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Tag: Carl Pearson

  • UPDATE: Launch Of JSS/JBP Follow-Up Scam (ProfitClicking) Under Way — Sort Of

    The launch of “ProfitClicking,” the follow-up scam to the JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid HYIP scheme (2 percent a day) purportedly operated by Frederick Mann, is under way.

    Sort of.

    Carl Pearson in his JSS/JBP days.

    Just who’s running ProfitClicking is unclear, although the site has claimed that cash-gifting enthusiast J.J. Ulrich is the “PC Executive Director” and that Carl Pearson is on the “Management Team.” Pearson purportedly was the one-time COO of JSS/JBP, which experienced a promotional ban in Italy by the securities regulator CONSOB.

    Mann hinted last month that he feared arrest in the United States. He previously speculated that the JSS/JBP site could be taken out by “cruise missiles.” Some JSS/JBP members complained that their support tickets hadn’t been addressed in weeks.

    Rather than hold JSS/JBP responsibile, Mann suggested, it perhaps was best for members to read a self-improvement manual.

    ProfitClicking’s site had featured a countdown clock for days, with the launch set to go live at 6 a.m. (EDT) today. Despite claims by ProfitClicking that new servers and a new engineering approach would make for a seamless experience, the site experienced an immediate meltdown — with the landing page defaulting to a “Block DOS” gateway.

    The site did begin to load slowly within a few minutes, but members immediately complained on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum that they couldn’t log in. Members now are saying that they can log in but that the site is performing worse than dial-up.

    Whether members’ data was transferred properly from the JSS/JBP site to the ProfitClicking site remains an open question. Like JSS/JBP, ProfitClicking makes members affirm they are not with the “government.” The site also seeks to disclaim any responsibility on the part of the “opportunity” or its affiliates for offering the “program.”

    As JSS/JBP’s purported owner, Mann compared government workers to the Mafia. Regardless, he once permitted JSS/JBP’s conference-call host to hang up on a man who claimed to have been recruited by Mann and later to have suffered a stroke. Prior to being unceremoniously disconnected from the call, the man informed Mann that JSS/JBP support had ignored his pleas for help.

    A woman who complained about support after claiming her sister’s home was at risk because of the JSS/JBP “program” was treated rudely during an earlier call — this after she pointed out she had a heart condition.

    Among the apparent early aims of ProfitClicking is to permit members to fund accounts, but not withdraw. Such an approach is consistent with an effort to draft suckers into turning over money that may or may not be used at a later time to make Ponzi payments to people who bought into the JSS/JBP scam. AdSurfDaily, a ProfitClicking-like autosurf, scammed its members in this fashion in 2007, according to U.S. federal court files.

    Mann was a former ASD pitchman, according to a 2008 promo.

    ASD President Andy Bowdoin never told his new members that their money would be used to pay old members on board when the original iteration of ASD collapsed, federal prosecutors said. Bowdoin was sentenced last month to 78 months in federal prison.

    All sorts of vacuous claims are made on the ProfitClicking site, including a claim that the purported opportunity is “Legally Compliant” and has a “Patented system.” Like JSS/JBP, ASD and the recently collapsed Zeek Rewards “program,” ProfitClicking has no known securities registrations and purports to do business with payment processors linked to fraud scheme after fraud scheme.

    Because ProfitClicking has a virtually unquantifiable number of HYIP scammers within its ranks owing to the fact it was formed from the carcass of JSS/JBP and was promoted widely on the Ponzi-forum cesspits, new members may be at grave risk. ProfitClicking’s original group of scammers has a vested interest in continuing the deception because attracting “new money” may be the only means of getting paid in the future.

    For posterity, the screen shots below provide a snapshot of the countdown of a new scam in progress:

    1.

    The ProfitClicking countdown timer at the 1:00 mark today.

    2.

    The ProfitClicking countdown timer at the 0:01 mark today, one second before launch.

    3.

    Time to scam anew!

  • UPDATE: Call In Which Frederick Mann Told JSS/JBP Members That ‘Opportunity’ Was Paying Them With Funds From ‘New Members’ Goes Missing From Website

    Frederick Mann, onetime ASD pitchman and the purported operator of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid

    UPDATED 7:44 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.). A potentially damning audio recording of a March 15 conference call in which Frederick Mann told JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid members that the “opportunity” was paying them with money from “new members” has gone missing from the JSS/JBP website.

    The precise date on which the recording was removed was not immediately clear. But the removal occurred after JSS/JBP also had removed recordings of conference calls featuring Carl Pearson, a pitchman for the “opportunity” and its purported COO.

    Mann, whose name appeared in 2008 promos as a pitchman for AdSurfDaily, is the purported operator of JSS/JBP. The U.S. Secret Service seized tens of millions of dollars tied to ASD in 2008, amid allegations it was conducting an international Ponzi scheme over the Internet.

    Andy Bowdoin now has been accused of serial scamming dating back at least two decades. He faces a May 8 bond-review hearing. Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS/JBP, was identified in 2008 promos as an ASD pitchman.

    ASD President Andy Bowdoin was charged criminally in 2010. He now faces a May 8 bond-review hearing amid allegations that he continued to scam the public even after the August 2008 seizure of $65.8 million from his 10 personal bank accounts and even after his December 2010 arrest in Florida on ASD-related Ponzi charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.

    “I (Frederick Mann) have been with ASD since January 07,” remarks attributed to Mann on a site known as BigBooster read on May 14, 2008. “Past performance indicates a strong probablility (sic) that ASD will continue to perform as advertised. (By early May 2008, I had received 14 payments totalling over $6,000!”)

    The U.S. Secret Service conducted a Ponzi raid of ASD less than three months later. Despite the Ponzi allegations against Bowdoin and ASD, Mann purportedly went on to launch JSS/JBP, which purports to pay members a return of 2 percent a day — double the purported return of ASD.

    In January 2012, JSS/JBP-related claims came under the lens of CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator. The agency banned promos for the “opportunity” last month after earlier announcing a 90-day suspension.

    Just days before CONSOB’s April 23 announcement of the ban — on April 17 — U.S. federal prosecutors sent a letter to Bowdoin’s defense attorney in the ASD Ponzi case. The letter informed the attorney — Charles A. Murray — that the government intended to introduce evidence that Bowdoin continued to commit crimes after the August 2008 ASD seizure and after Bowdoin’s subsequent indictment on charges that could put him behind bars for 125 years if he is convicted on all counts.

    Prosecutors said they had tied Bowdoin to AdViewGlobal (AVG), an autosurf that collapsed in 2009. They also said Bowdoin had emerged as a pitchman for a “fraudulent scheme” known as OneX that — in ASD-like fashion — “simply re-distributes funds among participants.”

    Online Ponzi schemes are infamous for morphing into new forms. Serial scammers who populate Ponzi boards such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup drive business to the purported “opportunities,” which often advertise MLM-style, tiered recruitment “commissions” on top of preposterous rates of return.

    ASD, AVG, OneX and JSS/JBP all have (or had) a presence on the Ponzi boards. Serial apologists for JSS/JBP have pooh-poohed the CONSOB developments.

    In the now-missing March 15 recording, a caller purportedly from “San Francisco” asked Mann where “JustBeenPaid get[s] the money to pay that kind of interest.”

    The reference was to the advertised return of 2 percent a day, which corresponds to a precompounding, annualized return of 730 percent — a figure that would make Bernard Madoff blush.

    “Well, first of all, JBP or JSS Tripler is a revenue-sharing program, so that means some of the money comes from new members buying positions,” Mann responded to the caller. “Then, we are in the process of developing additional income streams, so that’s relevant. And eventually the additional income streams may be sufficient to pay the 2 percent — maybe not.”

  • ** [UNCONFIRMED] ** ‘JustBeenPaid’ Experiencing DDoS Attack ** [UNCONFIRMED] **

    UPDATED 2:56 P.M. EDT (APRIL 3, U.S.A.): After an outage that lasted more than 24 hours, the JustBeenPaid website is back online — although there are reports it is not accessible in all parts of the world. Our earlier story is below . . .

    ** [UNCONFIRMED] ** Some members of the JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid “program” have reported that the JBP website is experiencing a DDoS attack. The PP Blog cannot independently confirm the reports, which have appeared on the MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold Ponzi forums and on at least one JBP affiliate Blog.

    The JBP domain has been returning a “timed out” error message for hours.

    JSS/JBP purports to pay a daily return of 2 percent and a monthly return of 60 percent. The “opportunity” purportedly has more than 400,000 members. Similar “programs” have operated as virtually pure Ponzi schemes.

    In a March 15 conference call, Frederick Mann, JSS/JBP’s purported operator, told members from the United States and Canada that JSS/JBP is paying them with money sent in by “new members.” Using “new” money to pay “old” members is the central element of a Ponzi scheme — although Mann did not use the phrase.

    In the days that followed, JSS/JBP removed certain material from its website, including recordings of conference calls hosted by “Carl Pearson,” the purported COO of JSS/JBP. Images of certain JSS/JBP affiliates and customer-service personnel also were removed from the website.

    JSS/JBP purportedly has been installing new servers. Members have grumbled in recent days about downtime at the site, delays in posting purported “earnings” and delays in sending payments.

    Mann repeatedly has declined to identify JSS/JBP with a nation-state, leading to questions about whether members have any consumer protections at all.

    If a DDoS attack is under way, the event may lead to questions about whether JSS/JBP has reported the attack to a law-enforcement agency or whether the “opportunity” would be reluctant to make such a report out of fear its base of operations would be exposed.

    JSS/JBP has no known securities registrations, but Mann has advised members that it was OK to call JSS/JBP an investment program. Such guidance potentially could make both JSS/JBP and its affiliates targets of securities-related probes in various jurisdictions around the world.

    The Italian securities regulator CONSOB announced a JSS/JBP-related probe on Jan. 23.

  • STATUS QUO CHANGE IN ‘PROGRAM’? Conference-Call Recordings Of ‘Carl Pearson’ Go Missing From JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid Website; Development Explained Away As Response To Potential ‘Hackers’ — Although Frederick Mann Recordings Remain

    Purported JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid COO Carl Pearson. From: YouTube.

    It sometimes is the case in the corrupt universes of HYIPs that a change in the status quo signals panic or devastating news. It’s also sometimes the case that significant developments get explained away as meaningless or part of a plan that had been in place all along in response to explosive growth.

    It is almost always the case that HYIPs such as JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid and their various purveyors reveal incongruities and internal inconsistencies — and a few big ones now are in play at JSS/JBP.

    Within the past several days, audio recordings of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid “conference calls” featuring pitchman and purported COO “Carl Pearson” have gone missing from the JSS/JBP website. The recordings previously had been embedded on the site below the embedded recordings of Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS/JBP. Although Mann’s recordings remain, the recordings of Pearson have vanished.

    No recording from Mann was added to the site last week, meaning the last embedded Mann recording carries a date of March 15. No recording was posted for March 22, meaning that the streak of posting a recording of every Mann Thursday conference call dating back to Feb. 16 had been broken.

    In the March 15 call, Mann told members that JSS/JBP was paying them with money from “new members” and that it was OK to call JSS/JBP an investment program. Using money from new members to pay old members is the central element of a Ponzi scheme. And because Mann himself described JSS/JBP as an investment program, promoters could find themselves confronting assertions they are selling unregistered securities as investment contracts.

    JSS/JBP members who identified themselves of residents of the United States or Canada were on the March 15 call (and also on previous calls). Their nationalities and citizenship are potentially important because JSS/JBP has no known securities registrations, meaning that regulators from either the United States or Canada could move against the enterprise and perhaps even some of its promoters.

    Mann has declined on multiple occasions to identify JSS/JBP with a nation-state — and promoters still are pushing the scheme, despite the fact they appear to have no clue about the internal workings of JSS/JBP and how they (and their recruits) ever could recover their investments in the event of a collapse or a government intervention.

    In January, the Italian securities regulator CONSOB announced a JSS/JBP-related action — and affiliates still promoted the program, with JSS/JBP itself claiming it was posting record numbers of new members daily.

    At least a few JSS/JBP members have noted the removal of the Pearson calls. Earlier today, the PP Blog viewed an affiliate’s Blog for JSS/JBP in which an assertion was made that Pearson had become too busy with other duties to host calls.

    “Due to the unprecedented growth of JBP, Carl Pearson will no longer be doing the weekly conferences,” a comment from a reader asserted. “He is prioritising now full time in the back office operations of JBP.”

    The comment was dated March 21. A follow-up comment dated March 22 suggested the recordings had been removed for security reasons and that other information also might be removed.

    “From the conference room yesterday at around 8pm Dominick got on the mic and announced it,” the post claimed. “He also said that staff members could have their pictures and information removed from the site if they wanted to and Carl as well as other staff members decided it would be best to have that information removed. He said that they are growing so fast that they could be targeted by crooks and hackers.”

    But what the explanation did not reveal is why Mann’s recordings remained on the site if concern about crooks and hackers was great enough to trigger the removal of the Pearson recordings.

    As often is the case in the HYIP sphere, the information was posted anonymously, meaning it could not be verified. Even so, the information is potentially disturbing in the sense that it defaults to well-known HYIP clichés such as introducing the prospect of hackers  — while ignoring the potentially damning information contained in the jettisoned material as a factor in the removal decision and the obvious fact that information that remains on the site may be equally damning.

    With a straight face, for example, JSS/JBP purports to pay a daily return of 2 percent and a monthly return of 60 percent.

    JSS/JBP openly advertises that it pays a return of 60 percent a month on TOP of affiliate commissions totaling 15 percent over two tiers.

    In 2007, when the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme stopped making payments to members (even as its operator allegedly was making political donations with Ponzi money), ASD President Andy Bowdoin allegedly blamed the halted member payouts on script problems and “Russian” hackers who’d allegedly taken $1 million.

    Bowdoin never filed a police report about the purported theft of $1 million, federal prosecutors said.

    In 2008 promotional materials attributed to Mann, Mann was identified as an ASD pitchman. As the ASD prosecution moved forward, it became apparent that certain ASD members either were “sovereign citizens” or sympathizers. Some “sovereign citizens” hold extreme antigovernment views and have an irrational belief that laws do not apply to them.

    In November 2011, ASD figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming was arrested by an FBI Terrorism Task Force in Washington state on charges he had filed false liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD case, including a federal judge, three federal prosecutors and a special agent of the U.S. Secret Service.

    On Feb. 27, the PP Blog reported that a website linked to Mann included links to 11 videos concerning Francis Schaeffer Cox, a purported “sovereign citizen” under indictment in an alleged murder plot against public officials in Alaska.

    One poster on the JSS/JBP-related Blog from which the “hackers” explanation was advanced had a different take on conference-call-related developments.

    “Heat is also the REAL reason why Carl Pearson has moved off the conference calls,” the poster speculated.

     

  • EDITORIAL: The Astonishing Virality Of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, A ‘Program’ That Purports To Pay A Return Of 2 Percent A Day And Makes Members Affirm They Are Not With The ‘Government’ — Even As Purported Operator Spotlights ‘Sovereign Citizen’ Implicated In Alleged Murder Plot Against Public Officials

    EDITOR’S NOTE: For the purposes of this column, the PP Blog is reporting on only a small number of references to JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid in the past 24 hours, as compiled by Google’s “Past 24 hours” feature. Google also has a “Past hour” feature. At the time of this post, Google is reporting “About 3,970” indexed “results” for jss tripler during the 24-hour time period, yesterday to today. A good number of the returns are in languages other than English. (Editor’s note continues below screen shot.)


    JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid is an exceptionally murky “program” that purports to pay a return of 2 percent a day. That’s an absurd 60 percent a month — or, on an annualized basis, 730 percent, an ROI that would make Bernard Madoff gag. The “program,” which purports to be “indefinitely sustainable” and makes members affirm they are not government spies or media lackeys, has a strong presence on forums listed in U.S. federal court files as places from which Ponzi schemes are promoted.

    On Feb. 27, the PP Blog reported that a website linked to Frederick Mann, the purported operator of the “program,” is publishing two videos and links to nine more that highlight Francis Schaeffer Cox, a purported “sovereign citizen” implicated in an alleged murder plot against public officials in Alaska.

    “Sovereign citizens” have an irrational belief that laws do not apply to them. They have been implicated in numerous fraud schemes and may engage in what has become known as “paper terrorism” — i.e., the filing of false liens against members of law enforcement, false libel lawsuits against publishers and other bids to chill and nuisance the law-enforcement community or members of the media.

    Mann declined to tell conference-call listeners on Feb. 23 even where the enterprise was operating from.

    Despite these disturbing events, JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid has achieved Internet virality and may be recruiting thousands of new affiliates daily. The bullet-point brief below condenses some of the affiliate claims in just the past 24 hours.

    Despite repeated promotional references to the sum of $10, JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid members do not have to limit their “purchase” to only one $10 position. The scheme could be raking in tremendous sums during an era of securities hucksterism that sometimes involves massive — if not epic — sums of money. It is not unusual for large sums to go missing, leaving defrauded investors holding the bag for tremendous losses. At a minimum, those losses contribute to the undermining of economies on a local level, perhaps particularly if groups of individuals from the same area become investors.

    • Source: Blog titled “Easy Online Money” with a kicker of “Change a life today!” Among the claims: “You are guaranteed to earn a daily 2% on the positions you purchase, thereby making a decent amount of passive income online working from home.”
    • Source: Blog at URL that is a subdomain of blogspot.com, a free Blogger platform hosted by Google. Among the claims: “You can fund your account with as little as $10, and earn 2% per day with no work.”
    • Source: Blog at another blogspot subdomain. Among the claims: “JSS-Tripler now has 294,651 members — having grown by just over 6,000 new members during the past 24 hours. Thank you to our many promoters for doing such a great job!”
    • Source: Text accompanying video on Google-owned YouTube. Among the text claims: “Once you are in JSS tripler . . . Click on ‘Financial’ tab . . . Scroll down you will have $10 in your jss tripler account . . . Click on ‘Buy Jss Tripler Position’ . . . Purchase 1 free position with the $10 you receive in your account . . . You will be getting 2% earnings on $10 [sic] i.e. $0.20 every day without doing anything . . . After the 75 days you make $15 dollars [sic] without any more investments or referrals. Then you invest back in $10 or whatever you like and you make more and more each day. Simple system really [sic] More position [sic] you purchase or get from referrals the more you make. Very simple process.”
    • Source: Blog titled “Money Making Tips.” Among the claims: “The level of support is better than any other program i have seen, the Daily Web Conferences with Carl Pearson are terrific. You can usually get your questions acknowledged instantly, you are kept up to date with what’s going on with this company, they provide training including tutorials and videos. You can access the conference area 24/7 [sic] a moderator is there to answer all your questions. JBP had just hired a new marketing leader, Louis Paquette[,] to help educate members in any areas where they need help.” [Note by PP Blog: Louis Paquette is referenced in this Feb. 4 PP Blog story, which reported that a JSS Tripler-related domain hosted in Utah mysteriously began to redirect to the Netherlands after a JSS Tripler-related action by CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator.]
    • Source: Blog at empowernetwork.com URL. Among the claims: “JSS Tripler Gives You the first $10 for FREE: My Total ‘2%’ Earnings Thus Far $4757.00.”
    • Source: Blog with a kicker of “Social Media Marketing Consultant.” Blog has accompanying YouTube video: Among the Blog claims: “I would like to help JBP grow, in any way I can contribute . . . It is my goal to add 60 active referrals over the next 6 months or less.” Among the video claims: “Makes It So Easy to Make Money Online that a Baby can Almost do it!” The text accompanying the video engages in considerable keyword stuffing with the phrase of “Make Money At Home” and similar phrases.
    • Source: Entry on apsense.com. Among the claims: “I just want to pay it forward and help others . . . get ‘$10 free money’ in your accounts . . . Buy a JSS-Tripler position and start earning 2% per day! . . . Inbite [sic] new members. There is an endless supply of people online looking for money making opportunities.”
    • Source: Blog styled “Success Instantly.” Blog has accompanying YouTube video. Among the video claims: “Compound your Earnings To INCREASE Your Daily Payout.”