Rumors Swirl About Banners Broker ‘Program’
This affiliate page for the purported Banners Broker “advertising” program claims members can double their money.
UPDATED 8:54 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) Rumors abound online that authorities in India have carried out some sort of action against the Banners Broker “advertising” program. As of the time of this post, the PP Blog has been unable to confirm the rumored action with a law-enforcement source.
“Advertising” scams long have been associated with the HYIP sphere. The $119 million AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, for instance, was such a “program.” Such scams are associated with the unlawful sale of unregistered securities and claims by law enforcement of members’ money being siphoned by operators. “Winners” in such schemes can be sued for their ill-gotten gains. There also have been instances in which key pitchmen have been sued by regulatory agencies and even charged with crimes.
Several things the PP Blog has noticed:
A “welcome page” Banners Broker URL exists for the United States but is throwing this error message: “Unable to locate template file welcome_us.tpl.”
The nonworking US URL is http://www.bannersbroker.com/main/welcome_us. It is listed on an apparent Banners Broker affiliate’s website with a headline of “BANNERS BROKER INDIA.” The site also lists a U.S. address for the company in Ocala, Fla. Other addresses and welcome URLs for other countries appear on the same page. Welcome URLs for India, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom appear to be working. Only the URL for the United States appears not to work.
Whether Banners Broker removed the U.S. “welcome” URL in a bid to distance itself from U.S. regulatory scrutiny is unclear.
Regardless, the Banners Brokers site is viewable in the United States from the URLs for other countries and by connecting directly to the Banners Broker dotcom address. Although Banners Broker lists the flags of several countries on its homepage, the American flag is not listed. (Or at least wasn’t viewable by the PP Blog from the United States.)
The Better Business Bureau has given Banners Broker an “F,” the BBB’s lowest grade.
At least one Banner’s Broker affiliate site is calling itself “Banners Broker Brief” and using the BBB acronym long associated with the Better Business Bureau. (A 2010 Phil Piccolo scam known as Data Network Affiliates arranged for one of its products to be called BBB. Such approaches sometimes are used to leech off of the Better Business Bureau’s famous acronym and to distort search-engine results and make “negative” information harder to find. It also is common in certain MLM schemes for affiliates to use the word “scam” when presenting the “opportunity” — and they then explain why it’s purportedly not a scam. This approach also may make it difficult to find “negative” information about a “program” because information can become buried in page after page of claims that the “program” is not a scam.)
Any number of affiliate YouTube videos exist for Banners Broker. Some are of the check-waving variety. Instead of featuring checks, however, they appear to feature screen shots of payments that purportedly originated at SolidTrustPay. SolidTrustPay has a reputation for doing business with scam after scam. Zeek Rewards, which the SEC described in August as a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid scheme, used SolidTrustPay.
Banners Broker appears to have been popular among Zeek promoters. One video exists in which a Banners Broker affiliate tells the audience about the SEC’s Zeek case, but the affiliate claims he believes Banners Broker is not a fraud scheme. Even so, he allows that it could be.
Banners Broker has a major presence on the Ponzi boards — again like Zeek. Some promoters race from scam to scam to scam.
There are claims about Banners Broker “doubling” money.
http://www.oheraldo.in/News/Local%20News/Investment-firm-accused-of-duping-investors/68704.html
Thanks for that link, Oz — and Happy New Year.
Patrick
http://finchsells.com/2012/12/20/banners-broker-scam-update/comment-page-1/#comment-73079
The excuse is “blame the punters” for not “explaining” it correctly. Yes, that old excuse.
Cheers, you too. Here’s to another year of blogging.
It appears that most of the Zeek top affiliates have migrated over to this and several other schemes. I suppose they cannot say they didn’t know these are Ponzi schemes?
wow thanks for the scarcely insightful diatribe of trying to scare folks – how about you gather the facts before blurting out – otherwise there just may be a case for defamation!!
Don’t you think “Scarily insightful” would be a better way of describing the article. The facts look pretty well researched and verifiable to me.
“a case for defamation”? Defamation for WHAT exactly? Bring it on Walter. Never heard of Discovery?
To be honest, there’s a lot of that **** in India. It’s estimated that banks handle only 60% of the money. The other 40% went into the “shadow economy”, and much of that was eaten up by scams, Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, bad investments and such. TVI Express, emu farms, gold, etc. One company charged 24% interest on “gold loans” (i.e. give them your gold jewelry and you get money today)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-19/cash-for-gold-loans-hide-shadow-banking-risks-in-india.html
There’s a picture on realscam linked by someone of the news item regarding BB
http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/7942/ana1i.gif
Hi!
I am one of Banners Broker affiliates and there are 250,000 of us!!! And this is 1 person made a complaint …. right?…. I’d have understand if 50000 affiliates made complaints then Yes! there is a problem! But one! one! complaint….. you just trying to paint that bigger than it is!!!!!
Yes! Why do you think Zeek ex-affiliates migrated to Banners Broker?…. because they wanted to get involved in another Ponzi-scheme????…… Oh! Yes! I love when someone stilling my money! So take some more!!!! Right! I’ll go to another Ponzi scheme!!!!….. Is that how you think?!?!?! Yeah!!! Someone slap me on a face – good!!! Slap me again!!!! I am one of Zeek affiliates….. And we not daft and not on drugs….. far from it….
Jazzy,
History will show you that, in the earliest days of the AdSurfDaily “advertising” Ponzi case, the cheerleaders divined a construction by which a lone affiliate caused all the trouble.
That lie ran out of steam, although it was true there were relatively few complaints.
But here’s now many complaints are required to open an investigation: ZERO.
In the United States, law enforcement can open an investigation on their own initiative. These schemes need banks and financial conduits to thrive. They are pushing millions and millions of dollars in and out of banks/vendors — and their worlds often are exceptionally murky. That fact alone introduces an unacceptable element of the unknown.
There can be no doubt that these schemes pose an untenable risk to national/international security.
Patrick
It might surprise you, Ms. Jazzy, what a high percentage of Ponzi scheme victims appear to be recirculated into new schemes of the same kind.
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