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Tag: Andy Bowdoin

  • JSS TRIPLER 2 (T2) UPDATE: Serial Ponzi-Board Huckster ‘Strosdegoz’ Deletes MoneyMakerGroup Link That Showed T2 Presence In The United States, Italy

    Prior to its killing, this post yesterday by Ponzi-forum huckster "strosdegoz" showed a DNS propagation map for JSS Tripler 2 (T2) when a link in the post was clicked. The page that loaded showed that T2 was accessible via wire in the United States. The post vanished without explanation in less than an hour.

    “strosdegoz,” the serial Ponzi-board pitchman who claims to have a presence on at least 35 forums or websites that promote “programs” that advertise preposterous returns, has killed a MoneyMakerGroup post he created that showed JSS Tripler 2 (T2) is accessible via wire in the United States.

    The original post, which appears to have been created because some T2 members were complaining they could not access the T2 site, was replaced with a single word: “Edit.” A note below the substituted one-word post explained it had been “edited by strosdegoz.”

    Prior to its killing, the post had included a link to this DNS tracking service. When that link was clicked, it showed that the JSSTripler2 domain is accessible in the United States. It also showed T2 is accessible in Italy. (More on the potential importance of T2’s reach into Italy below.)

    “strosdegoz” did not explain his decision to kill his post and the link. Nor did he say whether he was properly registered to sell securities to U.S. or Italian citizens. Nor did he say whether T2 was properly registered to do so.

    T2 was known to be accessible in the United States even before “strosdegoz” killed the link that showed multiple points of contact on U.S. soil from the East Coast and the West Coast and places in between. Still, the DNS map provided a compelling visual of how scammers from all parts of the world can reach into the United States (and other countries) and recruit the unknowing into the murkiest of investment enterprises.

    T2, which preemptively denies it is a Ponzi scheme despite advertising returns that dwarf the return rates of Bernard Madoff,  purports to pay a return of 2 percent a day, a figure that computes to an annualized return of 730 percent. The “opportunity” claimed for weeks that it had suspended member cashouts, blaming the development on an AlertPay account freeze.

    AlertPay is a processor based in Canada.

    But T2 now says is has regained access to the frozen funds, a development that led to a flood of “I got paid” posts on MoneyMakerGroup, which is listed in U.S. federal court filings as a place from which Ponzi schemes are promoted.

    After having posted the DNS tracking link and later deleting it, “strosdegoz” — also known as “manolo” — virtually simultaneously posted an “I got paid” post for T2 at MoneyMakerGroup.

    “I got paid today already,” the post read. “Fast as usual.”

    Only days earlier, T2 purportedly was paying no one. Its explanation of an AlertPay freeze was a virtual concession that the enterprise was insolvent and could not pull from other resources to meet its obligations. “Opportunities” such as T2 pretend liabilities do not exist or conceal insolvency by treating liabilities as assets. Any significant interruption of cash flow can create a crisis that potentially affects thousands or even tens of thousands of participants.

    Both the edited DNS post and the “I got paid” post below it had a time stamp of 7:11 p.m. (The original DNS post had a time stamp of 6:21 p.m; the edit occurred at 7:11 p.m., according to the time stamp, and the follow-up “I got paid” post also was time-stamped at 7:11 p.m.)

    T2 Reaches Into Italy As Promoters Of Namesake ‘Opportunity’ JSS Tripler Are Under The Lens

    T2 purportedly created its name by appropriating the name of JSS Tripler, another “program” that advertises a return of 2 percent a day. JSS Tripler promoters have come under the lens of CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator.

    Like T2, JSS Tripler is accessible in the United States — with no corresponding evidence that the program itself as well as its promoters have any registrations as issuers of securities or broker-dealers.

    JSS Tripler promoters have pooh-poohed the CONSOB action, preferring instead to flood the Ponzi forums with “I got paid” posts.

    Compellingly, the DNS link “strosdegoz” posted at MoneyMakerGroup yesterday for T2 — JSS Tripler’s purported namesake — showed that T2 is accessible in Rome, the capital of Italy. CONSOB is headquartered in Rome.

    Club Asteria, another Ponzi-forum darling, came under the CONSOB lens last year — even as “strosdegoz” was leading Club Asteria cheers. The Club Asteria “program,” which traded on the name of the World Bank, first slashed weekly payouts and then eliminated them — amid reports of a PayPal freeze.

    Some Club Asteria cheerleaders claimed the “program” provided a “passive” return of up to 10 percent a week. “Ken Russo,” one of “strosdegoz’” fellow cheerleaders on the Ponzi forums, posted purported Club Asteria payment proofs totaling in the thousands of dollars.

    Even as accused AdSurfDaily Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin was pimping a murky “program” known as “OneX” while awaiting his September 2012 criminal trial that potentially could land him in prison for 125 years if found guilty on all counts, “strosdegoz” also emerged as a OneX pitchman.

    Among other things, Bowdoin is accused of selling unregistered securities to U.S. residents. He also is accused of using wires that run through the United States to sell prospects into the massive ASD scam, along with securities fraud.

    As “strosdegoz” was hawking T2 and OneX by wire, he turned his attention to a “program” called “HugeYield.”

    T2 purportedly is operated by “Dave,” now said to be venturing to Cambodia after previously venturing from England to Thailand during the purported AlertPay freeze. “Dave” posts on MoneyMakerGroup as Peakr8.

    JSS Tripler, meanwhile, is purported to be in the stable of “JustBeenPaid,” a “program” purportedly operated by onetime ASD promoter Frederick Mann.

    Like its Ponzi-forum cousin Legisi — which became the subject of an undercover operation by U.S. law enforcement that resulted in fraud charges — JSS Tripler makes members affirm they are not government spies or media lackeys.

     

  • UPDATE: JSS Tripler 2 (T2) Pulls An Andy Bowdoin; T2’s ‘Dave’ Comes Back For Second Bite Of Ponzi Apple To Chorus Of Forum Cheers

    Although accused Ponzi schemer and AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin appears not to be among the promoters of JSS Tripler (T2), T2 appears to be relying on a Bowdoin-like playbook in announcing a restart after having earlier suspended payouts.

    The bizarre international spectacle created by JSS Tripler 2 (T2) is continuing — and gets stranger and more insidious by the day.  The purported “opportunity,” which is trading on the name of a murky entity known as JSS Tripler and apparently cloning its Ponzi business model, has announced a restart after weeks of existing in a state of suspended animation purportedly caused by the freezing of a one-time T2 business partner’s AlertPay account.

    T2 now claims it has regained access to the frozen AlertPay funds.

    A week or so prior to T2’s purported restart, promoters of JSS Tripler, the purported “opportunity” upon which T2 based its name,  became  the subject of a securities investigation in Europe. Ponzi-forum hucksters — some of whom are promoting both T2 and JSS Tripler — scoffed at the CONSOB probe and flooded the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum with “I got paid” posts.

    It is axiomatic that all successful Ponzi schemes pay. That an “opportunity” pays is not evidence that no underlying criminality exists.  The timing of T2’s restart — indeed, the restart occurred after the Italian regulator CONSOB announced that JSS Tripler promoters were being scrutinized — demonstrates that the serial hucksters driving T2 are turning a blind eye to the serious issues being raised in Europe.

    The development is hardly unprecedented, given that core groups of scammers who populate the Ponzi boards and simultaneously maintain their own fraud sites thumbed their noses after law-enforcement moved against “opportunities” such as Pathway To Prosperity, Legisi, Gold Quest International, Imperia Invest IBC and others, including AdSurfDaily.

    Like its namesake JSS Tripler, T2 advertises a return rate of 2 percent a day, twice that of ASD. In 2008, the U.S. Secret Service called ASD an international Ponzi scheme. Tens of millions of dollars were seized from bank accounts, and ASD operator Andy Bowdoin later was arrested on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.

    At least $110 million found its way into ASD or related coffers, prosecutors said. Several million dollars were moved into Canada just prior to the seizure of ASD-related assets in August 2008, according to court filings.

    In early 2007, according to prosecutors, ASD suffered a Ponzi collapse that in part was blamed on “Russian” hackers. Bowdoin claimed the hackers stole $1 million, but he never filed a police report.

    Like T2 did between at least December 2011 and February of this year, ASD existed in a state of suspended animation for months in 2007. Bowdoin eventually restarted the “opportunity” under a different name and different website — ASDCashGenerator, as opposed to AdSurfDaily — and began the process of picking pockets anew, federal prosecutors said.

    Unlike ASD, T2 did not claim its payout problems were caused by Russian hackers. Instead, the “opportunity” claimed a onetime business partner known as “Chris,” purportedly living in England, was to blame.

    Like ASD, however, T2 claimed it was changing names, morphing from JSS Tripler 2 to T2MoneyKlub. The name change was explained to be part of an overall restart plan in which T2 would create revenue streams by building prefabricated websites and offering them for sale at a tremendous profit. The plan, which appeared to be exceptionally forward-looking while making preposterous assumptions, presented fallacies of logic such as these:

    • That T2, operating with an in-house skeleton crew and volunteer members, no declared base of operations and no compliance arm despite reaching into dozens of countries each with a unique set of laws, could at once be a web-service provider while managing a “program” that promised a return rate of 2 percent a day or 730 percent a year on top of recruitment-commission payments.
    • That web-service customers would pay a premium for sites built by a murky entity whose operators simultaneously were offering investors returns that would make Bernard Madoff blush.
    • That the fees generated by the sale of websites at a future point uncertain somehow could sustain a scheme that promised to pay out twice as much as ASD, whose operator already was under indictment on Ponzi-related charges and had advertised the same sort of payment schemes.
    • That there would be any reason at all for T2 to continue to offer an investment program that advertised a ludicrous return if its purported sale of websites could result in handsome, self-sustaining profits for the web-service venture. (Longtime PP Blog readers will recall that the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf claimed at one time that it, too, was morphing into a company that would offer web services as a means of propping up an initial investment scheme. AVG, like ASD, promised to pay out half of what T2 claims. AVG disappeared in June 2009, only weeks after its morphing announcement.)

    Also like ASD, T2 preemptively denied it was a Ponzi scheme, despite an absurd confluence of payment schemes in which T2 claimed an ability to pay an annualized return of 730 percent on top of recruitment commissions.

    As previously noted, T2’s advertised return rate was double that of ASD, which prosecutors said had no meaningful revenue streams beyond payments by members. Those payments simply were recycled and returned to other ASD members in the form of classic Ponzi payouts.

    Even though T2 — like ASD — purported to be changing its name, the name change appears to have hit a snag. T2 initially announced it would emerge as T2MoneyKlub on Feb. 1. That didn’t happen, according to Ponzi-forum chatter, because T2 did not have an AlertPay account in its new name.

    T2, according to chatter, then defaulted back to its original name, a circumstance that apparently means the purported “opportunity” can both receive and send money, shelve its new name for the time being and reposition itself under its “old” name to reach into the pockets of new investors.

    “Dave,” the purported operator of T2, according to Ponzi-forum chatter, once was a member of JSS Tripler, one of the entities referenced in the CONSOB action. It appears as though “Dave” was unmoved by the CONSOB action, so much so that he restarted JSS Tripler 2 even though claims about namesake JSS Tripler are under scrutiny and the already-radioactive name easily could become even more radioactive in the weeks ahead.

    T2 payouts will come from “AlertPay, SolidTrustPay and LibertyReserve,” Dave announced on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, posting as “Peakr8.” All three of the named processors have reputation for being friendly to fraud schemes. Both AlertPay and SolidTrustPay are referenced in court files in the ASD Ponzi case.

    MoneyMakerGroup member “jieroz” quickly fired up an “I got paid” post for T2 today, saying the $25 payment had come from AlertPay.

    Veteran huckster “strosdegoz” quickly congratulated “jieroz.”

    “Congrats, that was fast … As usual . . .” strosdegoz blathered.

    A poster purportedly from India and using the handle “hemsagar” also joined in the cheers.

    “WTG! WTG!” he exclaimed in approval.

    A link under the approving post of “hemsagar” led to a “benefactor” promotion in which he claims he’ll pay people to join T2 by sending them money through AlertPay.

    Amid the cheerleading in the MoneyMakerGroup T2 thread, “Dave,” posting as “Peakr8,” announced he was taking a trip to “Cambodia.” This trip apparently follows on the heels of a trip “Dave” purportedly had taken earlier from England to Thailand during a period in which T2 was not paying members.

    “Dave” conceded that T2’s restart had resulted in problems at T2’s in-house cheerleading forum.

    “I know there are bugs, but we will stamp on em one by one when I get back from Cambodia,” Dave posted on MoneyMakerGroup as “Peakr8.”

    Below that post, another post from “hemsagar” appears. Although his brief MoneyMakerGroup bio at the left of the post claims he is from India, his post about the bugs in the T2 forum makes this claim:

    “Its back up here in the Ukraine.”

    Whether “hemsagar” is a citizen of India now living in Ukraine is unclear.

    Serial huckster “strosdegoz” later proclaimed “we need to pump up” the T2 forum and “also . . . every place else.

    “I have to do my dozens of forums too,” strosdegoz acknowledged.

    Regulators have warned the public repeatedly that scams involving hundreds of millions of dollars are spreading virally on the Internet through forums and social-media sites. Pathway to Prosperity, which was pushed on the Ponzi forums, eventually made its way to 120 countries, according to court filings.

    The scheme had a take of more than $70 million and created at least 40,000 victims, according to court filings.

    ASD may have created a similar number of victims, according to court filings. Legisi and Imperia Invest IBC also created victims by the thousands, investigators said.

    Included in the Imperia victims’ count were thousands of people with hearing impairments, investigators said.

  • DISTURBING: JSS Tripler-Related Domain Listed In CONSOB Action Is Based In United States — But Suddenly Starts Redirecting To ‘JustBeenPaid’ Site In The Netherlands; Claim That ‘We’re Not Located In Any Unfriendly Political Jurisdictions’ Exposed As Rank Deception

    On Jan. 23, CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, made public an action against promoters of JSS Tripler, a “program” that advertises an annualized return of 730 percent. The claim alone would be enough to make Bernard Madoff or Charles Ponzi himself blush.

    Or projectile-vomit.

    But if the CONSOB action were not trouble enough, one of the JSS Tripler-related domains listed in the agency’s action is hosted in Utah, according to domain records. The domain, which forms its root with a hyphen splitting the proper name of JSS Tripler — i.e., JSS-Tripler.com — continued to serve pages from Utah for several days after CONSOB’s Jan. 23 announcement. The domain, for instance, published daily updates on the number of days JSS Tripler itself purportedly had been in action.

    Among the graphics on the Utah-hosted landing page was an image of a JSS Tripler pitchwoman who appeared to be Asian in descent. Assuming the woman actually exists, her nationality remains a mystery. At a time uncertain between Feb. 2 and Feb. 3, however, the site stopped serving content and instead began to redirect to a JustBeenPaid subdomain styled “marketing” that is hosted in the Netherlands.

    Whether a U.S. resident or citizen of another country who reached across international borders applied the redirection is unclear. What is clear is that the United States could join Italy in exercising  jurisdiction over JSS Tripler and its promoters if it chose to do so. The site also is accessible through individual U.S. states, meaning regulators at the state level also could exercise jurisdiction.

    A state’s choice to exercise jurisdiction over the sale of unregistered securities is hardly unusual in the HYIP sphere. Florida, for example, exercised jurisdiction over AdSurfDaily and operator Andy Bowdoin. North Dakota exercised jurisdiction over Pathway to Prosperity and operator Nicholas Smirnow. Oregon exercised jurisdiction over an abomination known as “I Need Cash,” a cycler operated by Kristopher K. Keeney.

    JustBeenPaid and Frederick Mann, a murky figure who once claimed to be an ASD promoter, are the purported operators of JSS Tripler. The Netherlands subdomain shows an image of a man at the top of the page. That man is described on the site as “Louis Paquette, JBP Affiliate Sales & Marketing Director.”

    The redirection, which occurs in Utah, according to server data, is virtually immediate — meaning that the previous content and photo of the woman of Asian descent no longer load and that the traffic is switched to the Netherlands page that shows the purported image of Paquette.

    Among other things, this development raises questions about who caused the Utah server to redirect to the Netherlands domain and precisely why the change was made on the heels of the CONSOB action. Whether JustBeenPaid or JSS Tripler themselves had control over the Utah domain is unknown.

    At a minimum, though, the presence of the Utah domain may be evidence that JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler not only sold unregistered securities to U.S. citizens, but did so from inside the United States with a U.S. promoter or a promoter from another country with access to the Utah server at the helm. And because the redirect to the JustBeenPaid subdomain in the Netherlands occurs from inside the United States, it exposes a JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler lie that the “opportunity” protects itself and promoters from investigation and/or prosecution.

    Even if the redirection were not occurring in the United States, the CONSOB action destroys the myth that the “opportunity” is outside the reach of law enforcement.  So does the simple fact that any regulator in the world could take action against the “opportunity” and its promoters. Indeed,  the cross-border nature of the scheme puts investors in virtually all jurisdictions at risk. Individual promoters could be targeted for investigation/prosecution in multiple jurisdictions — and if actions such as those begin to occur, the access of Just BeenPaid/JSS Tripler to cash sources could dry up.

    A claim by a MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi-forum promoter that Just BeenPaid/JSS Tripler has paid out more than $10 million to investors may demonstrate the vast reach of the “opportunity” and its ability to tap funding sources while siphoning undisclosed sums for itself. Just BeenPaid/JSS Tripler may be no Madoff, but $10 million still is a massive sum, one that should raise eyebrows in the worldwide law-enforcement community.

    Content accessible from the Netherlands-based JustBeenPaid subdomain — marketing.justbeenpaid.com — raises other troubling concerns. This statement (next paragraph) appears at the bottom of a “login” page in the JustBeenPaid root domain. The statement is accessible through the “marketing” subdomain. (Indent/italics added):

    Secure Offshore Servers
    — Our servers are in a strategic location.
    We pay special attention to security.
    Our servers are organized so upgrading and expansion are very easy.

    Offshore Business
    — Our business operations are geographically decentralized.
    We don’t have any central office.
    We’re not located in any “unfriendly political jurisdictions.”

    As a practical matter, the mere fact the page is accessible through a redirect that occurs in the United States may destroy any claims that JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler protects members against “unfriendly political jurisdictions.” Any transaction that occurred or occurs through the Utah domain necessarily involves wires in the United States.

    Regardless of the domain or email address through which business is conducted, any U.S.-based promoter of JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler is using wires inside the United States, a situation that brings wire fraud into play — in addition to the securities issues.

    A more troubling question, perhaps, is why JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler even would have the need to make such a claim if its international business is above-board. The same enterprise also claims to have a U.S. patent, a specious claim in the context of securities because the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does not regulate the securities markets of the United States or any other country.

    Is JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler The BCCI Of The HYIP World?

    In the early 1990s, a corrupt international banking enterprise known as Bank of Credit and Commerce International created a worldwide financial scandal. The bank perhaps was best known by its acronym — BCCI — and purportedly was designed to be “offshore everywhere.”

    JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler is making the same sorts of claims associated with BCCI, a spectacularly bright red flag if ever there was one.

    But if that bright red flag were not enough, other content accessible through the “marketing” subdomain of JustBeenPaid sends signals that positively glow of danger. Indeed, a “Member Agreement” link accessible through the site includes this language. (Indent/italics added):

    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.

    7. 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 JBP pages in order to collect information for someone else.

    Any political jurisdiction in any part of the world easily could construe those words as an invitation extended by JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler to investors to join an international conspiracy engaging in organized crime and mass-marketing fraud.

    The same type of claim became an element of the Legisi HYIP prosecution in the United States. The Legisi prosecution, which ultimately involved the SEC, began as an undercover operation between the U.S. government and the state government of Michigan.

    Even more land mines emerge when one considers that JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler  is being promoted on Ponzi boards such as MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold, both of which are referenced in U.S. federal court files as places from which Ponzi schemes are promoted.

    Veteran forum and social-network hucksters are promoting JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler, including promoters linked to the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme case in the United States and CONSOB’s earlier action involving Club Asteria, another Ponzi forum darling.

    Depending upon how the universe lines up, JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler could find itself starving for cash in very short order. It is a program that is thumbing its nose at law enforcement across the globe — and its willfully blind promoters could find themselves named in individual actions just about anywhere.

    It is the very definition of an international financial conspiracy of the most dangerous sort, a sort of emerging BCCI of the HYIP world.

    BEFORE

    This is the top of the page at the JSS-Tripler.com domain as it existed on Jan. 30, 2012.

    AFTER

    This is the top of the "marketing" subdomain of JustBeenPaid.com as it exists today. Prospects who visit the Utah-based JSS-Tripler domain referenced in the "BEFORE" screen shot above now are redirected to the Netherlands-based "marketing" subdomain of JustBeenPaid. The switch occurs in Utah, according to server data.

  • UPDATE: JSS Tripler Promoters On Ponzi Boards Scoff At CONSOB Action, React By Making ‘I Got Paid’ Posts; Like AdSurfDaily, Purported ‘Opportunity’ Calls Payouts ‘Rebates’ And Employs Confluence Of Payment Schemes

    “I dont care what the CONSOB or whatever says because I am not an Italian.” — TalkGold poster known as “WallStreetIsAPonzi,” Jan. 28, 2012

    Even as CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, is publishing an announcement on its website that promoters of a bizarre HYIP known as JSS Tripler are under investigation amid preposterous claims that investors receive an annualized return of 730 percent, promoters on Ponzi forums such as MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold are thumbing their noses at the news.

    JSS Tripler is an arm of “program” known as “JustBeenPaid” (JBP). Whether JBP plans to assist any of the companies or individuals identified in the CONSOB announcement in navigating the regulatory waters and preparing a defense in the weeks ahead is unclear.

    What is clear is that some JBP promoters are reacting to the news by posting fresh “I got paid” posts on the Ponzi boards, even as JBP continues to use its website to advertise returns of “2%+ per Day” and “60% per Month!”

    Visitors are advised they can “Increase Earnings with Daily Compounding” and glean affiliate “bonuses” totaling 15 percent over two tiers — on top of the annualized returns of 730 percent.

    In the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case in 2008, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer described “a confluence [of ASD] payment schemes” very similar to the payment schemes purportedly in place at JBP. JBP, though, is advertising a return rate double that of ASD, whose operator, Andy Bowdoin, later was arrested on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.

    Bowdoin faces up to 125 years in federal prison and fines in the millions of dollars, if convicted on all counts.

    In her 2008 ruling in the ASD case in which she refused to release money seized by the U.S. Secret Service as part of an international Ponzi probe, Collyer noted that ASD called its payouts to members “rebates.”

    Separately, documents from Canadian investigators show that the word “rebates” was used in international scams, including Flat Electronic Data Interchange (FEDI) and the mysterious “Alpha Project.” At least one FEDI promoter is jailed in the United States, as is FEDI operator Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, also known as “Michael Mixon,” who was convicted on charges of operating an investment-fraud scheme and financing terror.

    At MoneyMakerGroup yesterday — on the heels of the CONSOB news — a poster published seven purportedly recent payment proofs from JSS Tripler. Each of them used the word “rebate,” demonstrating that the purported opportunity also is using the same language as ASD and FEDI to describe payouts to members.

    The MoneyMakerGroup member said he planned to buy a “motor home” and “start traveling the US” with his JSS Tripler money.

    In the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case, several automobiles were seized as the alleged proceeds of a criminal scheme. A boat and marine equipment also were seized, along with computers and real estate valued at more than $1 million. All in all, the cash seizures to date in the ASD case total more than $80 million, including cash seized from individual promoters in at least four U.S. states.

    U.S. federal prosecutors say that ASD in part tried to mask its $110 million Ponzi scheme by calling its payments to members "rebates." JSS Tripler, an arm of a "program" known as "JustBeenPaid," also refers to its payouts to members as a "rebate," according to this post yesterday at the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum.

    Although Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JBP/JSS Tripler, is described by supporters as a business genius and creator of a “masterpiece,” the program is using the same sort of language and bizarre presentations that drew the attention of law enforcement in the ASD and FEDI cases.

    Elsewhere on MoneyMakerGroup, a member described the CONSOB development as “NONSENSE!”

    Another member observed yesterday that JBP payouts came from an email address on a domain styled BigBooster.com. Why the payouts are associated with the BigBooster domain is unclear, but the BigBooster domain previously has been linked to the alleged ASD Ponzi scheme and Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JBP/JSS Tripler.

    Separately, the TalkGold forum deleted a link to a PP Blog report on the CONSOB action. In the ASD case, a forum known as “Surf’s Up” routinely deleted links to the PP Blog. ASD members who relied on the Blog for information were described on the forum as troublemakers, and posters willing to consider the government’s point of view were described as “rats,” “maggots” and “cockroaches.”

    ASD figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming was arrested by the FBI in November 2011 on charges of filing bogus liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD case, including a federal judge, three federal prosecutors and an active-duty agent of the U.S. Secret Service who did some of the early legwork in the case.

    The Secret Service employed undercover operatives in bringing the ASD prosecution.

    One MoneyMakerGroup poster yesterday suggested that the CONSOB action was “crap” and claimed outright that JSS Tripler had “paid out over 10 million bucks.”

    Whether the poster ever had seen the verified, audited books of JBP/JSS Tripler and other financial records such as bank and payment-processor statements to substantiate his claim is unclear. But even if the $10 million claim is true, the claimed sum was not broken down by recipient — and online scams are infamous for siphoning cash and concentrating it in the pockets of program sponsors and insiders.

    Promoters of fraud schemes often pass along company lies and deceptions to recruits and prospects, a situation that U.S. government agencies, including the Secret Service, the SEC and the CFTC,  have noted in prosecutions involving individual, commission-based promoters.

    The same MoneyMakerGroup promoter also ventured the CONSOB action came because “governments are not getting a cut of this revenue,” further asserting that  “the only reason they are starting to do probes and crap (sic) not because they care about protecting you from loosing (sic) your money.”

    ASD members made similar claims. Like JBP/JSS Tripler, ASD also was promoted on the Ponzi boards — as were at least three purported ASD clones, all of which have ceased to operate. The cost to investors is unknown.

    Like ASD, JSS Tripler also appears to have a clone — one that actually uses JSS Tripler’s name to form its own name. That “program,” known as JSS Triper 2 or T2, appears now to be changing its name to T2MoneyKlub. Regardless of the name, T2 also was hawked on the Ponzi boards and appears even to have given birth to itself on a Ponzi board as a result of a dispute with JBP/JSS Tripler.

    Federal prosecutors said ASD also changed its name, morphing from just plain AdSurfDaily into ASD Cash Generator. Court records suggest that changing names was part of ASD’s criminal plan and that the change occurred after the initial ASD Ponzi collapsed and after certain payment conduits began to come under government scrutiny.

    Among the MoneyMakerGroup posters who published “I got paid” posts for JBP/JSS Tripler yesterday was “10BucksUp” — his second such post since the CONSOB action became public.

    “10BuckUp” previously pushed Club Asteria, anotherPonzi-forum darling that came under CONSOB scrutiny. In addition to displaying no apparent respect for CONSOB, “10BucksUp” let it be known in September 2011 that he also was a pitchman for Cherry Shares, a collapsed program referenced in June by Canadian regulators.

    Cherry Shares also was a Ponzi-forum darling.

    Whether “10BucksUp” and other JBP/JSS Tripler promoters planned to tell their existing recruits and prospects about the fact CONSOB is targeting individual promoters in a 90-day suspension order related to the purported JBP/JSS Tripler program is unclear.

    Also unclear is whether JBP/JSS Tripler will inform existing participants and prospects about the CONSOB action.

    Members of any “opportunity” that purports to pay an absurd return always are at great risk. The risk becomes even greater if they are denied information about investigations. Promoters who do not disclose the presence of an investigation or simply rely on the company line (or lack thereof) potentially are at greater risk of prosecution as individual promoters.

    In the ASD case, for instance, federal prosecutors said the company was collecting money from new members and funneling it to original members affected by ASD’s first collapsed Ponzi — without informing new enlistees and prospects that their money was being used to prop up losers from the initial scheme and to help the second Ponzi gain a head of steam.

    The personal assets of a number of individual ASD promoters were targeted in forfeiture actions or affidavits, with the government seizing sums in several bank accounts in multiple U.S. states. These sums totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to court records.

  • BULLETIN: Fugitive Found With AdSurfDaily Figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming Back In Jail After Judge Revokes Bond; Timothy Shawn Donavan Refused To Be Sworn As Witness At Pretrial Hearing In Arkansas Mail-Fraud Case; Leaming’s Firm Listed As Registered Agent For 2 Companies Implicated In Alleged Multimillion-Dollar Envelope-Stuffing Fraud

    BULLETIN: Timothy Shawn Donavan, one of two federal fugitives from Arkansas found in Washington state Nov. 22 with AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming, is back in jail.

    Separately, records show that Leaming’s Washington state firm was the registered agent for two defunct companies linked to the alleged Donavan mail-fraud scheme and that Leaming himself — using the name “Kenneth Wayne” and dropping his surname — was an officer in the companies.

    U.S. District Judge P.K. Holmes III revoked Donavan’s bond after Donavan, 63, refused to be sworn at a court proceeding in Arkansas earlier this month in violation of a bond condition that required him to cooperate at pretrial hearings in the mail-fraud case filed against Donavan in February 2011.

    Meanwhile, Donavan’s co-defendant in the mail-fraud case, Sharon Jeannette Henningsen, also is listed as back in federal custody. The circumstances surrounding her renewed detention were not immediately clear.

    Henningsen, 67, also was found with Leaming in the Pacific Northwest, federal prosecutors said in November. Donavan and Henningsen were participants in an Arkansas-based fraud involving envelope-stuffing, according to an indictment filed in February 2011.

    Donavan and Henningsen were freed on conditional bond several days after their arrests in Washington state. They returned to Arkansas, and trouble begun anew in very short order, according to court records.

    In the order revoking Donavan’s bond, Holmes said that Donavan “continues to insist, as he has in past proceedings, on repeating incomprehensible legal jargon in response to any question the Court posits, instead of cooperating with Court proceedings and responding appropriately to questions asked. Donavan ultimately refused to either swear or affirm to tell the truth during the proceedings.”

    The judge warned Donavan that he’d be taken into custody by U.S. Marshals if he refused to cooperate, according to the order revoking bond.

    On Jan. 23, Holmes ordered Donavan to be transported to a Bureau of Prisons medical facility in Texas, according to records.

    On Dec. 28, Donavan and Henningsen filed a strange pleading styled “NOTICE of Tender for Setoff and a Request Regarding a Statement of Account by Sharon Jeannette Henningsen and Timothy Shawn Donavan.”

    The Dec. 28 pleading was filed on the heels of other strange pleadings, including one styled,”Notice: Forgive Me Request; Constructive Notice of Conditional Acceptance and Request to Continue Public Proceedings.”

    Although Donavan and Henningsen had been scheduled to go on trial Jan. 19, the trial date has been canceled — and prosecutors have filed a superseding indictment against both defendants that adds at least four mail-fraud-related counts to the 15 originally filed 11 months ago.

    In the new allegations, federal prosecutors referenced two defunct Washington state companies — 1st Incentive Co. and Trail Head Options Inc. — allegedly tied to the Arkansas fraud of Donavan and Henningsen.

    Both firms, according to records in Washington state, listed Leaming’s firm — American International Business Law Inc. — as their registered agent.  Leaming, who sometimes drops his surname and uses simply “Kenneth Wayne,”  is listed as an officer of both companies.

    Prosecutors said the Donavan/Henningsen mail-fraud scheme netted more than $2.2 million.

    Leaming, 56, of Spanaway, Wash., was arrested in November on charges of filing bogus liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD case. The U.S. Secret Service said ASD was a Florida-based Ponzi scheme that gathered at least $110 million.

    ASD President Andy Bowdoin, 77, was charged with wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities in 2010.

    Some ASD members reportedly relied on Leaming for legal advice, even though he is not an attorney. Whether Dovavan and Henningsen did the same thing is unclear. Also unclear is whether they were ASD members.

    Leaming is jailed near Seattle. He is not named a defendant in the Arkansas case, but the indictment refers to at least one “unindicted co-conspirator.”

  • ‘OneX’ And Club Asteria Pitchman ‘Strosdegoz’ Turns Attention To New ‘Program’ Called ‘Huge Yield’; Flogging On Ponzi Boards Has Begun Amid Early Report Of DDoS Attack

    Veteran Ponzi-board huckster “strosdegoz,” also known as “manolo,” now is flogging a new “program” known as “Huge Yield.” There already is an unconfirmed report that HugeYield has suffered a DDoS attack.

    “strosdegoz” emerged last year as a regular shill for Club Asteria, the purported Virginia-based program that became a Ponzi-forum darling and later announced its PayPal account had been suspended. Claims about ClubAsteria came under investigation by CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, and the American Red Cross later clashed with the purported “program,” which traded on the name of the relief agency.

    As time moved on, “strosdegoz” later joined  accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin of AdSurfDaily in flogging a mysterious “program” known as “OneX.” There is a report today that Bowdoin either canceled or postponed his latest OneX pitch because a fellow pitchman identified as “Alan” has “pneumonia and is not able to do anything right now.”

    The pneumonia announcement was attributed to an email sent by Bowdoin, who is accused of orchestrating an international Ponzi scheme involving at least $110 million through ASD. His criminal trial is set for September 2012.

    Huge Yield purports that $120 can turn into $1,000. The following HugeYield claims are verbatim:

    “A Traditional SPICED UP follow your sponsor 2×2 that will surprise anyone online TODAY! HugeYield has changed the way marketing a tradition 2×2 is done. We have added a safety net to ensure that all members progress through the program and make their ultimate goal, The $1000.00 Payout!”

    In the website’s FAQs section, a question about what payment processors HugeYield accepts is answered in this verbatim fashion:

    “We accepts payments and pays all commissions through Alertpay,liberty reserve and solid trust pay,perfect Money and Okpay.”

    Whether “”strosdegoz/manolo” is concerned about HugeYield’s apparent lack of grammar and usage skills is unclear.

    “strosdegoz/manolo” is pitching HugeYield on MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold. In addition to ClubAsteria and OneX, he has pitched Centurion Wealth Circle and “The Tornado.”

    Both MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold are identified in federal court filings as places from which international Ponzi schemes are promoted.

  • T2’s ‘Dave’ Suggests Police Stood ‘Idly By’ As Trouble Engulfed His ‘Program’ That Advertises Daily Return Of 2 Percent; MoneyMakerGroup Suspends T2 Naysayers After Poster Claims Mod Pitched Dozens Of ‘Programs’ Now In Scams Folder

    EDITOR’S NOTE: Our first reference to JSS Tripler 2 (T2), which is trading on the name of an obvious fraud scheme known as JSS Tripler, is here. JSS Tripler is part of a larger fraud scheme known as JustBeenPaid, which was pushed by members of the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme and any number of Ponzi-forum scammers. ASD President Andy Bowdoin was indicted 13 months ago for wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities. He faces a maximum term of 125 years in federal prison, if convicted on all counts of a seven-count indictment.

    We published a T2 follow-up here, and an update to the follow-up here. We also published a story on a decision last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that upheld the 27-year prison sentence of Tennessee-based Ponzi schemer Dennis Bolze, whose operation recruited senior citizens and resulted in a two-level “vulnerable victim” sentencing enhancement for Bolze.

    Online Ponzi purveyors and forum fraudsters may be particularly susceptible to the vulnerable-victim enhancement. Indeed, their “programs” cast with a wide net, gain a head of steam through willful blindness and practiced, serial disingenuousness on Ponzi boards and within the purveyor and promotional ranks — and often mushroom to involve thousands of participants, thus increasing the odds they’ll recruit vulnerable members of society into their schemes  . . .

    “Dave,” the purported operator of an increasingly bizarre HYIP that advertises a daily payout rate that projects to an annualized return of 730 percent, appears now to be blaming an unidentified law-enforcement agency for standing “idly by” as trouble engulfed his “program” after a onetime business partner’s AlertPay account was frozen.

    Oddly, though, “Dave” now appears to be grateful his business partner was not arrested on “Dave’s” word, asserting that the partner “is working with us to put this situation back on track.”

    At the same time, “Dave” asserts T2 is implementing a restructuring plan amid reality-bending claims it is “NOT in a weak position” despite a “month of no withdrawals” caused by “Chris,” the onetime business partner whose AlertPay account apparently was used to gather funds for T2 and now cannot be accessed.

    T2 members have been left in the lurch for weeks.

    The T2 “program” purportedly will restart on Feb. 1 with a new “algorithm” and a new name: T2MoneyKlub. The name change, according to a T2 members’ update, will occur because the program “no longer wish[ed] to be confused with Justbeenpaid.com.”

    Claims about “algorithms” and other mathematical magic frequently accompany fraud schemes. So do name changes at mid-stream. AdSurfDaily, for example, allegedly changed its name to ASD Cash Generator after a Ponzi collapse and did not inform incoming members that their funds were being used to pay back investors scammed when the original iteration collapsed.

    Ponzi collapses can be brought on by theft, account closures or seizures by banks and payment processors or by actions by law-enforcement to freeze accounts to stop a scheme from mushrooming. Details surrounding AlertPay’s apparent decision to freeze the account of “Chris” are unclear.

    “Dave’s” move to change the program’s name is in stark contrast to earlier, mind-bending claims that trading on the name of JustBeenPaid’s JSS Tripler arm somehow was appropriate. The T2MoneyKlub domain was registered Jan. 12 — as T2 members were publicly fretting about not getting paid.  The new domain is being powered by servers that use JSS Tripler 2’s name, according to records.

    Existing T2 Members May Face New Risk

    Even now, according to “Dave’s” members’ update, the program is taking advantage of an “SEO” strategy to expand its audience. If true, the program could be expanding its own risk of attracting vulnerable investors.

    “We will be setting up a quantity of forums and blogs, and each one will need to receive page views from the members, also there will be blog commenting tasks and forum posting tasks,” “Dave” asserts.

    “This is to build up a high alexa rank with a massive amount of original content and high pageview count which sets a great foundation for SEO and advertising revenue etc,” he continues in the members’ update. “We will give attention to each website for approx one month for forums and 2 weeks per blog.”

    Separately posting on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum as “Peakr8,” “Dave” painted himself a man of considerable business experience who’d been condemned unduly by the media and left twisting in the wind by an unidentified “police” agency.

    ‘Police Standing Idly By’

    “Yes we have had a few problems both technical and the [AlertPay] problem,” “Dave” conceded as “Peakr8” in a post yesterday on MoneyMakerGroup. “[T]his is not unlike any business offline or online, apart from it’s like trying to run your business with a mob walking up and down outside your business premises waving banners screaming ‘scam, scam, scam’ and also the newspapers saying you are a liar and a cheat with absolutely no evidence to back up their claims… when you have done nothing wrong and the police standing idly by saying that they are allowed to do it.”

    “Dave” has not identified the police agency to which he allegedly complained about “Chris” and apparently now is complaining about. He earlier asserted that his complaint would result in the arrest of “Chris.”

    “Dave’s” public complaint on MoneyMakerGroup followed on the heels of his apparent decision to block the public from the T2 forum and a separate claim by “Dave” that he would “viciously” oppose a T2 member who declared the program a “SCAM,” encouraged fellow members to file an AlertPay dispute and said he’d try to get his money back from SolidTrustPay, another payment processor used by T2.

    Whether the member “Dave” claimed he’d oppose “viciously” for trying to get back his money and complaining about the program planned to file a consumer complaint with any of the world’s law-enforcement agencies is unclear.

    What is clear is that it is common for fraud purveyors and their forum shills to discourage members from filing payment disputes amid claims that such complaints harm a “program” and its members.

    MoneyMakerGroup Doles Out Suspensions To Naysayers

    Separately, MoneyMakerGroup announced it had suspended some members who’d raised questions about T2. Those suspensions were attributed to “mmgcjm,” a “Global Moderator.”

    “Dave,” who purports to be posting from Thailand after jetting from England several days ago while T2 members were clamoring for their cash, appears to have approved of the suspensions.

    “Isn’t it nice here[?],” he crowed. “Should have been done months ago and they also ought to get a life ban for their dreadful behaviour.”

    T2 sells “dream positions” and “dream matrices” amid claims that even “passive” members can earn returns of 2 percent a day over the course of 75 days. The “program” has asserted it has “multiple income streams,” and “Dave” has preemptively denied T2 was operating a cross-border Ponzi scheme. T2 says its has 8,838 members, a claim that leads to troubling questions about whether vulnerable victims were reeled in by T2’s wide net on the web.

    “Chris,” a onetime business partner of “Dave,” is responsible for the “program’s” troubles, according to “Dave,” who earlier asserted that “Chris” would be arrested.

    If a police investigation actually ensues, it almost certainly would lead to questions about the extent of T2’s purported income streams, whether those purported ventures were profitable enough to sustain themselves — let alone T2’s (precompunding) annualized return of 730 percent on top of referral commissions — and whether Dave’s public pleas for members not to file AlertPay disputes were designed to keep a Ponzi scheme intact.

    Another possible area of inquiry is whether “Dave” — who appears to have closed the T2 forum to public viewing even as he suggests on MoneyMakerGroup that people who file disputes with SolidTrustPay will be opposed “viciously” — is trying to chill his own members.

    The MoneyMakerGroup suspensions of T2 doubters attributed to “mmgcjm” appear to involve at least three members and were carried out after a poster asserted that “[a]lmost 3 dozen opportunities” that mmgcjm “promoted as being “good”, “Great”, “Fantastic” and so on in 2011″ are now in the SCAM/CLOSED folder.”

    “mmgcjm” justified the suspensions by asserting that, under the guidelines of the MoneyMakerGroup forum, “programs” in the folder were not necessarily scams.

    As an advertisment on the right side of the T2 thread at MoneyMakerGroup lured readers with a suggestion that another program known as “Moon Fund” paid 8,850 percent “After 24 Hours,” “mmgcjm” claimed that the T2 critic was posting “false information.”

    The suspensions followed a short time later, with a prompt from “mmgcjm” for the T2 naysayers to “Enjoy your vacations!”

     

  • BULLETIN: ‘Trust Account’ For Accused Ponzi Schemer Andy Bowdoin ‘Currently Unable To Receive Money’; Is Bowdoin Encountering New Troubles In Wake Of ‘OneX’ Promos?

    ASD's Thomas A. "Andy" Bowdoin

    UPDATED 6:31 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) A website collecting money through PayPal for the criminal defense of accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin of AdSurfDaily appears to have lost its ability to gather funds designated for an attorney’s “trust account.”

    This message (next paragraph) appears if would-be Bowdoin sympathizers click on any of a number of payment buttons on the site, which is known as “Andy’s Fundraising Army.”

    “This recipient is currently unable to receive money.”

    The message originates on PayPal’s server.

    Why the trust account lost the ability to collect money via PayPal is unclear. The office of U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. of the District of Columbia said this afternoon that it “typically does not comment on pending cases, and has no comment on this particular matter.”

    Machen’s office is leading the Bowdoin prosecution.

    Bowdoin, 77, is awaiting a September 2012 trial on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities. The U.S. Secret Service said the ASD patriarch was presiding over a Ponzi scheme involving at least $110 million and thousands of victims.

    In September 2011, the Secret Service and federal prosecutors returned to members more than $55 million seized in 2008 in the civil portion of the case. The agency described ASD as a “criminal enterprise.”

    Bowdoin began to solicit money through the fundraising website last summer, after repeated delays. Information published on the site suggests Bowdoin collected about $26,800, far short of this stated goal of $500,000. The site positioned Bowdoin as “David,” with the government as “Goliath.”

    In recent months, Bowdoin has been pushing a mysterious scheme known as OneX, claiming God had delivered OneX to enable him to pay for his criminal defense.

    ASD figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming, a purported “sovereign citizen,” was arrested by the FBI in November 2011. He is detained in a federal facility near Seattle on charged he filed fraudulent liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD Ponzi case.

     

  • JSS Tripler 2 (T2) Creates Another Bizarre Ponzi-Land Spectacle; Purported Operator Purportedly Takes Off For Thailand After Threatening Purported One-Time Business Partner In Wake Of Purported AlertPay Freeze

    Online huckster “Ken Russo,” also known as “DRdave,” appears once again to have backed an HYIP fraud scheme and recruited a downline into a Ponzi morass. This one is known as JSS Tripler 2 — T2 for shorthand — and the backstory is just plain bizarre.

    Several cross-border crimes punishable by jail time already may have occurred, and there are reports that T2 somehow was operating through an AlertPay account that was not owned by T2 or T2’s purported operator, another person known as “Dave.”

    Like virtually all HYIP schemes, details are fuzzy and ambiguous. But “Dave” apparently was operating T2 through an AlertPay account owned by “Chris,” and the Canada-based payment processor — according to Ponzi board posts — has frozen the account.

    “Dave,” meanwhile, asserted that the account contained $200,000 and that “Chris” will “be in police custody by the end of the day,” according to Ponzi-board posts.

    Although the “police” assertion appears to have been made earlier this month, there appears to be no corresponding information about what police agency “Dave” called to have “Chris” taken into custody. Nor has “Dave” explained why police should consider “Chris” a criminal at the exclusion of “Dave,” whose T2 program claims to pay members a return of 2 percent a day plus referral commissions.

    The purported daily payout rate is double that claimed by AdSurfDaily, which the U.S. Secret Service said more than three years ago was operating a massive international Ponzi scheme on the Internet. Like T2, ASD also offered referral commissions on top of absurd daily returns.

    Such a “confluence” of payment schemes and an apparent lack of outside revenue are markers of a pure or virtually pure Ponzi scheme — even though criminals on the Ponzi forums turn a blind eye to the fundamental mathematical reality and the virtual certainly that members are being paid from the funds of other members.

    It is unclear if anything about T2 is real.

    What is clear is that ASD President Andy Bowdoin was indicted on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities in December 2010. He faces up to 125 years in federal prison if convicted on all counts, a fact virtually ignored by T2 promoters. ASD also was promoted on Ponzi boards such as MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold.

    At the same time T2’s “Dave” was claiming to have alerted police about “Chris,” “Dave” appears not to have explained what he intended to do if “Chris” called police on him.

    Also apparently absent from the police claim is any sort of real-world explanation of how it apparently came to be that “Dave” had come to believe it somehow was appropriate for a program “admin” such as himself to run a scheme through a third-party’s AlertPay account, not an account in the name of T2.

    “Dave” appears also to have asserted he had the power to exact “a lifetime ban from internet access” against “Chris” while further asserting that he somehow could authorize AlertPay to pay T2 members with money in the frozen account held by “Chris.”

    Ponzi-forum posts from October assert T2’s server was located in Thailand, with “Dave” being “from the UK.” It appears now, however, that the server is in the United States. “I Got Paid” posts on the Ponzi boards suggest payments have come from a Gmail address that uses the name of “Chris” in its makeup, not an email address from the JSSTripler2 domain.

    Such mechanics also were in place for JustBeenPaid and JSSTripler (see link below), “programs” that appear to have used multiple domains and addresses in multiple jurisdictions to funnel payouts to participants.

    For his part, “Ken Russo” — who earlier introduced members to the Club Asteria disaster and any number of fraud schemes — is describing T2 members who are demanding real-world answers as individuals who should be “deleted.”

    “The relatively few members who are demonstrating impatience along with their demand for a refund should be taken care of and deleted from the program and this forum,” “Ken Russo” ventured, according to RealScam.com, an antifraud site that concentrates on mass-marketing fraud. “Their continued presence here will only create more anxiety and frustration.”

    T2 was almost impossibly bizarre from the moment it came out of the gate. The “program” apparently believed it prudent to adopt the name of an existing program in the fraud stable of JustBeenPaid: JSS Tripler. Ponzi-board supporters of the emerging T2 “program” asserted that, since JSS Tripler apparently had not trademarked its name, that using the name as the calling card of a new “program” was perfectly acceptable.

    Why any legitimate entity would want to adopt the name of an obvious fraud scheme such as JSS Tripler was left to the imagination — as are so many things in the foundationally corrupt worlds of HYIPs.

    In any event, “Dave” now claims that he’s traveling to Thailand to try to right the T2 ship because he was having trouble concentrating from his undisclosed earlier location, according to Ponzi forum posts. Some T2 cheerleaders appear to be urging T2 members not to file disputes with AlertPay, a common occurrence when HYIP Ponzi schemes begin to tank.

    T2 apparently also has licensed itself to ban members and seize money (or the representations of money) in their accounts for speaking ill of the purported “program.”

  • RECOMMENDED READING: Fortune Magazine On The Manipulations Of Recidivist Con Man Barry Minkow — And Deseret News On The Sentencing Of Utah Ponzi Schemer Travis Wright In Front Of A ‘Couple Of Rows Of Eagle Scouts’

    EDITOR’S NOTE: This post contains links to recommended reading on Barry Minkow and Travis Wright — the former a classic narcissist and con man doing his second stint in federal prison after having played the redemption circuit for years, the latter a man who used other people’s money to ensconce himself in the lap of luxury, surround himself  with gaudy taxidermy such as a full-body African lion — and once reportedly paid $150,000 to have a swimming pool at his tony digs moved eight feet to make his life more perfect.

    The stories on Minkow in Fortune magazine and Travis Wright in Deseret News are intriguing and, we believe, socially significant. Both provide plenty of fodder for rumination as America continues to confront an epidemic of white-collar fraud . . .

    Barry Minkow first rose to national infamy as a con man who’d managed to dupe investors and Wall Street before he was old enough to sip a cocktail legally in many jurisdictions. The spectacular rise and fall of his ZZZZ Best carpet-cleaning business became one of the great cautionary tales of the 1980s.

    Minkow was sentenced to federal prison for the ZZZZ Best caper, but reportedly embraced Christianity while jailed and later was freed. He became a pastor who doubled as a fraud analyst and television commentator.

    But Minkow, now 45, is back in prison. Fortune magazine explains why in its Jan. 16 issue — and also reports that Minkow appears to have let it slip during the filming of a movie on his life that he was up to no good again. Here is an outtake:

    “Finally, one day in September 2009, recounts Meyers, he was in the production booth with headphones on when Minkow and James Caan were schmoozing between takes. Perhaps forgetting about the open mike in his lapel, Minkow leaned over to Caan and whispered, “I financed this movie by clipping companies,” Minkow said.

    “Clipping,” of course, is a slang word for “swindling.” Minkow says the incident “never happened.” “Not ever,” he wrote Fortune in an e-mail in September. “And have him produce the tape.”

    Fortune reports that the tape was produced and that “Minkow said it.”

    And Fortune reports plenty of other things, including an assertion that some people working on the film were getting paid in strange ways.

    Read the Fortune story.

    Separately, Deseret News is reporting that Utah Ponzi schemer Travis Wright has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

    Here is an outtake from the story in the Deseret News:

    “A couple of rows of Eagle Scouts in court to support a former Scoutmaster-turned-criminal might have backfired against a convicted Ponzi scheme operator Friday.”

    Going to court to observe proceedings as part of a civics lesson is one thing. But should Eagle Scouts assemble in court to show “support” for a man facing sentencing for one of the largest frauds in Utah history?

    In Ponzi schemes — as longtime observers and victims know all too well — the visuals often are incongruous. In the AdSurfDaily case, for instance, some members who openly described themselves as people of faith looked on and said nothing as ASD President Andy Bowdoin claimed the prosecution was the work of “Satan” and compared the U.S. Secret Service to the 9/11 terrorists.

    It’s our hope that the scouts were present at Wright’s sentencing to receive an education on how Ponzis alter lives and futures, not as stage props for Wright. And we also hope that Wright, post-release, shows the scouts that redemption is not just a religious or penal theory and that he doesn’t backslide like Minkow and become a slave to self-absorption.

    Read the full story on Wright’s sentencing in the Deseret News, which notes that “several” victims were crying in the courtroom.

    NOTE ON ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDED READING: “The Salon of Famous Babies,” a classic poem by Irving Feldman, is not about Ponzi schemes. But if a Ponzi schemer or narcissist’s “daydream of glory” has sucked the joy from your life, you very well might find that the poem gives voice to your feelings of anger and provides a measure of comfort.

    Visit the Virginia Quarterly Review to read “The Salon of Famous Babies.”

    “As well teach ducks to drown as teach him not to take it all as owed the world’s own son and heir.” — From “The Salon of Famous Babies” by Irving Feldman, American poet

  • SEC Names 3 Defendants In Alleged $16 Million Credit-Card ‘Merchant Portfolio’ Ponzi Scheme Targeted At Mormons; Records Show Schemes Within Schemes Dating Back Years

    EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’re keeping a Bubba Blue notebook on how to have a Ponzi scheme as opposed to shrimp, here is an entry: an alleged “merchant portfolio” Ponzi scheme.

    Ponzi and fraud schemes often use impressive-sounding terminology to separate people from their money. Schemes typically mushroom to consume millions of dollars when investors — who sometimes become commission-based promoters and effectively act as unregistered brokers and dealers — accept a firm’s extraordinary claims at face value, ignore red flags such as outsized returns or engage in willful blindness because choosing to see is bad for profits.

    In June 2010, the SEC charged Joseph A. Nelson, Anthony C. Zufelt, David Decker, Cache Decker and five companies “in connection with three related Ponzi schemes largely targeting the Mormon community.” The complaint was filed in Utah and alleges schemes within schemes dating back at least to 2005.

    As 2011 came to a close, the SEC named three additional defendants in a separate, Nelson-related complaint also filed in Utah. Named in the year-end complaint were Kevin J. Wilcox, Jennifer E. Thoennes and Eric R. Nelson.

    Eric Nelson is Joseph Nelson’s brother. He is accused of deceiving investors by creating “fictitious bank account statements reflecting balances in his brother’s accounts that were far in excess of the actual amounts in those accounts.”

    Wilcox and Thoennes are accused of solicitation fraud

    Joseph Nelson, Wilcox and Thoennes told investors “that Joseph Nelson and his companies were engaged in the business of purchasing ‘merchant portfolios’ of credit card processing accounts, holding them for a certain period of time, and then selling them for a profit to financial institutions, such as banks.”

    “Many” of the investors were “fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints” whom Joseph Nelson “identified and targeted through church connections and during church functions,” the SEC charged.

    But “Joseph Nelson and his companies never purchased or sold a single merchant portfolio,” the SEC charged.

    “The money invested with Joseph Nelson and his companies was instead used by Nelson to make incremental payments to investors in a Ponzi-scheme fashion, to pay his associates, including Wilcox and Thoennes, and to pay his own lavish personal expenses, as well as those of other family members,” the SEC charged.

    Affinity fraud is a major problem in Utah. In June 2010, the FBI said thousands of people in the state had been victimized by Ponzi schemes and cases of investment fraud that caused Utah residents to lose an estimated $1.4 billion.

    SEC Warns About Scams That Use Social-Media Sites To Fleece The Masses

    In a separate, unrelated action yesterday, the SEC charged an Illinois-based investment adviser with offering to sell fictitious securities on LinkedIn, a social-media site.

    Social media increasingly are being used to sanitize schemes and help them mushroom, a top SEC official said.

    “Fraudsters are quick to adapt to new technologies to exploit them for unlawful purposes,” said Robert B. Kaplan, co-chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Asset Management Unit.

    Charged in an SEC administrative action yesterday was Anthony Fields, 54, of Lyons, Ill.

    The agency alleged he “offered more than $500 billion in fictitious securities through various social media websites.”

    On LinkedIn, for example, he allegedly used “discussions to promote fictitious ‘bank guarantees’ and ‘medium-term notes.’”

    Read the SEC order against Fields, Anthony Fields & Associates and Platinum Securities Brokers. See this SEC Investor Alert on social-media fraud.

    Revisit this July 2010 PP Blog story on a FINRA warning about HYIPs and scams that use social media to proliferate. See this Nov. 2, 2011, PP Blog editorial on a threat by AdLandPro — a purported social-media site — to sue RealScam.com, an antifraud forum.

    Among other collapsed schemes, the alleged AdSurfDaily and Pathway To Prosperity Ponzi schemes were promoted on AdLandPro. A recent thread at AdLandPro is promoting OneX, which also is being promoted by ASD President Andy Bowdoin while he awaits trial on criminal charges of wire-fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.

    Among the screaming headlines in OneX-related content on AdLandPro is this one:

    “Are You in Deep Money Trouble? See Me at Once!”