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Tag: Christopher George Smith

  • BULLETIN: 2 Arrested In Alleged ‘Banners Broker’ Pyramid Scheme

    breakingnews725BULLETIN: (14th Update 3:39 p.m. ET U.S.A.) Toronto police have arrested “Banners Broker” figures Christopher George Smith of Toronto and Rajiv Dixit of Vancouver.

    Both suspects are 45 and are scheduled to make a court appearance today, police said. The scheme allegedly raised $93 million (U.S.).

    They have been charged with Defrauding the Public of Over $5000, Possession of the Proceeds of Crime, Laundering the Proceeds of Crime, Operating a Pyramid-Selling Scheme and Making False or Misleading Representations under the Competition Act, police said.

    “[T]here are 1000’s of victims worldwide in Banners Brokers pyramid scheme,” police said on Twitter. The remark was attributed to Det. Sgt. Ian Nichol of the Toronto Police Mass Marketing Section.

    And, the department Tweeted, the agency and mass-marketing fraud investigators from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police “worked for 2yrs full time on Banners Brokers pyramid scheme investigation.”

    Also assisting in the cross-border probe were the Competition Bureau of Canada, the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, the Ministry of Finance, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, FINTRAC and the Canada Revenue Agency, police said.

    FINTRAC stands for the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.

    “[T]he program’s existence was entirely dependent upon the fee-based entry of new members and little or no real product or service was provided,” police said.

    Banners Broker, a purported “advertising” program similar to the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme broken up by the U.S Secret Service in 2008 and a current “program” known as MyAdvertisingPays or MAPS, previously has been described as a criminal enterprise.

    As the PP Blog reported last year, Banners Broker, like similar schemes, appeared to be trying to intimidate members.

    Read the statement by the Toronto Police Service on Banners Broker and the arrests of Smith and Dixit.

    In 2013, the PP Blog received bizarre spam from apparent Banners Broker supporters unhappy about the Blog’s coverage of the “program.”

    The PP Blog’s first reference to Banners Broker was published on June 17, 2012, when the Blog reported that a site that claimed it sold “customers” to Zeek Rewards members also was pushing traffic to Banners Broker and JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, the bizarre, 730-percent-a-year “program” purportedly operated by Frederick Mann.

    Mann also was a pitchman for the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme. JSS/JBP, which later morphed into a “program” known as ProfitClicking, may have ties to the sovereign-citizens movement. Zeek allegedly was a Ponzi/pyramid scheme that gathered more than $850 million.

    Some HYIP promoters move from scheme to scheme to scheme, creating a condition in which losses mount globally and banks become warehouses for fraud proceeds. The SEC yesterday announced charges against alleged Zeek promoter Trudy Gilmond, whom the agency alleged recruited members for multiple failed schemes.

    See the PP Blog’s tag archive of references to Banners Broker or use the search function near the upper-right corner.

    Also see: “Law Firm’s Name Used In Bid To Dupe Members Of Banners Broker, Profit Clicking, MLM Attorney Says.”

    Within the story, the PP Blog showed a menacing communication it had received in January 2013. The story also shows the interconnectivity of certain online MLM schemes, as does this 2013 story: “TelexFree Affiliate Pitches Appear To Have Been ‘Scraped’ To Drive Traffic To Purported Gold And Silver Venture In Panama; Spam Link Leads To Site That Showcases ‘First Zeek Red Carpet Event’ And ‘Banners Broker’ In Folder Labeled ‘aaronsharazeek’  




  • KABOOM! Banners Broker MLM ‘Program’ Described As ‘Criminal Enterprise’ That Gathered Tens Of Million Of Dollars

    “Affiliates found to be contributing to the negativity on the Internet will have their accounts locked, they will be banned from participating in the Banners Broker system and they will forfeit all of their inventory and revenue.” —  Banners Broker threat to members, February 2014

    “It is the position of investigators that this business was a pyramid scheme that over time evolved into a straight Ponzi scheme in which new victims were recruited to stave off requests for withdrawals and complaints from older ones.” —  Royal Canadian Mounted Police, July 17, 2014: Source: Affidavit that shows the RCMP, the Toronto Strategic Partnership and the Toronto Police Services Financial Crime Unit are involved in a criminal probe of Banners Broker.

    EDITOR’S NOTE: The double-your-money Banners Broker “program” posed as an online “advertising” company. It appears to have gathered tens of millions of dollars using a series of conduits and employing entities or business identities in money-laundering havens. At least for now, the total sum stolen from participants is unclear. As alleged, funds were “diverted by the suspects and their associated corporations to various offshore and other bank accounts controlled by them.”

    ** _________________________**

    Screen shot from page of court exhibit in Canada.
    How to begin the brainwashing process: Screen shot from page of court exhibit in Canada.

    As an interview subject allegedly told the Competition Bureau of Canada on April 9, 2013, it was all so simple to Banners Broker operator Christopher George “Chris” Smith:

    Indeed, Canadian authorities now have alleged, when the subject “met with Smith [in 2010,] he asked Smith why people lost money in these programs and Smith said it was what the programs were designed for, they bring people in, make some money and then they shut down and people move on to the next one.”

    What was Smith allegedly discussing at the meeting in Toronto? His desire to come up with a “copycat” of Travel Ventures International, a purported “opportunity” also known as TVI Express and described as a scam on multiple continents. (See K. Chang’s MLM Skeptic Blog for a report on how TVI Express spread around the world.)

    This, friends, is whack-a-mole — in the style of MLM huckster Chris Smith. It’s also racketeering MLM-style, whether formally prosecuted as such or not. And so it comes as no surprise that the term “criminal enterprise” to describe Banners Broker and its associated corporations now appears in court filings in Canada. (See links and credits at bottom of this story.)

    In 2011, the U.S. Secret Service described the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, another cross-border MLM fraud, as a “criminal enterprise.”

    Members of the TelexFree MLM “program” allege that racketeering occurred within that enterprise, described by U.S. regulators earlier this year as a billion-dollar, cross-border pyramid- and Ponzi scheme. The Zeek Rewards MLM “program,” alleged to have gathered on the order of $850 million before is August 2012 collapse, launched after the 2008 collapse of ASD. There can be no doubt that TelexFree, Zeek, ASD and Banners Broker had promoters in common.

    There also can be no doubt that “see no evil” MLM cottage industries sprouted up around these foundationally corrupt “programs” and offered services such as “lead” provision and “ad” placement. Victims have piled up in such numbers that, in the TelexFree scam alone, 20,000 Greyhound buses with a 50-seat capacity each would be required to accommodate the fleeced masses.

    But where would they all go to observe events and be acknowledged at once?

    No courtroom can accommodate 1 million victims. Even if Mass-Participation Court existed and were gaveled into session on an unbooked Saturday in Pasadena’s famous Rose Bowl with onetime Tournament of Roses Parade Grand Marshal and U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor coming out of retirement to preside, the huge stadium’s seating capacity of 92,542 still would be far too small to accommodate the injured parties.

    Beyond that, Greyhound’s entire noble fleet consists of only 1,200 buses, not the 20,000 that would be required to transport TelexFree victims to California.

    Despite the best efforts of the courts, victims are being lost as a result of these insidious MLM schemes. Some will be re-victimized in a whack-a-mole reload scam pitched by an MLM predator with a smile on his or her face and a Bible verse at the ready.

    There also can be no doubt that certain members of the “programs” are members of a criminal combine that, whether loosely or closely associated, pushes one racketeering scam after another on the consuming public. It is willful blindness on a global scale. It is so dangerous, so calculating and methodical, so gruesomely injurious to persons and property, that it almost defies description.

    Next time someone tries to recruit you into an HYIP  “program” by telling you the “leaders” are already on board, here’s what to think: The racketeers are either running things or influencing events (again). They’re going to harm me (again). They’re going to harm my community, my country (again). They’re going to say they have been vetted by “attorneys” (again).

    And then, as Chris Smith allegedly said, they’re going to shut down and “move on to the next one.”

    Again.

    Reclaim Your Brain — Right Now!

    Like predecessor scams such as AdSurfDaily and AdViewGlobal and Zeek, the hypnotized and robotic Stepfordians in Banners Broker who’d been brainwashed by cult tactics rose up to “defend” the “program,” including some individuals who continued to champion the scam even after it effectively extorted them into paying more fees to keep their positions intact and to retain any chance of receiving a payout.

    While trying to chill members who remained in control of their gray matter and hadn’t slipped into an MLM trance, Banners Broker naturally counted on the Stepfordians whose brains it had reduced to slush to wage efforts to chill Blogs and websites that report on scams.

    “If you know of a site with content that is negative towards Banners Broker, we ask that you report it to the Community Watch,” the “program” instructed in February 2014.

    Yes. Amazing as it sounds, Banners Brokers called its efforts to cover up its own criminal enterprise a “Community Watch” program. Even earlier than that, it dispatched the Stepfordians to harass and hound a Blogger named Finch, who now says, “I received all kinds of threats, smears and public verbal bashings.”

    On Jan. 17, 2013, the PP Blog reported it was receiving menacing communications about Banners Broker.

    For additional background on bids to chill reporters or program members who publish information about scams and highly questionable “opportunities,” see this Dec. 27, 2012, PP Blog post: Our Choice For The Most Important PP Blog Post Of 2012. (It’s about an effort to chill K. Chang over his reporting on Zeek Rewards.)

    Also read about continuing efforts from the MLM HYIP sphere to destroy the antiscam well at BehindMLM.com and RealScam.com.

    NOTE: A special shout out today to RealScam.com and the Banners Broker Ponzi Scam Community on Facebook. They shared this 275-page court filing in Canada on civil and criminal investigations into Banners Broker.

    ALSO: Visit the website of the msi Spergel inc., the receiver.