When the PP Blog later sought to visit the site, it encountered this error message: “www.egopay.com – Connection failed.”
Precisely when the site started generating that message is unclear. A March 9 Facebook post included a screen shot of the same error message the PP Blog observed today.
It is unclear if the EgoPay site has been offline continuously since the 9th. Google cache appears to show the site was online at least part of the day on the 9th.
HYIP enthusiasts apparently haven’t lost faith. On March 11, someone posted this on Twitter: “Huge Income For Your Egopay Account,investing money.”
On March 10, someone posted this on Twitter: “Egopay Payment Received,investing tips.” The post included a link to something called “Qatar Investment,” a site that promises “3400% profit in 24 Hour [sic] (Principal Return).”
The Qatar Investment site also says this: “Fund your Perfecy [sic] Money, Bitcoin or EgoPay account. You can fund your account by Credit Card, Bank Wire Transfer, Cash Deposits, Western Union, Money Gram and other payment methods.”
Despite the apparent Twitter claim on March 10 that Qatar Investment had paid someone through EgoPay on that date, whether anyone actually got paid is unclear.
Could it be the end for EgoPay, a Ponzi-board darling? And if it is the end, what caused it?
“BRING THE BACON HOME,” a Ponzi-board “program” pushed by Achieve Community promoter Rodney Blackburn, says EgoPay is among its payment processors. A Blog post on the EgoPay site claims EgoPay was hacked and subjected to embezzlement by its owner — and that the CEO has stepped down. The PP Blog cannot verify the claims.
UPDATED 1:09 P.M. ET U.S.A. The Blog on the website of the EgoPay payment processor claims in a Jan. 22 post that the company was hacked on Dec. 28. The claims, which the PP Blog cannot confirm, read like a spy novel that marries insidious financial fraud and escalating computer fraud to uber-bizarre palace intrigue.
After the hack, the post claims, EgoPay could trust no one. So it disabled its “transaction interface,” suspended staff, called in an unidentified “investigation team,” let support tickets go unanswered and interacted with “Astropay and Payza as well a few key merchants to gauge interest in helping remedy this situation.”
“Egopay was looking for help to discover the truth of the hack, for funding or liquidity, as well as to help consult on how to resolve this situation,” the Blog post claims.
Whether any “interest” was forthcoming was unclear in the post. Also unclear is how the asserted events would affect a range of schemes on the Ponzi boards.
Given companion assertions on the Blog that EgoPay “owner” Amir Aziz effectively had hijacked EgoPay servers to delete evidence of a crime and that the hack “exposed a gap in the cash reserves of Egopay,” using EgoPay in any fashion would seem an exceptionally risky proposition.
It was unclear in the Blog post whether EgoPay was blaming Aziz for the Dec. 28 hack. The post claimed that EgoPay determined on Jan. 5 that Aziz had been embezzling from the company, but it further claimed that (italics added):
On January 18th, 2015 Amir Aziz social engineered his way with the hosting provider to reset his accesses and grant him access again to the servers which he used in turn to delete his Egopay account from the system (we would assume to cover his scheme) and removed all other Administrative accesses.
The EgoPay Blog, which did not identify who wrote the post describing the hack and the post-hack actions and claims the company is back in full control of the servers, did not say whether it called police or regulatory authorities.
The post further claims that Tadas Kasputis, the onetime CEO of EgoPay, has stepped down, “allowing for a new team to come onboard to make or break this situation.”
The post did not say who was stepping in to fill the asserted leadership vacuum. Nor did it say who currently was running the company. The Blog post is attributed to the “Egopay Team.”
On Friday, the PP Blog reported that the state of Colorado had opened an investigation into “Achieve Community,” a money-cycling scheme with a Ponzi-board presence. Although Achieve appears not to have advertised EgoPay, some Achieve promoters are pushing Ponzi-board schemes that claim to accept EgoPay.
One such “program” is bizarrely called “BRING THE BACON HOME” and has a curious catch phrase of “We Do Bacon Right.” Achieve promoter Rodney Blackburn now is pushing “BRING THE BACON HOME.”
“Are you ready to make some Yummy Money?!” Rodney asks in a text line below his Jan 14 YouTube promo titled “Bring The Bacon Home- Comp Plan and Review!!!” The video has a play time of 14:53.
“Unison Wealth,” another Ponzi-board “program” pushed by Blackburn, also says it accepts EgoPay.
Despite the Jan. 22 EgoPay Blog post asserting the company could trust no one — not even its own staff — the same page on which the post appears contends that “EgoPay.com is your safe way to Pay.”
Here’s how the Blog post on the EgoPay site begins to explain the asserted hacking (italics added):
On December 28th, during the holiday period, Egopay suffered a hack that greatly impacted key merchants and partners. False values were made available in the merchants platform, when no actual value was transmitted in Egopay. This hacker then proceeded to convert this fake value into irreversible currencies all within a one hour window. These merchants believed that this value was in their Egopay account, but unfortunately it was not. Upon discovery, at this point, Egopay immediately put restrictions in place and placed transactions from being automatically completed, to manual review to contain further damage and impact on our merchants. The Shopping Cart Interface (SCI) was also restricted. The impact amount was between 1M to 1.5M total for a handful of merchants.
We concluded, that this hack must have been perpetrated by someone from within who knew the inner workings and had privileged access, so we took immediate actions and suspended everyone that we suspected while this investigation was underway. Unfortunately, this resulted in our support services being delayed or non-existent. Support tickets were not being answered and our transaction interface was taken down to stop any further exploit. Considering the evidence on hand, Egopay was left with no choice but to take these drastic actions.
From an SEC exhibit in the Profits Paradise complaint.
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: (Updated 9:33 p.m. ET U.S.A.) The SEC has charged two Indian nationals with running an HYIP scheme known as “Profits Paradise” that reached into the United States and offered “extraordinary” returns of up to 480 percent in 240 days, plus “compounding.”
As is typical in HYIP schemes, the “program” gained a head of steam on social media, the SEC charged. (A quick Google search shows that ProfitsParadise also had a presence on well-known Ponzi forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup.)
ProfitsParadise operated between April 2013 and early February of 2014 and offered “guaranteed” payouts, the SEC alleged.
The scam “invited investors to deposit funds that supposedly would be pooled with money from other investors and traded on foreign exchanges as well as in stocks and commodities,” the SEC alleged.
Pitches on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were “pervasive” and resulted in investors being exploited, the SEC charged.
The named respondents are Pankaj Srivastava of Mumbai and Nataraj Kavuri of Hyderabad. They also are accused of promoting the scam through Google Plus.
Srivastava “used the pseudonym “Paul Allen,” the SEC charged. Kavuri called himself “Nathan Jones.”
It was not immediately clear from the complaint whether the HYIP scammers intended to trade on the name of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. HYIP schemes, however, are infamous for trading on the names of prominent individuals.
“Srivastava and Kavuri used excessive secrecy in their effort to swindle investors through social media outreach and a website that attracted as many as 4,000 visitors per day,” said Stephen Cohen, associate director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “Our investigation stopped the constant solicitations once the website disappeared, and successfully tracked down the identities of the perpetrators behind those fraudulent solicitations.”
Bogus names also were used to register websites, the SEC charged.
Srivastava caused the Profits Paradise website to be registered through GoDaddy in the name of “Jane Roe” of Seattle, the SEC charged.
“Jane Roe is a fictitious name, and there is no connection between Profits Paradise and the dwelling at 300 Boylston Ave E., in Seattle, Washington, or its residents,” the SEC charged. “The telephone number provided to GoDaddy is a toll-free number for a conference call center that is unrelated to Profits Paradise,” the SEC charged.
Meanwhile, a Gmail email address linked to the supposed Seattle street address was associated with IPs “located in India, not Seattle,” the SEC charged.
At the same time, the agency charged, “Kavuri disguised Profits Paradise’s physical location by providing the false ‘whois’ data, indicating that Profit Paradise’s operations were within the United States when they were not.”
From the SEC’s civil administrative complaint (italics added):
“The phony name and address served a dual purpose. In addition to concealing the fact that Srivastava and Kavuri were behind the Website, the domain name registration to Jane Roe at a Seattle address was meant to attract American investors. Additionally, to create the illusion that mainly American investors were visiting the Profits Paradise Website, Srivastava instructed the web designer to ensure that the ‘Alexa detail’ showed the Website’s ‘rank in the United States’ rather than its ‘rank in India.’ “Alexa” refers to a website (www.alexa.com) that ranks other websites, by country, based on the amount of Internet traffic directed to the website.”
Also typical of HYIP scams, payment processors such as Liberty Reserve, PerfectMoney and EgoPay were used. Dates cited in the SEC complaint suggest Profits Paradise opened its Liberty Reserve account just prior to federal prosecutors bringing criminal charges against Liberty Reserve in May 2013.
Srivastava, in 2005, worked for Quixtar.com in Minneapolis, but returned to India in 2007, the SEC said.
Read the SEC complaint, which alleges the Profits Paradise scheme also was “structured so that under certain conditions investors could never recover their principal investments.”
You’ve probably heard about the debacle at Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin exchange. Reuters, meanwhile, is reporting that a Bitcoin bank known as Flexcoin is shutting down after it lost $600,000 to a hacker attack.
Elsewhere there are stories about the tragic death of 28-year-old Autumn Radtke, CEO of First Meta Pte Ltd, a Bitcoin exchange.
Uncertainly about the future of Bitcoin and exchangers appears to be driving reload scams. These may be positioned as ways to recover Bitcoin losses incurred through Mt. Gox.
Something styled “BitcoinInvestmentFund” at a .net has appeared online. One of the links on the site, which appears have been registered in January 2014, leads to a forum in which this claim is made (italics added/verbatim):
Make millions EgoPay PerfectMoney Bitcoin SolidTrustPay in paying hyips fastest Real Investment
The PP Blog reported yesterday about a scam known as “Mutual Wealth” that allegedly was gathering cash though EgoPay, PerfectMoney and SolidTrustPay, which often are facilitators for fraud schemes.
Nothing is sacred in HYIP Ponzi Land. In a disturbing tale of disconnect, some promoters of TelexFree, an MLM “program” under investigation in North America, South America, Africa and the subject of warnings in Europe, more or less tried to cherry-pick recruits by posting in media accounts in Brazil about the suicide deaths of two TelexFree promoters.
Tacky doesn’t begin to describe it.
At 12:10 a.m. today, the PP Blog received a spam from someone (or something) tying to post in the Comments thread below this story about thousands of people being sued as a result of the Zeek Rewards scam. The would-be poster used the would-be user ID of “Hyip Egopay” and sought to plant a link to the purported Bitcoin recovery venture at the .net.
Within the would-be post was an assertion about “Investment Insurance.” It also issued this appeal: “Cover Your Lost [sic] on MTGOX.”
The would-be post appeared to solicit sums of between $300 and $250,000 — and the purported payouts were in the thousands of percent per hour.
Among the claims on the actual .net site is this: “Bitcoin Investment Fund is short term, high yield private loan program, backed up Our Newest system of Forex trading.”
BULLETIN: On the heels of the apparent shutdown of Costa Rica-based Liberty Reserve as part of an international money-laundering investigation, “PerfectMoney” says it is banning users from the United States. Perfect Money purportedly operates from Panama. (More below.)
In an announcement dated today on its website, Perfect Money says that “due to changes in our policy we forbid new registrations from individuals or companies based in the United States of America. This includes US citizens residing overseas. If you fall under the above mentioned category, please do not register an account with us.”
How PerfectMoney intends to treat existing U.S. users was not immediately clear, and the firm did not explain why it suddenly had changed its policy. The company is favored by criminals and HYIP scammers and has a history of advertising on behalf of purported Forex “opportunities” that have been the subjects of sweeping court actions in the United States.
In January 2013, the Superintendency of the Securities Market of the Republic of Panama (SMV) warned that Perfect Money “has not been granted any kind of license by the SMV, nor has been authorized to carry on activities of intermediation, administration, or advisory in securities, financial instruments or forex, in or from the Republic of Panama, within the scope of the Securities Law.
“PERFECT MONEY FINANCE CORP. does not have [its] own offices in Panama, the office and its P.O. Box claim in its website [deleted by PP Blog], belong to the companies Azuero Business Center, Inc. and Panama Net Buy, which provides online shopping services,” SMV said.
In 2011, the PP Blog reported that an individual referenced as a Perfect Money contact person is referenced in federal court filings that tie money from the alleged EMG/Finanzas Forex fraud scheme to an international narcotics probe that led to the seizure of at least 59 bank accounts in the United States and the companion seizure of 294 bars of gold and at least seven luxury vehicles.
PerfectMoney’s name also is referenced in case filings from the SEC’s 2010 fraud complaint against Imperia Invest IBC, a scam purportedly operating offshore. Deaf people lost millions of dollars to Imperia, the SEC said.
A quick check today by the PPBlog showed dozens of HYIP sites that claim to accept PerfectMoney. Many of the same sites also claimed to accept LibertyReserve. How the “programs” — all of which advertise preposterous returns — will contend with the absence of LibertyReserve and the new restrictions imposed by PerfectMoney was not immediately clear.
Liberty Reserve operator Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk is reported to be under arrest in Spain as part of a probe by authorities in Costa Rica and the United States.
Based on U.S. court files and certain extrapolations, murky HYIPs may be raking in billions of dollars. In August 2012, the SEC alleged that the Zeek Rewards “program” gathered at least $600 million. Legisi, another HYIP scam, gathered at least $72 million before its 2008 collapse. Pathway To Prosperity appears to have churned at least $70 million prior to its 2010 collapse. The 2008 AdSurfDaily scheme gathered at least $119 million, according to federal prosecutors.
Zeek and ASD — at least — did business with AlertPay and SolidTrustPay, processors based in Canada.
In April 2013, the SEC alleged that a murky “program” known as Profitable Sunrise may have gathered tens of millions of dollars. Profitable Sunrise is the subject of regulatory actions or Investor Alerts in at least five countries: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy and New Zealand.
Profitable Sunrise pitchmen may not even have known for whom they were working to glean commissions, the SEC alleged.
There may be hundreds or perhaps thousands of HYIP scams operating online at any given point in time. Some of them — like Profitable Sunrise — even advertise they accept bank wires. HYIP scams often have promoters in common, a situation that sets the stage for banks to come into possession of funds tainted by a revolving door of fraud schemes.
In recent weeks, the PP Blog has reported on a number of reload scams aimed at victims of the Profitable Sunrise scheme. Virtually all of the schemes accepted PerfectMoney, LibertyReserve or both. Some also advertised they accepted SolidTrustPay and EgoPay.
These schemes included BiwakoBank Limited, SuperWithdraw, Whos12, Fairy Funds, Roxili, OptiEarn, AVVGlobal, ProForexUnion, MajestiCrown and TelexFree.
