From a letter by Sen. Al Franken to Uber. Franken, a Democrat, is a member of the powerful Senate Committee on the Judiciary. He also is chairman of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law.
We’ll begin by pointing out that Uber, the popular ride-sharing company and darling of venture capitalists, is not an MLM firm. But it sure is acting like one, even briefly vomiting one of MLM’s most familiar and reflexive responses to critics: HatersGonnaHate.
Can MLM enterprises and MLMers in general learn from Uber’s bizarre missteps?
You see, both Uber and MLM have a common problem: a certain internal recklessness coupled with a tin ear for PR, one that serves up one spectacular gaffe after another. Uber’s latest self-inflicted wound now has the attention of Sen. Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat. Franken wants to know why “Uber’s Senior Vice-President of Business Emil Michael recently made statements suggesting that Uber might mine private information to target a journalist who had criticized the company.”
A senior executive at Uber suggested that the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media — and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company.
Put another way: make the lady sweat that some skeleton might surface and lead to her demise should she dare continue to write pieces Uber found unflattering.
One Uber executive, BuzzFeed reported, planted the seed that Uber could prove “a particular and very specific claim about her personal life.”
The journalist is Sarah Lacy, the editor-in-chief at PandoDaily and a Mom. Here we’ll mention that, in addition to the Uber thuggishness, she’s also had to deal with the sidebar contention that Pando just might be funded by the CIA.
As a journalist who has been accused by MLMers of being on the CIA payroll and told by MLMers that my supposed secrets dealing with my supposed homosexuality and supposed porn addiction will be outed even as “sovereign citizens” threaten me with $500,000 fines for alleged trademark infringement, it will come as no surprise to PP Blog readers that I’m more than a little sympathetic to reporters who encounter thugs.
This sympathy extends whether the thugs are in the Ivory Tower or operating from the sewers.
The BuzzFeed Uber revelation set off a media firestorm now in its fourth day, putting Uber’s name in the papers for all the wrong reasons. Now, at least one reporter has come forward to claim that Uber tracked her without her permission as she rode in a Uber car. The device Uber uses to perform this tracking is known as “God View.”
In September, venture capitalist Peter Sims wrote that he’d been tracked by Uber without his permission. Sims says he was in a Uber car in New York City and that Uberites in Chicago were monitoring his movements. What this means, in essence, is that Uber was using him as a stage prop without his knowledge and consent from halfway across the country while also invading his privacy.
This reminds me of two crackpot MLM schemes making the rounds in 2010. These “programs” were known as NarcThatCar and Data Network Affiliates. Both schemes bizarrely reimagined mass invasions of privacy as exciting new products — and then wrapped pyramid schemes around their creations for good measure.
The schemes worked approximately like this: Armies of MLMers would hit neighborhoods across the land and write down the license-plate numbers of cars parked on streets and the addresses at which they were parked. They’d also hit the parking lots of grocery stores, big-box retailers, restaurant chains, pharmacies, doctors’ offices, bookstores, libraries, theaters, video-rental companies and universities.
All of this information would be entered in a database, purportedly to assist the AMBER Alert system of locating abducted children. AMBER Alert purportedly would get the data for free, but clientele purportedly including banks and companies in the business of repossessing cars during the height of the recession would pay for it.
MLM recruits were told to try not to attract too much attention while writing down all these plate numbers. They also were falsely told they were helping the U.S. Department of Homeland Security track terrorists.
Yes. MLM went in the spy business, using the pretext that it was one’s patriotic duty to monitor license plates and that enormous profits would flow from neighbors keeping track of automobiles in their neighborhoods. As the story was told, the database could tell the police what cars were parked at a fixed address at the time a child was snatched. This information then could be compared to the next sighting of the tag as entered in the database from a different fixed address, thus purportedly providing clues as to where the kidnapped child was being held.
If anyone had the temerity to raise a stink or even make a polite inquiry about why a stranger was recording their plate number in a parking lot, the recorders were trained to respond that no one had anything to fear if they hadn’t done anything wrong.
Both Narc and DNA were filled with such Orwellian outrageousness (and were such obvious pyramid schemes) that reporters began to hound both “programs.” The Better Business Bureau was subjected to bizarre attacks from the MLM sphere for raising questions about the “programs,” and some MLMers got the idea that the reporters, rather than the companies pulling off obvious scams, should be investigated.
Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels couldn’t have imagined greater allies than the MLM Stepfordians.
By 2012, MLMer and Zeek Rewards Ponzi-scheme figure Robert Craddock got the bright idea of putting himself in the opposition-research business — the opposition being reporters who wrote anything bad about Zeek. One of his targets was Zeek critic K. Chang, who briefly lost control over his HubPages site because Craddock had filed a complaint alleging copyright infringement, trademark infringement and libel.
K. Chang eventually prevailed, but not without experiencing downtime while the Zeek scheme was still gathering cash. The SEC eventually shut down Zeek, alleging that it was operating a fraud that had gathered $850 million.
Still sensing there was money to be made in the MLM cottage business of harassing reporters or soliciting dirt on them, Craddock eventually established a website known as “InternetClowns” that purportedly would serve all MLM firms. The supposed “clowns” included the PP Blog and BehindMLM.com, two sites that report on MLM frauds.
At the beginning of this column I noted that perhaps MLM could learn something from the experience of Uber in the subject area of tracking reporters and soliciting dirt on them. It strikes me now that maybe it should be the other way around: that Uber could learn from MLM.
One of the things Uber could learn is not to do anything MLMish if it wants to maintain its standing as a venture-capital darling.
By MLMish, we mean something crazy and outlandish such as tracking reporters, bringing in opposition-research teams to menace them and telling a group of people in the Second City that you’re using your “God Machine” to spy on a venture capitalist in the Big Apple.
And perhaps Uber also might want to avoid the most recent practice associated with “defenders” of outrageous MLM “programs” and HYIP schemes.
This would be the practice of trying to smear critics by using online forums to plant false stories about critics’ ties to Islamic terrorist groups and otherwise attacking human beings based on their Muslim faith.
Uber can read all about that one on RealScam.com, a site that concerns itself with international mass-marketing fraud. RealScam.com currently is being hectored by a person known as “Happy Customer” who is making outrageous claims against critics, filing bogus reports at RipoffReport and trying to keyword stuff the forum with words such as “Islamic Forum” and “haven for Islamic Terrorists !”
Happy Customer’s mind appears to be telling him (used presumptively) that, if only he can use the words “Islamic” and “Muslim” enough times — while mixing in words such as “terrorist” and “terrorism” — the eavesdropping and text-reading National Security Agency might just buzz by and turn off RealScam’s server.
Study the strange MLM circus, Uber. What you’ll learn should be more than enough to help make most unwanted headlines go away.
UPDATED 6:07 P.M. EDT U.S.A. In yet another bizarre development in the world of MLM, a company that competes in a space TelexFree said it wants to occupy has declared bankruptcy less than two years after its formal launch.
As though on Stepfordland cue, competing MLMers started trawling the Internet for the carcasses of potentially disaffected affiliates.
Seattle-based Solavei, which offers a cell-phone service, announced its Chapter 11 filing yesterday. Now in bankruptcy court itself, TelexFree has said it, too, wanted to offer a cell-phone service on top of its VOIP product.
Solavei formally launched in July 2012, saying it was a “new social commerce company with an affordable, contract-free mobile service that actually pays back consumers for adding new members.”
The company, however, now says it needs to restructure its debt “in line with operating income and more accurately align costs and infrastructure needs.”
Some MLMers immediately pounced on the news of the bankruptcy filing, using it as a means of poaching Solavei affiliates into competing MLM “programs.” Like some TelexFree loyalists, some Solavei fans tried to dismiss the Solavei filing as business as usual.
Solavei itself declared on Twitter that it was “Happy Pay Day.”
The firm says its members and employees “will notice no changes in service or operations as we work with our vendors and investors to refine the social commerce platform and model we pioneered. Solavei will emerge from this process equipped to continue our growth with strong operations, a better cost structure, and opportunity for our members.”
Read a Solavei brief (and accompanying comments thread) at BusinessForHome.
MLM often is known for epic PR blunders and embarrassing efforts to poach recruits. When two TelexFree affiliates were referenced in Brazilian media accounts about suicide deaths, some fellow affiliates spammed the stories with offers to join the “program.”
After TelexFree confronted pyramid-scheme allegations in Brazil, some affiliates responded by asserting they were “100% TelexFree.”
Perhaps channeling the PR approach of TelexFree Stepfordians, one Solavei affiliate on Twitter declared himself “100% Solavei now!” Another on Facebook roared, “I am Solavei!”
MLM’s telecom sector is known for strange occurrences. In 2010, an upstart “program” known as Data Network Affiliates purported to be the world’s low-price leader in cell phones, offering “unlimited” talk and text for $10 a month. The company appears to have made the claim despite the fact it had no carrier agreements and no licensing.
It then backed away from the claim, bizarrely asserting that a vendor had made it believe it had crushed all competition on earth.
(2ND UPDATE 3:26 P.M. EDT U.S.A.) Rod Cook, who publishes the “MLM Watchdog” and was threatened with a $40 million lawsuit by the AdSurfDaily Ponzi racketeers in 2008, is reporting that veteran swindler Phil Piccolo is back on the prowl.
This time, Cook reports, it’s with a cobra-venom product sold at MyNyloxin.com. The product is positioned as a pain reliever, and Piccolo is calling himself “Felice Angelo.”
Piccolo is known as “the one-man Internet crime wave.” If there’s a Piccolo signature, it’s his ability largely (though not exclusively) to remain in the shadows while engineering scams within scams or within dubious “opportunities” in which an affiliate’s success chances are exceptionally low going in. Piccolo appears to be particularly keen on “programs” ostensibly in the health-maintenance and electronic-technology fields. The “programs” may remain in “prelaunch” phase virtually indefinitely while gathering cash and gaining a head of steam.
“[P]hil is selling his stock to individuals and giving it away as incentives under the table illegally and running $500 co-ops scamming people out of their money,” Cook reports about Piccolo’s MyNyloxin activities.
Based on the PP Blog’s research, Piccolo also is known to engage in anonymous shilling and to leave thousands of orphaned affiliate links of his onetime recruits all over the web as a means of corralling the earnings of people duped into placing the links before they fled the programs because they weren’t getting paid.
PP Blog reader Tony H. noted on March 4 that a “Piccolo Felix Angelo” was listed as a “winner” in the $850 million Zeek Rewards Ponzi-scheme and was being sued by the court-appointed receiver.
As the PP Blog previously has reported, Piccolo has a history of threatening websites that report on his scams. Part of his MO features appeals to religious faith. These incongruously have been mixed with suggestions he can summon leg-breakers if the need arises.
Piccolo claims to hail from New York. He is known to operate in the region of Boca Raton, Fla., and to participate in scams that try to create the illusion of scale — perhaps by using Photoshop to make the scamming firm’s name appear on a large building, for example.
Another part of Piccolo’s MO includes suggestions that “opportunities” he pitches soon will “go public” or already are part of public companies. In the TextCashNetwork scheme, for instance, the Piccolo group suggested that TCN was part of Johnson & Johnson, the famous pharmaceutical company.
Meanwhile, Piccolo scams may feature claims that people who send in large sums of money will receive a preposterous return, a marker that the “programs” are vulnerable to charges they are selling unregistered securities as investment contracts. If a Piccolo-associated scheme loses its payment conduits, recruits have been encouraged to wire money via Western Union.
Piccolo scams also have featured claims that celebrities such as billionaire Donald Trump and entertainment icon Oprah Winfrey were on the ships he helped steer. Such was the case with a scam known as Data Network Affiliates — DNA, for short.
DNA claimed to be in the business of assisting the Amber Alert system of rescuing abducted children. It later claimed to be in the cellphone, offshore “resorts” and mortgage-assistance businesses. DNA was targeted at churches, with prospects told they had the moral obligation to enroll the faithful.
Piccolo also was associated with a business known as “One World One Website” (OWOW) that suggested a bottled-water product could cure cancer and had been vetted by the National Institutes of Health.
Over the years, Piccolo has pushed products such as a purported license-plate “spray” positioned as a means of helping motorists escape traffic tickets at camera-monitored intersections. Perhaps most notoriously, Piccolo has pitched a purported “magnetic” product that purportedly could help medical patients escape limb-amputation procedures while at once helping gardeners/farmers produce tomatoes at twice their normal size. The scam also included a claim that the “magnetic” product could help dairy herds increase milk production.
Perhaps most infamously, the Piccolo group in the DNA scam traded on the name of Adam Walsh, a child who’d been abducted and murdered. Piccolo employs anything that “works,” even the memory of a slain 6-year-old.
Piccolo scams typically also feature the presence of MLM huckster Joe Reid. The scams also may include suggestions that affiliates should enroll as a means of qualifying for tax write-offs. In a typical Piccolo scam, an increase in Alexa rankings is positioned as asserted proof of an MLM “program’s” legitimacy. The Piccolo scams also typically feature a link to Google’s translation tool, potentially as a means of picking off nonspeakers of English.
In 2010, the PP Blog was accused by an apparent Piccolo apologist of being a shill for Israel and spreading “Islamophobia.” This claim was made after the Blog reported that the FBI had stopped a plot to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore.
Also see this Jan. 16, 2014, comment by PP Blog reader and RealScam.com moderator Glim Dropper. The comment appears below an Aug. 30, 2013, PP Blog story titled, “Zeekers Targeted In New Scheme With Ties To Piccolo Organization.”
This affiliate page for the purported Banners Broker “advertising” program claims members can double their money.
UPDATED 8:54 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) Rumors abound online that authorities in India have carried out some sort of action against the Banners Broker “advertising” program. As of the time of this post, the PP Blog has been unable to confirm the rumored action with a law-enforcement source.
“Advertising” scams long have been associated with the HYIP sphere. The $119 million AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, for instance, was such a “program.” Such scams are associated with the unlawful sale of unregistered securities and claims by law enforcement of members’ money being siphoned by operators. “Winners” in such schemes can be sued for their ill-gotten gains. There also have been instances in which key pitchmen have been sued by regulatory agencies and even charged with crimes.
Several things the PP Blog has noticed:
A “welcome page” Banners Broker URL exists for the United States but is throwing this error message: “Unable to locate template file welcome_us.tpl.”
The nonworking US URL is http://www.bannersbroker.com/main/welcome_us. It is listed on an apparent Banners Broker affiliate’s website with a headline of “BANNERS BROKER INDIA.” The site also lists a U.S. address for the company in Ocala, Fla. Other addresses and welcome URLs for other countries appear on the same page. Welcome URLs for India, Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom appear to be working. Only the URL for the United States appears not to work.
Whether Banners Broker removed the U.S. “welcome” URL in a bid to distance itself from U.S. regulatory scrutiny is unclear.
Regardless, the Banners Brokers site is viewable in the United States from the URLs for other countries and by connecting directly to the Banners Broker dotcom address. Although Banners Broker lists the flags of several countries on its homepage, the American flag is not listed. (Or at least wasn’t viewable by the PP Blog from the United States.)
At least one Banner’s Broker affiliate site is calling itself “Banners Broker Brief” and using the BBB acronym long associated with the Better Business Bureau. (A 2010 Phil Piccolo scam known as Data Network Affiliates arranged for one of its products to be called BBB. Such approaches sometimes are used to leech off of the Better Business Bureau’s famous acronym and to distort search-engine results and make “negative” information harder to find. It also is common in certain MLM schemes for affiliates to use the word “scam” when presenting the “opportunity” — and they then explain why it’s purportedly not a scam. This approach also may make it difficult to find “negative” information about a “program” because information can become buried in page after page of claims that the “program” is not a scam.)
Any number of affiliate YouTube videos exist for Banners Broker. Some are of the check-waving variety. Instead of featuring checks, however, they appear to feature screen shots of payments that purportedly originated at SolidTrustPay. SolidTrustPay has a reputation for doing business with scam after scam. Zeek Rewards, which the SEC described in August as a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid scheme, used SolidTrustPay.
Banners Broker appears to have been popular among Zeek promoters. One video exists in which a Banners Broker affiliate tells the audience about the SEC’s Zeek case, but the affiliate claims he believes Banners Broker is not a fraud scheme. Even so, he allows that it could be.
Banners Broker has a major presence on the Ponzi boards — again like Zeek. Some promoters race from scam to scam to scam.
There are claims about Banners Broker “doubling” money.
Our assertion: Were he alive today and desperately needed cash, famed daredevil Karl Wallenda would find Zeek’s tightropes too dangerous to walk.
Purported MLM “expert” sent to woodshed: Zeek “consultant” and former SEC defendant Keith Laggos reportedly gets the Zeek boot after using phrases associated with the investment trade and after suggesting that gambling regulations could be used to derail the Zeek train in the near future.
Train wrecks and pom-poms: To his credit, MLMHelpDesk Blogger Troy Dooly reports the Laggos news and dubs an incendiary audio recording featuring Laggos into a Dooly-produced video. But known for his ability to find something “positive” in an MLM train wreck, Dooly goes on to suggest Laggos used Zeek-banned words because he was distracted and wasn’t concentrating. Dooly later declares that an examination into Zeek’s business practices by North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper is “exciting” news.
Only in Stepfordian MLM: Zeek cheerleading video with Dooly presented as centerpiece and Laggos presented as key answer man remains online, even after Zeek cans Laggos and Dooly questions the ethics of Laggos while at once making excuses for him.
Cluelessness: No guidance from Zeek on whether affiliates should avoid using the video when introducing Zeek.
More cluelessness: No guidance from Zeek on whether affiliates should continue to use marketing props published by Laggos’ Network Marketing Business Journal, a previous subject of gushing from Dooly.
Plan B: Laggos heralds Lyoness.
Stepfordian MLM vomit: Lyoness trades on name of former South Africa President Nelson Mandela, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Why lots of people are fed up with Stepfordian MLM: As Lyoness uses an image of Mandela in a marketing campaign, AdSurfDaily’s Andy Bowdoin awaits sentencing in case in which ASD was accused of trading on the name of then-U.S. President George W. Bush to sanitize $110 million Ponzi scheme.
Whatever “works” is OK in Stepfordian MLM: As nascent penny-auction site and upstart Zeek competitor known as Bids That Give prepped for launch and positioned itself as a company that would aid charities for children, early promos traded on the name of the White House and Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Oddities: Narc That Car/Data Network Affiliates/Phil Piccolo/Text Cash Network.
More . . .
** ______________________________ **
EDITOR’S NOTE: While performing a high-wire stunt in Puerto Rico in 1978, legendary daredevil Karl Wallenda fell to his death. He was 73, a risk-taker to the end.
UPDATED 11:39 P.M. EDT (AUG. 14, U.S.A.)
This is one of those “only in Stepfordian MLM” stories, a story that features not one, but two tightropes over a treacherously windy gorge Karl Wallenda would judge too dangerous to walk even if the daredevil business were in a sustained slump and he desperately needed cash. These are the tightropes over the Zeekler/Zeek Rewards Gorge, a man-made gulch in Lexington, N.C., potentially MLM’s next Quincy, Fla.
Quincy was the home of AdSurfDaily, a company that did an almost inconceivable amount of damage to MLM’s already-suffering reputation — first by creating an obvious, five-alarm Ponzi scheme and trying to disguise it as a “revenue-sharing” program and, later, by trying to “save” itself by comparing the U.S. Secret Service to “Satan” and the 9/11 terrorists.
Like the ASD story (and far too many MLM tales), the Zeek story is one that mixes the incongruous with the bizarre and only reinforces negative stereotypes about multilevel marketing.
Keith Laggos, a figurative tightrope-walker and purported MLM expert who once opined that AdSurfDaily’s 1-percent-a-day “program” was not a Ponzi scheme and later became a consultant whose image appeared repeatedly in a cheerleading video for the Zeek Rewards 1-percent-a-day-plus “program” after ASD was raided by the U.S. Secret Service in a Ponzi scheme case, is out, the company reportedly told Blogger Troy Dooly. (Link below.)
Laggos, though, appears not to have been fired for his ASD opinion. Indeed, Zeek may find comfort in that musing, which has been used by at least two ASD members (Todd Disner and Dwight Owen Schweitzer) who accused the U.S. government of presenting a “tissue of lies” to a federal judge when bringing the ASD Ponzi forfeiture case. Both of those ASD members also emerged as Zeek promoters. Curiously, the claim that the government had presented a “tissue of lies” was made longafter ASD had lost the case in both U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals.
ASD and its apologists never were known for their impeccable timing. Neither was a 1-percent-a-day ASD knockoff known as AdViewGlobal (AVG), which incongruously announced a month after its February 2009 launch that its bank account had been “suspended” and that its CEO had resigned but would remain in the “accounting” department.
Two months later, AVG, which purported to operate from Uruguay while using U.S.-based Gmail to perform customer service, announced its banking problem had been solved by an offshore facilitator. AVG made this announcement on the same day the President of the United States announced a crackdown on offshore fraud. AVG was done weeks later. Before it exited the stage, it apparently thought it prudent to threaten to sue members who shared negative information and perhaps even have their Internet connections shut down.
Zeek is playing in this same bizarre field. Over the past couple of weeks, Dooly has ventured that Zeek might sue Randy Schroeder, an executive with the Mona Vie MLM company, for using words Zeek might find objectionable — “Ponzi” and “pyramid,” for example. And Dooly has suggested that a North Carolina credit union was risking a lawsuit from Zeek. Meanwhile, a Zeek critic known as “K. Chang” was informed by a purported Zeek “consultant” that Zeek might sue if its efforts to bring down “K. Chang’s’ site on HubPages.com failed.
Zeek now bizarrely claims that “all” criticism of Zeek has been unfair.
This claim was made just days after Zeek appears to have fired Laggos for casting his MLM line elsewhere while a Zeek “consultant” and while not sticking to the company line that Zeek does not constitute an investment opportunity. The other “program” is known as Lyoness, which Laggos has described as his “Plan B” and a “Plan B” for current Zeek members.
MLM ‘Mo’
To hear Laggos tell it on tape, the MLM business is the “momentum” business. One of the ways to maintain the momentum is to move certain banking operations offshore, say, to places such as Hong Kong. Laggos helped Zeek do that, according to Laggos. But Zeek might lose the mo and might not be far enough away to neutralize the regulators, he speculated.
No matter, Laggos ventured. There’s always another company with mo.
“Since last November, Zeekler has had the momentum,’ Laggos intoned in a recording now playing on Dooly’s Blog as part of a YouTube video and report on the sudden sacking of Laggos. “I believe they are going to lose the momentum shortly . . . The company now that’s gaining momentum — and I think it will be the momentum company over the next six months or a year — is Lyoness. And I’m suggesting that a lot of you guys consider Lyoness as your Plan B company now. Stay working with Zeekler. Keep promoting it. Don’t cross-sponsor it, but build a second income. Now, what’s nice about an ideal Plan B company is you would be able to work passively. Lyoness is that kind of company.”
In HYIP-speak, the word “passively” is code that tells participants that they won’t have to do much or anything at all to pile up cash (a/k/a “passive earnings”) by the boatload if they send in enough cash at the beginning of a scheme. Zeek is afraid of that word because it’s the type of word that can cause the SEC to come knocking. Lots of MLM scams that rely on willfully blind promoters to gain a head of steam use it in the early stages. When things get too hot, they try to take it off the table. The reason they try to take it off the table — sometimes by threatening affiliates — is it can lead to civil and criminal charges, seizures of bank accounts and investigations by multiple agencies.
Mixing the language of investments with references to Plan B didn’t do Zeek any favors, to be sure. Another thing that didn’t do Zeek any favors was Laggos’ reference to Zeek becoming the “momentum” company “last November.” In late September of 2011, the U.S. government released about $55 million in remissions payments to victims of the ASD Ponzi scheme.
This leads to questions such as these: How much of Zeek’s “momentum” was fueled by funds originally seized in the ASD Ponzi case and returned to victims in the form of remissions payments? How many ASD members turned around and plowed what effectively was their crime-victim compensation into Zeek, another 1-percent-a-day scheme? Why did Zeek promoters and former ASD members Disner and Schweitzer wait until November 2011 — the same month Laggos now says Zeek became the “momentum” company — to file their ASD-related lawsuit against the government and to present a federal judge an opinion from Laggos that ASD was not a Ponzi scheme?
“Plan B,” also known as “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket,” has a long and sordid history in HYIP Ponzi Land. AVG, for instance, was a de facto Plan B company set up after ASD, the Plan A company, got raided by the U.S. Secret Service on the Tuesday after the previous Friday’s seizure (Aug. 1, 2008) of ASD bank accounts. Lots of ASD members deluded themselves into believing that official company line that God was on ASD’s side. Some of ASD’s earliest post-seizure apologists told the troops that the seizure was a good thing because it would provide the government an opportunity to see how lawful and wholesome ASD truly was, that the government did not understand the business model and had made a monumental mistake.
The MLM vultures, though, had a slightly different take. In case the government didn’t see the ASD light, they speculated, ASD members could join other autosurfs, HYIPs and cash-gifting schemes. These Plan B schemes would enable ASD losses to be made up elsewhere. “Offshore” programs were positioned as the best.
Among the tips Laggos provided to listeners of the Lyoness conference call was this: “Don’t put no more than 70 percent back in [Zeek]. Take out 20 or 30 percent [on] a daily basis. [Unintelligible.] This would be a good place. But, by the same token, if you put $10,000 in Zeekler, if nothing happens over the next year, you’ll probably make $30,000 or $40,000, if that’s all you do without building the front end, the matrix . . . The same amount of money in Lyoness, you’re looking . . . and not doing anything else, without single sponsoring . . . you can probably make a quarter-million dollars.”
The threat to Zeek, according to Laggos, is the FTC and how U.S. gambling regulations could be applied to penny-auctions such as its Zeekler arm. His words on the tape suggest he is confident that Zeek has sufficient cover to ward off a Ponzi/securities investigation. But even as he’s suggesting Zeek has the securities angle covered, he’s using the language of investments.
We wonder: Can MLM really have sunk to these deplorable depths?
But it gets even worse.
Laggos then suggested Lyoness could be used as a hedge in case the FTC acted against Zeek.
“If I’m wrong about what’s gonna happen with the penny auctions — and if you look at my career, I haven’t been wrong often — then the worst-case scenario is we screwed up and we made two incomes . . . We’re making two great incomes with two great companies.”
Dooly, whom to date hasn’t found Zeek’s various claims altogether too much, now has decided that Laggos crossed the altogether-too-much line when he harrumphed for Lyoness and used certain words Zeek finds offensive.
While the featured speaker on the Lyoness call last month with Zeek members listening in, Laggos spoke about Zeek in “several” ways that were “way out of compliance,” Dooly ventured in his video report running on YouTube.
Laggos “talks about putting money into the game,” Dooly reports. “I mean, this is bad right here. You can’t put money in. OK? You either join the company and you’re buying memberships, you’re buying bids. But for Keith to be talking like this was an investment-type deal. This is just . . . and we all fall prey to this. But this is why you shouldn’t be doing public calls when you’re under fire and you’re not paying attention to what you say. And you can hear in Keith’s case — the phone [is] ringing, his assistant [is] coming in to talk to him, his mind is not in the game the way it should be. And that is just . . . it’s sad right now ’cause he’s no longer with [Zeek] . . .”
In short, according to Dooly, Laggos’ big sin was painting Zeek as an investment program in contravention of the Rules Of Zeek.
Not sticking to the script, however, is hardly an original sin within the Zeek sphere. In 2011, while speaking during a conference call to raise money for the Disner/Schweitzer ASD-related lawsuit against the government, Schweitzer, a one-time lawyer whose license was suspended in Connecticut, said he’d invested in ASD. Nevertheless, Disner and Schweitzer later presented a federal judge Laggos’ opinion that ASD was not a Ponzi scheme and that providing money to ASD did not constitute making an investment.
Nobel Peace Prize Used As MLM Stage Prop
Lyoness is an MLM company eager to let its participants and prospects know that it is building a school in the hometown of Nelson Mandela and that a Lyoness team recently was invited to the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize-winner’s home. It even publishes a picture to prove it and notes that a Mandela grandson is a Lyoness rep.
Back in the United States, meanwhile, former ASD President Andy Bowdoin will find out Aug. 29 how long he’ll spend in federal prison. Zeek’s business model and disclaimer language strongly resemble that of ASD, which the U.S. Secret Service described as a “criminal enterprise” that relied on linguistic sleight-of-hand to draft tens of thousands of people into an electronic Ponzi scheme. ASD traded on the name of then-U.S. President George W. Bush, in effect using the White House to sanitize a massive international fraud caper.
Welcome to the Highwire Wing of MLM.
While all of this is going on, a nascent penny-auction “program” and upstart Zeek competitor that claims it exists to elevate children out of poverty is getting ready to unleash itself on the consuming public.
That “program” is known as Bids That Give. One prelaunch promo claimed that a founding affiliate was an SEO expert once hired by a candidate for the U.S. Presidency. The first three minutes of the promo did not even reference Bids That Give. Instead, it dropped names linked to the White House, including the name of former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton and Doug Read, an adviser to two U.S. Presidents. For good measure, the promo dropped the name of NBC News anchor Lester Holt.
The most vomitous MLM “programs” are infamous for dropping names. It is typically the case that the individuals whose names are dropped have no affiliation whatsoever with the “program.” But name-dropping and brand leeching have proven to work time after time in MLM scheme after MLM scheme. (See screenshot.)
Did Mark Zuckerberg REALLY endorse JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid. According to this Blog, the answer is yes. Facebook did not respond to a request for comment from the PP Blog last year on claims that Zuckerberg had endorsed JSS/JPB, which purports to provide a return of 60 percent a month.
MLM And Wordplay
In 2009, ASD’s Bowdoin was sued by some members of his own company under the federal racketeteering (RICO) statute. Looking at it another way, the ASD members came to believe that ASD was a criminal enterprise with a plan to expand while coming up with new and better ways to steal.
Because veteran MLM huckster Bowdoin also was a veteran securities swindler who’d been charged at the state level with fraud in at least three Alabama counties before launching Florida-based ASD in 2006, federal prosecutors said, Bowdoin tried to avoid the use of the language of investments as a means of keeping the 1-percent-a-day ASD scheme under the radar.
The linguistic cover Bowdoin chose — a cover the Feds stripped bare — was that ASD was an “advertising” company with a “revenue sharing” program, not an investment company selling “securities.”
Bowdoin tried to create additional cover by saying payouts were not guaranteed, according to federal court filings.
Now, four years after the ASD raid, Zeek is using the same type of disclaimer language and members are getting the same sort of instructions on what words to avoid.
Federal investigators became wise to this type of linguistic charade long ago. The charade was outlined in the 2010 criminal indictment against Bowdoin. The indictment quoted Bowdoin himself laying out the linguistic plot to hide the true nature of the 1-percent-a-day ASD program and keep the government at bay (italics added):
“[L]et’s don’t (sic) use the words investment and returns. Instead, lets (sic) use ad sales and surfing commissions. The Attorney Generals in the U.S. don’t like for us to use these words in our program.”
Wordplay to mask an investment scheme also was referenced repeatedly in the forfeiture complaints against more than $80 million in ASD-related bank accounts (italics added):
“The [undercover agent] asked her about investing with ASD. She immediately said, ‘Don’t call it investing, you know what I mean, we can get in trouble if we say that, we have to be careful.” — Source: Federal forfeiture complaint, Aug. 5, 2008.
Only In MLM La-La Land
To be sure, the departure from Zeek of Laggos is a big story. But it’s not the biggest story. The biggest story is that the Paul Burks-led company already was walking a tightrope when it hired the tightrope-walking Laggos and now has cut his rope, casting him into the gorge without informing the membership at large and without pulling the tightrope-walking promotional material that references Laggos or was produced by his publishing company.
Some of that promo material features tightrope-walking Dooly, who’s now questioning the ethics of tightrope-walking Laggos.
How strange is the latest PR disaster to rock Zeekland? So strange it almost defies description.
As noted above, news of the Laggos departure was delivered by Zeek-friendly Blogger Dooly. And the news was delivered even as images of Dooly appeared online as a centerpiece in the same cheerleading video that features images of Laggos as centerpieces. The video largely consists of still photos taken at a Zeek “Red Carpet Day” event in Clemmons, N.C., on June 13. Incredibly, the video continues to appear online, despite the sudden and unexpected departure of Laggos last month.
On Aug. 4, Zeek used its Blog to accuse unspecified “North Carolina Credit Unions” of slander for expressing concerns to customers about Zeek. The post implied Zeek members who didn’t toe the company line would be penalized. Such members were “violators” of company policy, the firm said.
But Zeek has not addresed the Laggos issue on its Blog. Nor has it provided any guidance on whether members should stop using the Zeek cheerleading video that features both Laggos and Dooly, along with Zeek staffers, executives and members who showed up at the June 13 event in Clemmons. The Laggos-produced written materials also are out there, with no guidance from Zeek about whether members should continue to use them or to rely on them in any way.
Like ASD, Zeek plants the seed that participants will earn a return that corresponds to an annual return in the hundreds of percent but insists it is not offering an investment. The office of North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper said last week that it had asked Zeek to produce “documents” as part of an “examination” of its business practices. Dooly described that development as “exciting.”
Zeek is making MLM look ridiculous. Troy Dooly is making it look sillier yet. He should not be “covering” a company that is trading off his credibility as an MLM advocate to sell itself. Dooly now is questioning the ethics of Laggos even as Dooly permits Zeek to use his image in marketing promos that also feature images of Laggos.
Prior to opining that ASD was not a Ponzi scheme — only to be one-upped later by Bowdoin, who said that it was when entering a guilty plea to wire fraud in May 2012 — Laggos agreed to settle a 2004 case with the SEC that alleged he issued laudatory press releases and a laudatory article for a company that later become the subject of a securities investigation without disclosing he was being compensated for touting the purported opportunity.
Laggos neither admitted nor denied the SEC’s allegations, which involved a company known as Converge Global Inc. and a subsidiary known as TeleWrx Inc. The future Zeek consultant settled the SEC case by disgorging nearly $12,000, paying interest of nearly $2,000, paying a civil fine of $19,500 and agreeing to a five-year penny-stock ban.
In April, Network Marketing Business Journal, which lists Laggos as its president, published a laudatory article on Zeek. Dooly memorialized the article’s publication by publishing a special Sunday story about it on Dooly’s MLMHelpDesk. He memorialized it further by producing a gushing video in which he described Laggos as “my good friend and mentor.”
“He is breaking a story here that I thought was amazing,” Dooly said of the NMBJ Zeek article, which gushed that Zeek has a 25 to 1 customer to rep ratio. The claim is important because, if true, it could take Ponzi and pyramid concerns out of play. Some Zeek critics doubt that it’s true.
In April, Dooly noted that NMBJ was one of his favorite publications and that he picked it up on that particular Sunday while relaxing near his pool over a cup of tea.
But now — less than four months after Dooly’s April 15 gushing story and video on NMBJ’s gushing story about Zeek and less than two months after images of both Dooly and Laggos appeared in the Zeek video in which Zeek gushed about itself — Laggos is out at Zeek.
“Breaking MLM News: Zeek Rewards Officially Parts Ways With Dr Keith Laggos After Recorded Call Goes Public,” Dooly advised readers in a headline.
The precise reasons for the departure of Laggos remain unclear. Also unclear is whether Laggos will retain a reported Zeek downline of about 4,500 members that he apparently was managing while at once being a paid Zeek consultant.
Produced by USHBB Inc., which once produced videos for the bizarre (and failed) Narc That Car license-plate recording scheme that claimed some affiliates were out-earning the President of the United States, the Zeek video heralding Laggos, Dooly and others shows Dooly mugging with Zeek executive Dawn Wright-Olivares and Laggos posing with Peter Mingils. The last names of both Laggos and Mingils are misspelled in the USHBB video.
Like Dooly, Mingils is a board member of the Association of Network Marketing Professionals. He’s also Zeek’s Training & Incentives Coordinator and is “rockin’ the Certified Trainers course curriculum,” according to Zeek.
Zeek, which at one time listed USHBB executive OH Brown as a Zeek employee, now says Brown is “banging out video after video.”
Some of the backstory surrounding the failed Narc That Car scheme is remarkably similar to the Zeek scheme. In addition to the presence of USHBB, Narc and Rex Venture LLC, Zeek’s purported parent company, both have scored the Better Business Bureau’s lowest rating: “F.”
Affiliates of both Narc and Zeek, meanwhile, have sought to turn attention away from the core issues surrounding both Narc and Zeek by suggesting that the BBB is a fraud.
But perhaps most compellingly, the now-failed Narc scheme once did at least part of its banking at NewBridge Bank, one of the banks that Zeek used before mysteriously announcing on Memorial Day that it was ending its relationship with NewBridge. Narc was based in Texas. How it ended up banking at NewBridge is unclear.
What is clear is that Narc was a pyramid scheme that planted the seed it existed to help the U.S. AMBER Alert system for locating abducted children and traded on imagery of the White House. Both the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children, which administers part of the AMBER Alert program, confirmed to the PP Blog more than two years ago that they had no affiliation with Narc.
A Narc Knockoff With Phil Piccolo As Background Player
Narc appears to have inspired a knockoff MLM scheme known as Data Network Affiliates, which was linked to longtime MLM huckster Phil Piccolo. In late 2011, DNA’s website — and the website of another a Piccolo-linked “program” known as OWOW — were used to drive traffic to an emerging MLM scheme known as TextCashNetwork (TCN).
In December 2011, the PP Blog reported that TCN had used the name of Rex Venture Group on its website in the context of a purported “ASSIGNMENT” clause. The Rex Venture reference later mysteriously went missing from the TCN site, a circumstance that could cause investigators to question Rex Venture about whether it was aware that its name appeared on the TCN site and whether it had any business relationship with TCN.
If this is modern MLM, MLM is in a lot of trouble. Karl Wallenda, who built a magical name in the daredevil business and made a career out of taking risks, wouldn’t do Zeek.
Here is an imponderable: Is there any ceiling to the absurdities in the HYIP sphere and the destructive force it exercises around the web?
On Wednesday, the PP Blog received repeated spams from U.S.-based IPs. The spammer used the handle “invest liberty reserve” and targeted two threads, including this one about JSS Tripler 2, a purported “program” that purportedly based its name on JSS Tripler. JSS Tripler is a purported element of JustBeenPaid, an “opportunity” purportedly operated by Frederick Mann that claims it pays a return of 60 percent a month.
Liberty Reserve is an “offshore” payment processor favored by HYIP schemes, including JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid. Wednesday’s spam bids used purported email addresses at AOL and Hotmail.
One of the Wednesday spams featured a graphic swiped from PonziNews, once a sister site to the PP Blog. The spammer attempted to use the stolen graphic in his posting bid on the PP Blog.
It was not the first time the Blog’s graphics had been used in a nefarious way online. On Dec. 12, 2010 — in commemoration of its 1,000th post — the PP Blog recounted a July 2010 story that its Breaking News graphic had been swiped and placed inside a promotion for Data Network Affiliates.
DNA was a scam associated with huckster Phil Piccolo. The “opportunity” traded on the names of Oprah Winfrey and Donald Trump and advertised a nonexistent cell-phone plan of unlimited talk and text for $10 a month, an offshore “resorts” scheme and a “mortgage-reduction” scheme — all while tying itself to Christianity, the U.S. AMBER Alert system of locating abducted children and a purported bid to end world poverty.
It’s worth noting that some JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid promoters also traded on Winfrey’s name.
In the same December 2010 commemoration post, the Blog reported that Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, had been called names that would peel paint when DHS announced that Walmart had joined the “If you see something, say something” terrorism-awareness campaign. Meanwhile, the Blog reported that some online-fraud schemes had evolved to victimize participants by the tens of thousands — numbers America’s largest sports stadiums could not accommodate.
The PP Blog no longer owns the PonziNews domain. The Blog suspended publication of the site in 2010, after thieves who used international IPs stole the domain’s content verbatim and posted it on other sites they controlled that had a higher Page Rank than Ponzi News.
In short, the net effect of the theft was that the PP Blog was being used to create “free” content for thieves who intercepted the traffic of PonziNews. Such piracy schemes are hurting the publishing industry.
In a separate spam bid on Wednesday, a would-be poster suggesting he represented an HYIP ranking site targeted this PP Blog thread on strange claims associated with “MoneyMakingBrain” in the context of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid.
The would-be poster purporting to represent the HYIP ranking site complained that the Blog had used the term “HYIP” in the linked story above “21 times” without explaining the meaning of the term.
“Nice writing job!” the would-be poster jabbed. He provided no comment on the substance of the story.
On RealScam.com yesterday, “MoneyMakingBrain” — who’d emailed threats repeatedly to the PP Blog on Feb. 29 — described the Blog as a “BIG idiot,” a “chicken,” a “deceptive unethical lowlife,” the user of “NONFACTUAL” sources and other names.
Because of the emailed threats and “MoneyMakingBrain’s” subsequent ban from the PP Blog, the Blog will not engage with MoneyMakingBrain on RealScam.com, an antiscam forum that concerns itself with mass-marketing fraud and occasionally has been subjected itself to threats and menacing communications.
“MoneyMakingBrain” has advanced various conspiracy theories about RealScam.com, the PP Blog and and some of their common posters.
What he has not done is explain what his purported “due diligence” into the JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid “program” entailed or how purported operator Frederick Mann could pay an annualized return between 48 and 73 times higher than the purported “returns” of Bernard Madoff.
Yesterday on RealScam, “MoneyMakingBrain” asserted that he has “recently read [about the PP Blog] on some scams forum, that he is a very deceptive reporter, well, that doesn’t surprise the MMB at all.”
It is possible that “MoneyMakingBrain” is referring to this September 2009 thread on Scam.com. The thread was started by a PP Blog poster known as “little joe” who’d been banned for harassment. The poster, who later was banned from Scam.com, claimed the PP Blog would be “scrambling to put out fires” from multiple IPs.
The threats and intimidation campaign from “little joe” began after the summer 2009 collapses of AdViewGlobal (AVG) and Ad-Ventures4U (ADV4U), both of which claimed an ability to provide preposterous returns in the wake of the government seizure of tens of millions of dollars in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case.
Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, has described himself as a promoter for both ASD and ADV4U.
On Aug. 18, 2009, antiscam commentators on the PP Blog were called “idiots” and the PP Blog itself was asked by an ADV4U promoter whether the author was a “fag.” After launching his ad hominem attacks against the PP Blog and its posters, the ADv4U pitchman asserted he was a longtime businessman and that criticism about ADV4U on the PP Blog was about “as unprofessional as it gets people.”
“I’m out of here.You bunch of idiots make me sick!!!” the poster railed.
Less than a year later — in May 2010 — Professor James Byrne, an expert hired by the U.S. government to assess the alleged HYIP Ponzi scheme of Nicholas Smirnow of Pathway To Prosperity — observed that HYIPs were not “noted for their internal consistency.”
One of the inconsistencies that became part of the ADV4U story was the assertion by the “defender” that he was a longtime, professional businessman — while the same “defender” asked the PP Blog if he was a “fag” and declared ADV4U critics who questioned a purported payout rate of 1 percent a day “idiots.”
Both assertions occurred a year after the U.S. Secret Service brought Ponzi allegations against ASD, whose payout scheme was similar to ADV4U’s.
“WE NEED INTERNATIONAL SATELLITE PARTNERS: #1 must have minimum $25,000 deposit. #2 must have a good name in the country. #3 must be very honest and trustworthy. If you know of such a person in your country have them send a request to [deleted]@textcashnetwork.com.” — Feb. 13, 2012, Blog promo for Text Cash Network
From a TCN Blog promo on Feb. 13, 2012.
UPDATED 12:07 A.M. ET (FEB. 16, USA.)
Following a previous pattern of scams linked to MLM huckster Phil Piccolo, the purported Text Cash Network (TCN) text-advertising “opportunity” now is fishing for great sums of cash, according to affiliate Blog posts that appear not to even to question the offer.
The posts appear to be based on an email affiliates received from TCN , with affiliates simply copying and pasting the content on Blogs.
TCN, according to the posts, is seeking “INTERNATIONAL SATELLITE PARTNERS” willing to plunk down a “minimum $25,000 deposit.” The posts are tied to a purported TCN celebration for being in business for 100 days.
The promos also are hyping something called the “VIP Plus Advertising Package,” which purportedly will debut March 16 at a cost of “$499 + $60 Monthly x 11 Months with 100% of the additional funds going to the VIP Plus Agents.”
Some TCN affiliates are simultaneously encouraging recruits and prospects to send money to TCN via Western Union to buy in as TCN distributors at levels between $129 and $399. Such tactics have been associated with advance-fee scams and other forms of fraud.
“Western Union will allow you to put it on your credit card!” one TCN affiliate promo roars. “Call Western Union for details.”
In November 2010, a Piccolo-associated entity known as One World One Website (OWOW) solicited members to send in cash amid promises the contributions would earn “24% Annual Interest.” The offer led to questions about whether OWOW, which is listed as a defunct Wyoming corporation while it maintains websites that are unable to process payments, was selling unregistered securities as investment contracts.
“The 24% Annual Interest On Your Money … Did you know that many PROS are receiving 24% Annual Interest on their money. The deadline for 24% annual interest paid in monthly increments of 2% will end on 11/30/2010 . . . Any funds deposited thereafter will pay 18% annual interest in monthly increments of 1.5%,” the Nov. 18, 2010, OWOW email read in part.
In July 2010, Data Network Affiliates — another venture associated with Piccolo — said it was offering an offshore “resorts” program through a vendor. Members could buy into the purported program through a “No Interest Easy 24 Month” payment plan of of $625 a month. DNA solicited members to spend $14,995 on the resorts program, suggesting that some prospects would put the entire amount on a credit card.
Like the current TCN invitation soliciting deposits of $25,000, the OWOW email from November 2010 included an email address. Prospects with access to cash were encouraged to use the address to contact the company to discuss the offer.
Recent scams with which Piccolo has been involved — including OWOW and DNA — have featured Piccolo as a background player. Other individuals emerged as the faces of the company.
TCN has ducked questions about Piccolo. The firm lists Brett Hudson as its president. Both TCN and DNA operate in the region of Boca Raton, Fla.
DNA’s former CEO resigned within a matter of weeks in early 2010, saying that various email missives from the company were “bull” from a “backdoor guy.” Both TCN and DNA purport to operate “processing centers” in Boca Raton.
DNA’s corporate registration is listed in Nevada as dissolved. Like OWOW, Text Cash Network filed corporate paperwork in Wyoming. OWOW’s registration is listed as “delinquent” and “Inactive – Administratively Dissolved (Tax).”
OWOW effectively died in November 2011, the same month TCN was born in Wyoming, according to records. OWOW got a 10-day head start on other TCN affiliates in early November, according to web promos that explained OWOW was helping TCN test its system.
Why TCN would choose OWOW as a key, early business partner is unclear.
Another common thread among TCN, DNA and OWOW is the presence of Piccolo business associate and MLM huckster Joe Reid. TCN has accented the purported “tax” benefits of joining, something DNA also did.
Certain images will not load today on the website of JustBeenPaid, a "program" tied to JSS Tripler.
EDITOR’S NOTE: HYIP critics long have pointed out that many Internet-based schemes have members in common and that the interconnectivity of certain schemes creates a condition in which fraud proceeds circulate from scheme to scheme to scheme. Such fraud schemes can mushroom to involve tens of thousands — or even hundreds of thousands — of participants.
The logistical challenges of reverse-engineering such schemes are enormous — and it’s often the case the combined international hauls of the schemes also are enormous.
A man referenced in a JSS Tripler-related action by CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, appears to have lost access to his U.S.-based website — and appears also to have been a pitchman for Text Cash Network, a U.S.-based “opportunity” linked to serial hucksters Joe Reid and Phil Piccolo.
TextCashNetwork purports to be an international text-advertising business involving cell phones. The “opportunity,” though, is decidedly murky. Affiliates have described Text Cash Network vaguely as “a new division of a five year old communications company owned 100% by The Johnson Group.” Other promoters have claimed it was owned by the “Johnson & Johnson Group,” a possible bid to leech off the brand of the famous pharmaceutical and consumer-products company.
TCN Promotional Tie To JSS Tripler
On Jan. 23, CONSOB announced the JSS Tripler-related action. Included in CONSOB’s statement were references to an individual named Mauro Messina and a website styled gruppounitoworld.com.
That website, which appears to have been hosted in the United States, now beams this message: “I’m sorry, but this account has been suspended.” No reason for the suspension was provided.
The message appears even though the domain registration is good through June 30, 2012, according to registration data.
The name Mauro Messina also appears on an affiliate site for Text Cash Network. The affiliate ID on the Text Cash Network site is “gruppounito” — the first 11 letters of the now-suspended site referenced in the CONSOB probe. (See comment from PP Blog reader Tony here. Kudos, Tony.)
Driven by a relentless hypefest, Text Cash Network or TCN launched late last year — with Reid leading the cheerleading as he had done previously for Data Network Affiliates (DNA), a Piccolo-associated entity that mixed and matched itself with One World One Website (OWOW), another Piccolo-associated entity.
Both DNA and OWOW appear to be defunct corporations, but appear also to maintain a web presence that in part has been used to drive traffic to TCN. Strangely, the DNA website now is publishing a “STOP SOPA” graphic, referring to antipiracy legislation in the United States that became part of well-publicized opposition campaigns by Google and Wikipedia (among others).
DNA, which claimed it was a data company with a cell-phone arm and appears never to have delivered on either count, has a history of brand leeching and divining ties to causes, including the U.S. AMBER Alert program and child poverty. Among other things, DNA — despite the fact its Nevada corporate registration is listed as “Dissolved,” asks prospects to “Help DNA Feed A Million[:] OVER 1000 AN HOUR DIE.”
It also purports that children are “The Heart Of D.N.A.,” even though the corporation is defunct and DNA received an “F” grade in 2010 from the BBB and is the subject of a BBB alert. After apparently abandoning its purported data and cell-phone arms by July 2010, DNA claimed it was morphing into the land-mine business of offshore “resorts” and “mortgage reduction.”
Like DNA, TCN purports that it has or will engage in philanthropic pursuits.
CONSOB’s Jan. 23 announcement also referenced an entity known as “Ricochet Riches” and a dotcom by the same name. On the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum yesterday, a cheerleader for JSS Tripler 2 or T2 — an enterprise that appears to have appropriated the name of JSS Tripler — published an “I got paid” post for T2.
Below the post was a link to Ricochet Riches.
Incongruities that challenge description and involve both JSS Tripler and JSS Tripler 2 are occurring all over the Ponzi boards. Both JSS Tripler and JSS Tripler 2 have promoters in common. Regardless, Ponzi-board posters are pooh-poohing the CONSOB action or ignoring it — even as they champion other opportunities referenced in the CONSOB action, including Ricochet Riches.
A JSS Tripler/Club Asteria Tie
CONSOB last year took action against promoters of Club Asteria, another Ponzi-forum darling. “Andrea Viz,” another JSS Tripler promoter referenced in the CONSOB action, also has been linked to Club Asteria.
The Club Asteria promo appears on a domain styled vizconsigli.com, which is referenced in the CONSOB announcement about JSS Tripler. That domain, too, appears to be based in the United States.
Hank Neeedham, one of Club Asteria’s purported principals, formerly was a pitchman for AdSurfDaily, which the U.S. Secret Service described as an online Ponzi scheme involving at least $110 million.
Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS Tripler, also was an ASD pitchman, according to a 2008 promo that appeared online during the same period in which Needham — who simultaneously was promoting cash-gifting schemes — also was promoting ASD.
Over the weekend, JustBeenPaid, the entity that purportedly operates JSS Tripler through Mann, appears to have encountered website problems that are affecting its ability to publish certain graphics.
There is at least one Ponzi-forum report today about JustBeenPaid/JSS Tripler problems:
“. . . sites all messed up chat room no mods no admins little odd,” a MoneyMakerGroup poster claimed.
The JustBeenPaid site includes information attributed to Mann on AdVentures4You (ADV4U), a “program” that collapsed in 2009 amid reports its operator had been threatened.
In the remarks, Mann asserted that he made a pile of money through ADV4U prior to its collapse.
“The biggest difference between JSS-Tripler and AV4U is that JSS-Tripler is indefinitely sustainable, while AV4U had a design flaw that ensured its eventual failure,” according to the remarks attributed to Mann.
The pitchman hosting a 90-day anniversary call yesterday for Text Cash Network introduced fellow TCN pitchman Joe Reid as an “absolute legend.”
“In this industry, folks, facts tell, and stories sell,” a pitchman identified as “Eddie” said in remarks introducing Reid.
“This gentleman is a legend — an absolute legend in the industry,” Eddie said. “This gentleman makes money. This gentleman makes BIG money. He’s made millions and millions of dollars over the years in the network-marketing industry . . .”
But “Eddie” said nothing about Reid’s involvement in Data Network Affiliates (DNA) and One World One Website (OWOW), bizarre and crashed opportunities linked to Reid business associate and fellow MLM huckster Phil Piccolo amid claims that affiliates were not getting paid. Piccolo also has been linked to TCN.
Among other things, DNA claimed it could help the AMBER Alert program rescue abducted children, later claiming it offered a “free” cell phone with “unlimited” talk and text for $10 a month.
DNA appears to have assisted in the rescue of no children, but it did complain that the AMBER Alert program had a bloated budget. It later removed its cell-phone offer, claiming it had been duped into making the offer by a huckster. OWOW, for its part, claimed it had products that cured or treated cancer — while also claiming a “magnetic” product helped prevent leg amputations and helped produce tomatoes that would grow to twice their ordinary size — all while assisting dairy herds in producing more milk. (Use the search button in the upper-right corner of the PP Blog for more info on DNA and OWOW and their series of ambiguous and confounding offers.)
As he is doing now for TCN, Reid led cheers in videos or conference calls for DNA and OWOW. (TCN is using the same conference-call software as DNA.) While researching an offer by OWOW, the PP Blog was advised by the Des Moines Police Department (Iowa) that certain addresses that appeared in online promos for OWOW were nonexistent. Lower in this story, you’ll find a reference to something the Boca Raton Police Department reported after the PP Blog asked it to visit a local building.)
An Emerging Bromide
Despite “Eddie’s” assertion that “facts tell,” he provided no substantiation of his claims about Reid and offered no information on Reid’s DNA/OWOW ties, apparently preferring instead to focus on the “stories sell” part of his emerging bromide.
Reid’s story yesterday offered platitudes that “exciting things are happening” at TCN, with Reid adding that the purported text-advertising firm had “tremendous leaders” who’d created “great excitement.”
Reid, whose TCN cheerleading appeared to be somewhat subdued during the call, then passed the call back to Eddie.
Without providing any factual foundation and again apparently defaulting to the “stories sell” part of his bromide, Eddie again assured listeners that Reid was a “legend.” He added that TCN had set all of the following records:
Fastest to 10,000 members.
Fastest to 20,000 members.
Fastest to 50,000 members..
Fastest to 100,000 members.
Fastest to 200,000 members.
“And most recently, folks, we were the fastest company to 300,000 members — in under 90 days.”
Participants who weren’t excited about those numbers need to check their “pulse,” Eddie ventured, predicting later that there would be “seven-” and “six”-figure earners.
Like DNA and OWOW, strange events and incongruities have marked TCN’s existence.
The TCN Photo Mystery
Despite oddities such as the existence of a promotional photo that shows TCN’s name affixed to a glistening office building in Boca Raton and a public statement by the Boca Raton Police Department that the name is not affixed to the building, Eddie asserted that TCN is a company that “makes sense.”
TCN Tax Claims — After Similar DNA Claims
TCN also may be playing with fire by wooing recruits with claims about the purported tax advantages of joining.
“What about the tax benefits that you receive from owing a home-based business?” Eddie asked yesterday’s conference-call listeners. “You can literally bring home 3, 4, maybe $5,000 — up to $7,000 a year in tax benefits. So many people are completely unaware that, just by being a part of a home-based business, they can save thousands of dollars every year by being a part of a home-based business.
“Guess what? Join us with Text Cash Network and start saving today . . .” Eddie instructed while focusing on the purported tax advantages.
Screen shot: Like DNA, TCN puports to operate a "processing center" in Boca Raton.
Another oddity associated with TCN and DNA is that both firms
Screen shot: Like TCN, DNA purports to operate a "processing center" in Boca Raton.
claimed to operate “processing centers” in South Florida, but the addresses appear to be rental services.
Meanwhile, both TCN and DNA have OWOW — another Piccolo-associated entity — in common somewhere in the food chain.
The earliest promos (early November 2011) for TCN appeared on OWOW’s website.
Like DNA, OWOW appears to be a defunct corporation that continues to produce a website that sometimes goes missing and sometimes is rerouted to other sites.
The management structure of TCN, DNA and OWOW also has been murky, with all three firms claiming to be operated by top professionals while simultaneously publishing ambiguous information. Some TCN promoters, for instance, have claimed TCN is owned by “The Johnson Group.”
Promos that originated through OWOW, however, added an ampersand and extra proper noun, declaring that TCN was owned by the “Johnson & Johnson Group.”
Affiliates of TCN, DNA and OWOW have complained publicly about not getting paid. All three firms have explained away those concerns in largely the same fashion: that payments have come or will come once a series of launches and prelaunches and website adjustments are completed.
Each of the schemes spread in part through social-media sites such as YouTube and Facebook.
One poster on a Facebook TCN site dubbed the “Text Cash Network- Official Group Page” complained today that “power line stats” are not working.
“It stopped on the 12/28/2011,” the poster claimed.
On another Facebook site — one dubbed simply “Text Cash Network” — a poster spammed an offer for JSS Tripler. Promoters of JSS Tripler are under investigation by CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator.
From YouTube: Mr. P. prowls the stage for OWOW in 2010.
UPDATED 5:05 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) Did One World One Website Inc. (OWOW) — the Phil Piccolo-associated company that appears to have been given some of the top positions in Text Cash Network (TCN) and recruited a huge downline with the knowledge of TCN management — try to fix its own problems last year by hatching a Ponzi plan in which money sent in by new members would be used to pay commissions owed to original members?
A bizarre OWOW promo dated July 30, 2011, on Dealslinker.com suggests so. The promo, which claimed that “O.W.O.W. Management left town a long time ago” and “gave up for many reasons,” further claimed OWOW was implementing a restoration plan and suggested that the company was being run by “leaders.” The “leaders” were not identified.
Incongruously, the promo claimed that “[i]t is actually not the current O.W.O.W. that is in Financial Trouble. It is the baggage from 10/10/2010 to 3/10/2011 that has brought us down. And is a Ball and Chain around the current O.W.O.W. Team.”
“WE NEED YOUR HELP ‘OR’ THE HELP OF BRAND NEW PEOPLE…” the promo urged. “THE SOLUTION IS ‘FOUNDER OWNERSHIP’ YES… FOUNDERS…”
With those words in July, OWOW introduced a scheme by which “FOUNDER PACKAGES” would be created in four tiers (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum) and sold online to right the OWOW ship. The purported packages were priced between $500 and $5,000, and purchasers who bought in at the $5,000 level were promised they would get “20 shares in a (sic) 5% of The Sales Profit Pool from 8/8/11 to 12/12/12 of The O.W.O.W. Program…”
The claim leads to questions about whether OWOW was offering unregistered securities as investment contracts and effectively creating an investment pool while using unregistered broker-dealers to sell the offer.
Purchasers who bought in at the lower-priced tiers were promised a smaller number of shares, according to the promo. Members at the $500 level would get one share; members at $1,000 and $2,500 levels would get three shares and 10 shares, respectively.
Despite the claim that OWOW’s profits would be shared among certain members through Dec. 12, 2012, the business registration in Wyoming of One World One Website Inc. is listed as “Inactive – Administratively Dissolved (Tax).”
Whether OWOW sold any of the purported packages referenced in the July 2011 promo is unclear. But about three months later — during the opening days of November 2011 and while OWOW apparently was still reeling — OWOW appears to have been given a 10-day head start to sell TCN.
Some TCN members now say that TCN has delayed commission payments to members for a fourth time and that members have been encouraged to send money via Western Union and money orders to both the company and individuals associated with the firm.
A pulldown menu on TCN’s website says money can be sent via Western Union to three individuals: Tyler Johnson, Brett Hudson or Jane Johnson. TCN purports to have hundreds of thousands of members globally.
Brett Hudson is listed on TCN’s website as the firm’s president. TCN purports to operate from Boca Raton, Fla. OWOW and another Piccolo-associated entity know as Data Network Affiliates (DNA) also purported to operate from Boca Raton and environs. The Better Business Bureau issued an alert about DNA in 2010.
Why TCN is asking members to send funds to individuals via Western Union is unclear.
TCN purportedly is owned by “The Johnson Group,” although descriptions about that company have been vague and ambiguous.
Here is what TCN says about itself:
“Text Cash Network Inc is a USA Corporation and is own (sic) 100% by a five year old communication company which is another USA Corporation owned by The Johnson Group. We have not disclosed the communication’s company name or contact information in fear that THOUSANDS OF AGENTS may or should we say would call them for information prior to our official launch of 12/12/2011.”
The date TCN advertised as its launch date — Dec. 12, 2011 — was precisely one year ahead of the date through which OWOW promised to pay tiered members who purchased shares in a pooling arrangement: Dec. 12, 2012.
Curiously, TCN promoters associated with OWOW added an ampersand and extra proper noun to the name of TCN’s purported ownership group, describing TCN’s owners as the “Johnson & Johnson Group.”
Whether the addition of the ampersand and extra proper noun was a bid to trade on the name of Johnson & Johnson, the New Jersey-based Dow and S&P 500 component, is unclear. TCN came out of the gate trading on the name of Groupon, but a Groupon logo that once appeared on the site has been removed.
Returning to the subject of OWOW, money from the purported OWOW “FOUNDER PACKAGES” would be used in part to “pay off all of the past commissions and money owed to suppliers,” according to the bizarre OWOW promo, which was attributed to “Mister P.”
“Mister P” is an alias used by Phil Piccolo. Strangely, though, the OWOW promo was positioned as a “personal letter from J.P. aka Mister P.” Why the initials “J.P.” were used is unclear.
Other Oddities
The July 2011 OWOW promo referenced in this post appears to be a bid to sell both OWOW and a program known as ThatFreeThing. Indeed, the headline on the promo reads, “OWOW Wholesale Direct and MyFreething – ThatFreeThing.”
Despite the headline reference to That Free Thing, the promo does not contain a link to the That Free Thing program.
That Free Thing uses an address in Westminster, Colo., and publishes a picture of an office building with the name of the company affixed in large letters to the side of the building.
TCN promos have featured images of a building in Boca Raton with the company’s name affixed in large letters near the crown of the building. The Boca Raton Police Department said on Dec. 14 that TCN’s name was not affixed to the building — despite what promoters led recruits to believe.
“Mister P,” meanwhile, also is referenced in a promo for something called “MY FREE EVERYTHING,” which appears to be operating through a domain styled “TheDebtFreeCard.com.”
Visitors to that site are told about a “100% PASSIVE!” program through which they can earn through the sale of “$50,000 to $250,000 JVP FOUNDER LOAN PACKAGES.” Like the OWOW promo, the My Free Everything promo raises questions about whether the purported firm is selling unregistered securities as investment contracts and whether promoters are serving as unregistered broker-dealers.
Amid confusing claims on the site, visitors are told this: “If you are within 10 Levels of This Sale you will EARN IMMEDIATE MONEY… $500 to $2500… or If you personally sell one $5000 to $25,000… However THE BIG PICTURE will be THE RESIDUAL INCOME because THE SALE was made in YOUR DOWNLINE… There are many DOCTORS and OTHER PROFESSIONALS looking for PASSIVE INCOMES… All you do is FIND THEM and The Leadership SELL THEM… ”
Separately, promos for OWOW on LinkedIn are asking viewers to visit a YouTube site to “see [an] Oprah” video on OWOW.
When a link in the LinkedIn promo for OWOW is clicked, however, visitors are taken to a video that has nothing to do with Oprah Winfrey, the entertainment icon and business titan whose name often is appropriated by MLM hucksters and affiliates unwise to their ways.
Instead, the video is about a product known as PhoneGuard, an app that purportedly keeps teens and children safe by shutting off a cell phone’s texting capacity while they’re in automobiles.
See this story about DNA, another Piccolo-associated program that used Winfrey’s name. DNA purported to have ties to Anthony Sasso, who was described as DNA’s data expert and a “special board consultant.”
Sasso, who reportedly once had a role in PhoneGuard, is a convicted felon who was charged in a South Florida racketeering case. DNA, the Piccolo-associated entity, hyped him as “The King Of Data For Dollars” and Sasso was said to be the “owner of the largest database of text numbers in the world.”
Some affiliates have claimed Text Cash Network (TCN) is part of a company known as “The Johnson Group.” Others have added an ampersand and mimicked the name of an internationally famous company, saying TCN is part of the “Johnson & Johnson Group.”
Now, yet another TCN flap involving a company name is emerging. The name appeared on TCN’s purchase-agreement page in recent days.
“I understand that this agreement may not be transferred or assigned without prior written consent of REX Venture Group, LLC a/k/a/ T.C.N..com (sic), which consent shall not be unreasonably denied,” the TCN purchase-agreement page read in part on Dec. 22, according to Google cache. The language appeared below a clause labeled “ASSIGNMENT.”
Largely the same language appears on a page for a program known as Zeek Rewards, which leads to questions about whether TCN had copied the language and swapped in the name of its own company without consent.
But the name of REX Venture Group no longer appears on the purchase-agreement page of TCN’s website, and the “ASSIGNMENT” clause has been reworded to read, “I understand that this agreement may not be transferred or assigned without prior written consent of Text Cash Network, inc. a/k/a T.C.N., which consent shall not be unreasonably denied.”
It is unclear when the changes were made.
TCN has claimed to employ an “attorney,” but does not name the attorney. It also has claimed to use a “host of traditional domestic and international legal representatives.”
Whether TCN consulted the purported attorney and the purported “host of traditional domestic and international legal representatives” before posting the assignment clause — and later editing it — is unclear. Also unclear is whether TCN ever consulted with the Rex Venture Group, the firm whose name now has been deleted from TCN’s purported assignment clause.
Why TCN claimed it also was known as the Rex Venture Group also is unclear.
TCN has promotional links to Ponzi scheme boards and to MLM huckster Phil Piccolo and Piccolo-associated firms such as Data Network Affiliates (DNA) and OWOW, which stands for “One World One Website.”
Significant incongruities and vagueness over TCN’s ownership structure have marked promotions for TCN. Similar incongruities marked promos for DNA and OWOW.
1.
Google took a cache shot of TCN's purchase-agreement page on Dec. 22. Here is a screen shot of part of the page, which shows the name of REX Venture Group LLC. The name no longer appears on the page, leading to questions about whether TCN had simply copied-and-pasted terms from another MLM opportunity.
2.
Section from TCN's purchase-agreement page as it appeared on Dec. 27. The section has been reworded, and the name of REX Venture Group LLC has been removed.
