Alleged Ponzi Schemes

By PatrickPretty.com • October 13th, 2016

Nicholas Smirnow, the operator of the Pathway To Prosperity Ponzi-board “program” charged with fraud by U.S. authorities in 2010, has been sentenced in Canada to seven years in prison. News of the sentence appeared Sept. 30 at MuskokaRegion.com. Smirnow was arrested in Canada for P2P-related crimes in 2014. The United States has submitted an extradition […]

UPDATED 3:51 P.M. EDT U.S.A. Peggy Hunt, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney in Salt Lake City, is the court-appointed receiver in the SEC’s Ponzi- and securities-fraud case against Traffic Monsoon and Charles David Scoville. Her impressive Dorsey bio says she has worked in the areas of bankruptcy and receivership law for more than 25 years […]

BULLETIN: U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Melvin S. Hoffman has certified a defendant class-action lawsuit brought by TelexFree Trustee Stephen B. Darr against about 15,000 alleged TelexFree “net winners” in the United States. The ruling means “clawback” cases against alleged U.S. winners will proceed. Darr has alleged aggregate payments to the domestic net winners exceed $100 million and must […]

If you were a claimant in Zeek Rewards — and if you did not submit the required OFAC certification and release — you are at risk of not receiving a payment from the court-appointed receiver. OFAC stands for the Office of Foreign Assets Control. As receiver Kenneth D. Bell explained on the FAQs section of the receivership […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story, which easily could be titled “What NOT To Do In MLM,” summarizes a few of the witnesses and exhibits the U.S. government may use against TelexFree’s James Merrill when his trial gets under way Oct. 24 in Massachusetts. The background provided below is based on research by the PP Blog. Prosecutors filed their witness/exhibit […]

BULLETIN: (4th Update 7:23 p.m. EDT U.S.A.) Sann Rodrigues, a figure in the TelexFree Ponzi- and pyramid-scheme case, has agreed to plead guilty to a charge of immigration fraud, court documents say. The agreement potentially puts the native Brazilian at risk of deportation and a U.S. prison term of up to 10 years. He last was […]

A former pitchman for the Traffic Monsoon “program” declared a Ponzi scheme by the SEC is using Facebook to promote a “Revenue Shares Matter Campaign.” This is occurring against the backdrop of three nights of civil unrest in Charlotte, N.C., after a police shooting of an African American man. The purported Revenue Shares Matter campaign, which […]

BULLETIN: At the request of Trustee Stephen B. Darr, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Melvin S. Hoffman has extended the deadline to file TelexFree claims until Dec. 31, 2016, at 4:30 p.m. Prevailing Eastern Time. The deadline had been Sept. 26. Darr asked for the extension on Sept. 21. Why was the extension needed? “The Trustee has […]

UPDATED 1:05 P.M. EDT U.S.A. SEPT. 23 In April 2014, TelexFree declared corporate bankruptcy. Now, an alleged “key figure” in TelexFree being pursued by the court-appointed trustee has declared personal bankruptcy. Jay Borromei of Opt 3 Solutions Inc. filed his petition Sept. 13 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, according to […]

BULLETIN: Dawn Wright-Olivares, the former COO of Zeek Rewards, has been sentenced to seven and one-half years in federal prison. The sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr. of the Western District of North Carolina. The office of U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose prosecuted Wright-Olivares for investment- and tax-fraud conspiracy. Daniel Olivares, […]

UPDATED 4:21 P.M. EDT U.S.A. With trial set to begin on Oct. 24, an eye-popping superseding indictment has been returned in Massachusetts federal court against TelexFree figures James Merrill and Carlos Wanzeler. The indictment adds eight counts of engaging in monetary transactions in property derived from specified unlawful activity and includes a money-laundering forfeiture allegation. Merrill […]