DEVELOPING STORY: Post On EgoPay Blog Claims Hack, ‘Gap In The Cash Reserves,’ Embezzlement And Staff Suspensions; Some ‘Achieve Community’ Promoters Are Pushing Other Ponzi-Board Schemes That Claim EgoPay Tie
“BRING THE BACON HOME,” a Ponzi-board “program” pushed by Achieve Community promoter Rodney Blackburn, says EgoPay is among its payment processors. A Blog post on the EgoPay site claims EgoPay was hacked and subjected to embezzlement by its owner — and that the CEO has stepped down. The PP Blog cannot verify the claims.
UPDATED 1:09 P.M. ET U.S.A. The Blog on the website of the EgoPay payment processor claims in a Jan. 22 post that the company was hacked on Dec. 28. The claims, which the PP Blog cannot confirm, read like a spy novel that marries insidious financial fraud and escalating computer fraud to uber-bizarre palace intrigue.
After the hack, the post claims, EgoPay could trust no one. So it disabled its “transaction interface,” suspended staff, called in an unidentified “investigation team,” let support tickets go unanswered and interacted with “Astropay and Payza as well a few key merchants to gauge interest in helping remedy this situation.”
“Egopay was looking for help to discover the truth of the hack, for funding or liquidity, as well as to help consult on how to resolve this situation,” the Blog post claims.
Whether any “interest” was forthcoming was unclear in the post. Also unclear is how the asserted events would affect a range of schemes on the Ponzi boards.
Given companion assertions on the Blog that EgoPay “owner” Amir Aziz effectively had hijacked EgoPay servers to delete evidence of a crime and that the hack “exposed a gap in the cash reserves of Egopay,” using EgoPay in any fashion would seem an exceptionally risky proposition.
It was unclear in the Blog post whether EgoPay was blaming Aziz for the Dec. 28 hack. The post claimed that EgoPay determined on Jan. 5 that Aziz had been embezzling from the company, but it further claimed that (italics added):
On January 18th, 2015 Amir Aziz social engineered his way with the hosting provider to reset his accesses and grant him access again to the servers which he used in turn to delete his Egopay account from the system (we would assume to cover his scheme) and removed all other Administrative accesses.
The EgoPay Blog, which did not identify who wrote the post describing the hack and the post-hack actions and claims the company is back in full control of the servers, did not say whether it called police or regulatory authorities.
The post further claims that Tadas Kasputis, the onetime CEO of EgoPay, has stepped down, “allowing for a new team to come onboard to make or break this situation.”
The post did not say who was stepping in to fill the asserted leadership vacuum. Nor did it say who currently was running the company. The Blog post is attributed to the “Egopay Team.”
On Friday, the PP Blog reported that the state of Colorado had opened an investigation into “Achieve Community,” a money-cycling scheme with a Ponzi-board presence. Although Achieve appears not to have advertised EgoPay, some Achieve promoters are pushing Ponzi-board schemes that claim to accept EgoPay.
One such “program” is bizarrely called “BRING THE BACON HOME” and has a curious catch phrase of “We Do Bacon Right.” Achieve promoter Rodney Blackburn now is pushing “BRING THE BACON HOME.”
“Are you ready to make some Yummy Money?!” Rodney asks in a text line below his Jan 14 YouTube promo titled “Bring The Bacon Home- Comp Plan and Review!!!” The video has a play time of 14:53.
“Unison Wealth,” another Ponzi-board “program” pushed by Blackburn, also says it accepts EgoPay.
Despite the Jan. 22 EgoPay Blog post asserting the company could trust no one — not even its own staff — the same page on which the post appears contends that “EgoPay.com is your safe way to Pay.”
Here’s how the Blog post on the EgoPay site begins to explain the asserted hacking (italics added):
On December 28th, during the holiday period, Egopay suffered a hack that greatly impacted key merchants and partners. False values were made available in the merchants platform, when no actual value was transmitted in Egopay. This hacker then proceeded to convert this fake value into irreversible currencies all within a one hour window. These merchants believed that this value was in their Egopay account, but unfortunately it was not. Upon discovery, at this point, Egopay immediately put restrictions in place and placed transactions from being automatically completed, to manual review to contain further damage and impact on our merchants. The Shopping Cart Interface (SCI) was also restricted. The impact amount was between 1M to 1.5M total for a handful of merchants.
We concluded, that this hack must have been perpetrated by someone from within who knew the inner workings and had privileged access, so we took immediate actions and suspended everyone that we suspected while this investigation was underway. Unfortunately, this resulted in our support services being delayed or non-existent. Support tickets were not being answered and our transaction interface was taken down to stop any further exploit. Considering the evidence on hand, Egopay was left with no choice but to take these drastic actions.
Quick note: “BRING THE BACON HOME” purportedly turns $40 into $1,800.
Patrick
From the video opening. “Hey, guys. It’s Rodney again, and I wanted to let you know that we have brought out a brand-new cycler for you. Yes, another cycler — but don’t be alarmed. This cycler is going to be great . . .”
Patrick
[Not sure if this worked first time. Delete if duplicate]
More background info here:
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2015/01/23/millions-stolen-inside-the-elaborate-bitcoin-scams-of-tadas-kasputis-egopay-virtex-com-paymentbase/
I’m sure that may people will be shocked to hear that a ponzi friendly payment processor was started by a ponzi operator. Further shocking are the news that he started various shell companies in various locations.
At least his time as a ponzi operator will have given him experience of the usual ponzi excuses. “Hacked servers” – classic.
Thanks for sending this along, Tony. It went in the spam queue, for some reason.
What a wild story surrounding EgoPay. All of these things are about as clear as mud.
Patrick
Quick note: Rodney’s Achieve Community/Unison Wealth/Trinity Lines/Legendary Income Solutions Team colleague Mike Chitty also is promoting “BRING THE BACON HOME.”
The 10:04 YouTube promo is titled “Bring the Bacon Home Free Beta” and is dated Jan. 26.
There is a panel in the Chitty video that reads in part, “35% Forced Repurchase After Seed Money For Sustainability.”
Lots of “opportunities” have such forced repurchases or Zeek-like artifices such as “80/20 programs,” which might as well be called “riding the Ponzi.”
http://www.finra.org/Investors/ProtectYourself/InvestorAlerts/FraudsAndScams/P121728
https://patrickpretty.com/2013/12/20/urgent-bulletin-moving-zeek-rewards-figures-dawn-wright-olivares-and-daniel-olivares-charged-criminally-sued-civilly/
Patrick
Funny that Payza and real Egopay owner Firoz Patel is attacking Amir on facebook http://www.realscam.com/attachments/f43/9029d1422295820-egopay-egopay-com-money-launderer-aziz_firoz.jpg
Not really. Amir is the guy behind egopay. He is a guy from Montreal. By reading the text on fb it shows firoz attacking him for stealing money. Good on him.
Referencing that forum is sad. Those people are vultures looking for anything To grasp at. Obviously the know each othwe. From montreal and a client of payza doing good business.
Egopay is based out of Lithuania. Ran by Lithuanians on a different platform. People love to make crazy rumours but it doesnt make sense. tadas kasputis is the ceo the company. The main guy behind the scenes is amir aziz. This business has completely different payment partners and functionality.
why would you invest 500K+ (guess) to create a new system when you can replicate your old one and skin it differently.
But what do I know… except repeating the same rumour over and over again doesn’t make it a fact.
Jason, do you always take a word of scammers over scambuster’s ?
What makes you think it is based in Lithuania ?
It was always based in Montreal, developed by few russian programmers (hired),
it would be stupid to try to hide the link and running on the same platform.
How do you know that real Tadas was running it ?
Did you meet him in person ? can identify him on pictures ?
Did he say he is CEO of Egopay ? (you would be surprised what story real Tadas will tell)
Please contact me if you ever met this Tadas in person.
I tell you what, Lithuania is a popular destination to get a fake passport for $1k, a great passport on a real person name, with real passport numbers, but with a picture of anyone you want. big amount of offshores and bank accounts were registered on lithuanian citizens without even their knowledge.
And you seem to believe the funny show Firoz and Amir is playing on Facebook :)
Good Point Nik Sam it doesn’t make any sense that any crap ecurrency which is operating from Lithuania doesn’t make any sense that owner is in other country and operating such a scammer like tadas kasputis who is famous already and i am surprise why people are defending him may be getting money to post and defend him everyone knows that tadas kasputis is one who ran megalido,regalpayscam, moneytrip, primfix and many more big scams and recently spurbs and rockwell partners so whom to believe egopay? or tadas kasputis no way that doesn’t make any sense to believe that kind of scammers and paid posters.
simply payza and Mr kasputis are blaming the other person whom name we never heard if you have any confusion still.. simply google tadas kasputis ceo egopay so you will found on google in last year who attend meetings in china as egopay ceo/founder
thanks
Justin
Looks like Egopay site is now gone?
Interesting, Markus. I just tried to go to the site, and it wouldn’t load. This was the error message: “www.egopay.com – Connection failed.”
Patrick
Quick note: If you look at this March 5 story about an unexpected shutdown of Virtex, you’ll see a screen shot of the error message:
http://bitcoinist.net/virtex-shuts-down-customers-lose-funds/
The current message I’m seeing at the egopay site is presented in the same way.
Patrick
OK. Have found a Facebook site whose content suggests the egopay error message was present on March 9:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10205210392412993
Not sure whether the site has been offline continuously since March 9. But at least at one point on March 9, it was online, according to Google cache.
Patrick
Looks like Amir and Mr Patel are not friends anymore… http://t.soquij.ca/k7A5K. Mr Patel is evicting Amir Aziz.
What is next?