CLAIM: TelexFree Reps Took ‘Private Jet’ From Dominican Republic To Haiti And Were Met At Airport By ‘Prime Minister’s’ Motorcade

UPDATED 7:03 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) At a TelexFree pitchfest in a Massachusetts hotel this morning, a man promoting a credit-repair “program” linked to TelexFree claimed that TelexFree reps recently took a “private jet” from the Dominican Republic to Haiti.

“I felt like a rockstar,” the man said from the stage.

Once on the ground in Haiti, the man said, “we got in the Prime Minister of Haiti’s motorcade.”

This triggered “high-fiving,” the man said from the stage.

Things settled down when the TelexFree passengers observed throngs of poor people lining the road from the airport into the city, the man suggested.

Whether TelexFree executives were on the private jet and later purportedly traveled in a government motorcade is unclear. TelexFree executive Steve Labriola said last week that he and TelexFree “leaders” recently ventured to Haiti.

It also was not immediately clear whether the asserted TelexFree “high-fiving”  and claims of a state motorcade providing shuttle service to TelexFree would prove embarrassing to Haiti’s government. Nor was it clear that the TelexFree reps were guests of the government. The Washington Embassy of the Republic of Haiti did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the PP Blog.

Laurent Lamothe is Haiti’s Prime Minister. He is a former telecom executive.

Similar seeds about government ties from promoters of other MLM schemes have proved embarrassing to other governments, including the government of the United States. In the 2008 AdSurfDaily MLM/HYIP Ponzi scheme, for example, some members of the scheme planted the false seed that ASD had been endorsed by George W. Bush, then the President of the United States.

The false seeds about Bush were one of the things that prompted the U.S. Secret Service to open the ASD probe. Agents went on to discover a massive Ponzi scheme hidden inside ASD.  ASD used “ad packs” from which purported “rebates” flowed to disguise its $119 million investment-fraud scheme.

TelexFree offers something called “AdCentrals.” Some promoters have claimed that sums of money from $289 to $15,125 sent to TelexFree triple or quadruple in a year. The $850 million Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme had a similar component. Like TelexFree members, Zeek members were told they got paid for posting ads about the company online.

“ZeekRewards told Affiliates that in order to supposedly ‘earn’ their points, they were required to place a short, free digital ad each day on one of the many free classified websites available on the internet,” the court-appointed receiver in the Zeek Ponzi- and pyramid-scheme case asserted in a lawsuit last month against alleged insiders.

“In reality,” Zeek receiver Kenneth D. Bell asserted, “the ads were just an attempt to manufacture a cover for what was nothing more than the investment of money by Affiliates with the expectation of receiving daily ‘profit’ distributions.”

One of Bell’s lawsuit targets is Scott Miller of Greenwood, Ind. Miller, an alleged winnner in Zeek’s massive Ponzi scheme, has spoken at at least one TelexFree event and may be one of TelexFree’s key pitchmen.

TelexFree Affiliates Claim Government Approval

It is somewhat common in the HYIP sphere for promoters to suggest a “program” has the backing of a politician, a government or a government agency.

At least one TelexFree-related Blog claimed in a post dated March 7 that the “program” has gained “SEC Approval from USA.”

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does not issue such approvals. In 2013, some TelexFree members worded promos to suggest that the U.S. government itself had authorized TelexFree to operate in the United States. During roughly the same time period in the spring of 2013, affiliates made this assertion (italics added):

Steve Labriola, Director of Marketing for Telex FREE, Boston, announced via email earlier today that they are ‘pulling out of Bank of America.’

Earlier, in roughly January of 2013, TelexFree affiliates were urging recruits to make walk-in deposits at a Bank of America branch in Massachusetts. The instructions strongly resembled instructions AdSurfDaily gave its recruits in 2008. TelexFree also used TD Bank, according to affiliates.

It is possible — though not confirmed — that U.S. investigators began looking into TelexFree around the same period in early 2013 in which affiliates were soliciting deposits through Bank of America and TD — while simultaneously claiming that certain TelexFree members could speed the flow of deposits if recruits emailed copies of their deposit slips to a Gmail address.

TelexFree says on its website that tickets to “new comp plan training & overview” event at the Massachusetts hotel today cost $164 and were “Sold Out.”

TelexFree, a purported VOIP communications firm expanding into cellphones, apps and credit repair, is under investigation by the Massachusetts Securities Division. Investigators in Brazil have called TelexFree a pyramid scheme.

Haiti perhaps is the most economically disadvantaged country in the Western Hemisphere.