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  • OUR ANSWER: ‘Nuts!’ PP Blog Receives Threat That ‘Authorities’ Will Move Against It If It Doesn’t Remove Content About Profitable Sunrise Figure Nanci Jo Frazer And Others; Email Claims FBI ‘Fully Aware Of All Your Consistent Attempts’ To Harm Frazer Group

    profitablesunrisethreateningemails

    “No!” Make that “Hell no!” — or, as Gen. Anthony McAuliffe once famously scribbled at the prompting of Gen. Harry W.O. Kinnard during the Battle of the Bulge, after soldiers for the Nazi Third Reich demanded surrender: “Nuts!”

    At 12:11 a.m. ET today, the PP Blog inexplicably received five duplicate emails from an IP in the vicinity of Tiffin, a city in North Central Ohio. The emails were sent through the Blog’s contact form and threatened that “the authorities” would get involved if the Blog did not remove content about Nanci Jo Frazer and other Profitable Sunrise story figures by Nov. 15, nine days from today. The emails were signed “Nanci Jo Frazer,” but the Blog cannot independently confirm Frazer was the sender.

    Why the Blog received five emails is unknown. The Blog tested the form after receiving the duplicated submissions, and it appears to be working properly, meaning it does not appear to be sending multiple copies of inquiries from readers. The Blog, however, did experience an outage that lasted approximately two hours yesterday. The outage occurred shortly after an IP from Ukraine made an appearance here at approximately 1:50 p.m. (Bots that leave a Ukranian signature have been circling the Blog for weeks.) The precise cause of yesterday’s outage, which occurred after the Blog reported on an HYIP/prime-bank scam in California outed as part of an FBI undercover operation that began in 2006, remains unclear.

    In any event, the Blog will not remove any Frazer or Profitable Sunrise-related content unless ordered to do so by a U.S. federal judge. Nor will it submit to threats that incongruously are mixed with appeals to the Christian faith to make posts go missing. HYIP schemes are all about incongruities and preposterous constructions: “secret” or “safe” or “guaranteed” or “insured” investments that purportedly are “offshore” and able to deliver Christians and other people of faith legitimate interest rates of hundreds or even thousands of percent each year, for instance.

    For security reasons, the Blog will not reply to the emails at the Gmail address entered by the sender. Instead, it will publish the content of the emails in this  space. The FBI is free to make its own assessment about acts attributed to the agency by the sender in or around Tiffin. The Blog also will continue to publish Profitable Sunrise-related stories. Such stories are in the public interest.

    The emails build on a conspiracy theory that has been circulating for weeks: that the Blog somehow acts in concert with fraudsters, cyberstalkers and at least one felon posing as a Christian do-gooder to subject Nancy Jo Frazer and her ministry to harm. Meanwhile, the emails plant the equally false seed that the Blog is part of a group involved in Bitcoin scams.

    Among other things, the emails seek to chill the Blog’s reporting by contending that “The FBI is fully aware of all your consistent attempts to keep my name and our FocusUp Ministries Board members, our staff, voluteers and even my husband (who had no connection) tagged to negative , damaging words (such as scam, fraud and Ponzi) along with negative press and stories we are not connected to at all.” (No editing performed by PP Blog.)

    “Last week through a phone conversation, the Senior investigator from the FBI, instructed me to have my attorney send you a Cease and Desist and demand for immediate removal of your unauthorized usage of materials, videos, audio, all radio & TV media, articles and all types of communication connected to FocusUp Ministries and our Board Members, staff and volunteers: including Nanci Jo Frazer (Nancy Frazer) and Albert Rosebrock, David Steckel (volunteer), Jon Simmons (staff pastor) also my husband David Frazer,” the emails read in part. (No editing performed by PP Blog.)

    The emails did not identify the purported “Senior investigator from the FBI” who purportedly gave the sender instructions on how to accomplish the deletion of PP Blog content the apparent Frazer group supporter finds both objectionable and actionable. The PP Blog is willing, however, to voluntarily provide the IP address of the sender to the FBI, the SEC, the Ohio Office of the Attorney General or other law-enforcement agency in the United States that has an interest in the Profitable Sunrise case.

    No subpoena will be necessary; we’ll simply provide the information and copies of the email, once the Blog verifies the request is genuine.

    Over the years, the PP Blog has encountered various bids to chill its reporting on the HYIP sphere, including a sustained DDoS attack in 2010 and traffic floods in 2011 for which the Blog received a claim of responsibility. The Blog forwarded the claim to a U.S. law-enforcement agency.

    In 2012, during a period of heavy reporting on two specific HYIP schemes, the Blog received repeated threats believed to be from different senders. Two of the threats were not aimed at the Blog. The first was received Aug. 6, 2012, and was aimed at three prominent U.S. politicians: one Democrat and two Republicans.  This communication appeared to have been sent from Switzerland and questioned why the American politicians are “still alive and running around.” The email further described an American subject of the PP Blog’s crime reporting as a “true Patriot[]” who, like other purported “Patriots,” believed in “sending out mercenaries to take out those corrupt bankers, USG politicians, agents, judges and attorney’s [sic].”

    Such content is consistent with members of the so-called Patriot Movement or similar U.S. extremists who identify themselves as “sovereign citizens.” Because the communication appears to have originated in a country famous for banking secrecy, it leads to questions about whether U.S. domestic extremists were networking with counterparts in Europe or perhaps were there themselves to “defend” HYIP schemes and chill reporting on the outrageous frauds by suggesting that mercenaries and assassins were at their disposal.

    The second communication, received Aug. 29, 2012, was aimed at the alleged operator of a huge international Ponzi scheme. This communication appears to blame the accused operator for not properly defending the purported opportunity from investigations by the U.S. government.

    “why you don’t stand to back [program name deleted by PP Blog][?]” the communication read in part.

    “we lost our money. we will kill you . . .”

    The communication concluded by slurring the alleged Ponzi operator as a “dog.” It appears to have been sent from Pakistan.

    Yet-another 2012 communication believed to be from a different sender suggested that members of the PP Blog’s family might die if the Blog continued to report on HYIP schemes. The Blog forwarded all of these communications to a U.S. law-enforcement agency.

    In 2009, the Blog repeatedly was stalked by an apologist for the AdSurfDaily and AdViewGlobal Ponzi schemes who sought to engineer an SEO campaign against the Blog. This tactic was repeated in 2012 by an apologist for the JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid scheme which, like ASD and AVG, may have ties to the “sovereign citizens” movement.

    This specific individual appears to have been inspired in part by an infamous troll whose posts and visits bear an IP signature from the United Kingdom. The troll has been attacking antiscam sites since at least 2009, often incorporating sexual innuendo, antiChristian themes and elements of misogyny into his bizarre and vulgar game plan. In any event, the JSS/JBP apologist he inspired asserted he’d defend purported operator Frederick Mann “so help me God.” He also targeted specific PP Blog readers in an SEO campaign carried out on a free Blogger site — all while spreading absurd conspiracy theories and utterly preposterous lies. At the same time, he appears to have embedded code in certain communications as a means of trying to identify potential federal witnesses and perhaps even obtain/isolate the identities undercover federal agents may use online.

    Requests for the Blog to delete content are not always menacing, but can be described fairly as mind-bogglingly bizarre. In 2010, an affiliate of the MPB Today MLM scheme asked the Blog to delete a story that reported President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton were being depicted as Nazis in a promo designed to recruit MPB Today affiliates. A separate script from the same MPB Today recruiter described the Obama family as welfare recipients who aspired to eat dog food and put these words into the mouth of First Lady Michelle Obama: “Hmm, I should prolly call my Food Stamp worker now that I’ve joined MPB.”

    The Blog declined the deletion request.

    MPB Today operator Gary Calhoun later was jailed in Florida on state-level racketeering charges. Federal prosecutors contended in July 2012 that crimes such as access-device fraud and fraud in connection with identification documents had occurred. Some MPB Today affiliates claimed the purported grocery “program” had been endorsed by the U.S. government and Walmart and that impoverished prospects should sell their Food Stamps to raise the $200 needed to join MPB Today. At least one MPB Today affiliate referenced pipe bombs in a promo.

    In May 2009, the PP Blog reported that the AdViewGlobal scam announced it had secured a deal with a new offshore wire facilitator. The AVG announcement was made on the same day the President of the United States announced a crackdown on offshore fraud. The PP Blog later was asked by AVG’s purported facilitator to remove the story. The Blog refused.

    The purported AVG facilitator — KINGZ Capital Management Corp. — later was linked to the epic Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme in Minnesota and was booted from the National Futures Association. AVG earlier had collapsed in a pile of Ponzi rubble. Even as it was going down, critics of the “program” and even members concerned about where their money had gone were threatened with lawsuits and ISP terminations for speaking out online.

    Federal prosecutors later linked the AVG scam to the $119 million AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme broken up by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008. ASD story figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming, a purported “sovereign citizen,” is serving a federal prison sentence for targeting federal employees involved in the ASD case with bogus liens seeking billions of dollars, assisting a known tax fraudster in the filing of false liens, harboring federal fugitives in a case unrelated to ASD and being a felon in possession of firearms.

    HYIP schemes are a cancer on America and the rest of the globe because they permit the murkiest of figures to acquire tremendous sums of money that endanger the United States and other nations. They are a scourge on society in no small measure because they attract “sovereign citizens” and other extremists whose intent is to undermine legitimate markets and create widespread confusion, if not anarchy. People of faith often are targets of HYIP scammers. The scams often switch forms, but the criminality remains largely the same.

    In the case of Profitable Sunrise, the SEC has alleged that potentially tens of millions of dollars were driven to an individual potentially operating overseas. This individual’s identity may not be known. The allegations alone are chilling.

    Frazer and her associates are not named in the SEC civil action. But Frazer and two of her alleged business associates — husband David Frazer and Nancy Frazer business associate Albert Rosebrock — are named in a Profitable Sunrise-related civil fraud action filed by the state of Ohio in July.

    As noted above, the PP Blog will not remove any Frazer or Profitable Sunrise-related content. Here, now, the verbatim content of the emails received by the Blog at 12:11 a.m. today. (The Blog added carriage returns to make the contents more readable.)

    The Emails

    Dear Patrick;

    I am send you this private (not to be published or shared) email to you as a Christian brother, from your Christian sister, in hopes to have your assistance to stop all media coverage concerning our Ministry and our volunteer board members without having to get the authorities involved to get this accomplished.

    We understand that you have been trying to find the truth about Profitable Sunrise. The FBI has fully reviewed every document, communication and record we have and has returned everything to us. Our lead investigator stated that it is clear that we were a victim of “innocent ignorance”.

    The investigation resulted in no criminal charges being filed. The Federal Government has confirmed we are not being named in this case. Kansas is in the process of dismissing the case and Ohio has stated they do not have enough information to move forward (after losing the majority of the assets at our hearing on August 30th, 2013). We are so thankful that we are finally being vindicated and can speak out soon.

    2013 has been a refining year but so many awesome miracles have occurred that I cannot just feel there was no positive purpose. We believed that Profitable Sunrise was the “real deal”. We know that many of you believe that BitCoin is the “real deal” but in Texas, it is now declared a security and to some- part of a Ponzi? We sometimes learn things the hard way.

    The FBI is fully aware of all your consistent attempts to keep my name and our FocusUp Ministries Board members, our staff, voluteers and even my husband (who had no connection) tagged to negative , damaging words (such as scam, fraud and Ponzi) along with negative press and stories we are not connected to at all. Thus driving traffic to your website for your own purpose.

    Last week through a phone conversation, the Senior investigator from the FBI, instructed me to have my attorney send you a Cease and Desist and demand for immediate removal of your unauthorized usage of materials, videos, audio, all radio & TV media, articles and all types of communication connected to FocusUp Ministries and our Board Members, staff and volunteers: including Nanci Jo Frazer (Nancy Frazer) and Albert Rosebrock, David Steckel (volunteer), Jon Simmons (staff pastor) also my husband David Frazer.

    I am requesting that Patrickpretty.com and all associate websites, blogs and media… Cease and Desist immediately from using images, text, tags,YouTubes, Powerpoints, articles, documents and recordings associated in any way with the patrickpretty.com website, which is containing or referring to Nanci Jo Frazer, Nancy Frazer, David Frazer, Albert Rosebrock, David Steckel, Jon Simmons and FocusUp Ministries and/or any of our associate Ministries, as you are not authorized to use our names or image for any purpose without written permission.

    We have spent hundreds of hours of research to help authorities in everyway to fully understand and solve this case. We are almost to the point whereas I can share what I have learned to help avoid this event from happening again. I believe in going to my Christian brother first to resolve an issue. I believe that your heart is in the right place.

    We need to see that everything is deleted and completely removed from the Internet by Friday, November 15th, 2013 so we can all move on. I hope you honor this and that we can start over and have this be a much better story for all.

    Thanks Patrick!
    Nanci Jo Frazer

  • ‘Minister Of The Gospel’ Accused Of Offering Undercover Agent Discount To Join ‘Secret’ HYIP Program Found Guilty Of Wire Fraud And Conspiracy

    onciuEDITOR’S NOTE: It doesn’t come any crazier than HYIP prime-bank schemes. This is another example . . .

    UPDATED 7:47 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) Moses Onciu, a self-styled “Minister of the Gospel” and director of David and Goliath International Ministries Inc. of Fountain Hills, Ariz., has been found guilty in federal court in California of HYIP-related criminal charges. (Wire fraud and conspiracy.)

    Onciu appears yesterday to have personally announced the guilty verdicts against him on a subdomain of a website styled DIYTrade that may operate from Hong Kong. On DIYTrade, Onciu promotes an Arizona company known as Allied Petroleum LLC, which claims to be “a Christian based company that believes in Jesus Christ as Lord, His virgin birth and his death and resurrection. We espouse the principles of Godly business practices and believe that God has given clear direction to those that truly wish to walk upright in their life and business.”

    OCWeekly, a publication in Orange County, Calif., first reported the news of the Onciu guilty verdicts on Oct. 24. PonziClawbacks.com picked up the story on the same day.

    How things will proceed at Allied Petroleum is unclear, given that Onciu was indicted in 2008 as part of what federal prosecutors called an “undercover investigation into fraudulent high yield investment schemes” and now has been found guilty. As part of the sting, the FBI created an “undercover entity (UCE) in Newport Beach, California that purported to be a financial advisory firm,” according to the indictment.

    Undercover agents posed either as “partners of the UCE seeking to invest their own funds or as wealthy clients of the UCE seeking to invest substantial monies,” according to the indictment.

    Onciu was accused in the indictment of pumping a “select, secret” HYIP that “would yield a 300% to 650% return in 30 to 45 days at no risk.”

    Along the way, according to the indictment, a Onciu co-defendant named Irene Pemkova of Las Vegas explained that David and Goliath was a “humanitarian foundation under the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) umbrella” and that Onciu was a “former, highly placed CIA officer.”

    In an allegation similar to allegations in the Profitable Sunrise HYIP case brought by the SEC earlier this year, the 2008 indictment alleged that Pemkova asserted that a “humanitarian project was required for entry into the program.”

    Onciu, meanwhile, told an undercover agent during a conference call in December 2006 that he “usually doesn’t do transactions of less than $100 million” and that “making a return of 100% a month is not abnormal,” according to the indictment.

    With an undercover agent on the line, Onciu asserted that his role was to provide the required “humanitarian element” and that the “program is highly confidential and the government does not want people talking about such programs,” according to the indictment.

    Onciu also offered to reduce his fee, as a means of inducing the undercover agent to join the program, according to the indictment.

    During the same 2006 time period, Onciu co-defendant Beata Gizella Priore of Glen Head, N.Y., spoke on the phone with an undercover agent and purported to be in Europe, according to the indictment.

    Priore told the agent that a “client of hers invested $1 million in the program and made a return of $6.5 million,” according to the indictment. Priore, who has pleaded guilty, later had a personal meeting with the undercover agent.

    Among other things, New York resident Priore asserted she was “calling from the trading group in Frankfurt,” had been in the HYIP business for seven years and that the “program required a minimum investment of $1 million,” according to the indictment.

    Records in New York show that a person by the same name in the same town was disciplined by the state Office of the Professions in 1998 after admitting to “having been convicted of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the Fourth Degree.” The profession was identified as “Certified Dietitian and Certified Nutritionist.”

    In the Nov. 4 web post, Onciu appears to be claiming that Priore’s surprise  guilty plea in the 2008 HYIP case undercut his defense and that Pemkova created a false narrative that he was a CIA operative, thus subjecting him to the conspiracy charge. The post did not explain Onciu’s take on the allegations that he’d offered an undercover agent a discount to join the program and apparently decided that, in this instance, he’d accept less than the $100 million usually required to do business with him.

    Nor did the post explain how making a return of 100 percent a month in a secret HYIP program that required a humanitarian element was not abnormal.

    “Although I was only the introducing party I was charged as a co conspirator in this case and ultimately was the only one tried due to the other two parties legal standing: one took a guilty plea for a reduced sentence and the other took an insanity plea, leaving me as the only defendant,” the post read in part.

     

  • ‘Sovereign Citizen,’ 66, Used ‘Bogus Checks’ To Pay For 2 Dodge Trucks, Chiropractic Services And Logging Equipment

    americaatrisk4In the latest bizarre case involving a purported “sovereign citizen,” Charlie McCants Jr., 66, of Mayesville, S.C., has been convicted on seven counts of attempting to pass bogus government checks to pay for items such as Dodge trucks, chiropractic services and logging equipment, federal prosecutors said.

    “Evidence presented at the trial showed McCants used bogus checks to purchase two Dodge trucks from a Sumter dealership,” the office of U.S. Attorney William N. Nettles of the District of South Carolina said. “McCants also used bogus checks to pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of chiropractic services and even attempted to purchase three million dollars’ worth of logging equipment from a Newberry dealership.”

    McCants filed “bizarre financial documents” and claimed to have renounced his citizenship, divining a construction by which these acts gave him “the ability to pay his debts using the United States Treasury,” prosecutors said.

    He potentially faces decades in federal prison. A sentencing date has not been set, prosecutors said.

    In 2009, another purported South Carolina “sovereign citizen” — Joseph Brunson, a Ponzi schemer — declared Nettles’ predecessor as U.S. Attorney guilty of treason, insurrection and conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. The claim was made as part of a bizarre bid to hamstring the Ponzi prosecution led by former U.S. Attorney Walt Wilkins.

    A year later, Brunson was sentenced to 27 years in federal prison for his role in the infamous “3 Hebrew Boys” Ponzi scheme in which the scammers declared their investment entity a debt-relief ministry and purchased a Gulfstream jet, a party bus and expensive sports tickets, according to court filings.

  • BULLETIN: U.S. Citizen Presiding Over New Zealand Firms Ran Ponzi, Stole Millions And Was Aided By Pitchmen In Utah And Louisiana, SEC Says

    secpedrasBULLETIN: The SEC has gone to federal court in the Central District of California and alleged that a U.S. citizen running companies in New Zealand and relying on pitchmen in Utah and Louisiana operated a Ponzi scheme and stole millions of dollars from investors.

    A federal judge has approved an emergency asset freeze, the SEC said.

    Named defendants, according to the SEC, were Christopher A.T. Pedras, a U.S. citizen who resides in Turlock, Calif., and operates firms in both America and New Zealand; Sylvester M. Gray II of Kaysville, Utah; and Alicia Bryan of Bossier City, La.

    Pedras presided over “sham investment opportunities ranging from a bank trading program to kidney dialysis clinics,” the SEC said. The agency added that Pedras “advised investors not to respond if contacted by the SEC.

    “He characterized SEC investor questionnaires as ‘fake’ and stated that the SEC’s investigation was motivated by a ‘personal vendetta’ against him,” the agency said.

    As part of the scam, the SEC alleged in its complaint, “In March 2012, Pedras conducted an in-person seminar at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles for actual and prospective investors. At the seminar, he described the nature and benefits of the Maxum Gold Trade Program and the safety of investors’  funds in escrow accounts.”

    Bryan, the agency said, has a criminal record and pleaded guilty in September 2008 “to a charge of attempted felony theft in the State of Louisiana, arising from her attempt to cash a counterfeit check from her then-employer, an internet company for whom she collected charitable donations and sent them to a purported disaster relief organization overseas.”

    “Rather than conducting any legitimate business activity, Pedras and his partners were simply operating a Ponzi scheme that was ultimately doomed to collapse,” said Michele Wein Layne, director of the SEC’s Los Angeles Regional Office. “This emergency action stops them from fraudulently raising any more money from U.S. investors.”

    The scams gathered at least $5.6 million from U.S. investors, the SEC said.

    Corporate defendants include Maxum Gold Bnk Holdings Limited of New Zealand; Maxum Gold Bnk Holdings LLC of Nevada; FMP Medical Services LLC of Nevada; FMP Medical Services Limited of New Zealand.

    From a statement by the SEC (italics added):

    The SEC alleges that Christopher A.T. Pedras, who has residences in Turlock, Calif., and New Zealand, misled his initial investors into believing they were investing in a profitable trading platform in which his company served as an intermediary between global banks.  When Pedras and his companies encountered difficulty paying the promised 4 to 8 percent monthly returns, they began steering investors to a different investment program to purportedly increase the value of their investment by 80 percent by funding kidney dialysis clinics in New Zealand.  Pedras’s business partner Sylvester M. Gray II and lead sales representative Alicia Bryan helped him solicit investors for both programs, and the money was never invested as promised.  Earlier investors were paid supposed returns with funds received from newer investors, and Pedras stole more than $2 million and spent another $1.2 million on sales agents.

    Pedras also is known as Chris Pedras and Antone Thomas Pedras, the SEC said.

    The New Zealand Financial Markets Authority filed a prospectus cancellation against Pedras’ FMP Medical Services Limited last month, saying it that marked “the first time that FMA has cancelled an offer document.”

    The cancellation means “FMP must stop the offer and that it cannot allot any shares,” the New Zealand agency said. “FMP must immediately repay any investors who have subscribed to the offer.”

  • EDITORIAL: Alleged LAX Gunman And Conspiracy Theorist Paul Anthony Ciancia Becomes Author Of One Of History’s Unwanted Footnotes

    Paul Ciancia
    Paul Ciancia: Source: FBI.

    UPDATED 11:04 A.M. ET (NOV. 4, U.S.A.) Gerardo I. Hernandez, a 39-year-old Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officer described as a loving husband and father and dutiful employee, gave his life for his country Friday. In an awful and unwanted footnote, he became the first TSA officer killed in the line of duty.

    Officer Hernandez thus indelibly became linked in history to figures such as Edwin C. Shanahan, the first FBI agent to die in the line of duty (1925), and William Craig, the first member of the U.S. Secret Service killed while doing his job (1902). Shanahan was murdered by a car thief wielding an automatic pistol. Craig died in a horrific collision between a streetcar and carriage while protecting President Theodore Roosevelt. Like El Salvador-born Hernandez, Craig was not born in the United States. He was born in Scotland.

    A full fact set has not yet emerged in the death of Hernandez. What is clear is that Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, was arrested after being shot by police Friday at Los Angeles International Airport. He initially was identified by the FBI as the suspect in a shooting death and the wounding of others at the airport. On Saturday, he was charged with Murder of a Federal Officer and Violence at International Airports.

    Ciancia used a “.223 caliber M&P 15 assault rife” he’d pulled from his bag at the TSA checkpoint inside Terminal 3, the FBI said in an affidavit filed yesterday in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

    Less clear is Ciancia’s full motive for making war against officers of his own country. Clues, however, are beginning to emerge.

    TSA officers flatly needed to die, according to a handwritten letter allegedly signed by Ciancia and cited in the FBI affidavit.

    The deaths at LAX would “instill fear” in the “traitorous minds” of TSA officers who survived, according to the letter cited by the FBI.

    TSA is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). TSA officers guard passenger safety at LAX, one of the busiest airports in the world. Like many other facilities at which TSA officers protect passengers within the U.S. network of transportation and commerce, LAX is one of America’s great symbols of freedom.

    DHS was formed after the 9/11 terrorists hijacked four airliners and made prisoners of passengers engaged in the the simple act of pursuing their freedom. Three of the planes were used as weapons of mass destruction and deliberately flown into the World Trade Centers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth plane, intended to become another weapon of mass destruction in Washington, crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers began to understand what was happening and tried to overpower their murderous al-Qaeda hijackers.

    Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the four-pronged attack, the final minutes of their lives spent in unimaginable terror.

    Similar feelings about dying in a horrifying way were experienced by passengers and workers at LAX Friday: Ciancia, an American from New Jersey living in Los Angeles, allegedly was inside the airport with a weapon that resembled a machine gun. After hearing police bark commands to get down, passengers and workers fearing for their lives hit the floor and scrambled for cover. Some people cloistered themselves in restrooms and restaurants, torturing themselves with thoughts they’d made the wrong bet in the fog of sudden war and had corralled themselves as cattle, becoming more convenient targets for the slaughter.

    In an atmosphere of panic and perhaps fearing one or more gunmen also could be packing bombs, some people stampeded for the exits. Once outdoors, they remained fixed on the danger behind them and obliviously sprinted into traffic lanes. They could have survived the initial siege, only to have been killed by an approaching taxicab or perhaps even by a taxiing plane. Chaos breeds such tortuous fates. Events at LAX on Friday were a sort of personal 9/11 for many thousands of people, a mad dash to get out of a war zone.

    Ciancia had “five magazine clips of ammunition for his assault rifle,” the FBI said, noting that the letter specifically addressed TSA employees and painted him as a man on a mission.

    And Ciancia made what appears to be a formal declaration in the letter, in which he allegedly stated he’d made “the conscious decision to try to kill” multiple TSA employees.

    He started by firing “multiple rounds” at Hernandez, who was on duty and wearing his uniform, according to the affidavit. The officer was shot at “point blank range,” with Ciancia next moving toward an escalator.

    Upon peering back from the escalator at Hernandez and perhaps noticing movement, Ciancia “returned and shot the wounded officer again,” according to the affidavit.

    “The TSA officer was fatally wounded,” according to the affidavit.

    Ciancia then opened fire on “at least two other uniformed, on-duty TSA employees and one civilian passenger, all of whom sustained gunshot wounds,” according to the affidavit.

    A “sergeant and an officer of the Los Angeles Airport Police” shot Ciancia after pursuing him, according to the affidavit.

    As worried Americans watched CNN and other networks Friday for news about the attack, they heard Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti describing Ciancia as a man with enough ammunition to “have literally killed everyone in that terminal.”

    Americans also heard Leon Saryan, who was exercising his freedom at the airport Friday, tell of his chilling encounter with Ciancia. As reported by NBC News (italics added):

    . . . a witness said the shooter, calmly walking through the terminal with his weapon, approached him with a one-word question.

    “All he said was, ‘TSA?’ Just like that,” Leon Saryan told MSNBC.

    Saryan appears to have been permitted to survive for one reason and one reason only. He was not “TSA.”

    In Ciancia’s mind, this apparently meant that Saryan was not the enemy, meaning he was not the U.S. government or one of its employees. The young man apparently also had decided that he needed to kill federal officers in response to a perceived encroachment by the “New World Order.”

    Ciancia also referenced “fiat currency,” according to an AP report.

    The Southern Poverty Law Center, quoting a source, reported that Ciancia “also expressed antagonism toward the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its chief until she resigned in August, Janet Napolitano, the source said. Ciancia’s note called former Secretary Napolitano a ‘bull dyke’ and contained the phrase ‘FU Janet Napolitano,’ the source said.”

    The shootings occurred in Terminal 3. In mid-October, explosive devices made of dry ice were found in and around the area of Terminal 2 at LAX. Dicarlo Bennett and Miguel Angel Iniguez were arrested in that incident, which possibly was an excruciatingly mindless prank carried out by two contract workers who never got the memo that things that explode are incompatible with airport safety and the safety of millions of souls who exercise their travel freedom in the skies and at ticket counters and boarding and arrival gates on the ground.

    An actual attack allegedly carried out by Ciancia at the airport occurred just 19 days after the dry-ice incident.

    The Unwanted Footnotes Of Rogues

    In allegedly gunning down Gerardo Hernandez and wounding others, Ciancia joined Martin J. Durkin as the author of a terrible, tragic and unwanted footnote. Durkin was the car thief who shot the FBI’s Shanahan, making him the first FBI agent killed in the line of duty. Special Agent Shanhan was 27 when a Durkin bullet entered his chest and killed him.

    Although Shanahan returned fire, his death was “almost instantaneous,” the FBI said.

    Of course, what happened to Hernandez also reminded Americans of what happened to John Lennon in 1980 at the hands of Mark David Chapman, the author of Lennon’s terrible footnote: first former Beatle to die. Lennon was shot while exercising his freedom to walk in peace at his apartment building in New York City.

    And since it’s November and edging closer to the 50th anniversary (Nov. 22) of one of the greatest crimes in U.S. history, it’s hard not to recall yet-another author of an awful footnote that will live for the ages: Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, the first Catholic President to be elected and the first Catholic President to be assassinated. President Kennedy was killed while exercising his freedom to ride in an open convertible in Dallas. (Watch, listen, learn, remember).

    Martin Luther King Jr. left this world in 1968. The author of his terrible footnote — an assassinated winner of the Nobel Peace Prize — was James Earl Ray. King was exercising his freedom to stand on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tenn.

    Another Senseless Death In America

    TSA officers wear uniforms and badges while conducting passenger screenings, but do not carry arms and have no power of arrest. The phrase “sitting ducks” to describe the typical TSA officer was used during television coverage of the LAX events Friday, leading to questions such as this: If the officers are sitting ducks, what are the passengers? Friday’s shooting death of Hernandez in his workplace — a workplace at which the public congregates while exercising its freedom to fly — naturally has led to questions about whether TSA officers should receive training in firearms and carry guns as a means of protecting themselves and the public.

    The PP Blog has no early answers to these questions. Nor does it understand how a gunman with a high-powered rifle somehow breached LAX security in a fashion that apparently permitted him to hunt uniform-wearing federal officers for sport in full view of the traveling public.

    On this Sunday — after trying to distill all sorts of deeply disturbing information about the death of Officer Hernandez since the news broke Friday — the Blog has reached only one conclusion: Despite his lack of the power of arrest and an employment designation that likely makes him an nonpolice officer, Hernandez should be accorded full police honors, including casket watch, honor guard, funeral commander, pallbearers, flag team and firing party, if consistent with the wishes of his widow.

    It is particularly disturbing that TSA officers trying to prevent the next 9/11 and protect symbols of freedom that are the vulnerable equivalents of the toppled Twin Towers and the damaged and rebuilt/refortified Pentagon have become fodder for late-night comedians and targets of the insipid headline taunts of Matt Drudge.

    Janet Napolitano, now the president of the University of California and a former U.S. Attorney, two-term governor of Arizona and DHS Secretary, was called names that would peel paint while at DHS. The treatment she received from Drudge was a national disgrace that served to fuel animosity toward TSA officers.

    It is one thing to criticize public officials, agencies and employees; it is quite another to subject them to hysterical ridicule. Far too many Americans have been conditioned to believe the TSA consists of gropers and malingerers eager to carry out orders from their Orwellian controllers in Washington.

    Officer Gerardo I. Hernandez was exercising his freedom to be employed and not be harassed — let alone murdered — at his workplace. But this is no ordinary case of workplace violence. No, it is a case in which a self-appointed soldier went hunting for the officer and others like him.

    Hernandez met his awful fate Friday on a beautiful day in Los Angeles, which had served up a day not unlike the one experienced in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. He appears to have been murdered by a lone-wolf domestic terrorist who preemptively sought to paint himself a patriot and great defender of freedom.

    The most deeply disturbing thing about the alleged word choices of Ciancia — the rants against federal employees, “fiat currency,” the Federal Reserve and the “New World Order” — is the striking similarity to rants and conspiracy theories that often appear on the Ponzi boards by other self-styled defenders of freedom.

    Ciancia would have been a perfect recruit in that utterly corrupt universe, a young malcontent in search of an intellectually lazy philosophy that reimagines organized fraud as a noble way to make a living while reimagining federal agents as the bad guys who deserve to suffer.

    With Ciancia, the intellectual and emotional detachment appears to have become so complete that he licensed himself to kill federal agents, create widows and widowers and alter the psychological trajectories of children and thousands of other innocents — all while hijacking the blanket of patriotism and pretending he was a soldier for freedom.

    Rest in Peace, Officer Hernandez.

  • Halloween Day Guilty Plea For Liberty Reserve Figure Vladimir Kats

    ponzinews1Before Liberty Reserve and its alleged co-conspirators were indicted in May, the company was involved in several horror-filled propositions. These included laundering $6 billion as part of schemes involving “credit card fraud, identity theft, investment fraud, computer hacking, child pornography, and narcotics trafficking,” federal prosecutors said.

    Now, Liberty Reserve figure Vladimir Kats, also known as “Ragnar,” has pleaded guilty to multiple crimes. The plea occurred yesterday: Halloween Day.

    Liberty Reserve, prosecutors said, set the stage for criminals to thrive and functioned as “as the bank of choice for the criminal underworld because it provided an infrastructure that enabled cybercriminals to conduct anonymous and untraceable financial transactions.”

    “Vladimir Kats, by his own admission, helped to create and operate an anonymous digital currency system that provided cybercriminals and others with the means to launder criminal proceeds on an unprecedented scale,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman. “His conviction reinforces what we said when Liberty Reserve was first brought down: banking systems that allow criminals to conduct illegal transactions anonymously will not be allowed to stand, and professional money launderers will be brought to justice.”

    It all added up to danger and created “an international den of cybercrime,” added U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of the Southern District of New York.

    “As a co-founder and operator of Liberty Reserve, Vladimir Kats served as a global banker for criminals, giving them an anonymous, online forum to hide the proceeds of their illegal and dangerous activities,” Bharara said.

    Kats, 41, of Brooklyn, N.Y., potentially faces decades in federal prison. No sentencing date has been sent.

    From a statement by prosecutors (italics added):

    Kats was arrested in Brooklyn in May 2013 and pleaded guilty today to one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison; one count of conspiring to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison; one count of receiving child pornography, which carries a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison; and one count of marriage fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

    Charges remain pending against Liberty Reserve founder Arthur Budovsky and alleged co-conspirators Ahmed Yassine Abdelghani, Allan Esteban Hildago Jimenez, Azzeddine El Amine, Mark Marmilev and Maxim Chukharev, prosecutors said.

  • BULLETIN: ‘First Clawback Claims Are Now Imminent,’ Zeek Receiver Says

    breakingnews72BULLETIN: The court-appointed receiver in the Zeek Rewards MLM Ponzi scheme case says in new court filings that clawback claims against alleged net winners “are now imminent, and a lawsuit against multiple named defendants along with a class of net winners will be filed during the fourth quarter of 2013.”

    Zeek winners received an estimated $283 million through “fraudulent transfers,” receiver Kenneth D. Bell said in a quarterly report to the court dated yesterday.

    North Carolina-based Zeek’s international winners also are on the hook to return ill-gotten gains through clawbacks, Bell said.

    The report is styled “Quarterly Status Report – Q3 2013.” It is available at the receiver’s website.

  • Churches May Be At Risk From WCM777 ‘Program’; Congregants In Rialto, Calif., May Have Been Swept Into Bizarre Cross-Border Scheme; YouTube Pitchman Says Venture Will ‘Go Into Selling Shares, Pre-IPOs’; Craigslist Flags Ad In Atlanta; Siemens AG Says ‘No Form Of Cooperation Exists’ Between Itself ‘And The World Capital Market Company’

    wcm777Siemens AG, the German engineering and electronics conglomerate, has taken the unusual step of issuing an “official statement” on its public website that “no form of cooperation exists between Siemens and the World Capital Market company and its affiliated businesses.” The statement appeared yesterday and was announced on Twitter, after the multibillion-dollar firm had received repeated tweets inquiring about its purported ties to WCM and WCM-related web entities, including an MLM “program” known as WCM777.

    Among other things, WCM and its MLM affiliates have asserted that Siemens, beginning in 2012, assisted WCM in the development of cloud-computing products. Siemens, however, said it sold the business unit to which WCM and affiliates have referred in 2011.

    “The World Capital Market (WCM/WCM7/WCM777) company is not entitled to use the Siemens name or trademark,” Siemens said.

    It added, “In order to help other investors avoid making any investments based on false assumptions, we would urge you to pass on this information.”

    The WCM entities may be operating out of Hong Kong.

    Siemens did not say whether it had received any inquiries from law enforcement about the claims made by WCM and its apparent worldwide group of MLM promoters, some of whom have claimed WCM has business ties to other famous companies, perhaps particularly companies in the hospitality industry. News about the Siemens statement appeared on the MLM Skeptic antiscam Blog.

    Based on its research, the PP Blog is reporting today that text below a YouTube video dated Aug. 18, 2013, references Siemens as a technology supplier to the WCM777 MLM “program” and further claims that WCM has provided loans totaling in excess of $1 billion to nine jewels of American business, including at least two that trade on NASDAQ. One concern, a national restaurant chain, was said to have borrowed $908 million from WCM. Another concern, a convenience-store chain founded in Texas, was said to have borrowed $75 million. A famous American toy company that trades on NASDAQ and is an S&P 100 component was said to have borrowed $50 million.

    Five hotel chains with famous flags were said to have borrowed a cumulative sum in excess of $134 million. A famous soft-drink concern was said to have borrowed $60 million. The YouTube text pitch further asserts: “World Capital Market (WCM) is the parent company for WCM777. WCM is a private bank managing and lending money to over 700 institutions.”

    But if WCM is indeed a “private bank,” it’s apparently one that has no concerns about the privacy of its own borrowers if MLM money is to be made. WCM777 affiliates now are parading in Stepfordian fashion around the Internet and claiming not only to know the identities of WCM’s famous borrowers, but also to know precisely how much they borrowed.

    Assuming any of the purported deals actually exist and that anything about WCM is real, the precedent has been set for any future WCM customer to face repeated privacy invasions and repeated episodes of brand leeching as part of bids to legitimize an MLM “program.” Such incidents would be untenable for any enterprise that values its brand and marketplace reputation.

    In the video pitch, the WCM promoter suggested that prospects should ignore lower affiliate levels and buy in at $1,999 because the position would pay $3,200 in 100 days. He also suggested that reentry at the $1,999 level would cost only $20 out-of-pocket and that the position would continue to return $3,200 every 100 days.

    “Most people are coming in with three units, seven units, 15 units and above,” the narrator said.

    “I just had some[one] wire me from Mexico . . . $6,000 for three units,” the narrator said. “I’m signing up another person [in] [Florida?] for six units as well — excuse me, three units as well — another $6,000. And this is just going nuts.”

    A “kickoff meeting” was being held in Mexico for WCM777, the narrator said. (Based on the date of the video, this event might have been held in late August, perhaps on the same date as a companion event at a church in California. See below.)

    Each of WCM’s famous purported borrowers now may face undeserved embarrassment or a PR problem because an MLMer trying to sell the WCM777 “program” on YouTube is claiming that they borrowed a combined sum of more than $1 billion from the purported parent company of an enterprise now under investigation in Colombia, amid pyramid scheme allegations.

    What’s potentially worse is that the YouTube pitchmen claimed in a promo for WCM777 that he had “a presentation in Rialto, California, with a church of 500 people where the entire church is going to be there, Spanish church in Rialto.”

    He could not attend the kickoff event in Mexico because it conflicted with the church event in Rialto, the narrator said.

    Rialto is a Southeast California community of about 100,000 in San Bernardino County. In 2010, the PP Blog interviewed a 64-year-old woman from San Bernardino County. She’d been ripped off of $5,300 by the Noobing MLM scam operating online. The woman was deaf.

    Like similar schemes, WCM777 almost certainly will bring securities concerns into play. “Programs” such as Zeek Rewards, for example, have been accused by the SEC of securities fraud and selling unregistered securities. Based on the YouTube promoter’s claims that WCM is venturing “into selling shares” and “pre-IPOs,” those concerns may only become heightened.

    WCM also reportedly permits members to transfer money or the equivalent of money through an in-house system, which raises questions about whether it is setting the stage for money-laundering to occur. Colombia long has had problems with narcotics traffickers. Colombian MLMer David Murcia was extradited to the United States in 2010 to face charges that his D.M.G. Group of companies laundered narcotics cash in the United States. He later was sentenced to nine years in federal prison. Murcia also faces 30 years behind bars in Colombia.

    U.S. prosecutors pointedly called DMG “a vehicle for a multi-level marketing scheme.” Participants were told to buy prepaid debit cards that operated on a points system and would permit them to buy electronics and other merchandise at DMG retail stores and enable them to get back 100 percent of what they paid in and perhaps more.

    WCM777 also operates a points system and is tied to something called the “Kingdom Card” highlighted at a site known as 1And300.com.

    The PP Blog has observed at least one instance in which Craigslist pulled an ad for WCM in Atlanta. Ads in other American communities, including Dallas and Orange County, Calif., continue to appear.

    In addition to making a veiled reference to Siemens, the ad screams in all caps: “WHAT IF I TOLD YOU I CAN SHOW YOU A WAY TO TAKE SOME OF YOUR MONEY RIGHT NOW AND PUT IT TO WORK AS AN INVESTMENT AND TURN IT IN A FIRM PROFIT AMOUNT YOU CAN GET OVER AND OVER AGAIN EVERY 100 DAYS. NOT JUST MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR MONEY BUT ALSO HAVE NO SALES TO DO AND YOU WON’T HAVE NO NEED TO RECRUIT PEOPLE. . .?”

    WCM, according to the Dallas ad, stands for “WE CREATE MARKET.”

     

  • BULLETIN: Another Mass Shooting In United States — This One In Kaufman County, Texas, Which Already Had Experienced Unspeakable Violence Earlier This Year

    BULLETIN: (UPDATED 4:20 P.M. EDT U.S.A.) The unthinkable has happened again in Kaufman County, Texas, where the district attorney, his wife and a prosecutor allegedly were gunned down earlier this year by a now-jailed former Justice of the Peace who was aided by his spouse.

    Various media outlets now are reporting that a man went on a cross-town shooting spree yesterday in the Kaufman County community of Terrell. Five people are reported dead in a series of murders, including the mother and an aunt of the suspect. One of the murders also may be tied to an arson at the suspect’s home.

    That suspect, Charles Everett Brownlow Jr., 36, now has been captured after a manhunt and is in police custody. Terrell is situated east of Dallas.

    From the lede of a story at WFAA.com (italics added):

    An overnight manhunt in Kaufman County led to the arrest of a 36-year-old Terrell man after five people were found killed at four separate locations Monday.

    Perhaps the bitterest irony of all is that Terrell police reported just 19 days ago that the crime rate was “down nearly 9% from this time last year.” Now, officers find themselves investigating five murders and a related arson that occurred in a city of 16,000 within a single day.

    International media, including the United Kingdom’s Daily Mail, also are reporting on the Terrell murder spree.

    Luis Leal, a convenience-store clerk, also was among the victims, according to the NBC outlet in Dallas/Fort Worth.

    “Brownlow allegedly killed the clerk inside the store then jumped in the car and took off after officers spotted him,” the station is reporting.

    Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times used this headline: “Eight hours of terror in Terrell, Texas, killing rampage, 5 dead.”

    From the Times (italics added):

    “We’re all in a state of shock,” [Terrell] Police Chief Jody Lay said at a televised news conference.  “You have a tendency to think, ‘How can that happen here?’  This is a country community, a rural community, people are real close. This is going to be, it’s going to have a really big impact on us.”

    Business publications also are covering events in Terrell. Here’s a snippet from the International Business Times (italics added):

    Brownlow’s criminal history includes arrests for burglary, assault, unlawful possession of a firearm and possession of marijuana, authorities said.

     

  • BRITISH COLUMBIA: Man Under Investigation For $5K Offering Fraud Launched Double-Down Scam; Won Sang Chen Cho Banned From Securities Markets; BCSC Says He ‘Poses A Serious And Continuing Risk’

    breakingnews72A British Columbia man already under investigation for duping investors $5,000 at a time doubled down and then went for $10,000, the British Columbia Securities Commission said.

    Won Sang Chen Cho, also known as Craig Cho, now has been banned for life from the securities trade, the agency said.

    Cho, the agency said, “poses a serious and continuing risk to investors and to our markets.”

    In addition, he has been ordered to make restitution of $20,569 to scammed investors and to pay a $200,000 administrative penalty.

    BCSC identified Cho’s businesses as Chosen Media and Groops Media. The firms were cease-traded.

    From a BCSC statement (italics added):

    Between January 2011 and February 2012, Cho, doing business as Chosen Media, promoted securities on the Vancouver Craigslist website and sought minimum investments of $5,000. The panel found that Cho raised $101,846 from five investors, to whom he returned purported investment returns of $62,000.

    Cho admitted to promising extremely high rates of return that were “risk free”, and to telling prospective investors that he would deposit their funds into accounts at various sports betting websites. He admitted that he told investors that profit would be generated by the “generous signup and reload bonuses” provided by the sports betting websites.

    The panel also found that in December 2012, during the course of the Chosen Media investigation, Cho sent an e-mail promoting an investment with Groops Media requiring a minimum $10,000 investment. He admitted that this was after he had been warned by BCSC staff that he must comply with prospectus requirements when distributing securities through Chosen Media.

  • UPDATE: ‘YouGetPaidFast’ Pitchman Said To Be Casting Net At Unemployment Office For Gifting-Program Leads; Meanwhile, Scheme Takes A Phil Piccolo-Like Turn By Pointing To Alexa Rankings As Supposed Proof Of Legitimacy

    yougetpaidfastclaim

    YouGetPaidFast, a Texas-based “program” that plants the seed it has the blessing of the FBI, is benefiting from a pitchman who is handing out flyers at an “unemployment office,” according to a post from an apparent naysayer at the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum.

    The poster says his friend is the one handing out the flyers — and won’t listen to reason because he is desperate for money.

    If the claim is true, it would follow an incendiary circumstance that surfaced in the Women’s Gifting Tables pyramid scheme in Connecticut that resulted in lengthy prison sentences for two pitchwomen.

    In the Women’s Gifting Tables scheme, members of Alcoholics Anonymous were targeted, according to the trial testimony reported by the New Haven Register.

    Such schemes typically target vulnerable populations. Similar schemes such as HYIP frauds have been known to target people facing mortgage foreclosures and recent job losses.

    YouGetPaidFast is operated by Paul Darby, a Texan who claims he is friendly with FBI agents and has them on “speed dial.”

    At least one FBI agent has vetted his “program,” Darby has claimed.

    Unlike the Women’s Gifting Table scheme, which asked for $5,000 at a time, YouGetPaidFast appears to be seeking the much-smaller sum of $28. Participants reportedly are instructed to mail $7 to each of four names of individuals or entities that appear on a list and advised they are purchasing products.

    Gifting and other fraud schemes that assert they sell inexpensive “products” appear somewhat regularly on the Internet. Such an approach is consistent with micro-fraud, a scam by which hucksters gather small sums from participants, rather than seeking large sums. The hope is that the small sums will add up to a large sum over time and investigators will perceive a micro “program” as less toxic than a jugular-vein fraud and won’t bother to look into it.

    The JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid HYIP “program” purportedly operated by AdSurfDaily Ponzi pitchman and cash-gifter Frederick Mann was an example of micro fraud. Participants were told that JSS/JBP would give them $10 to get started in the “program.” After payout and other problems developed at JSS/JBP, the “program” started seeking “purchases” of tens of thousands of dollars at a time.

    Claims that a “program” sells “products” and that participants make “purchases” long have been associated with bids to mask the true nature of the “program” — a gifting scam or HYIP fraud disguised as a merchant doing legitimate business, for example. Meanwhile, claims that the government or an important politician or business person have vetted or endorsed a “program” are common in the fraud sphere.

    An earlier Darby “program” featured a knockoff of the Seal of the President of the United States and suggested that something called Net Millionaires Club was an “economic stimulus package.”

    The marketing efforts of Net Millionaires Club were reminiscent of those of the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme exposed by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008. (ASD traded on the name of former U.S. President George W. Bush; Darby has traded on the name of President Obama.) In 2010, a Phil Piccolo-linked scam known as Data Network Affiliates planted the seed that it had been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey and Donald Trump.

    Meaningless, Bizarre, Piccolo-Like Claims

    YouGetPaidFast now screams it is “SETTING RECORDS WORLD WIDE,” pointing to an Alexa traffic ranking and “Video Views by You Tube 30 Days” as purported proof of legitimacy. Despite the claim it is setting records, however, YouGetPaidFast does not appear to specify precisely what records it is setting. Nor does it appear to say precisely what authority had certified the marks as “records.”

    Such incongruities litter the cash-gifting and HYIP landscapes, which are lined with the carcasses of collapsed “programs.” Sometimes the “programs” come back with a new name or a name designed to instill new confidence such as XXX Scheme 2.0 XXX Scheme Web 3.0.

    The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) warned in 2010 that fraud schemes were spreading online through social-media sites such as YouTube. A year earlier — in 2009 — the Better Business Bureau reported there were 22,974 cash-gifting videos on YouTube.

    Those videos, the BBB said at the time, had garnered an “astounding 59,192,963 views.” (Also see June 2009 report on cash-gifting by KIII-TV. The report includes an interview with an official from the Better Business Bureau of Central Texas.)

    Cash-gifting purveyors are “targeting people with some form of an affinity — such as as women’s clubs, community groups, church congregations, social clubs and special interest groups,” the BBB warned four years ago.

    On Oct. 8, BehindMLM.com, citing a Darby claim, reported that one or more Christian pastors was encouraging Darby to sue his detractors.

    Pointing to Alexa rankings and YouTube videos to sanitize frauds is one of the oldest tricks in the scammer’s playbook in the Information Age. Veteran online huckster Phil Piccolo, known for bizarre schemes such as Data Network Affiliates, OWOW and Text Cash Network,  has been doing it for years.

    Piccolo also has planted the seed he’ll sue his critics. In 2010, he planted the seed on Troy Dooly’s radio program that he could bring in leg-breakers if lawsuits didn’t work. Piccolo earlier had threatened to sue Dooly.