the size of any refunds depends entirely on how much is recovered, and how many non winners the receiver decides are eligible.
IOW, if the amount of a deposit is less than the total amount the member has received from Zeek receiving any sort of refund is improbable.
Patrick,
Gilardi & Co. are “Experts in class action administration”. One would think that once returns begin, Gilardi will be administering them. It might also be that they are hosting the website or that they set up the page, since it is copyrighted to them.
Good morning. Will this company shut down or will invested get only what they invested in this business? Or will we get whatever the amount mounted to be? Thanks for your time.
How can I get my $5,000 refunded? I became a member on June 20 2012. Do I have to register somewhere?
You’d be lucky to get back HALF of what you put in. Zeek has only 225 mil left in the bank and there’s 1 million of you. Do the math.
You wait until the website mentioned in the post is ready to take your info.
And as others have said, it may take 2 or 3 years before any payments are made.
During that time there will be accusations that the receiver is “stealing” all the money in fees. A variation of the “evilgovernment” excuse.
There will be/has already been vultures offering to “get your money back” either by an unscrupulous lawyer, or as a sales tactic to promote another obvious ponzi scheme.
“Investors” in this obvious ponzi scheme who were daft/greedy enough to throw money at this scheme my want to look at how long it took for punters to get a refund from the 12DailyPro and CEP obvious ponzi schemes. These were also sut down by the SEC, so I expect a similar process will happen with ZeekRewards.
thanks coming for coming in just on time to salvage many families who are devastated by this scam..now,which money are we getting back? the actua amount we invested let say $3,000 or our VIp points that has acrued on our ac offices of zeek rewards?
more grease to your elbow and thanks for helping
Sad statistic. Only time “investors” of such scams come to this blog is when fat lady sung.
Too soon to tell how much, if any, members will be refunded.
If past cases are anything on which to go, refunds will be based on how much members actually paid, balanced against how many members actually claim and how much the receiver is able to retrieve.
In the AdSurf Daily HYIP ponzi, for example, the receiver was able to return $55million to members. Of the 80,000 supposed members, only 11,000 made valid refund requests and the receiver was able to make whole their losses i.e. they all received 100% of their losses.
One thing’s for sure, any refunds will NOT be based on points and will be based strictly on money deposited minus earnings.
You will get only percentage of money that you sent to Zeek. Any “interest” on “investment” or “points” that Zeek promised you is gone and will not be refunded.
Good point. If you send check to Zeek, get your bank to print out cashed check copy. Also a lot depends what kind paperwork Zeek kept. Since Zeek stopped before SEC came in, they had all the chances to destroy databases.
That’s $225 per person. Add in clawbacks, many of the million started free, or with 100 points, few put in the max initial injection of 10,000 per account, most probably put in less than $1000. I had 8 in my downline: 2 free, I signed 4 individuals up and put $100 of my own money in their accounts for them-none added their own money, my brother put in $2000, a friend put in $500. That averages out to $362 per person. I would say your guess will turn out pretty accurate.
Any “earnings” received by members will be deducted from any payout.
In fact, if the past is anything to go by, one of the main difficulties facing both the receiver and victims will be the lack of proper records kept by Zeek against which any claims and counterclaims can be verified.
After all, it’s not in a fraudsters best interest to keep accurate records of what he/she is doing.
The smart thing to do as far as fraudsters is concerned is to do the complete opposite.
Bury as much as is possible to confuse anyone looking as much as possible.
Give em a brake, it’s because many if not most of these people have never done anything like this and didn’t know any better.
uninformed yet innocent people who were taken in.
Quick, someone start this “business” I suggested in lexington! :D
http://behindmlm.com/companies/zeek-rewards/the-facts-dissecting-the-zeek-ponzi-apocalypse/#comment-89481
It is also because in these trying economy times people to harder to find alternative solutions. So we mustn’t persecute people for trying. Time and time you have all these people that we above saying things like, “I told you so…” or “Do the math, it should have been common sense!” or “Why on earth would you do something like that? If it is too good to be true then it probably isn’t!” and all kinds of other sayings, expressions, and cop outs that are indoctrinated into our minds by the institutions of society that we rely on to get our information. However, people truly need to see the truth for everything that these institutions tell us is biased, tainted, and skewed to the interests of those who corrupt it in this institutionalization of violence that we have created in our existing society. We must all seek to attain the truth at the cost of no one! The only way you can do that is by creating a newly founded society than is founded on a concept of an institutionalization of peace. Once we create such a foundation of institutions, this is where we will build the structure of a new society. This will become the example through will others will choose to emulate by joining what will become a United Federation of Earth. This will be the establishment of a global social democracy whose ability to be controlled by large corporations will end. This will mark the end of corporate owners who buy and pay for the campaigns of our politicians to be able to control the members of society, its industries, and the government that is supposed to protect them! The longer we continue to support our existing plutocratic society the more ponzi schemes and fraud we will have! We must establish truth, justice, and equality for all members of society! The only way we can do that is to acknowledge the failure of our existing society and that our time has come for the founding of a new society…. an institutionalization of peace… in the form of a global social democracy.
Specific to Zeek, there was a lot more than “it is too good to be true” and “do the math”.
There were also these, loudly shouted from the rooftops by the critics:
– Dude, the penny auction site sucks; this is your multi-million revenue generator?
– The 25:1 customer-to-affiliate ratio is bogus, look at all the fake customers that don’t require email verification and are just made up username with 3 digits
– Credit card processing outside the US, using unknown random third parties in second/third world countries… DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON.
– Zeekler’s Alexa rating is not climbing at the same rate as Zeek Rewards
– The penny auction 7 back office uses outdated ASP code, hullo
– Unregistered security investment risk, even if it is not a Ponzi
– Illegal lottery risk for the penny auction
– The business model looks like a Ponzi
– The business model looks almost identical to Ad Surf Daily
– Banking problems
– Not getting paid
– Support tickets going unanswered, unacknowledged for months
– No marketing whatsoever of the penny auction; no promos, no updates, obviously not a serious business and no intent to compete in the penny auction space
– The cult-of-personality “no negativity or you will be banned” attitude is same model used by past Ponzi scams
– Never in the history of any business or investment has > 1% daily ROI been anything BUT a Ponzi
You’re right and it’s funny I was in AVG a couple of years back and of course got screwed there and I haven’t been involved in any of this since.
AVG was 1% a day too for a little while.
I let someone talk me in to Zeek even though I wondered about 1.5% a day.
Where was the money coming from? The penney auctions? no way.
I only put in $200.00 but luckily the cashiers check wasn’t put in because it was the same day they were colsed.
Hopefully I’ll get it back, if not at least I didn’t lose 10,000.
That’s what I was thinking.
I was not blaming anyone at that post. I just said that it is sad statistic that people go to sceptic sites only when they want their money back after scam imploded. Guilt is 50/50. 50% on people who surely realize that there types of return can not last forever and 50% on Feds for allowing these scams to run unabated.
@boris – I think a lot of people who joined Zeek were skeptical, but took the risk anyways. A lot of people deep down believed the same as the skeptics but the “social proof” and check flashing from their uplines convinced them to try it out.
With other MLM’s, even if you are pushed into joining, you usually realize after 1-2 months that you won’t be able to make money unless you can sell and build a team. That’s why 97% drop out of MLM or don’t make much profit.
With Zeek, in that 1-2 month period where many would normally drop out of MLM, they saw paper profits in their back office and many added to their initial investment after the initial buy-in. The “trial period” made any skepticism evaporate, even though deep down inside most affiliates still doubted that Zeek would last forever.
So once it went belly up, many are flocking to skeptic site and only NOW are they sharing how they really felt.
@Admin / PPBlog — seems some body (Disner? Schweitzer?) started “Zeek Rewards Defense Team” and is planning some sort of legal action.
Heard LRM stated that some lawyers tried to rally ASD members into some lawsuit and made away with over 100K. Got any links to that?
I haven’t seen this mentioned yet:
ZeekRewards, Zeekler Affiliates File Class Action Lawsuit
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/376459/20120822/zeek-zeekrewards-class-action-lawsuit-paul-burks.htm
https://patrickpretty.com/2009/03/06/jacks-arons-purportedly-sued-by-larry-friedman/
Hi! I have account in zeekrewards. Now they close .how can I get the money back
You wait until receiver explains when they open refund process.
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