BULLETIN: CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, has issued a warning and suspended the trading of an HYIP “program” known as TureProfit that appears to be operating as both a macro- and a microscam while using the name of Bitcoin.
On its English website in a prompt dated Aug. 17, 2014, TureProfit purports it has “gained huge profit from BitCoin Futures market. As raward [sic], today we have added a special plan: 200% after 1 day . . . Min deposit: $500 . . . Max deposit: $500,000.”
In recent months, HYIP scammers have sought to trade on the name of Bitcoin to loosen purse strings. A number of regulators have issued warnings on scams that use a Bitcoin theme.
TureProfit, which appears to be a reincarnation of a Ponzi-board “program” that surfaced in 2011 and later collapsed, also says it gathers sums as low as $10. This and greater sums purportedly will earn “8% daily for 50 days,” with “compounding available.”
The time of the apparent resurrection may suggest scammers hoped to pick more pockets in advance of the Holiday season. Some “programs” may collect money for months and even make payments — but then suddenly go missing during the holidays. The phenomenon is known as “Back December.”
There is at least one report on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum that TureProfit was hacked in 2013. (Claimed hackings are part-and-parcel to the HYIP sphere.) By May 13, 2013, a Ponzi-board huckster noted, “looks as if this one is gone.”
But more than a year later — in August 2014 — TureProfit appears to have resurrected itself. Its website claims it is accepting Bitcoin, plus “Perfectmoney, EgoPay, Payeer . . . to ensure maximum safety of your funds. ”
Meanwhile, the “program” says, “Now we accept SolidTrustPay deposit. [T]his is good choice for US investors.”
Text on the TureProfit website bizarrely claims that when “[Liberty Reserve] failed, we had to shut down our program.”
In 2013, federal prosecutors in the United States described Liberty Reserve as a payment vessel that had helped HYIP scammers and other criminals launder $6 billion. A number of Liberty Reserve figures were charged criminally.
From the CONSOB warning (italics added):
Consob has suspended, as a precautionary measure and for a period of 90 days, the offering to the public resident in Italy of the investment programme named “Tureprofit” active via the website www.tureprofit.com (Resolution no. 19070 of 27 November 2014).
The offer is also intended for the public residing in Italy. Despite being prepared in English, the website where subscriptions are collected also features a function to automatically translate the content into Italian. It should also be noted that there is no specific disclaimer stating that the content refers only to residents of countries other than Italy.
The “Tureprofit” offer of financial products has the following characteristics: (a) for the purpose of subscription, a minimum payment of 10 US dollars is required; (b) in exchange for this payment, it promises a daily return, for 50 days, of 8 percent; (c) the client has no independent management. It would therefore appear to satisfy the characteristics of a financial investment, considering the simultaneous presence of: (i) an investment of capital; (ii) an expectation of a return of a financial nature; (iii) the assumption of a risk associated with the investment of capital.
However, in relation to the offer programme, there has been (a) no prior communication to Consob, and (b) no transmission of a prospectus intended for publication. Therefore, there is a well-grounded suspicion that this is an offer to the public of financial products carried out in breach of Art. 94, Section 1 of the Consolidated Law on Finance. As the offer is still underway, the Commission has adopted the precautionary measure of declaring a suspension in accordance with Art. 99, subsection 1, letter b) of said Decree.
(in “Consob Informa” no. 46/2014 – 1 December 2014)
Visit the CONSOB website. (As of today, Dec. 1, 2014, a brief on the TureProfit suspension action appears near the top of the CONSOB site, under the “Warnings” section.)
“6. I affirm that I am not an employee or official of any government agency, nor am I acting on behalf of or collecting information for or on behalf of any government agency. I affirm that I am not an employee, by contract or otherwise, of any media or research company, and I am not reading any of the Ad Click Xpress pages in order to collect information for someone else.” — From the AdClickXpress Terms of Service, Nov. 29, 2014
The carcass of AdClickXpress (ACX) is stirring — just in time to cast a spell on suckers hoping to find some extra money for the holidays. Like predecessor scams JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid and ProfitClicking in the same criminal family, ACX fancies itself the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) of online schemes.
In short, ACX ropes “customers” into an international financial conspiracy theoretically designed to be offshore everywhere. But deliberately taunting government investigators in its Terms of Service (see breakout quote above from the Terms) appears only to have been a first act. The “program” now appears to be taunting its own members and prospects.
From a Sept. 10, 2014, post on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, quoting from the taunt (italics/bolding added):
Note: if members are found to have posted negative information about ACX, even if it is absolutely true, their account could be penalized significantly. ACX Management will be the sole determinant as to how much damage the member has caused other ACX Members.
Like the bizarre and incongruous AdViewGlobal scam before it, ACX fancies itself a “private association.” But even if it were one of those — and even if in theory it could hamstring government investigators and reporters with a vomitous word salad — it is a “private association” that threatens its own members in ways the Mafia wouldn’t consider.
So, at least by Sept. 10, ACX began serving up BannersBroker-like word-sewage. It’s all designed to confuse and to obfuscate, of course.
By the Terms alone, ACX makes co-conspirators of its members. And after this artifice is carried out, it divines a construction by which it will penalize “significantly” and unilaterally calculate damages purportedly caused by those same members who’d dare post “negative information . . . even if it’s absolutely true.”
Separately, there are unconfirmed reports on MoneyMakerGroup that Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS/JPB and the de facto inspiration behind the follow-up scams, has died. Mann, a former pitchmen for the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, once directed traffic to videos featuring Francis Schaeffer Cox, the now-convicted Alaska “sovereign citizen” and militia man implicated in a plot to murder public officials.
From a letter by Sen. Al Franken to Uber. Franken, a Democrat, is a member of the powerful Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He also is chairman of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law.
We’ll begin by pointing out that Uber, the popular ride-sharing company and darling of venture capitalists, is not an MLM firm. But it sure is acting like one, even briefly vomiting one of MLM’s most familiar and reflexive responses to critics: HatersGonnaHate.
Can MLM enterprises and MLMers in general learn from Uber’s bizarre missteps?
You see, both Uber and MLM have a common problem: a certain internal recklessness coupled with a tin ear for PR, one that serves up one spectacular gaffe after another. Uber’s latest self-inflicted wound now has the attention of Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat. Franken wants to know why “Uber’s Senior Vice-President of Business Emil Michael recently made statements suggesting that Uber might mine private information to target a journalist who had criticized the company.”
A senior executive at Uber suggested that the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media — and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company.
Put another way: make the lady sweat that some skeleton might surface and lead to her demise should she dare continue to write pieces Uber found unflattering.
One Uber executive, BuzzFeed reported, planted the seed that Uber could prove “a particular and very specific claim about her personal life.”
The journalist is Sarah Lacy, the editor-in-chief at PandoDaily and a Mom. Here we’ll mention that, in addition to the Uber thuggishness, she’s also had to deal with the sidebar contention that Pando just might be funded by the CIA.
As a journalist who has been accused by MLMers of being on the CIA payroll and told by MLMers that my supposed secrets dealing with my supposed homosexuality and supposed porn addiction will be outed even as “sovereign citizens” threaten me with $500,000 fines for alleged trademark infringement, it will come as no surprise to PP Blog readers that I’m more than a little sympathetic to reporters who encounter thugs.
This sympathy extends whether the thugs are in the Ivory Tower or operating from the sewers.
The BuzzFeed Uber revelation set off a media firestorm now in its fourth day, putting Uber’s name in the papers for all the wrong reasons. Now, at least one reporter has come forward to claim that Uber tracked her without her permission as she rode in a Uber car. The device Uber uses to perform this tracking is known as “God View.”
In September, venture capitalist Peter Sims wrote that he’d been tracked by Uber without his permission. Sims says he was in a Uber car in New York City and that Uberites in Chicago were monitoring his movements. What this means, in essence, is that Uber was using him as a stage prop without his knowledge and consent from halfway across the country while also invading his privacy.
This reminds me of two crackpot MLM schemes making the rounds in 2010. These “programs” were known as NarcThatCar and Data Network Affiliates. Both schemes bizarrely reimagined mass invasions of privacy as exciting new products — and then wrapped pyramid schemes around their creations for good measure.
The schemes worked approximately like this: Armies of MLMers would hit neighborhoods across the land and write down the license-plate numbers of cars parked on streets and the addresses at which they were parked. They’d also hit the parking lots of grocery stores, big-box retailers, restaurant chains, pharmacies, doctors’ offices, bookstores, libraries, theaters, video-rental companies and universities.
All of this information would be entered in a database, purportedly to assist the AMBER Alert system of locating abducted children. AMBER Alert purportedly would get the data for free, but clientele purportedly including banks and companies in the business of repossessing cars during the height of the recession would pay for it.
MLM recruits were told to try not to attract too much attention while writing down all these plate numbers. They also were falsely told they were helping the U.S. Department of Homeland Security track terrorists.
Yes. MLM went in the spy business, using the pretext that it was one’s patriotic duty to monitor license plates and that enormous profits would flow from neighbors keeping track of automobiles in their neighborhoods. As the story was told, the database could tell the police what cars were parked at a fixed address at the time a child was snatched. This information then could be compared to the next sighting of the tag as entered in the database from a different fixed address, thus purportedly providing clues as to where the kidnapped child was being held.
If anyone had the temerity to raise a stink or even make a polite inquiry about why a stranger was recording their plate number in a parking lot, the recorders were trained to respond that no one had anything to fear if they hadn’t done anything wrong.
Both Narc and DNA were filled with such Orwellian outrageousness (and were such obvious pyramid schemes) that reporters began to hound both “programs.” The Better Business Bureau was subjected to bizarre attacks from the MLM sphere for raising questions about the “programs,” and some MLMers got the idea that the reporters, rather than the companies pulling off obvious scams, should be investigated.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels couldn’t have imagined greater allies than the MLM Stepfordians.
By 2012, MLMer and Zeek Rewards Ponzi-scheme figure Robert Craddock got the bright idea of putting himself in the opposition-research business — the opposition being reporters who wrote anything bad about Zeek. One of his targets was Zeek critic K. Chang, who briefly lost control over his HubPages site because Craddock had filed a complaint alleging copyright infringement, trademark infringement and libel.
K. Chang eventually prevailed, but not without experiencing downtime while the Zeek scheme was still gathering cash. The SEC eventually shut down Zeek, alleging that it was operating a fraud that had gathered $850 million.
Still sensing there was money to be made in the MLM cottage business of harassing reporters or soliciting dirt on them, Craddock eventually established a website known as “InternetClowns” that purportedly would serve all MLM firms. The supposed “clowns” included the PP Blog and BehindMLM.com, two sites that report on MLM frauds.
At the beginning of this column I noted that perhaps MLM could learn something from the experience of Uber in the subject area of tracking reporters and soliciting dirt on them. It strikes me now that maybe it should be the other way around: that Uber could learn from MLM.
One of the things Uber could learn is not to do anything MLMish if it wants to maintain its standing as a venture-capital darling.
By MLMish, we mean something crazy and outlandish such as tracking reporters, bringing in opposition-research teams to menace them and telling a group of people in the Second City that you’re using your “God Machine” to spy on a venture capitalist in the Big Apple.
And perhaps Uber also might want to avoid the most recent practice associated with “defenders” of outrageous MLM “programs” and HYIP schemes.
This would be the practice of trying to smear critics by using online forums to plant false stories about critics’ ties to Islamic terrorist groups and otherwise attacking human beings based on their Muslim faith.
Uber can read all about that one on RealScam.com, a site that concerns itself with international mass-marketing fraud. RealScam.com currently is being hectored by a person known as “Happy Customer” who is making outrageous claims against critics, filing bogus reports at RipoffReport and trying to keyword stuff the forum with words such as “Islamic Forum” and “haven for Islamic Terrorists !”
Happy Customer’s mind appears to be telling him (used presumptively) that, if only he can use the words “Islamic” and “Muslim” enough times — while mixing in words such as “terrorist” and “terrorism” — the eavesdropping and text-reading National Security Agency might just buzz by and turn off RealScam’s server.
Study the strange MLM circus, Uber. What you’ll learn should be more than enough to help make most unwanted headlines go away.
BitClub Network apparently has found its first crop of 500 suckers willing to throw down $3,599 to become “Founders.”
A link from a new post on Twitter suggests BitClub Network now is trying to line up 500 new suckers who’ll purportedly earn half of what the core group was promised. The new suckers will be called Founder[s]2.”
Buy-in pricing for the Founders2 positions wasn’t immediately clear. BitClub Network is a purported mining-pool “community” with a Bitcoin theme.
From the claim on the page linked from Twitter (italics added):
“If you came to the party late you still have another chance to be in the second wave of Bitclub Network Founders. This group will split an additional 0.5% of total mining profits paid out to the next 500 members who become a ‘Bitclub Network Founder2.’”
A week ago today, some existing BitClub Network promoters were trawling for suckers to let 100 percent of their money ride in the “program” by setting the repurchase scheme to 100 percent. BitClub Network’s repurchase scheme is similar to so-called “80/20” programs seen in Ponzi schemes such as Zeek Rewards.
BitClub Network is being promoted by some former Zeek members, including clawback defendant T. LeMont Silver.
In the affiliate pitch accessible today through Twitter, the claim was made that BitClub Network participants had to exercise patience because what the “program” is doing is like “building a home-made space ship to explore outer space.”
Though not Bitcoin-themed, an emerging “program” known as The Achieve Community also is trading on a community theme. As is the case with BitClub Network, Achieve Community members are encouraged to let a percentage of their money ride.
A video promo for Achieve Community viewed by the PP Blog today suggested that $50 plowed into the scheme could return $25,600 in 170 days or so by employing a 50-percent rollover strategy.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This post originally was published at 12:40 a.m. ET on Nov. 3. It will continue to appear at the top of the PP Blog for a while, but new stories will appear below it . . .
Dear Readers,
What a long, strange, occasionally exhilarating and sometimes frightening ride it has been. This letter celebrates the PP Blog’s 2,500th post with WordPress. Our first was 2,152 days ago, excluding today’s date. Some of you have been with us every step of the way since December 2008.
Many of you have shared your knowledge in our Comments sections and helped shape our thinking. This has helped us create a better publication, one that frames issues in context and provides analysis. Readers get breaking news, situational news and opinion.
One thing became evident early on: the serial scammers and willfully blind hucksters hate the coverage and hold the analysis in particular contempt. As our story total increased from dozens to hundreds and, now, to 2,500, we’ve been able to point readers to more and more content that helps them see patterns and understand things in a fuller context, a context that is more meaningful to them.
We often use both the current story and the Comments thread below the story to point readers to internal and external sources of information that create “lightbulb” moments. For example, lots of readers probably didn’t understand how similar Zeek Rewards was to AdSurfDaily until we helped them understand.
There have been days in which so much news was breaking that we couldn’t get to it all or had to present capsules. On days we do not publish, we’re typically researching and reporting on a story that will be published later. Our deep editorial well remains available 24/7/365, even on days we do not add new content.
The PP Blog started by covering the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme. It seemed for a while that it could never get stranger than ASD, but of course it has. The strangeness alone is worrisome. It is one of the reasons we’ve kept our nose to the grindstone. This amount of disconnect and the serial nature of the schemes speak to a growing menace.
These schemes rob people of freedom, shatter dreams, create friction between nations and lead to situations in which the dark forces of criminality gain economic power.
Because “sovereign citizens” made their presence known in in ASD and other unqualified debacles, we worked coverage of national-security issues into our coverage of securities fraud.
Affinity fraud often accompanies Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes. People of faith are constant targets. So are people whose first language may be one other than English. People frequently are targeted by race or ethnicity, often by magnetic personalities within the specific groups. It has become clear to us that people also are being targeted based on their political views.
If you’re inclined to believe that being a traditional Republican or Democrat very well might be a sign of mental illness or that the antichrist or closeted Nazis and Communists are running things in the corridors of power, rest assured that a Ponzi schemer or securities fraudster has fashioned an offer designed to appeal to your prejudices.
The PP Blog always has been free. It helps educate, inform and enlighten readers, including victims of Ponzi and pyramid schemes who’ve been reduced to ruin and spend their lives consumed by worry.
It should not be that way in America – or any nation.
We received a note the other day from a person who lives in an African nation that knows poverty. Some individuals in this country thankfully see themselves as up-and-coming entrepreneurs who not only will improve their own lives, but the lives of their family members and fellow citizens.
This individual thanked us for our coverage of TelexFree, but reminded us that the fallout went way beyond the Latino and Portuguese communities. We’ve known for some time that we’re building a small audience in Africa. Our audiences in South America also are building. The first time we noticed this was when we became the first publication in the world to confirm through a government official that TelexFree, which had a presence in Brazil, was under investigation in its home state of Massachusetts.
These hideous schemes are affecting people globally. The security situation they create is untenable. The local danger is that they turn family and friends against each other while at once harming local economies. Because murky forces are at work and marriages between organized crime and political extremists can occur, the schemes pose a threat to international security.
Today, to mark our 2,500th post, we’re asking readers who believe in what this Blog is doing to take out a one-year subscription for either $25, $50, $75 or $100.
At the same time, we’re trying to have a little fun with this. You see, the $25 fee constitutes a penny a post for our current editorial well of 2,500 articles. There’s a pull-down menu in case you decide you’d like personally to value the editorial well at 2 cents a post ($50), 3 cents a post ($75) or 4 cents a post ($100).
The subscription will renew in a year.
Friends, it hasn’t been easy. You’ll be helping me personally. And you’ll be helping a Blog that publishes an average of 416 stories a year and keeps matters important to readers a bookmark away remain free for other readers.
My best to my longtime readers of goodwill, whether you become a yearly subscriber in any category or not. No one who is experiencing financial pain should sign up for a year’s subscription, even if you have the money right now.
Some readers have inquired about subscriptions. I have thought about it for a long time, but always have been concerned that subscriptions could lead to lower readership. Lower readership is not a good thing, especially when scams are spreading virally on the Internet.
This “penny-a-post” idea to commemorate our 2,500th post has helped me scotch the very real concern about affecting readership. There will be no paywall. The readers who subscribe will be helping keep the Blog free for those who cannot afford to subscribe and for those who simply choose not to.
My sincere thank you for your continued interest in the PP Blog.
“Secure Investment lured customers by creating its own good reputation and by publishing a seemingly successful trading record on its elaborate website. It was all a lie. The company’s claims to have offices and a large staff were also false. At least some of its so-called customer testimonials were actually delivered by actors.” — Bloomberg News, Nov. 13, 2014
From promo for ‘Secure Investment’ on YouTube.
Dear Readers,
We’re about to provide you a link to a Bloomberg News story on a purported Forex-trading entity known as “Secure Investment.” Get ready: You’re about to read the maximum tale of how a nation’s security and faith in the legitimate marketplace can be undermined by criminals (or worse).
We did a quick check. Sure enough, Secure Investment had a presence on Ponzi boards such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup before it disappeared in May, possibly with $1 billion or more. At first glance, the Ponzi-board penetration appears not to have been particularly deep. Still there are “I got paid” posts, including one dated June 18, 2013. It says, “*** Great News ! *** You have successfully received money from a registered SolidTrust Pay member! Keep this email as your receipt.”
The purported SolidTrustPay sender’s email address was from Yahoo, not from the SecureInvestment.com web domain.
SolidTrustPay operates from Canada and has been associated with more scams than one has time to count.
Congressional investigations over Secure Investment are a virtual certainty. The SEC, just yesterday, announced that yet-another scam trading on social media had plundered investors with a fantastical narrative about “1.5% daily returns for 100 days” and accompanying artifices to pull it off — things such as fake business addresses, fake names, fake domain registrations. That “program” was called “Profits Paradise” and allegedly was operating out of India.
“Profits Paradise” also had a presence on the Ponzi boards.
In terms of fantastical constructions, Secure Investment crushes Profits Paradise. As things stand, persons or persons unknown have consumed wealth on an epic scale.
Read the Bloomberg News story, which is being widely quoted by the financial media today. A YouTube promo for Secure Investment appears below. Please note the link to the promo is featured in the very first MoneyMakerGroup post about Secure Investment. The MoneyMakerGroup category was “MoneyMaking: Markets, Real Estate, Banking, and Investments » Forex » Technical & Fundamental Analysis, Daytrading, & Other Strategies.”
From an SEC exhibit in the Profits Paradise complaint.
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: (Updated 9:33 p.m. ET U.S.A.) The SEC has charged two Indian nationals with running an HYIP scheme known as “Profits Paradise” that reached into the United States and offered “extraordinary” returns of up to 480 percent in 240 days, plus “compounding.”
As is typical in HYIP schemes, the “program” gained a head of steam on social media, the SEC charged. (A quick Google search shows that ProfitsParadise also had a presence on well-known Ponzi forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup.)
ProfitsParadise operated between April 2013 and early February of 2014 and offered “guaranteed” payouts, the SEC alleged.
The scam “invited investors to deposit funds that supposedly would be pooled with money from other investors and traded on foreign exchanges as well as in stocks and commodities,” the SEC alleged.
Pitches on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were “pervasive” and resulted in investors being exploited, the SEC charged.
The named respondents are Pankaj Srivastava of Mumbai and Nataraj Kavuri of Hyderabad. They also are accused of promoting the scam through Google Plus.
Srivastava “used the pseudonym “Paul Allen,” the SEC charged. Kavuri called himself “Nathan Jones.”
It was not immediately clear from the complaint whether the HYIP scammers intended to trade on the name of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. HYIP schemes, however, are infamous for trading on the names of prominent individuals.
“Srivastava and Kavuri used excessive secrecy in their effort to swindle investors through social media outreach and a website that attracted as many as 4,000 visitors per day,” said Stephen Cohen, associate director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Our investigation stopped the constant solicitations once the website disappeared, and successfully tracked down the identities of the perpetrators behind those fraudulent solicitations.”
Bogus names also were used to register websites, the SEC charged.
Srivastava caused the Profits Paradise website to be registered through GoDaddy in the name of “Jane Roe” of Seattle, the SEC charged.
“Jane Roe is a fictitious name, and there is no connection between Profits Paradise and the dwelling at 300 Boylston Ave E., in Seattle, Washington, or its residents,” the SEC charged. “The telephone number provided to GoDaddy is a toll-free number for a conference call center that is unrelated to Profits Paradise,” the SEC charged.
Meanwhile, a Gmail email address linked to the supposed Seattle street address was associated with IPs “located in India, not Seattle,” the SEC charged.
At the same time, the agency charged, “Kavuri disguised Profits Paradise’s physical location by providing the false ‘whois’ data, indicating that Profit Paradise’s operations were within the United States when they were not.”
From the SEC’s civil administrative complaint (italics added):
“The phony name and address served a dual purpose. In addition to concealing the fact that Srivastava and Kavuri were behind the Website, the domain name registration to Jane Roe at a Seattle address was meant to attract American investors. Additionally, to create the illusion that mainly American investors were visiting the Profits Paradise Website, Srivastava instructed the web designer to ensure that the ‘Alexa detail’ showed the Website’s ‘rank in the United States’ rather than its ‘rank in India.’ “Alexa” refers to a website (www.alexa.com) that ranks other websites, by country, based on the amount of Internet traffic directed to the website.”
Also typical of HYIP scams, payment processors such as Liberty Reserve, PerfectMoney and EgoPay were used. Dates cited in the SEC complaint suggest Profits Paradise opened its Liberty Reserve account just prior to federal prosecutors bringing criminal charges against Liberty Reserve in May 2013.
Srivastava, in 2005, worked for Quixtar.com in Minneapolis, but returned to India in 2007, the SEC said.
Read the SEC complaint, which alleges the Profits Paradise scheme also was “structured so that under certain conditions investors could never recover their principal investments.”
Affiliates of the BitClub Network “mining” scam have taken to Twitter today with news asserted to be glorious: Participants can leave 100 percent of their money in the “program.”
“The reason why you should consider setting all your bitclub network mining pool repurchases to 100% is the fact that you will build up your amount of bitclub network shares in those different bitclub network pools, hence the amount of bitcoins you will have in your bitclub network e-wallet [over time],” a website accessible through a Twitter link counsels. “What if like some experts claim the bitcoin price will go up to $10.000 a coin in a few years time? What if….?”
This, of course, is madness that trades on an appeal to greed. Ponzi schemes routinely use artifices such as this to stem the outflow of cash. The fewer cashout windows open to the masses, the better it is for the individual scammers and teams of scammers who race from fraud scheme to fraud scheme to fraud scheme.
BitClub Network is calling its artifice the “repurchase or recapitalization feature.” Even before planting the seed that good things would come to people who kept 100 percent in the system, the “program” appears to have forced members to make mandatory repurchases of between 30 percent and 50 percent, depending on which of three purported “pools” they purportedly owned “shares” in.
In addition to being another marker of a scam in progress, the “repurchase or recapitalization feature” also may suggest BitClub Network already is having severe cash-flow troubles. Early adopters already could have plundered the system, and headlines about BitCoin-themed scams and a criminal prosecution in New York sure aren’t helping.
Some members of the $850 million Zeek Rewards Ponzi- and pyramid scheme are pushing BitClub Network. Advertised buy-in sums have ranged from $500 to $3,500. Recruits are told they’ll earn for 1,000 days. Precisely who is operating BitClub Network is unknown.
Because that is unknown, it’s also unknown if members could recover anything when the BitClub Network train derails.
UPDATED 8:42 A.M. ET NOV. 9 U.S.A. Many Americans will have only a vague recollection of her name. Others will not be able to place her at all. But they’ll remember cases with which she has been involved.
One of those involved the prosecution of New York City police officers, including Justin Volpe, implicated in the brutal and unthinkable attack against Haitian immigrant Abner Louima in 1997. Americans of all races and creeds were infuriated at the news cops had assaulted Louima — and then hatched a coverup. The assault and the efforts to hide it embarrassed police agencies and prosecutors in New York and across the land because law enforcement is supposed to safeguard and champion civil rights, not violate and dispose of them.
The White House announced yesterday that President Obama today will nominate Loretta Lynch, a member of the team that brought justice to one of America’s most famous crime victims, to replace Eric Holder as Attorney General of the United States. Holder, in September, announced that he is stepping down. Lynch currently is the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. Local residents think of her as the U.S. Attorney for Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Nassau and Suffolk Counties on Long Island.
If confirmed by the Senate, Lynch will become the first African American female Attorney General in U.S. history. She was born in North Carolina 55 years ago.
Here are two statements from Lynch that have appeared on the PP Blog:
“As alleged in the complaint, the defendant came to this country intent on conducting a terrorist attack on U.S. soil and worked with single-minded determination to carry out his plan. The defendant thought he was striking a blow to the American economy. He thought he was directing confederates and fellow believers.” — U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch, Eastern District of New York, Oct. 17, 2012
In 2011, Lynch’s office became involved in the prosecution of Vincent P. McCrudden. He was accused of threatening to to kill 47 current or former market regulators from the SEC, FINRA and others, and of publishing an “Execution List” on his website. McCrudden, later convicted, allegedly also encouraged others to kill regulators.
Here is what Lynch said when the charges were brought:
“In this day and age, there is no such thing as an idle threat. Those who threaten injury or worse to the lives of others will be promptly investigated and vigorously prosecuted.” — U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch, Eastern District of New York, Jan. 14, 2011
McCrudden’s arrest occurred just five days after a gunman in an unrelated incident had opened fire at an Arizona constituent event hosted by U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Giffords was critically wounded in the attack. U.S. District Judge John Roll and five others were shot and killed.
David Alan Topping. Source: Brunswick County mugshot.
A North Carolina teenager who allegedly swindled senior citizens in an investment scam known as Stark Innovations was arrested yesterday, North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine F. Marshall said.
Bond for the suspect, David Alan Topping, 19, of Oak Island, was set at $250,000. The Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office assisted with the case.
“I am glad the citizens of Brunswick County will no longer be victimized by this individual’s deceit,” said Brunswick County Sheriff John Ingram V.
Topping was charged with felony securities fraud and felony solicitation to obtain property by false pretense. He also was charged with a misdemeanor count of the latter.
The scam gathered more than $100,000 investigators said.
Investigators said that Topping already was on probation for previous thefts. Those cases “involved felony convictions related to larceny and motor vehicle theft,” and Topping did not tell his Stark Innovations investors about them.
Stark Innovations purported to be a company that “bought and shipped electronic consumer goods in bulk from overseas and sold them at a markup in the U.S.,” Marshall’s office said.
“Investors told investigators that Topping said they could earn 6.5-percent interest per month with no risk to their principal,” Marshall’s office said.
The scheme allegedly traded on Facebook and LinkedIn, investigators said.
Scams regularly use social media to build heads of steam, according to regulators.
“Calling our Securities Division would have revealed that Mr. Topping was never licensed to sell securities, and that in itself should always raise a huge red flag for potential investors,” Marshall said.
A Facebook site that appears to be associated with Stark Innovations implies that the company was headquartered in a skyscraper in a bustling city. Other photos, however, suggest that Stark Innovations was renovating a trailer and turning it into a headquarters.
“Hard at work renovating out [sic] new building!” the Facebook site roars in a post dated Aug. 27. “Will be completed in three months! Come in and talk to us about investing with the highest interest rate anywhere!”
The site also prompts visitors to “Check out our newly designed site for Stark Card! The only card you can earn a 2.12% monthly interest rate.”
“We believe that among Mr. Topping’s victims were retirees, some of whom invested tens of thousands of dollars in his scheme that they may well never get back,” Marshall said.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In a story dated today, BehindMLM.com has broken down claims made in a recent video in which Better-Living Global Marketing (BLGM) figure Luke Teng appears. The potential criminality at BLGM, purportedly based in Hong Kong, not only is alarming, it is stunning. Even more disconcerting is the level of disconnect surrounding the scheme, which had a Zeek Rewards-like business model and purportedly was in the penny-auction business . . .
Hang on to your hats! There could be an active MLM HYIP Ponzi scheme that is even larger than TelexFree, which allegedly reached across national borders to take in $1.2 billion before collapsing in April 2014. The alleged TelexFree sum would rival the epic Scott Rothstein Ponzi and racketeering scheme in Florida and potentially would make TelexFree the fifth largest Ponzi scheme of all time, regardless of the Ponzi business model used. (Like the shrimp delicacies memorably recounted by “Bubba Blue” in the movie “Forrest Gump,” Ponzi schemes come in many forms.)
In 2012, prior to the actions against TelexFree by various law-enforcement agencies, PonziTracker.com rated Rothstein’s caper as the 4th largest of all time in terms of investor losses, estimated at $1.4 billion. Only the Bernard Madoff (est. $17.3 billion), Allen Stanford (between $4.5 billion and $6 billion) and Tom Petters schemes (est. $3.7 billion) were larger.
BehindMLM.com is reporting today that BLGM’s Luke Teng claims to have set a “world record” for intake in his particular sphere of MLM.
If the claim attributed to Teng is correct — that BLGM has taken in $3.3 billion — it could blow both Rothstein and TelexFree out of the water and put BLGM in the same Ponzi seas as Tom Petters and his $3.7 billion scheme. Put another way, BLGM could be the fourth-largest Ponzi scheme of all time, regardless of form.)
If an online Ponzi scheme operating across national borders (including the borders of the United States) can put $3.3 billion on the table in two or so years of operation and creep up on Petters, are we on the cusp of the once unthinkable? Could MLM HYIP schemes rival or even eclipse Stanford and Madoff?
At $1.2 billion, TelexFree already has created a litigation quagmire that rivals the quagmires surrounding the Madoff, Stanford, Petters and Rothstein schemes. BLGM could go the same way. Both BLGM and TelexFree even could eclipse the Top 4 in terms of litigation and logistical nightmares, because millions of victims from dozens and dozens of nations are apt to exist. That condition was not present in the Madoff, Stanford, Petters and Rothstein schemes.
Zeek Rewards — the sixth-largest Ponzi scheme in history, according to the 2012 PonziTracker list — created a litigation monster that could be surpassed by both BLGM and TelexFree.
And yet willfully blind MLM hucksters and serial scammers still are pushing cross-border fraud schemes. The numbers alone show that the world never has seen such felonious self-indulgence at the street level of dealers:
Zeek. Collapsed in 2012 after less than two years of operation. Victims: 800,000 to 1 million (est.). Dollar volume: $897 million. Source for dollar volume: U.S. court filings.
TelexFree. Collapsed in April 2014 after operating for a little better than two years. Victims: 700,000 to 1.5 million (est.). Dollar volume: $1.2 billion. Source: TelexFree figures cited in Massachusetts Securities Division action in April 2014.
BLGM: Operational, but reportedly experiencing cash-flow problem and not paying out or making selective payouts. Victims: Unknown number, but may rival Zeek and TelexFree. Dollar volume: $3.3 billion. Source: Luke Teng video cited by BehindMLM.com.
A Rippling Nightmare
The numbers are hardly the sole concern. As Behind MLM.com reported today, citing remarks made by Luke Teng in the BLGM video (italics added):
[8:13] Some leaders are still making good money. Because the leaders are taking cash from the new members and they use it to give them ecash.
So, that’s still a way for you to make money.
Our take: If true, this is beyond horrifying. It is alleged TelexFree created conditions that permitted members to transact business outside of the system, and some members even may have created an exceptionally dangerous black market for TelexFree’s earning units, which were known as “AdCentrals.”
As the PP Blog reported on March 24, 2014, an ad offering TelexFree AdCentrals at a firesale price appeared on an auction site. Viewers were encouraged to buy a bundle of 550 AdCentrals for $16,760. The asking price purportedly reflected a discount of $8,190 (33 percent), and the purchaser purportedly would earn $110,000 from TelexFree in the next year.
As the PP Blog reported at the time (italics added):
. . . there were schemes within schemes in a tangled web of domestic and international deception that featured dozens of bank accounts, shell companies and various fronts for money-laundering enterprises, including companies purportedly in businesses such as real estate and car washes.
The scheme was so corrupt, according to court filings, that some investors were told that, in order to leave the program whole, they had to recruit new investors, have the new investors pay them directly — and use the proceeds from the new investors to “recover” their initial outlays.
In short, if you wanted to recover your EMG/Finanzas money, you had to steal your way out of the “program” by gathering new cash from incoming recruits and keeping it.
Some of the money in the EMG/FinanzasForex case allegedly was tracked to the narcotics trade.
Based on the BehindMLM.com report, it also appears that BLGM may be trying work a second form of Ponzi fraud into its existing scheme. This would appear to involve an adverting rotator of some sort, something consistent with the AdSurfDaily MLM Ponzi scheme in 2008. In 2012, while sharing promoters in common with Zeek, a “program” known as JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid appeared to be trying to transition from a straight-line HYIP fraud into a fraud named “ProfitClicking” that would introduce an “advertising” function. Part or all of the earlier JSS/JBP fraud appears later to have morphed into something called “ClickPaid.”
So, in some ways, BLGM could be modeling ASD, JSS/JBP and other reload schemes to sustain its Ponzi deception.
Teng also may be channeling a notable delusion of now-jailed ASD Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin.
Indeed, according to the BehindMLM.com report, Teng is suggesting he may start his own bank.
Before Bowdoin was arrested in 2010, he claimed ASD was looking at acquiring an interest in a bank in South America and creating its own payment processor.
BULLETIN: CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, has issued a warning and suspended the trading of an HYIP “program” known as TureProfit that appears to be operating as both a macro- and a microscam while using the name of Bitcoin.
