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Accused Identity Thief May Have Had User ID At TalkGold Ponzi Forum, KrebsOnSecurity Reports; Hieu Minh Ngo, A Vietnamese National, Jailed In United States After Plot ‘To Steal And Sell’ Personally Identifiable Information From More Than 500,000 Individuals, Feds Say

Screen shot/highlights by PP Blog.

EDITOR’S NOTE: KrebsOnSecurity is written by Brian Krebs, who worked as a reporter for the Washington Post from 1995 to 2009. Our thanks to a PP Blog reader who brought our attention to information highlighted in the story below. Although the PP Blog is focusing on the TalkGold angle, the KrebsOnSecurity report covers much more, including how a U.S. credit-reporting agency potentially was doing business with a credit-card scammer and forum huckster hiding behind a proxy and wiring money from Singapore. It is highly recommended reading. Two links to the report appear in the story below.

An individual who used the handle “hieupc” on the “scammer-friendly” TalkGold forum may have peddled stolen Social Security numbers at the forum and appears also to have been in the business of defacing websites and “even attacking the Web site of his former university in New Zealand after the school kicked him out for alleged credit card fraud,” KrebsOnSecurity reports.

Hieu Minh Ngo, 24, a Vietnamese national, now is jailed in the United States. He was charged in a sealed, 15-count indictment in November 2012 with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, substantive wire fraud, conspiracy to commit identity fraud, substantive identity fraud, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit access device fraud, and substantive access device fraud, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Oct. 18.

It may be a case of an offshore fraudster who erroneously believed that U.S. agents and prosecutors couldn’t touch him and grew increasingly confident that oceans and land masses that separated him from the United States would insulate him from arrest. In its remarkable story, however, KrebsOnSecurity is reporting that U.S. federal agents “set up a phony business deal to lure Ngo out of Vietnam and into Guam, an unincorporated territory of the United States in the western Pacific Ocean.”

Ngo was arrested when he arrived in Guam, KrebsOnSecurity reports.

Citing the indictment, the Justice Department said, “[F]om 2007 through 2012, Ngo and other members of the conspiracy acquired, offered for sale, sold, and/or transferred to others packages of [Personally Identifiable Information] for more than 500,000 individuals.” (Bolding added by PP Blog.)

The User ID of “hieupc” appears to have been formed at TalkGold in June 2007. (See screen shot above.) In October 2010, a TalkGold post attributed to “hieupc” offered for sale the Social Security numbers and dates of birth (at least) of Americans.

If “hieupc” is Ngo, it could mean he was trawling TalkGold as a teen-ager and seeking to recruit HYIP scammers as customers for his identity-theft ring. Such an approach conceivably could enable fellow criminals to join HYIP scams under assumed names while providing them a means of accessing U.S. bank accounts, potentially setting the stage for them to steal money from the accounts and even pass tax liabilities for HYIP program “earnings” to unknowing victims. TalkGold is populated by serial HYIP fraudsters and willfully blind promoters of online fraud schemes. Over the years, such schemes have led to DDoS attacks on the sites of fraud schemes (and sites that report on them) and repeated claims of account hackings.

Here is part of the “hieupc” TalkGold pitch (italics added):

OUR PLANS
Plan For Tester – 6 Credits – $4
Plan $10 = 15 credits
Plan $20 = 35 credits
Plan $30 = 60 credits
Plan $50 = 110 credits
Plan $100 = 230 credits
Reseller Plan $500 – 2000 Credits
Reseller Plan $1000 – 5000 Credits
No Hit = No Lost Your Credit.
SSN US: 3 credits, DOB US: 3 credits Please register an account to buy credits. Thanks

Such packages of Personally Identifiable Information, the Justice Department said, are known as “fullz” and “typically included a person’s name, date of birth, social security number, bank account number and bank routing number.”

And Ngo had at least one co-conspirator, according to the now-unsealed grand-jury indictment filed in U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire. In the indictment, the co-conspirator is identified as “JOHN DOE ONE,” also known as “rr2518” and “Wan Bai.”

Here is the first paragraph from the indictment, which is available through a link at the KrebsOnSecurity website:

Defendant HIEU MINH NGO (“NGO”), also known by online monikers that include “hieupc” and “traztaz659,” resided in New Zealand and Vietnam. He is one of the control persons and administrators for the websites “findget.me” and “superget.info,” and its associated data.

During the 2007-2012 time period, “Ngo and other members of the conspiracy acquired, offered for sale, sold, and/or transferred to others stolen payment card data, which typically included the victim account holder’s payment card number, expiration date, card verification value number, account holder name, account holder address and phone number,” the Justice Department said in its Oct. 18 statement.

Meanwhile, the indictment notes that an “undercover agent located in New Hampshire” was involved in the probe that led to Ngo’s arrest and that the agent was instructed by scammers “to open an account with ‘Liberty Reserve’ in order to engage in any financial transactions with them.”

In May 2013, federal prosecutors in New York alleged that Liberty Reserve had engaged in a $6 billion money-laundering conspiracy. The U.S. Secret Service is known to be involved in both the Liberty Reserve and Ngo identity-theft probes. Liberty Reserve was popular among HYIP fraudsters and other scammers.

TalkGold is not referenced in the Ngo indictment. But the forum’s name appears in other court filings as a place from which online Ponzi and fraud schemes are promoted. Just five of the hundreds of recent (or relatively recent) scams promoted at the forum — Zeek Rewards, Profitable Sunrise, AdSurfDaily, PathwayToProsperity and Legisi — are believed to have generated receipts approaching or exceeding $1 billion. (Zeek Rewards = $600 million; ProfitableSunrise = unknown tens of millions; AdSurfDaily = $119 million; PathwayToProsperity = $70 million; Legisi = $72 million.)

Oct 22, 2013
MORE FROM THE MLM LA-LA LAND PLAYBOOK: Former ASD, NewGNI, Club Asteria, Zeek And Profitable Sunrise Pitchman ‘Ken Russo’ Coins New Acronym (NAG); Paul Darby Plants Seed FBI Backs His ‘YouGetPaidFast’ Program — AFTER Trading On Name And Likeness Of President Of The United States

Paul Darby with “President Obama,” apparently on Inauguration Day in 2009 after the U.S. Secret Service infomed the MLM world through the filing of the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case that trading on the name and image of the President of the United States might not be a good idea.

UPDATED 8:37 A.M. EDT (OCT. 21, U.S.A.) Former AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin is continuing to serve 78 months in federal prison at the age of 78 — in part because he borrowed liberally from the MLM scammer’s playbook and planted the seed that the President of the United States (then George W. Bush) backed his “program.” Some MLM prospects joined the ASD fraud scheme — a $119 million Ponzi popularized in part on the Ponzi boards and broken up by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008 — based on pitches highlighting Bowdoin’s purported ties to the White House.

Bush left office on Jan. 20, 2009. Barack Obama then became President.

Records now strongly suggest that Obama was President for only minutes when he became an unwitting salesman for an MLM or affiliate scheme. Indeed, an online pitch featuring “Obama” is dated Jan. 20, 2009, Inauguration Day in the United States and the date upon which Obama took over from Bush.

A Blog on Google’s free Blogspot platform made this headline claim on Jan. 20, 2009: “Barack Obama visits Unimax Services.”

The Blog, which remains online well into Obama’s second term that began on Jan. 20 of this year, features a knockoff of the Seal of the President of the United States. “Presidents Club,” it screams. Recruits for a “program” known as Net Millionaires Club apparently were accorded the title of Presidents — not of the United States, but of the “Unimax States.”

This is straight out of MLM or affiliate scheme La-La Land.

Paul Darby, who describes himself as “President of the Unimax Services Corporation” on the Blogspot site with the “Barack Obama visits Unimax Services” headline, is featured alongside a cardboard cutout of Obama in a video playing on the site. In the bizarre video, Darby bizarrely describes the cutout of Obama as the “featured guest” and suggests the Net Millionaries Club he’s promoting with the knockoff of the U.S. Presidential Seal is an “economic stimulus package.”

If you don’t go any farther than the headline — if you don’t take the time to view the video showing the Obama cutout — you could reasonably conclude that Obama actually visited Unimax Services and endorsed the “program.” Put another way, it’s a contemptible, backdoor way to use the Internet to turn the White House and the Commander-in-Chief into a spokesman for a highly dubious MLM or affiliate scheme.

If all of this seems altogether too much, altogether too bizarre, consider that the Secret Service, through the filing of the ASD Ponzi case in 2008, informed the MLM world that it wasn’t a good idea to go around trying to tie the President of the United States to your scheme. Next consider that the ASD scheme had its own form of a Darby-like Net Millionaries Club; the ASD version was multipronged and was called the “President’s Circle,” the “President’s Advisory Board” and “President’s Advisory Counsel.” Then consider that the Darby Blog — in January 2009, months after the ASD case had been filed — led with the “Barack Obama visits Unimax Services” headline on the date the President was inaugurated.

Did the President of the United States really visit Unimax Services, purveyors of the Net Millionaires Club? And did the White House somehow give Darby permission to alter the Seal of the President of the United States as a means of driving traffic to the “program? Did Paul Darby learn nothing from the ASD case?

But it gets worse . . .

Flash forward to 2013 (while considering that MLM schemes such as BidsThatGive and Lyoness also have tried to tie themselves to the U.S. Presidency or the Presidency of other countries), and you’ll find Darby as the braintrust behind yet another “program.” This one is called “YouGetPaidFast.”

Like ASD before it, YouGetPaidFast has a presence on the Ponzi boards. The new “program” appears to be a cash-gifting scheme. Ponzi-forum pitchman “Ken Russo,” previously of the ASD Ponzi scheme, the GNI and NewGNI Ponzi schemes, the Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme, the MPB Today pyramid scheme, the Club Asteria fraud scheme and the Profitable Sunrise fraud scheme, is helping lead the YouGetPaidFast charge.

“Ken Russo” appears even to have coined a new acronym to deflect attention away from the critical issues surrounding online fraud schemes. Critics, according to a post attributed to “Ken Russo” at the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, are “NAG[s].” NAG stands for “Naysayers Anonymous Group.”

According to “Ken Russo,” in apparent defense of YouGetPaidFast (italics added):

“The NAG (Naysayers Anonymous Group) are doing their best to deter you from joining an excellent program which offers one of the best opportunities I have ever seen for average folks to develop a substantial additional income stream. The NAG is relentless in their efforts to denigrate this fine program . . .”

This is occurring after the United States charged three women criminally in Connecticut for pushing a cash-gifting pyramid scheme. Two of the three women were sentenced earlier this year to lengthy terms in federal prison.

It also is occurring against the backdrop of bids earlier this year by enthusiasts of other Ponzi-board “programs” to trade on images of Obama and the prestige of the U.S. Presidency. Those “programs” included Empower Network and “Ultimate Power Profits.”

Unlike his Net Millionaires Club scheme, however, Darby’s YouGetPaidFast scheme appears no longer to be interested in trading on the name of the President of the United States and the seal of the President of the United States.

No, this time Darby is planting the seed that the FBI backs his “program.”

Darby is trotting out some of the same sort of MLM La-La Land talking points advanced by self-styled Zeek Rewards consultant Robert Craddock — that is, if you speak out against a “program,” you’re going to get sued and perhaps even paid a visit by its backers in law enforcement.

As BehindMLM.com is reporting today, Darby now claims to have FBI agents on “speed dial.” And at least one of those agents purportedly has vetted YouGetPaidFast and given it the all-clear.

Beyond that, according to the BehindMLM.com report, one or more Christian pastors is encouraging Darby to sue his detractors.

If that seems altogether too odd, consider that purported Christian pastors also are backing Empower Network and its purported “Badass” content, including the reported death by suicide of a top Herbalife MLM distributor.

David Wood, one of the top dogs at Empower Network, once advised critics to “Back the fuck down.”

“Be warned: BIG, SCARY WARNING,” Wood wrote. “I’m in the process of having lawyers research into whether or not we can sue the shit out of you.”

Whether Wood lost any pastors after the remark is unclear. At least one purported pastor encouraged Empower Network affiliates to overlook the nasty language and simply concentrate on making money. Pastors also backed the ASD Ponzi scheme and the Profitable Sunrise scheme — to cite just two of the MLM fraud schemes that recently have fleeced people of faith. ASD’s Bowdoin, before becoming a pitchman for a scheme known as OneX, once described himself as a Christian “money magnet.”

There is plenty of God talk in YouGetPaidFast, too.

Also see YouGetPaidFast thread at RealScam.com.

Oct 8, 2013
BREAKING BAD: Already-Convicted Narcotics/Firearms Felon With Peripheral Tie To AdSurfDaily And Zeek Ponzi Cases Pleads Guilty In ‘Commodities Online’ Caper After Saying He Approved Another Felon’s Request To Transfer More Than $5 Million To Mexico On Heels Of SEC Subpoena

EDITOR’S NOTE: In case you haven’t seen the series finale, there are no spoilers in this post. “Breaking Bad” ended its original run on AMC, and America said goodbye (or good riddance) to Walter White, the money-launderer next door, last night. The fictional White, of course, had been pursuing clandestine wealth, recklessly disregarding the safety of his family, destroying the lives of people who got in the way of his self-consuming greed and risking U.S. national security for five TV seasons. (At one point, he’d amassed at least $80 million in cash — enough to equip a small army of thugs or terrorists had they found its hiding place. Lo and behold, a group of neo-Nazi racketeers/murderers in part supplying Czech narcotics traffickers through a Houston-based methylamine supplier and upstart meth manufacturer did find it. Put another way, a white-supremacist group that openly shot at cops and murdered a bicycle-riding child to prevent him from tattling about the heist of a train carrying a meth precursor gained unwarranted economic power in the tens of millions of dollars.)

Like the world of narcotics traffickers, the HYIP world is filled with Walter White-types, the wire fraudsters and money-launderers next door. Beyond that, claims of great faith in God and miraculous money-making systems often accompany HYIP schemes. If you’re repeatedly joining murky HYIP schemes or pushing them, you’re engaging in the same sort of self-indulgence and self-deception chronicled each week on “Breaking Bad,” a program whose greed- and desperation-driven central character — Walter White — openly defies the U.S. government, helps crime thrive in the United States, Mexico and (now) Europe, sets the stage for political instability and for hostilities to develop among friendly nations, and rationalizes it as a necessary means of making money for his family.

The MLM equivalent of a Walter White could be in your upline or downline. Such a figure also could be very close to the money flow, staying out of sight but positioning himself to influence or even extort the public face of the scheme.

White broke bad when he morphed from a mild-mannered, noble but financially struggling chemistry teacher and family man into a brutal and conniving meth kingpin after his cancer diagnosis — on the theory that manufacturing and selling meth would help him pile up some cash to provide for his family after his death. Bodies in Mexico and the United States have piled up around him ever since, including the bodies of 167 people who perished when two planes collided over Albuquerque after an air-traffic controller who couldn’t concentrate on work accidentally directed them into each other because he’d been reduced to emotional rubble by his daughter’s drug-related death. (She asphyxiated on her own vomit; the airplane death toll in Albuquerque was only one less than the real-life Oklahoma City domestic-terrorist attack in 1995, which killed 168 when the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed by Timothy McVeigh.)

Another body was that of White’s own brother-in-law, a DEA agent murdered by a neo-Nazi White had hired to kill his business partner (and onetime chemistry student) Jesse Pinkman, the boyfriend of the woman who drown in her own puke. Yet-another body (actually a body part) was that of a DEA informant’s head mounted on a turtle after being severed by a Mexican cartel to send a message. The head and turtle were booby-trapped with explosives that detonated, killing a DEA agent. Still-another body was that of Gus Fring, a Chilean national, New Mexico drug kingpin and onetime White boss who laundered funds through chicken restaurants, pretended to be a supporter of the DEA and was killed by a wheelchair bomb planted by White in the nursing home in which Fring’s enemy Hector Salamanca, a onetime cartel enforcer, resided.

White’s form of money-laundering was the classic car wash. But the writers easily could have provided him a different front, perhaps that of respected teacher who’d gravitated to the commodities field and relied on MLM-style pitchmen and boiler rooms to drum up business for the side operation and help clean up the cash.

** _______________________________ **

James C. Howard III

Court documents in the Commodities Online Ponzi caper describe “purported” purchases of “iron ore” and “related equipment” by the Florida-based firm in Mexico. The documents also point out that the enterprise was led by two individuals previously convicted of narcotics crimes in the United States and that more than $5 million mysteriously was wired to “accounts in Mexico” in March 2011 after one of the felons approved the wiring “directions” of the other — this after the first felon had received an SEC subpoena and the second had found out about it.

Separately, the court-appointed receiver in the case says that, “after substantial investigation, including extensive interviews, depositions, and on-site investigation conducted both in the United States and Mexico, the Receiver concluded that the Defendants had no recoverable iron ore or related equipment in Mexico.”

What they did have in Mexico, if anything, remains unclear. Also unclear is how much of the money sent to Mexico will be recoverable

More than two years after the SEC moved against Commodities Online, the precise nature of its business remains murky. As noted above, one of the things that is known is that two of the firm’s managers were associated with narcotics earlier in their lives and had criminal records for felonies and and yet somehow had managed to become investment executives.

Now, one of those felons — James Clark Howard III — has pleaded guilty to mail- and wire-fraud conspiracy for his role in the Commodities Online scam.

And, according to Howard’s proffer in the criminal side of the case, he approved the “directions” of fellow felon Louis N. Gallo III to wire millions of dollars to Mexico after Howard had been subpoenaed by the SEC.

Gallo was in Mexico, according to the proffer — and that’s an oddity because he was on U.S. federal probation at the time. The Sun Sentinel newspaper reported in 2012 that “Gallo was sentenced in 2008 in New Jersey for bank fraud, intent to distribute cocaine and transmitting a threat to injure.”

And, according to the proffer, Howard was one of the controllers of an enterprise known as SSH2 Acquisitions Inc., which has been sued amid allegations it, too, was conducting a Ponzi scheme. Howard also has been implicated in a separate Ponzi scheme targeting Haitian-Americans in Florida.

Terralynn Hoy, who has not been accused of wrongdoing, is listed in Nevada as a onetime director of SSH2. SSH2 sued Howard, alleging he was conducting a Ponzi scheme.

Hoy earlier had been a cheerleader for AdSurfDaily, which proved to be a $119 million Ponzi scheme. After that, she became a cheerleader for AdViewGlobal, a 1-percent-a-day Ponzi scheme federal prosecutors linked to ASD President Andy Bowdoin, now serving a 78-month sentence in federal prison for the ASD scam. Hoy later was listed by Zeek Rewards as an “employee.” In August 2012, the SEC described Zeek as a $600 million Ponzi and pyramid scheme.

Bowdoin, like Howard, was a convicted felon, according to court records.

AdViewGlobal launched in 2009, even as ASD was the subject of a major federal investigation. Zeek, whose business model strongly resembled the models of ASD and AVG, launched after both ASD and AVG had collapsed. With two convicted felons linked to the narcotics business at the helm, Commodities Online appears to have gathered more than $20 million.

Sep 30, 2013
MODERN MLM PR: TelexFree Rep’s Blog On Loss Of Payment-Processing Firm: ‘We Killed Them’

The FaithSloan Blog bizarrely announces that TelexFree has “killed” GPG, a payment processor.

If continuing to recruit during multiple pyramid-scheme probes even as a judge and prosecutor reportedly had been threatened in Brazil with death were not enough, another MLM PR disaster is unfolding: The Blog of Faith Sloan, late of Zeek Rewards and Noobing, an HYIP Ponzi scheme that ripped off people with hearing impairments, wants TelexFree members to know why the alleged pyramid scheme no longer is using Global Payroll Gateway (GPG).

“We killed them,” FaithSloan.com reports flatly on the fate of GPG.

Meanwhile, there are competing reports that GPG had given the boot to TelexFree, not the other way around.

No so, according to FaithSloan.com, which is claiming TelexFree “killed” GPG because it “Could not handle the 50,000 accounts that came into their system.”

TelexFree now has turned to “ipayout’s globalewallet,” according to FaithSloan.com.

Whether TelexFree planned to “kill” IPayout if any hiccups developed in its purported processing of money for TelexFree was not disclosed in the undated post announcing that TelexFree had “killed” GPG. The apparent message in the TelexFree branch of MLM La-La Land, however, is that affiliates will ignore or downplay unsettling events in Brazil such as the pyramid probes and reported death threats and will blame any company that fails to find favor with TelexFree and its international army of cross-border pitchmen.

TelexFree appears to have sought to transition to GPG in mid-August, with affiliates trumpeting the firm on the web as the answer to TelexFree’s troubles. But problems developed within weeks (if not days), and TelexFree affiliates then announced the firm was switching to IPayout. In about a month, GPG went from the penthouse to the doghouse in the minds of certain TelexFree promoters. Now, IPayout apparently has been given the chance to occupy the penthouse in the incongruous world of TelexFree. Will it slip into the TelexFree doghouse and perhaps be “killed” by the firm, like rival GPG before it?

Within days of the announcement that TelexFree had brought IPayout aboard after the purported failure of GPG, TelexFree executive Carlos Costa announced that TelexFree was seeking bankruptcy protection in Brazil. While making the announcement, Costa curiously waved the flags of Portugal and Mediera. Like former AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin, Costa also suggested God was on the company’s side.

Bowdoin is serving a 78-month prison sentence in the United States. His ASD “program” was a $119 million Ponzi scheme. Among other things, Bowdoin claimed a 2008 raid on his “program” that promised a precompounding payout of 1 percent a day was the work of “Satan.”

Some TelexFree affiliates claim that $15,125 sent to the company fetches a profit of at least $42,075 in a year. Images of Jesus Christ have been used in TelexFree promos.

Noobing was an autosurf HYIP scheme pushed by former ASD pitchmen that tanked in 2009 after its parent company was implicated by the FTC in a government-grants scheme that led to combined judgments totaling more than $54 million. The scam even was discussed at a Senate hearing.

A court-appointed receiver determined that Noobing was impossibly upside-down. Affiliate Strategies Inc., the U.S.-based parent company, registered several corporations offshore, including Noobing, formed in the Caribbean island of Nevis; ASI Management Inc., formed in Belize on March 24, 2009; Landmark Publishing Group LLC, formed in Nevis on March 25, 2009; Landmark Publishing LLC, formed in Nevis on March 25, 2009; International Research and Writing Group LLC, formed in Nevis on July 1, 2009; and International Publishing Group LLC, formed in Nevis on July 1, 2009.

All in all, the receiver said in 2009, “the ASI defendants have formed and operated eighteen additional Kansas LLCs as subsidiaries of Defendant Apex Holdings International LLC.” The receiver proposed a plan by which all assets tied to Noobing’s parent would be sold — right down to a stainless-steel wastebasket in the women’s restroom.

In 2010, the PP Blog interviewed a 64-year-old woman with a profound hearing loss. The interview was conducted through the woman’s interpreter. The woman told the PP Blog she has lost $5,300 in Noobing and could not sleep at night. Noobing later was added as a receivership defendant. The receiver said that Noobing and 14 other companies under the ASI umbrella had become the subjects of “numerous inquiries” from “tax authorities,” creditors and “former independent contractors.”

TelexFree has U.S. footprints in Massachusetts and Nevada. The firm also now purports to be operating in England. TelexFree is the subject of multiple pyramid-scheme probes in Brazil, where it operates through an entity known as Ympactus Comercial Ltd.

There have been reports that at least one judge and one prosecutor involved in the Brazil probe have been threatened with death.

HYIP fraud schemes spread in part because promoters engage in serial disingenuousness and ignore red flags such as unusually consistent returns, claims of guaranteed payouts and the circuitous flow of money. Some TelexFree affiliates have provided ASD-like coaching tips to prospects on how to speed the flow of money to the firm.

Sep 22, 2013
Legisi HYIP Ponzi Pitchman Matthew John Gagnon Is In Federal Custody

Matthew John Gagnon

Will it be the shot heard ’round the HYIP world — or will serial Ponzi-board and social-media fraudsters continue to pretend it is meaningless?

Matthew John Gagnon, a 45-year-old pitchmen for the $72 million Legisi HYIP Ponzi scheme and other online fraud schemes, is listed as an inmate at Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Sheridan, Ore.

In July, Gagnon was sentenced to 60 months in prison, ordered to pay $4.4 million in restitution and further ordered to serve three years’ supervised probation after his prison release. He was permitted to self-report to prison. That appears to have occurred yesterday.

Gagnon colleague and Legisi operator Gregory N. McKnight was sentenced to a prison term of more than 15 years. McKnight’s age is listed as 53. He was sentenced last month and was ordered taken into custody immediately. He is listed as an inmate at the FCI in Milan, Mich. McKnight was ordered to pay more than $48.9 million in restitution and further ordered to serve three years’ supervised probation after his prison release.

Legisi was promoted on Ponzi-scheme forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup. In 2007, Legisi became the subject of an undercover investigation by state regulators in Michigan and the U.S. Secret Service. Both criminal and civil charges followed.

In court filings on June 6, Legisi receiver Robert D. Gordon said more than 85 percent of the $72.6 million directed at Legisi had flowed through e-Bullion.

e-Bullion is a now-defunct processor. One-time e-Bullion operator James Fayed is on California’s death row after being convicted of ordering the brutal contract slaying of Pamela Fayed, his wife and a potential witness against him.

AdSurfDaily, a $119 million Ponzi scheme also promoted on the Ponzi forums, also accepted money from e-Bullion, according to court filings.

Legisi’s Terms of Service read like an invitation to join an international financial conspiracy. Members had to affirm they were not associated with the SEC, the IRS, the FBI and the CIA — along with “Her Majesty’s Police,” the Intelligence Services of Great Britain and the Serious Fraud Office.

Sep 17, 2013
SPECIAL REPORT: Like AdSurfDaily And OneX Before It, Alleged TelexFree Pyramid Scheme May Be Engaging In Game Of Payment-Processor Roulette

“While reviewing the ASD website in the District of Columbia, [an undercover agent] found a posting within ASD’s News section, apparently posted by ASD on July 2, 2008. The title of the posting was, “Alert Pay & Direct Deposit are being phased out July 31, 2008.” According to ASD’s posting, “We have notified BOA not to accept cash or personal checks for deposit account – English or Spanish.” ASD further stated, “Please remember that the preferred method of purchasing Ad Packages is by mailing a Check or by Solid Trust Pay . . . Solid Trust Pay is a Canada based money transmitting and payment company that, like the e-Gold system, operates over the Internet. It appears that beginning August 1, 2008, Solid Trust Pay will be ASD’s preferred method for receiving funds from members, and for paying rebates and commissions to members . . . Within the past two weeks, ASD has wired several million dollars to Solid Trust Pay from its BOA Accounts. A TFA also learned that earlier in July 2008, a bank other than BOA closed the last account that was controlled by Bowdoin or family members after that bank determined, and explained to them, that an investigation by the bank determined that Bowdoin appeared to be operating a Ponzi scheme.” — AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme forfeiture complaint, August 2008

TelexFree affiliate promos encouraging participants to register for International Payout Systems (I-Payout) began to appear online in recent hours. Just last month, TelexFree affiliates were encouraged to register for Global Payroll Gateway, another e-Wallet vendor that supposedly would solve TelexFree’s payment problems as a pyramid-scheme probe moved forward in Brazil. There now are reports online that GPG has dumped TelexFree, leading to questions about whether TelexFree is trying to port its alleged fraud scheme to yet another vendor — I-Payout. Source: Google search results.

In 2008, the U.S. Secret Service effectively accused the AdSurfDaily MLM “program” of playing a game of payment-processor roulette as U.S. law enforcement put the squeeze on certain money-movers, the willfully blind enablers of online fraud schemes.

ASD, a $119 million HYIP Ponzi scheme that led to a 78-month prison sentence for operator Andy Bowdoin, started out by accepting “e-Gold and Virtual Money,” according to a Ponzi-scheme forfeiture complaint filed in federal court in August 2008.

But ASD, according to the complaint, realized e-Gold had come under investigation for enabling the laundering of money, something that could put the heat on ASD.

“Shortly after publicity surrounding the government’s investigation into e-Gold appeared, ASD discontinued using the e-Gold system as a means for receiving member funds,” the complaint alleged.

And even as these events were occurring, according to court filings in the ASD case and in other cases, Robert Hodgins, a supplier of debit cards and the operator of Virtual Money Inc. — now listed by INTERPOL as an international fugitive — came under investigation in Connecticut amid allegations he was assisting in the laundering of narcotics proceeds in Medellin, Colombia, and prepping himself to assist in the laundering of funds in the Dominican Republic.

Virtual Money, whom some ASD members said was supplying debit cards to ASD, also was linked to the PhoenixSurf Ponzi scheme, according to court filings.

In December 2010, federal prosecutors alleged that ASD also had accepted money from e-Bullion, a California firm that processed payments for Ponzi schemes, including the $72 million Legisi HYIP scheme in Michigan that led to prison sentences for operator Gregory McKnight and pitchman Matthew John Gagnon. E-Bullion operator James Fayed has been sentenced to death for ordering the brutal contract slaying of his wife, a potential witness against him. Pamela Fayed’s throat was slashed repeatedly in the shadows of a Greater Los Angeles parking garage, her husband seated on a nearby park bench “like he doesn’t have a care in the world.”

ASD, according to court filings, also used AlertPay and SolidTrustPay, money-movers based in Canada that have been linked to multiple Ponzi schemes, including the alleged $600 million Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme broken up by the SEC last year.

Not even Bowdoin’s arrest in 2010 stopped him from pitching fraud schemes, according to court filings. Facing serious criminal charges for his actions in ASD, Bowdoin (in 2011) became a pitchmen for the OneX “program,” which federal prosecutors later alleged to be a pyramid scheme recycling money in ASD-like fashion. Among Bowdoin’s fellow OneX pitchmen was T. LeMont Silver, later of Zeek and later of JubiMax and GoFunPlaces, two MLM “programs” that are suing each other amid allegations of financial fraud.

At one time, OneX claimed to have a relationship with SolidTrustPay. It then claimed to have ended that relationship and to have started a relationship with I-Payout. Earlier, I-Payout had listed the uber-bizarre TextCashNetwork MLM “program” with ties to the Phil Piccolo organization as a “selected client.” TextCashNetwork now appears to have disappeared, but still is operating with the acronym “TCN” — this time as TrueCashNetwork. How the “new” TCN is processing payments is unknown. What is known is that someone associated with the “new” TCN has sent emails to “winners” in the Zeek scheme in an apparent bid to get them to flog for the new iteration, an apparent investment arm of which is being promoted as an opportunity to earn an interest rate of 50 percent.

Now — as incredible as it seems — promoters of the alleged TelexFree pyramid scheme operating in Brazil and the United States now are claiming that TelexFree is using I-Payout, known formally as International Payout Systems Inc. Equally incredibly, this is happening less than a month after TelexFree promoters advised TelexFree participants to register with Global Payroll Gateway (GPG), another eWallet company and supplier of debit cards, as a means of getting paid after payouts to Brazilian members of TelexFree were blocked in Brazil.

Just last month, TelexFree affiliates were encouraging prospects to register with Global Payroll Gateway (GPG). In recent hours — and amid reports GPG has given TelexFree the boot — TelexFree affiliates have been urged to register with I-Payout. Source: Google search results.

There are reports online, including on Facebook from self-identified members of TelexFree, that GPG gave TelexFree the boot in recent days. No sooner did those reports surface than videos went up on YouTube encouraging TelexFree members to register for I-Payout.

One of the reports that TelexFree suddenly had shifted from GPG to I-Payout is published on the MoneyMakerGroup forum. MoneyMakerGroup’s name appears in U.S. court files as a place from which Ponzi and fraud schemes are promoted. Both FINRA and the SEC have warned that HYIP schemes spread in part through social-media sites such as forums, YouTube and Facebook.

Because international MLM HYIP fraud schemes often have promoters in common — and because the schemes are promoted on Ponzi cesspits such as MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold — proceeds from the schemes can flow into banks at the local level, putting them in the position of becoming warehouses for the ill-gotten gains of participants, including winners and insiders. The use of stored-value debit cards such as those in play in HYIP schemes can lead to the quick dissipation of assets, meaning that victims of an HYIP scheme may have limited hope (or even no hope) that a recovery can be made for their benefit.

The most recent incongruous events involving TelexFree are occurring even as at least one judge and one prosecutor involved in the TelexFree pyramid probe in Brazil reportedly have been threatened with death. And, as was the case with ASD, some promoters of TelexFree have claimed an ability to expedite the flow of money to the scheme — perhaps through back-office transactions within the TelexFree system.

Also see report on BehindMLM.com.

Sep 14, 2013
TELEXFREE: Promoters Tell Brazilian Prospects To Create Registration Address In England — And To Appear At Door Of Brazilian Supreme Court Judge

EDITOR’S NOTE: At the time of the publication of this story, the PP Blog was experiencing trouble loading graphics. The probable cause of this is a conflict between certain plugins used by the Blog. We are working to correct this problem . . .

** _____________________________ **

UPDATED 12:25 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) TelexFree, an alleged pyramid scheme operating as an MLM that has U.S. arms in Massachusetts and Nevada and effectively was shut down in June in Brazil (by court order in Brazil) but continues to operate elsewhere, seems on the cusp of cementing itself as a marquee example of cross-border fraud.

Several days ago, the company inexplicably began to publish the address of a purported office in the United Kingdom in Watford — near London. Today an apparent TelexFree promoter writing on a media site in Brazil appears to be instructing Brazilian affiliates to enroll with the firm by using any address in London, thousands of miles away. This coaching appears to originate from a hotmail address. (See story/comments thread in Portuguese; see translation of story/comments thread via Google Translate.)

The center of London is approximately 5,700 miles away from the center of Rio de Janeiro, the Brazilian city that will play host to the 2016 Olympics. London hosted the 2012 Olympics. There are dozens of pyramid-scheme probes under way in Brazil, in the run-up to the 2016 Summer Games.

Even more troubling than the suggestion that Brazilians should fabricate a London address to enroll in TelexFree is a suggestion from another apparent TelexFree affiliate on the same site in Brazil that affiliates should appear at the door of a judge of the Supreme Court of Brazil. It is unclear from the English translation of the post whether any protest aimed at the judge would occur at the Supreme Court or at his personal residence. Plenty of peaceful protests occur in Brazil. But a protest at the residence of a judge potentially would introduce the specter of menacing — something that was present in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case in the United States.

Purported American “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming — a figure in the ASD story — was convicted earlier this year of multiple charges, including filing bogus liens against public officials involved in the ASD case. The evidence in the case strongly suggested that Leaming intended to stalk the children of the Chief Justice of the United States at the school they attended — as part of a plot to serve paperwork on the Chief Justice.

TheTelexFree story is similar in certain key ways to the ASD story. For starters, some ASD members refused to believe that a crime had been committed against them and taunted prosecutors and the U.S. Secret Service with threats. There have been reports in Brazil of death threats against a judge and a prosecutor. Both the ASD and TelexFree schemes were targeted at Christians. Meanwhile, members of both “programs” were promised preposterous, unusually consistent returns. In the ASD case, the precoumpounding returns computed to an annual return in excess of 300 percent. Some TelexFree promoters have claimed that sending $15,125 to TelexFree results in a tripling or quadrupling of the money in a year.

Beyond that, it almost certainly is the case that some TelexFree affiliates also were pitchmen for ASD and for Zeek Rewards, an MLM “program” described by the SEC last year as a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid scheme. This leads to questions about whether criminal MLM combines are driving business to purported “opportunities” despite the legal, financial and social consequences. In April 2013, the SEC said a “program” known as Profitable Sunrise was using a mail drop in England as part of a massive scam that used a series of offshore bank accounts potentially to fleece people of faith of millions and millions of dollars.

Now, TelexFree purports to be operating from England. The mere listing of a business address is not proof that no scam is occurring, despite repeated bids by HYIP schemes to create an air of legitimacy by publishing an address or registering it with a government. Profitable Sunrise, for instance, had a registered address. So did Zeek. So did AdSurfDaily. Both of the TelexFree addresses in the United States appear to be virtual offices or mail drops.

And TelexFree affiliates have been sending confusing messages for months on how to send money to the firm. This sometimes signals that money-laundering, wire fraud or another crime is occurring. Some of the TelexFree affiliate bids strongly resemble events at ASD — events that led to the criminal indictment and subsequent sentencing of ASD President Andy Bowdoin to a 78-month prison term. (Also see Aug. 21 PP Blog story on a TelexFree shift to yet another payment processor.)

BehindMLM.com is reporting that “rampant fraud” may be affecting TelexFree’s operations.

Sep 9, 2013
United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority Issues Warning On SolidTrustPay, An HYIP Darling On The Ponzi Boards

UPDATED 3:33 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Thanks to PP Blog reader “Tony,” who first posted a link to the FCA warning in this story thread on how a Profitable Sunrise Facebook site was being used to promote TelexFree, an alleged pyramid scheme.

In April 2013, the SEC described Profitable Sunrise as a murky offering fraud that may have gathered tens of millions of dollars. SolidTrustPay, a Ponzi-forum darling used by a stunning number of schemes, reportedly was one of the processors used by Profitable Sunrise. Zeek Rewards, alleged last year by the SEC to have been a combined Ponzi- and pyramid scheme that had gathered at least $600 million, also used SolidTrustPay, according to court filings. So did AdSurfDaily, a $119 million Ponzi scheme broken up by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008. And so did JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid, a “program” purportedly operated by Frederick Mann that has spawned at least three reload scams and, like ASD, may have ties to the “sovereign citizens” movement. “Sovereign citizens” may be gaining a toehold in Canada, one of the bases of SolidTrustPay. (Please note that the “opportunities” referenced above constitute only a small sampling of the HYIP schemes enabled by SolidTrustPay.)

Also see this 2012 Consent Order between the Securities Department of the U.S. state of Arkansas and SolidTrustPay in which SolidTrustPay agreed to pay a $60,000 civil penalty and did not contest findings that it had been operating illegally in the state for years, had processed about $12 million in Arkansas through about 43,600 transactions and had illegally mined more than $331,000 in fees and commissions in the state.

What follows below is the warning on SolidTrustPay issued on Aug. 30, 2013, by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the United Kingdom. From the FCA:

SolidTrust Pay Ltd

_{Published: 30/08/2013}

We believe this firm has been providing financial services or products in the UK without our authorisation. Find out why to be especially wary of dealing with this unauthorised firm and how to protect yourself from scammers.

Almost all firms and individuals offering, promoting or selling financial services or products in the UK have to be authorised by us.

However, some firms act without our authorisation and some knowingly run scams like share fraud.

This firm is not authorised by us but has been targeting people in the UK:

SolidTrust Pay Ltd

Website: www.solidtrustpay.com

How to protect yourself

We strongly advise you to only deal with financial firms that are authorised by us, and check the Financial Services Register to ensure they are. It has information on firms and individuals that are, or have been, regulated by us.

If a firm does not appear on the Register but claims it does, contact our Consumer Helpline on 0800 111 6768.

There are more steps you should take to protect yourself from unauthorised firms.

You should also be aware that if you give money to an unauthorised firm, you will not be covered by the Financial Ombudsman Service or Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) if things go wrong.

Report an unauthorised firm

If you think you have been approached by an unauthorised firm or contacted about a scam, you should contact our Consumer Helpline on 0800 111 6768. If you were offered, bought or sold shares, you can use our share fraud reporting form.

You can see more ways to report an unauthorised firm and find out what to do if you have been scammed.

Sep 4, 2013
REPORTS: Ice Cream Flavor Named After TelexFree, An Alleged Pyramid Scheme; Separately, TelexFree Affiliates May Be Crossing National Borders To Keep The Money Flowing — Even As Purported Opportunity Turns To New Payment Method

The HYIP world is known for promoters’ bids to change the storyline, but this one may take the cake — or at least be a sweet complement.

There are reports in Brazilian media that a promoter of the TelexFree MLM scheme — alleged to be a massive pyramid — has named an ice cream after TelexFree to show support for the embattled firm.

“The ice cream is not a pyramid,” a person was quoted as saying in DiarioDigital, according to a translation — and neither is its namesake.

Here is a link to the story in Portuguese; here is a link to the English translation by Google Translate.

Recruitment by TelexFree is banned in Brazil while investigations by at least seven Brazilian states proceed. Payments to Brazilian participants by TelexFree likewise are blocked. The purported “opportunity,” however, still is operating in other countries and apparently gathering money and issuing payments.

Separately, Veja.com is reporting that undercover investigators in Brazil have noticed that some Brazilian promoters of TelexFree have crossed national borders into Bolivia and Paraguay to keep TelexFree investment money flowing. Here is a link to the story in Portuguese; here is the link to the English translation by Google Translate.

The United States long has warned about cross-border fraud such as was present in PathwayToProsperity, an alleged $70 million Ponzi scheme whose operator is listed by INTERPOL as an international fugitive. P2P, as the “program” was known, made its way across multiple continents and 120 countries, according to court filings.

Meanwhile, U.S. promoters of TelexFree have been busy watching a promoter’s Aug. 16 YouTube video titled, “How to register your GPG account with TelexFree.”

GPG, according to the video, stands for Global Payroll Gateway.

The company, according to its website, provides services such as loading payrolls onto debit cards. TelexFree, according to the affiliate’s video, is now a GPG client and TelexFree affiliates must “connect” their account to GPG to get paid.

A screen shown in the TelexFree affiliate’s video shows an apparent executive of TelexFree announcing that the changeover to GPG’s services “is causing a delay in our payment process for the first run.”

The FBI long has warned that certain types of debit cards can be abused and that a “shadow banking system” is playing a role in fraud schemes that affect national security.

If TelexFree is adjudicated a scam, it may be difficult for the governments of the world or the receivers/trustees they may appoint to gather proceeds for victims. HYIP money may dissipate quickly, perhaps particularly quickly if it is offloaded with debit cards. In a money-laundering case brought in 2008, federal prosecutors in Connecticut said that millions of dollars in narcotics proceeds were offloaded at ATMs in Colombia.

Robert Hodgins, a Canadian currently listed by INTERPOL as an international fugitive in the Connecticut money-laundering case, reportedly supplied the debit cards through a firm known as Virtual Money Inc. and had ties to the HYIP world and schemes such as PhoenixSurf and AdSurfDaily.

Another screen in the TelexFree affiliate’s video shows folders with titles such as “telexfree,” “Banner[s] Broker, “hyip monitors,” “forex”and “Passive peeps.”

The context of the folders shown in the video is unclear. Banners Broker, however, is a bizarre HYIP scheme. HYIP monitors are websites that monitor whether a particular HYIP site is “paying.” Meanwhile, the word “passive” often is used in HYIP scams that promote tremendous returns for investors inclined to sit back and wait for the payments to flow in, instead of recruiting other investors to earn downline commissions from a “program.”

TelexFree has been promoted on well-known Ponzi scheme forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup. The names of both forums appear in U.S. court filings as places from which fraud schemes are advanced.

From a promo for the alleged $600 million Zeek Rewards Ponzi- and pyramid scheme.

Zeek Rewards, an alleged $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid scheme that had a Ponzi-forum presence and became the target of an SEC action last year, was promoted as a “passive” program. Like Zeek, TelexFree purportedly has a requirement that participants post ads for the “program” online.

There have been reports in Brazil that a judge and prosecutor involved in the TelexFree case have been threatened with death.

But not even those disturbing reports were enough to cause TelexFree to cancel a rah-rah event in California last month. The company says it also plans an “at sea” event in December. Earlier, some TelexFree pitchmen provided AdSurfDaily-like coaching tips to enrollees, especially on matters of how to speed the flow of money to the company.

ASD was a $119 million MLM Ponzi scheme broken up by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008. Like Zeek and TelexFree, the ASD “program” also had a Ponzi-forum presence and was promoted as an opportunity for “passive” participants.

Some TelexFree promoters in Brazil appear to believe that TelexFree has been deemed legal in the United States by the U.S. government. This errant belief may in part have been instilled by promoters of TelexFree who worded MLM HYIP pitches to suggest that the U.S. government had authorized the “program.”

Some TelexFree promoters have claimed a payment of $15,125 to the firm will fetch a return of more than $42,000 in a year. Even the cautious “Aunt Ethels” of the world will grow to become keen on TelexFree, according to a promo.

Aug 21, 2013
TelexFree, MLM Firm That Is Subject Of Pyramid Probe, Says It Will Offer ‘At Sea’ Event

Source: TelexFree website, Aug. 16, 2013.

TelexFree, an MLM “opportunity” under investigation in Brazil amid allegations it is orchestrating a massive pyramid scheme, says on its website that it is conducting an “at sea” event Dec. 15-18.

Perhaps accidentally providing an awkward hint of dire portent, the promo shows the TelexFree logo superimposed on the side of a luxury ocean liner that is nearly beached in the tropics. Even more incongruously, it is being published not only against the backdrop of the pyramid probe, but also against reports that a judge and prosecutor in Brazil have received death threats related to the investigation.

Promoters of MLM HYIP scams such as JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid (2 percent a day) and AdViewGlobal (1 percent a day) previously have advertised sea cruises. It is unclear if the JSS/JBP cruise ever came off.

AVG’s 2009 cruise coincided with a bid (apparently unsuccessful) by the “program” to line up another bank and wire facilitator to assist in the swindling of investors who’d previously been swindled in AdSurfDaily’s $119 million Ponzi scheme that advertised a 1-percent-a-day payout.

AdViewGlobal, which purported to operate from Uruguay, bizarrely announced its new scam on the same day the President of the United States announced a crackdown on offshore fraud. Federal prosecutors later said they’d tied AVG to ASD President Andy Bowdoin.

Some TelexFree promoters say a payment of $15,125 to the program results in a profit of at least $1,100 a week for a year. Other promoters claim they’re “100% telexfree,” which apparently means they’ll stand by their “program” no matter what.

Aug 16, 2013
BULLETIN: Songkram Roy Shachaisere, Figure In AdSurfDaily Ponzi Story, Indicted With 8 Others In ‘One Of The Largest International Penny Stock Frauds In History’
BULLETIN: Songkram Roy Shachaisere, a sidebar figure in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme story, has been indicted with several others in what federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York are calling “one of the largest international penny stock frauds in history.”

The probe “used wiretaps in the United States and undercover agents in foreign countries,” prosecutors said.

Chillingly, prosecutors said some of the scammers impersonated IRS employees. Others joined forces to scam victims a second time by creating a “fake law firm.” Some of the money allegedly ended up in “an account maintained in Beirut, Lebanon.”

Indeed, prosecutors said, some of the scammers branched off from the penny-story scheme to orchestrate a scheme “in which they fraudulently induced penny stock victims to pay advance fees, on the promise that the victims would then either be able to sell their securities to other waiting investors or join lawsuits to reclaim their losses,” the office of U.S. Attorney Loretta E. Lynch said. “In reality, the advance fees were nothing more than a con, as neither the investors nor the lawsuits existed. To hoodwink the penny stock owners, the advance fee defendants invented fake trading companies and a fake law firm and then posed as employees of those entities while soliciting advance fees from the penny stock victims.”

“The criminals behind this scheme were shameless in heartlessly defrauding hundreds of victims out of their savings and retirement accounts for their own enrichment,” said James C. Spero, special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Buffalo.

All in all, the scams netted at least $140 million and defrauded victims in 35 countries, prosecutors said.

Fake news releases, bogus announcements about nonexistent ventures, bribes and fake posts on social-media sites were used to dupe the masses, prosecutors said.

Shachaisere allegedly was involved in a massive pump-and-dump scheme. In 2010, according to the SEC, Sahachaisere fraudulently touted the stock of Praebius Communications. That’s the company ASD once conveniently announced was providing it a $200 million revenue infusion. ASD made the claim while awaiting a key ruling by the federal judge presiding over the ASD Ponzi case brought by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008.

Even as critics were voicing concerns that ASD was advancing yet-another story that was too good to be true, members of the now-defunct Pro-ASD Surf’s Up forum were cheerleading ASD’s purported revenue infusion from Praebius.

Some ASD members sprinted to forums to announce the news, but the information could not be verified. ASD later removed the announcement from its website.

ASD’s name was not referenced in the SEC’s 2010 complaint against Shachaisere, and Praebius was not listed as a defendant in the case. Praebius was referenced in the case as a client that paid Sahachaisere and his company in stock “to provide investor relations services.”

All in all, seven defendants were arrested today, with nine indicted. Before the bust, one of the defendants bragged, “We know enough to be subtle,” prosecutors said.

Here is a list of the defendants:
- Sandy Winick
  Citizenship: Canada
  Age: 55
  Bangkok, Thailand
- Gregory Curry
  Citizenship: Canada
  Age: 63
  Bangkok, Thailand
- Kolt Curry
  Citizenship: Canada
  Age: 38
  Ontario, Canada
- Gregory Ellis
  Citizenship: Canada
  Age: 46
  Ontario, Canada
- Gary Kershner
  Citizenship: United States
  Age: 72
  Tucson, Arizona
- Joseph Manfredonia
  Citizenship: United States
  Age: 45
  Tom’s River, New Jersey
- Cort Poyner
  Citizenship: United States
  Age: 44
  Boca Raton, Florida
- Songkram Roy Shachaiser
  Citizenship: United States
  Age: 43
  Huntington Beach, California
- William Seals
  Citizenship: United States
  Age: 51
  Fallbrook, California
Here’s how prosecutors described the pump-and-dump scheme (italics added):

As alleged in the indictment, defendants Sandy Winick, Gary Kershner, Joseph Manfredonia, Cort Poyner, Songkram Roy Shachaisere and William Seals orchestrated one of the largest international penny stock frauds in history. First, the defendants gained controlling interests of huge quantities of worthless stock in 11 public companies known in the industry as ‘file cabinet businesses’ – thinly traded companies with minimal assets and non-existent business operations, which in many cases were mere shell companies. They then ‘pumped up’ the share prices of the companies’ stock by engaging in fraudulent and illegal sales campaigns, which included distributing false press releases, announcing non-existent business ventures and fake mergers, posting false information on social media sites and bribing stock promoters and brokers.

And here’s how prosecutors described the advance-fee component of the scam (italics/bolding added):

As the indictment alleges, defendants Winick, Gregory Curry, Kolt Curry and Gregory Ellis perpetrated a second scheme in which they fraudulently induced penny stock victims to pay advance fees, on the promise that the victims would then either be able to sell their securities to other waiting investors or join lawsuits to reclaim their losses. In reality, the advance fees were nothing more than a con, as neither the investors nor the lawsuits existed. To hoodwink the penny stock owners, the advance fee defendants invented fake trading companies and a fake law firm and then posed as employees of those entities while soliciting advance fees from the penny stock victims.

To facilitate the scheme, the defendants established boiler rooms or call centers from which members of the conspiracy would solicit advance fees from the unsuspecting penny stock victims. The call centers were located in various locales around the world, including Canada, Thailand and the United Kingdom. Recently, the defendants began planning to open a new call center in Brooklyn, New York. Some of the victims were told that they either needed to pay the advance fee to remove restrictions that were placed upon their penny stock, which prevented the victims from selling their stock in the market, or to join investors in a pending or anticipated lawsuit to recover losses that they incurred while owning the penny stock. Victims were then told that the advance fees were needed to convert the warrants of their stocks to a saleable security. In several instances, the advance fee defendants even pretended to be IRS employees collecting a bogus advance tax from victim investors before they could unload their penny stocks. The victims were directed to send payment of the advance fees to banks around the world, including bank accounts in New York City. The fraud proceeds were then transferred through a funds transfer network, located in Getzville, New York, to an account maintained in Beirut, Lebanon. Ultimately, these defendants generated more than $20 million in fraudulently obtained advance fees.

Defendant Kolt Curry described the Advance Fee Scheme in the following way over an intercepted wire communication: “I would say that 100 percent of these stocks are like uh pink uh… just dumps . . . . so … ya know they’re totally, they’re like, so a lot of these guys are dying . . . . to get rid of this crap. . . . The money is good, it’s easy. It’s easy money. Definitely easy money, and it’s good money.” In fact, while bragging about his prowess as a fraudster, defendant Kolt Curry further stated, “I had a guy send me a million dollars over one phone call . . . . He actually sent me almost two million dollars over the period of the hit . . . . I guess in the industry they coin it as a smash and grab.” As for the group’s recent plans to open a call center in Brooklyn, New York, defendant Kolt Curry said, “I tell you what man . . . hitting the Americans would be like taking money from a baby.”

Lynch’s office thanked various U.S. agencies for their worked on the probe. She also thanked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Financial Crime Intelligence Unit in Vancouver and the Integrated Market Enforcement Team in Toronto, and the Serious Organized Crime Agency in the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, prosecutors said that significant assistance was also provided by the United States Embassies in Ottawa, Toronto, London, Bangkok and Beijing.
Aug 13, 2013