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Tag: BBC

  • BBC Hit With New Year’s Eve DDoS Attack

    Websites of the BBC, including those with news content, were rendered unavailable by a New Year’s Eve DDoS attack, the venerable company reported. The outage lasted on the order of three hours. Service has been restored.

    From BBC News (italics added):

    All the BBC’s websites were unavailable early on Thursday morning because of a large web attack.

    The problems began about 0700 GMT and meant visitors to the site saw an error message rather than webpages.




  • BBC HOST: ‘We Have An Idiot On The Program Today’ — And It’s Alex Jones

    Andrew Neil yesterday made the universal "[batspit] crazy" gesture after trying to interview Alex Jones of InfoWars.
    Andrew Neil yesterday made the universal “[batspit] crazy” gesture after trying to interview Alex Jones of InfoWars.
    HYIP apologists dating back (at least) to the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme in 2008 ($119 million) have bizarrely sought to defend their favorite scams by steering discussions off the track. Why talk about the recidivist securities felon who presided over ASD (Andy Bowdoin), for instance, when the “real menace” is the Bilderberg Group?

    And, hey, since the United States is a participatory Democracy, why not further cloud the issues by launching petition drives designed to derail the prosecutions of major Ponzi schemes (such as AdSurfDaily and Zeek Rewards) and even filing bogus liens for billions of dollars against judges, prosecutors and investigators?

    If you encounter an HYIP Ponzi scheme these days that perhaps purports to pay interest of 2 percent a day or more, it’s a safe bet you’ll encounter one conspiracy theorist after another on well-known fraud-scheme forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup — especially if the evilGUBment brings a criminal or civil action against the purported “opportunity.”

    It was against this delusional backdrop that conspiracy theorist Alex Jones appeared on the BBC’s “Sunday Politics” program hosted by Andrew Neil. The subject was the annual meeting of the Bilderberg Group, sometimes known  simply as the Bilderbergers.

    One of the best moments of the program occurred near the end of the Jones segment, when Neil made the universal “[batspit] crazy” gesture after Jones shared a FEMA concentration-camp conspiracy theory and screamed that “you will not stop freedom! You will not stop the republic! Humanity is awakening!”

    Neil declared, “We have an idiot on the program today.”

    Among the bizarre claims of the AdSurfDaily apologists was that all commerce is lawful as long as the parties to a “contract” agree that it is lawful, a position that would legalize Ponzi schemes — and slavery and human trafficking and narcotics trafficking, for that matter. The U.S. Secret Service took down ASD, and promptly was called “Satan” by ASD operator Andy Bowdoin, now serving a 78-month prison sentence for wire fraud for his 1-percent-a-day scheme.

    The SEC took down Zeek Rewards in August 2012, amid allegations it was conducting a $600 million, international Ponzi- and pyramid scheme by duping people into believing they were receiving a legitimate return that averaged about 1.5 percent a day. A federal judge appointed a receiver, who quickly was described as a felon by a Zeek litigant. (The Zeek receiver is a former federal prosecutor who once successfully prosecuted a Hezbollah terrorist cell operating in the United States.)

    Back in 2008 and 2009, some of the ASD apologists accused a federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush of committing dozens of felonies and conspiring with a chief judge to deny ASD members justice.

    Why HYIP scammers seem to embrace the conspiracy theories of Jones long has been left to the imagination. One thing that is clear is that ASD and Zeek combined allegedly gathered $719 million. Some recent HYIP scams such as Legisi ($72 million) and JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid (unknown take) have required participants to avow they were not with the “government.” Legisi specifically named the CIA, FBI, SEC, “Her Majesty’s Police,” the Intelligence Services of Great Britain and the Serious Fraud Office, among others.

    Late last month, the United States — working with other countries — took down a major payment processor for fraud schemes. Its name was “Liberty Reserve.”

  • BULLETIN: John Bravata, Figure In Alleged ‘Billionaire Boys Club’ Ponzi Scheme In Michigan, Arrested At JFK Airport After Return From Italy

    BULLETIN: John Bravata, who was sued by the SEC in July 2009 in a Ponzi Scheme case that became known as the “Billionaire Boys Club” case, has been arrested at JFK International Airport in New York, the FBI said.

    Bravata was arrested on an inbound flight from Italy, prosecutors said.  He is charged with wire fraud.

    The Bravata civil case has been marked by oddities, including the November 2009 indictment of his defense attorney on charges he was running his own fraud scheme. The attorney, Gregory Bartko, was convicted last year.

    Separately, Bravata was accused in 2009 by the SEC of violating the asset freeze in the civil Ponzi case by taking loans against life-insurance policies. Judge David M. Lawson ordered Bravata to repay the money.

    Now Bravata has been charged criminally. He will be prosecuted in the Eastern District of Michigan.

    From 2006 through 2009, the FBI said, “Bravata knowingly participated in a scheme to defraud investors. Bravata and those working on his behalf made multiple misrepresentations to numerous prospective investors, including misrepresentations regarding how their investment funds would be utilized, the security of funds invested with BBC, and the returns that could be expected by investors of BBC.

    “Bravata also misled investors by telling them that managers of BBC would not earn money unless BBC was profitable,” the FBI said. “He also represented that the managers of BBC did not take fees, commissions, or a salary. In reality, Bravata and others received lucrative compensation from BBC and related entities despite that fact that BBC was never profitable. Bravata also used investor funds to pay for the construction of his roughly 18,000 square foot personal home and to pay for other personal expenses.”

    A California Ponzi scheme in the 1980s also was known as “The Billionaire Boys Club.”

    Bravata’s company is known as BBC Equities LLC.

  • BREAKING NEWS: ‘Billionaire Boys Club’ Attorney In Michigan Ponzi Scheme Case Indicted In North Carolina For Running His Own Securities Scheme

    ponzinewsUPDATED 7:02 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) A Georgia attorney representing defendants in the alleged “Billionaire Boys Club” Ponzi scheme in Michigan has been indicted in North Carolina on charges he ran his own securities-fraud scheme.

    Gregory Bartko, 56, of Berkeley Lake, Ga., was indicted in North Carolina under seal Nov 4, according to U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding of the Eastern District of North Carolina. The seal was lifted Nov. 18.

    Bartko and a co-defendant were charged with three counts of mail fraud and two counts of making false statements. Prosecutors said the scheme also involved conspiring to commit mail fraud, laundering monetary instruments, engaging in unlawful monetary transactions, making false statements and obstructing proceedings of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

    Bartko is representing “Billionaire Boys Club” (BBC) defendants John J. Bravata, Shari Bravata and Antonio Bravata against civil charges in a case brought by the SEC in Detroit. The SEC said that as many as 400 investors were fleeced in a $50 million Ponzi scheme operated by John Bravata and a co-defendant, alleging the scheme paid for “expensive lifestyles” and “luxury homes, watercraft, jewelry, gambling, exotic vacations and expensive cars.”

    “Indeed, John Bravata used money from the first two investors to buy himself a $90,268 Ferrari,” the SEC said. “John Bravata and [co-defendant Richard] Trabulsy spent at least $7 million of the investors’ money for their own benefit, and for the benefit of John Bravata’s wife, Shari A. Bravata, and son, Antonio Bravata.”

    The 2009 Michigan case became known as the “Billionaires Boys Club” prosecution because a Bravata company was named “BBC Equities,” and the SEC asserted in July 2009 that BBC was intended to stand for “Billionaire Boys Club.”

    A California Ponzi scheme in the 1980s also was known as “The Billionaire Boys Club.”

    Despite the indictment against him in North Carolina, Bartko advised U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson of the Eastern District of Michigan that he intends to proceed as the attorney for the Bravata family members without objection from his clients.

    In North Carolina, prosecutors said Bartko operated a “criminal investment fraud scheme” and “held himself out as an investment banker” to carry out the scheme.

    Darryl Lynn Laws, Bartko’s co-defendant in the North Carolina case, posed as a “Ph.D. in finance” for his role in carrying out the scheme, prosecutors said. Laws, 58, lives in La Jolla, Calif.

    “Bartko and Laws used bank accounts controlled by Bartko in Georgia to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in proceeds from fraudulent sales of investments,” prosecutors said. “[N]early all of the money collected by Bartko and Laws as part of the scheme had been obtained by a single salesman, [Scott Bradley Hollenbeck].

    “In making these sales, Hollenbeck used numerous materially false statements and omissions, including false promises to investors designed to conceal the true risk of the investment, such as ‘guarantees’ of yearly earnings of at least 12%, and the promise that the investment was insured when it was not,” prosecutors said.

    Hollenbeck is named an unindicted co-conspirator in the North Carolina case.

    Read the “Billionaire Boys Club” complaint by the SEC. Bartko is representing three defendants in the BBC case.

    Read a statement by U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding announcing the indictment against Bartko in North Carolina.

    The United States Postal Inspection Service, the FBI and the IRS Criminal Investigation Unit are doing the legwork in the North Carolina case, prosecutors said.