SPECIAL REPORT: MyAdvertisingPays, Zeek Figures Sued In TelexFree Class Action; AdSurfDaily And Zeek Cases Cited Repeatedly; Alleged ‘Private Jet’ Also Referenced In 200-Page Complaint

EDITOR’S NOTE: Certain reports by the PP Blog that are available to any person with an Internet connection are referenced in a consolidated, amended prospective class-action complaint that makes claims against various defendants with an alleged association with TelexFree. Information from other publicly available sites, including BehindMLM.com, RealScam.com and others, also is referenced.

The purpose of the PP Blog is to make information available to a wide audience interested in Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, securities-fraud schemes and concerns about the interconnectivity of such schemes. The Blog was not consulted about the inclusion of its links or quoted material from the Blog. Nor was the Blog compensated. The PP Blog has no association with the class-action attorneys, who obviously are readers of the Blog and the other online publications.

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Still promoting MLM HYIP schemes in the face of evidence they cause intractable financial, legal and emotional pain that sometimes mushrooms to involve hundreds of thousands of people?

On March 9, 2015, the PP Blog reported that the name of “MyAdvertisingPays” was referenced in a TelexFree-related proposed class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in December 2014.

The filing appeared to mark the first time MyAdvertisingPays, known in shorthand as MAPS, was referenced in a federal-court filing.

History shows that such references are closely watched by law enforcement. Indeed, they sometimes serve as unofficial triggering actions and presage federal regulatory action by civil authorities such as the SEC and even actions by agencies empowered to enforce criminal laws.

When the California Department of Business Oversight was investigating the WCM777 scam in 2013, for instance, TelexFree’s name popped up in the context of the cross-promotion of MLM HYIP schemes.

This was months before it became known that the SEC and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were investigating TelexFree, alleged to have gathered at least $1.6 billion in a combined pyramid- and Ponzi scheme.

MyAdvertisingPays, a purported advertising “program” similar to the 2008 AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme and the bizarre Banners Broker scheme alleged in Canada to be a criminal enterprise, was not named a defendant in the proposed December 2014 TelexFree class action.

Instead, the complaint alleged that TelexFree huckster Daniil Shoyfer was “the largest single Promoter” of TelexFree “in the greater New York area.” Web records showed that Shoyfer also was promoting MAPS alongside MAPS colleagues such as U.K. hucksters Simon Stepsys and Shaun Smith.

Smith is alleged by the receiver in the Zeek Rewards Ponzi- and pyramid case to be one of the largest Zeek “winners” in the United Kingdom.

Willfully blind and supremely disingenuous MLM HYIP promoters moving from one cross-border fraud scheme to another has been a longtime problem. Such promoters may have little of their own money invested, but contribute to a condition under which banks and payment processors become warehouses for fraudulent proceeds cycling between and among scams.

New York is the financial center of the United States. The filing of the proposed TelexFree class action there contributed to questions about whether MAPS soon would be on the U.S. regulatory and enforcement radar.

The answer to that question remains unclear. What is clear is that the New York complaint was transferred to Massachusetts, the U.S. home base of TelexFree. And it’s also clear that Shoyfer has been named a defendant in an amended TelexFree class-action complaint filed April 30 in Massachusetts federal court.

Among the allegations against Shoyfer (italics added/light editing performed/formatting not precise):

TelexFree changed its compensation plan on or about March 9, 2014, much to the fury of affiliates, noted below. Shoyfer, however, continued to promote it unremittingly, sending group text messages to his network with such as the following:

Hey..my team Telexfree! ! And here we go again..Come to check out and learn about new compensation plan TF 2.0.. and how to grow it even faster and MUCH more aggressively and efficiently than the one we had before.…Here is this week’s schedule. . Monday 03/24 at Salon Delacqua (2027 86 str) at 8.00 pm (in English) ..Wednesday 03/26 at SOHO launch(2213 65th street) at 7.45 pm ( in Russian) and Thursday 03/27 at 7.30 pm at 63-112 Woodhaven Blvd in a real estate office. In my case, since I have started from absulute zero during this passed week Mon 03/17- Sun 03/23/14 I booked 11,500 from new one and 21,600 still coming from old plan..A total of 31,100 in 7 short days… Go Telex!!!

After the institution of the new TelexFree compensation plan in March 2014, Shoyfer took part in a closed meeting with TelexFree’s directors and owners in Marlborough, Massachusetts, at which Shoyfer was instructed not to discuss the new TelexFree compensation plan with others and non-insiders, as the new compensation plan was detrimental to Promoters and was adopted to forestall [TelexFree] filing bankruptcy.

So, a man who allegedly promoted TelexFree and had inside information detrimental to ordinary TelexFree affiliates allegedly kept it to himself, continued to promote the scheme — and then moved on to MAPS. This naturally leads to questions about whether Shoyfer has kept information from ordinary MAPS members.

Purpose Of The Amended TelexFree Class Action

The complaint is an effort to consolidate for the sake of efficiency various TelexFree-related class actions filed in various courts. Such actions were filed in multiple U.S. states.

But that’s not the only news: The amended complaint also names TelexFree pitchman Scott Miller a defendant alongside Shoyfer and HYIP huckster Faith Sloan. In documents prepared by Zeek receiver Kenneth D. Bell, Miller’s name appears as an alleged winner in the $897 million Zeek scheme.

In 2013, Miller promoted TelexFree through a publication known as Home Business Advertiser. Another advertiser promoted a cash-gifting scheme. A columnist described Jesus Christ as the person who inspired modern network marketers through his recruitment of 12 disciples.

A Semacon cash-counting machine appeared as a stage prop in a cash-gifting video advertised in Home Business Advertiser. The promos appeared after two women in Connecticut were sentenced to federal prison for their roles in a cash-gifting scheme and tax fraud.

Sloan, charged by the SEC last year with securities fraud for her alleged role in TelexFree, also promoted Zeek. She also harrumphed for Profitable Sunrise, an abomination taken down by the SEC in 2013, and Noobing, an HYIP targeted at people with hearing impairments that effectively was litigated into the ground by a court-appointed receiver.

Also named promoter-defendants in the amended TelexFree class action are Sanderley Rodrigues de Vasconcelos (Sann Rodrigues), a two-time SEC defendant in pyramid-scheme cases who allegedly also claimed his actions were inspired by a deity; Santiago de la Rosa; and Randy N. Crosby.

All three men, plus Sloan, also are defendants in the SEC action. Rodrigues, who pushed the IFreeX scheme after TelexFree, was arrested last month on a charge of immigration fraud. Tight bail conditions were imposed on him.

How the promoter-defendants will pay for their defenses in the amended class action is an open question. One of the risks of promoting such schemes is to be left totally on your own if the government or class-action attorneys file lawsuits.

Another open question is whether other shoes will drop in the government actions. The government probes are ongoing. Some of the class-action defendants conceivably could become defendants in amended or new actions filed by the SEC or agencies that have criminal enforcement power.

The amended TelexFree class action asserts fraud claims under Massachusetts law against a slew of defendants, including financial vendors and MLM attorney Gerald Nehra, also a figure in the the Zeek scheme and the AdSurfDaily Ponzi-scheme story. ASD was a $119 million Ponzi scheme broken up by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008. ASD operator Andy Bowdoin was sentenced to federal prison in 2012, after authorities tied him to at least two other cross-border fraud schemes: OneX and AdViewGlobal.

ASD’s name is referenced repeatedly in the amended TelexFree complaint, as is the name of Zeek. When the complaint will be heard is anyone’s guess. That’s because there are unresolved criminal matters against alleged TelexFree principals James Merrill and Carlos Wanzeler, both of whom are named defendants in the amended complaint and also are among the subjects of the SEC complaint.

Katia Wanzeler, Wanzeler’s wife, also is named a defendant in the amended complaint. So is TelexFree figure Joe Craft, another defendant in the SEC action. Brazilian TelexFree figure Carlos Costa also is named a defendant in the amended class action.

Also named a defendant in the amended class action is Jason “Jay” Borromei of Laguna Niguel, Calif. Along with a company known as Opt3, he is accused of “intentionally, knowingly, unfairly and deceptively set[ting] up TelexFree’s United States-based servers in Brazil with the intent of directly furthering, aiding or abetting their unlawful and fraudulent operation, including facilitating the placement of evidence of the Pyramid Scheme beyond the jurisdiction of the United States’ courts.”

With TelexFree itself in bankruptcy court, the class-action plaintiffs contend that “Opt3 and Borromei have a history of providing technical services within the multilevel marketing industry and hold themselves out as having related specialized knowledge. For example, Borromei previously served as chief information officer of Joystar, Inc., later renamed Travelstar, a multilevel marketing company that collapsed in approximately late 2008, and subsequently entered involuntary chapter 7 bankruptcy.”

Though not named a defendant in the amended class action, TelexFree and Zeek figure Tom More also is referenced in the 200-page complaint.

‘Private Jet’ Gets A Mention

On March 9, 2014, the PP Blog reported that a person who took the stage at a TelexFree rah-rah fest in Massachusetts asserted that TelexFree had access to a “private jet” that recently had ventured to the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

The “private jet” also was referenced in the class-action complaint. Details about it remain unclear.

At the moment, the April 30, 2015, amended and consolidated complaint is posted here at the website of class-action attorney Robert Bonsignore.