URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: (12th Update 1:28 p.m. EDT U.S.A.) The SEC has gone to federal court in San Francisco, alleging that the eAdGear “program” was a pyramid- and Ponzi scheme that gathered $129 million. The action against eAdGear is the second major pyramid-scheme prosecution announced by the SEC this week.
The SEC has identified eAdGear’s operators as Charles S. Wang, 52, and Qian Cathy Zhang, 52, of Warren, N.J., and Francis Y. Yuen, 53, of Dublin, Calif. They have been charged with fraud and an asset freeze has been imposed, the SEC said.
Zhang is Wang’s wife, the SEC said, alleging the couple was part of a “ruse” that positioned Zhang as an ordinary “member” who “became hugely successful.”
“During sworn testimony before the staff of the Commission in the investigation preceding the filing of this case, Zhang asserted her privilege against self-incrimination rather than answer questions about her role at eAdGear,” the SEC said in its complaint.
The eAdGear “opportunity” itself, according to the SEC, was a “fiction.”
“eAdGear and its operators falsely claimed that they were running a profitable Internet marketing company when in reality, they were operating a Ponzi and pyramid scheme that preyed on Chinese communities and caused investors to lose millions of dollars,” said Jina L. Choi, director of the SEC’s San Francisco Regional Office.
Though not named a defendant in the eAdGear complaint, Zeek Rewards figure and alleged Zeek “winner” T. LeMont Silver may find himself at the center of yet another Ponzi- and pyramid storm. That’s because eAdGear once tried to sue ZeekRewards.com, amid claims of cyberpiracy, unfair competition and benefiting from copyright infringement.
And it’s also because Silver’s name surfaced in fraud lawsuits between and among eAdGear Inc., GoFunPlaces Inc., Randal Williams and JubiMax LLC.
From an SEC statement on the eAdGear prosecution (italics added):
. . . even though eAdGear claimed to be a successful Internet marketing company, nearly all of its revenue was generated by investors, not its products or services.
The complaint alleges that eAdGear’s operators used money from new investors to pay earlier investors as well as to repay a personal loan and purchase million-dollar homes for themselves. It alleges the operators concealed and perpetuated the scheme by displaying sham websites on eAdGear’s own site to make it appear as if it had real, paying customers and manipulated revenue distributions to investors to appear profitable.
eAdGear began operating in December 2010 and grew to include 66,000 accounts held by “tens of thousands of investors” mostly of Chinese descent, the SEC said.
Corporate defendants include eAdGear Inc of Pleasanton, Calif., and eAdGear Holdings Limited of Hong Kong. The “program” sold “so-called ‘memberships’ or ‘business packages,’” the SEC said.
From the SEC complaint (italics added):
Defendants market eAdGear as a successful internet marketing and advertising company that uses search engine optimization (“SEO”) technology they claimed to have developed to help paying clients increase the page rankings of their websites on various search engines. Defendants claim to share 70% of the revenue generated daily by this business with investors.
In reality, eAdGear’s purported business is a ruse. Instead, well over 99% of the funds eAdGear has received have come from its investors, and eAdGear simply uses new investor money to make payments to — or to credit the accounts of — existing members in classic Ponzi scheme fashion.
Wang, Yuen, and Zhang have perpetrated this fraud by, among other things: installing Wang as chief executive officer, and Yuen as chief financial officer and chief operating officer of eAdGear, Inc., while portraying Wang’s wife, Zhang, as an ordinary “member” who became hugely successful; creating a fiction of a business that has paying customers when it does not; and manipulating daily revenue distributions to credit investors’ accounts, to make it appear as though eAdGear is operating profitably.
Earlier this week, the SEC announced charges against a “program” known as Zhunrize, describing it as pyramid scheme that had gathered $105 million.
Zhunrize presented itself as a “Plan B,” a core fraud signature in the HYIP world. T. LeMont Silver, among others, is a “Plan B” pitchman.
Zeek receiver Kenneth D. Bell has said that MLM may have a problem with “serial” promoters of fraud schemes.
Another pyramid scheme has proven costly for its operators. Here, according to the SEC, is the rundown from the EAdGear case brought in 2014.
