BULLETIN: UPDATED 7:35 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) The Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB), the Italian equivalent of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, is conducting a probe into claims made about Club Asteria and has issued a 90-day suspension order that bars promoters from trading in Italy.
Club Asteria is based in Virginia. Members say it also conducts business from Hong Kong.
Promoters in Italy positioned Club Asteria as an investment company that “guaranteed” returns, CONSOB said in preliminary findings.
CONSOB’s action is detailed in Resolution No. 17790.
“Asteria Corporation presents itself as a company that ‘started as a U.S. financial company, with the aim of offering . . . humanitarian, educational and financial support in the poorest countries in the world, proposing an investment program with the slogan: ‘How to Invest € 15 After a year and earn 1200 Euros a month and a half for ever!’” the Italian regulator said. (Italian-to-English conversion by Google Translate.)
The translation uses the phrase “sign language,” giving rise to questions about whether Club Asteria members were targeting the deaf. Investors were encouraged to use PayPal to join.
Club Asteria reported a problem with its PayPal account last month, claiming promoters had misrepresented the company. A website apparently operated by promoters in Italy appears to have been stripped of content.
It was not immediately clear if CONSOB removed the content or caused it to be removed from a domain name that ended with an .it extension. The website now carries this message:
“Il sito à momentaneamente chiuso” — or “The site is temporarily closed.”
CONSOB said there also were “several” Italian forums in which Club Asteria and the possibility of getting “easy money” from monthly payments were discussed. Word about Club Asteria also was spreading through social-media sites such as Facebook, the regulator said.
ClubAsteria has been promoted in English on the TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup forums, both of which are referenced in U.S. court filings as places from which Ponzi schemes are promoted.
Scores of Club Asteria promoters — not just in Italy — have positioned the firm as a seller of a “passive” investment program that pays $400 a week based on a payment of $19.95 a month.
Such claims also were made in Italy, CONSOB said.