More lawsuits against international “winners” in the Zeek Rewards cross-border Ponzi-and pyramid-scheme case are coming, receiver Kenneth D. Bell has advised a federal judge.
Bell also signaled to Senior U.S. District Judge Graham C. Mullen that lawsuits may be coming against alleged international Zeek vendors such as Payza and SolidTrustPay, both of which earlier were involved in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme and are Ponzi-forum darlings.
On another front, Zeek’s former COO — Dawn Wright-Olivares — doesn’t get to keep her cars.
“In the first quarter, the Receiver also took possession of several motor vehicles as part of the settlement with Defendant Dawn Wright-Oliveras,” Bell informed Mullen. “The Receiver has retained an auctioneer and intends to liquidate these vehicles during the second quarter of 2015.”
Bell’s forensic team has tracked Zeek money all over the world. The receiver already has sued alleged “winners” with addresses in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the British Virgin Islands and Norway.
It won’t end there, he advised Mullen in a quarterly update to the court filed yesterday.
“The Receiver expects to file lawsuits against foreign net winners in additional countries during the second quarter of 2015,” he wrote.
News that Bell intended to expand his efforts to gather money for an estimated 800,000 victims of Zeek’s cross-border scheme was received while the nation of Thailand was squaring off against UFunClub/UToken, yet another scheme pushed by MLMers/network-marketers.
So-called “sovereigns” were involved in the $119 million AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme in 2008. ASD was pushed in part by Frederick Mann, the purported operator of multiple fraud schemes. Mann appears to have had sympathy for Francis Schaeffer Cox, an Alaskan “sovereign” and militia man implicated in a plot to murder public officials.
A scheme known as Profitable Sunrise also appears to have been pushed in part by “sovereign citizens.”
“6. I affirm that I am not an employee or official of any government agency, nor am I acting on behalf of or collecting information for or on behalf of any government agency. I affirm that I am not an employee, by contract or otherwise, of any media or research company, and I am not reading any of the Ad Click Xpress pages in order to collect information for someone else.” — From the AdClickXpress Terms of Service, Nov. 29, 2014
The carcass of AdClickXpress (ACX) is stirring — just in time to cast a spell on suckers hoping to find some extra money for the holidays. Like predecessor scams JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid and ProfitClicking in the same criminal family, ACX fancies itself the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) of online schemes.
In short, ACX ropes “customers” into an international financial conspiracy theoretically designed to be offshore everywhere. But deliberately taunting government investigators in its Terms of Service (see breakout quote above from the Terms) appears only to have been a first act. The “program” now appears to be taunting its own members and prospects.
From a Sept. 10, 2014, post on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, quoting from the taunt (italics/bolding added):
Note: if members are found to have posted negative information about ACX, even if it is absolutely true, their account could be penalized significantly. ACX Management will be the sole determinant as to how much damage the member has caused other ACX Members.
Like the bizarre and incongruous AdViewGlobal scam before it, ACX fancies itself a “private association.” But even if it were one of those — and even if in theory it could hamstring government investigators and reporters with a vomitous word salad — it is a “private association” that threatens its own members in ways the Mafia wouldn’t consider.
So, at least by Sept. 10, ACX began serving up BannersBroker-like word-sewage. It’s all designed to confuse and to obfuscate, of course.
By the Terms alone, ACX makes co-conspirators of its members. And after this artifice is carried out, it divines a construction by which it will penalize “significantly” and unilaterally calculate damages purportedly caused by those same members who’d dare post “negative information . . . even if it’s absolutely true.”
Separately, there are unconfirmed reports on MoneyMakerGroup that Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS/JPB and the de facto inspiration behind the follow-up scams, has died. Mann, a former pitchmen for the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, once directed traffic to videos featuring Francis Schaeffer Cox, the now-convicted Alaska “sovereign citizen” and militia man implicated in a plot to murder public officials.
A giant human hand puts the top piece on a golden pyramid. Source: Global-Unity website.
Updated 6:24 p.m ET (U.S.A.) Members of the WCM777 scam, which morphed into Kingdom777 after regulatory actions were filed, have been informed by a “program” upline that the venture now is operating as Global-Unity, a source told the PP Blog today.
Parts of the Global-Unity website appear to be under construction. The “News” tab, for instance, includes no releases.
Strangely, though, it does include a photo of a giant human hand placing what appears to be the top piece on a giant golden pyramid. Whether the photo was designed as a taunt to regulators was not immediately clear.
WCM777 is the subject of regulatory actions or Investor Alerts in the United States, Canada and Peru. TelexFree is the subject of a pyramid probe in Brazil.
HYIP scammers have been known to taunt regulators. Frederick Mann, the purported operator of the JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid HYIP scam, once claimed that government workers were “part of a criminal gang of robbers, thieves, murderers, liars, imposters.”
JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid purported to pay 2 percent a day (precompounding). The original scam changed names at least twice after the Zeek Rewards’ Ponzi action by the United States in 2012. Zeek was a scam designed to make investors believe they’d received an average payout of 1.5 percent a day, the SEC said.
JSS/JBP’s Mann was a former AdSurfDaily Ponzi-scheme pitchman and appears to have had sympathies for “sovereign citizen” political extremists in the United States, including convicted “militia” man Francis Schaeffer Cox.
A scam known as “Profitable Sunrise” that became the subject of state and federal regulatory actions in the United States last year once promoted a 2.7-percent-a-day investment “plan” known as the “Long Haul.” The Long Haul payout purportedly was due April 1, 2013 — April Fool’s Day and the day after Easter.
At least one Profitable Sunrise supporter taunted North Carolina regulators after the state filed a Cease and Desist order against the “program.” (See Comments thread below this story.)
Profitable Sunrise, like both WCM777 and TelexFree, was targeted at Christians. Both the “Long Haul” name and the purported payout dates could have been taunts.
In promos, TelexFree, WCM777 and Profitable Sunrise each used an image of the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil.
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: (Fourth update 9:10 p.m. EDT U.S.A.) In court papers, the state of Ohio has called Nanci Jo Frazer’s Focus Up Ministries a “front” for the Profitable Sunrise HYIP scheme and alleges that Focus Up changed its name to Defining Vision Ministries Inc. in June 2013 — two months after the SEC brought the Profitable Sunrise fraud action in federal court in Atlanta.
Records suggest Nanci Jo Frazer also is known as Nancy Jo Frazer. The Ohio court documents list the “Nancy” spelling. Other documents list the “Nanci” spelling.
A judge in Williams County, Ohio, has ordered Frazer, Focus Up and other entities associated with Frazer to “[i]mmediately cease all activities on behalf of any charitable organization/trust in the state of Ohio,” to preserve assets and to return assets that already may have been dissipated.
The judge also ordered Frazer and others to cease selling unregistered securities. Meanwhile, the judge ordered three Ohio banks to take eight accounts linked to Frazer and others into “actual and/or constructive possession.” Frazer resides in Bryan, Ohio.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and the Ohio Department of Commerce said today that the state has brought civil fraud charges against Frazer, Focus Up, Defining Vision and others. Documents say the state believes Frazer was a pitchwoman for the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme and other “programs,” including Zeek Rewards and Profit Clicking.
“This case involves a worldwide pyramid scheme that defrauded Ohioans and others out of millions of dollars,” DeWine said. “These individuals brought the scheme to Ohio by promising outrageous returns and telling investors that their donations and investments would help charities. We will continue to work closely with the Department of Commerce to hold the defendants accountable for their actions.”
Also charged were David Frazer, Frazer’s husband, and Albert Rosebrock, a member of Frazer’s NJF Global Group. Rosebrock also was alleged by Ohio to be an AdSurfDaily and Zeek affiliate.
Purported Profitable Sunrise operator “Roman Novak” is called “John Doe” in Ohio’s complaint, leading to continuing questions about whether “Novak” actually exists. In April, the SEC said that Profitable Sunrise pitchmen may not even have known with whom they were doing business. Profitable Sunrise purported to pay up to 2.7 percent interest a day. The SEC said it was using a “mail drop” in England and offshore bank accounts potentially to scam tens of millions of dollars.
Frazer’s group may have driven $30 million to the scam, according to court files.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer is reporting that Rosebrock is blaming the SEC for the collapse of Profitable Sunrise.
Profitable Sunrise is an international pyramid scheme recently shut down by federal and international authorities. Profitable Sunrise claimed to be a Christian company that would use investment proceeds to help charities and provide investors with large returns. According to the state’s complaint, the Frazers, of Bryan, and Rosebrock, of Sherwood, used Focus Up Ministries’ status as a charity to solicit donations and investments into Profitable Sunrise. They also claimed that invested funds would compound at 1.6 to 2.7 percent daily, growing at annual rates of 5,000 to more than 75,000 percent. The complaint also alleges that the defendants used funds donated to Focus Up Ministries for personal expenses and other unlawful purposes. These included financing for personal business ventures, the purchase of a big screen television, no-interest personal loans, and compensation for agents who solicited on behalf of the Profitable Sunrise pyramid scheme. The complaint contains counts of misrepresentation, deceptive acts and practices, conversion, falsification, securities fraud, and unlicensed sale of securities, among other violations.
The SEC has described Zeek Rewards as a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid fraud. AdSurfDaily was a $119 million Ponzi scheme, according to the U.S. Secret Service. Meanwhile, ProfitClicking is a “program” linked to Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid, which has come under regulatory scrutiny in Italy and the Philippines.
If Frazer was a pitchwoman for ASD, Zeek and ProfitClicking/JSS/JBP, it would mean she was pushing Profitable Sunrise after various well-publicized regulatory or law-enforcement actions against those “programs,” which purported to pay interest of between 1 percent and 2 percent a day. (ASD = 1 percent/day; Zeek = 1.5 percent/day; ProfitClicking/JSS/JBP = 2 percent/day.)
Beyond that, it would mean Frazer pushed the purported 2.7 percent a day Profitable Sunrise “Long Haul” plan, even though agencies filed various actions against the “lower-paying” programs with which she allegedly was involved previously.
Some HYIP promoters move from one fraud scheme to another, while engaging in willful blindness. ASD is known to have had ties to the “sovereign citizens” movement. Mann, of ProfitClicking/JSS/JBP, once used a website to drive traffic to videos featuring Francis Schaeffer Cox, a purported “sovereign citizen” and “militia” man implicated in a murder plot against public officials in Alaska.
A “program” the PP Blog reported may have ties to the so-called “sovereign citizens” movement appears to have wiped out investors and perhaps zeroed out the purported earnings of many of them, according to posts at the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi-scheme forum.
In fact, according to one post, the “ProfitClicking” program perhaps now can be best described as “Profitcrapping.”
ProfitClicking listed Liberty Reserve as one of its payment processors. On Tuesday, federal prosecutors in New York described Liberty Reserve as a massive criminal enterprise involved in the laundering of more than $6 billion. The effect of the Liberty Reserve action on Profit Clicking was not immediately clear.
What is clear is that ProfitClicking was a fraud from the start. The “program” traces its roots to JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid, which promised a daily payout of 2 percent and purportedly was operated by Frederick Mann, a one-time pitchman for the collapsed, 1-percent-a-day AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme. ProfitClicking surfaced after Mann purportedly retired suddenly in the days after the SEC took down Zeek Rewards in August 2012, amid allegations it had operated a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid fraud that had duped investors into believing it provided a legitimate payout averaging about 1.5 percent a day.
Prior to the emergence of ProfitClicking, Mann speculated that his JSS/JBP “program” could come under attack by American cruise missiles. He also has described U.S. government employees as “part of a criminal gang of robbers, thieves, murderers, liars, imposters.”
Taking the time to ensure JSS/JBP was operating legally was a concession to slavery, Mann contended. Fellow AdSurfDaily figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming, a purported sovereign convicted in a plot to file false liens for billions of dollars against U.S. government employees, later contended that he was being held as a slave against his will.
But even as Mann was sliming the U.S. government and calling its employees slavemasters, one of his JSS/JBP pitchmen was operating a site known as Vatican Assassins that contended “Majority Savage Blacks were never taught to behave in civil White Protestant culture and thus have been released upon us Reformation Bible-believing Whites to further destroy our once White Protestant and Baptist American culture founded upon the Reformation’s AV1611 English Bible and a White Protestant Presbyterian Constitution with its attached White Baptist-Calvinist Bill of Rights.”
Some analysts have speculated that the name “Frederick Mann” (emphasis by PP Blog) is longhand code for “free man.” Purported “sovereign citizens” sometimes calls themselves “free men of the land.”
Among other things, both JSS/JBP and ProfitClicking made members affirm they were not with the “government.” Mann declined to say where his “program” was operating from, a development that drew comparisons to the infamous BCCI banking scheme of the 1990s. BCCI, shorthand for Bank of Credit and Commerce International, purportedly was designed to be “offshore everywhere,”
A Ponzi-board program known as “Profitable Sunrise” also experienced the same fate in Italy.
The U.S. SEC has described Profitable Sunrise as a murky “program” that may have collected tens of millions of dollars through offshore bank accounts. Profitable Sunrise had five HYIP plans, including one bizarrely dubbed the “Long Haul,” which purported to pay 2.7 percent a day — more than Zeek, more than ASD, more than JSS/JBP, more than ProfitClicking, more than ClickPaid.
A website linked to Mann once linked to videos featuring Francis Schaeffer Cox, a purported “sovereign” and “militia” man implicated in a murder plot against public officials in Alaska.
For starters, Zeek affiliates being approached by upline sponsors and email/website appeals to send in money “to defend Zeek Rewards and all of our independent businesses as per our legal rights of due process” might want to read this July 25 PP Blog post.
It’s about how wordplay was used to sanitize HYIP scams.
For additional background, Zeek affiliates might want to read this July 28 PP Blog post.
It’s about how purported Zeek “consultant” Robert Craddock sought to disable the Hub of Zeek critic “K. Chang.” Craddock now is part of the effort to raise funds to “defend” Zeek affiliates.
Zeek and untold thousands of its minions are known to have a tin ear for PR. That tin ear is on full display again today, with a “warning” from the leaders of the effort to “defend” Zeek from the SEC’s Aug. 17 allegations that it was a $600 million Ponzi and pyramid scheme not to contact the SNR Denton law firm.
“We have asked the firm to provide us the names of the individuals that are calling; we will refund your donation and will remove you from the group to be represented if you call. The law firm is only going to discuss the case with the 12 leaders and we will put out the information to the entire group on this site.”
“This site,” as it were, is this site, which calls itself ZTeamBiz.
ZTeamBiz, which calls itself a “professional organization,” says its has hired SNR Denton. The precise reason why is unclear, although ZTeamBiz says the “SEC has tried to make us all believe that Zeek Rewards was an ‘investment’ and a Ponzi scheme. All the pages that were submitted by the SEC indictment has all been one sided and what we believe to be a misrepresentation of the truth and facts of what Zeek Rewards was as a viable and legal business.”
And ZTeamBiz also accused the SEC of misleading a federal judge.
One of the persons on the ZTeamBiz squad — although it’s unclear if his presence is formal or informal — is Todd Disner. Disner is a former pitchman for the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme and, along with former attorney Dwight Owen Schweitzer, sued the government in November 2011. Disner and Schweitzer alleged that prosecutors and a U.S. Secret Service agent presented a “tissue of lies” to a federal judge when bringing the civil portion of the ASD Ponzi case in August 2008.
Disner and Schweitzer made that claim after ASD had lost the case in U.S. District Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals. Among other things, Disner and Schweitzer claimed the government had gone shopping for a friendly judge when it brought the forfeiture proceedings.
That judge allegedly was targeted with a false lien by Kenneth Wayne Leaming, who also targeted three federal prosecutors and a Secret Service agent with false liens, according to the FBI. Leaming was arrested by an FBI Terrorism Task Force in November 2011. He is a purported “sovereign citizen.” All five of the federal officials targeted in the alleged lien campaign have ties to the ASD case.
ASD President Andy Bowdoin pleaded guilty seven months later to a Ponzi-related charge of wire fraud. He is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday.
Zeek is known to have members in common with ASD, which federal prosecutors have described as a $119 million Ponzi scheme that created at least 9,000 victims before its 2008 collapse amid allegations by the U.S. Secret Service of Ponzi fraud.
Like Zeek, ASD claimed it was not offering an investment program. And like Zeek, ASD planted the seed it offered a daily payout rate of 1 percent a day or more.
Like Zeek, ASD came under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service. The agency has referred to ASD as a “criminal enterprise,” with the U.S. Department of Justice calling ASD “insidious.”
Those descriptions apparently were not enough to dissuade investors from throwing money at Zeek, which has listed ASD members as “employees.”
On Aug, 4, Zeek itself blasted unspecified “North Carolina Credit Unions” for raising concerns about Zeek. Zeek warned members to toe the company line.
The SEC was in federal court 13 days later.
Zeek also is known to have members in common with JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, which appears now to have morphed into something called “ProfitClicking.” Both JSS/JBP and ProfitClicking may have ties to the sovereign-citizens movement.
A domain registered in the name of purported JSS/JBP operator Frederick Mann once linked to videos featuring Francis Schaeffer Cox, a purported sovereign citizen implicated in a murder plot against public officials in Alaska.
Because HYIP scams typically are promoted on Ponzi-scheme forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup — and because Zeek, JSS/JBP, ProfitClicking and ASD all had a presence on those forums — questions have been raised about whether cash was circulating between and among various fraud schemes and placing U.S. banks in the position of possessing fraudulent proceeds.
A receiver has been appointed to marshal the assets of the alleged Zeek fraud.
Despite the appeal by ZTeamBiz for Zeek affiliates to send in money to “defend” themselves and the company, the interests of all Zeek affiliates almost certainly are not equivalent. Net “winners” almost certainly are at risk of clawback lawsuits from the receiver. Such court actions are used to enlarge the pool through which victims of a Ponzi fraud receive a disbursement designed to make them as whole as possible.
It’s often the case that victims never are made whole and receive disbursements of dimes or even pennies on the dollar. Such is the case to date for victims of the 2009 Trevor Cook Ponzi caper in Minnesota. That scheme was a form of affinity fraud targeted largely at people of faith, including senior citizens.
Post-Ponzi receiverships sometimes turn into an international paper chase because scammers hide money offshore. Reverse-engineering a Ponzi caper can take years. Even as Zeek receiver Kenneth D. Bell begins his duties, scammers on the Ponzi boards are planting the seed that the receivership cannot be trusted.
In the 2009 Mantria/Speed of Wealth Ponzi scheme case, which in part was pushed MLM-style, a federal judge issued a specific order not to interfere with the receiver.
Francis Schaeffer Cox: Guilty in murder plot against public officials.
On Feb. 27, the PP Blog reported that a website registered in the name of purported JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid operator Frederick Mann was publishing links to at least 11 videos featuring Francis Schaeffer Cox, an Alaska man implicated in an alleged “militia” murder plot against public officials.
These were among the remarks attributed to Mann at BuildFreedom.com — as a drop-down ad for JSS/JBB was displayed on the page.
“To what extent do the people and activities featured so far on this page provide real solutions? How far do they go toward neutralizing the real enemies? What activities need to be added to increase the prospects for freedom?”
The PP Blog almost immediately began to receive threats from “MoneyMakingBrain,” a Mann “defender.”
JSS/JBP purports to provide an investment return of 2 percent a day. It has no known securities registrations. In May, Mann said that government employees were “much worse than the Mafia.”
Government workers, Mann intoned in May, were “part of a criminal gang of robbers, thieves, murderers, liars, imposters.” He also speculated that the web servers of JSS/JBP could be targeted in a “cruise missile” attack.
Cox was convicted yesterday after a jury trial on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder. So, too, was Cox associate Lonnie Vernon.
EDITOR’S NOTE: A reader contacted the PP Blog yesterday, saying the JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid “program” was being “glorified and promoted” on a website styled Vatican Assassins.org. Sure enough, a fawning pitch dated May 21 for JSS/JBP appears on the site — along with a graphic that advertises the purported JSS/JBP payout rate of 60 percent a month and includes a prompt that higher earnings were possible through “daily compounding.”
But VaticanAssassins could serve up yet another PR disaster for JSS/JBP, which openly acknowledges it is not registered to sell securities, does not disclose its base of operations or identify itself with a nation-state, uses offshore payment processors linked to numerous fraud schemes, may have ties to the “sovereign citizens” movement and says its members must affirm they are not with the “government.”
“In general, government people are not welcome in JBP,” said JSS/JBP’s purported operator Frederick Mann on May 24, noting that a “cruise missile” attack against the “program” could not totally be ruled out.
It is paranoia coupled with a curious form of discrimination — we’ll call it exclusion by employment — and JSS/JBP’s new helpmate is almost certain to cause even more stomachs to turn. Indeed, VaticanAssassins describes black people as “savages” and “bastards” even as it tries to link the Catholic Church to one conspiracy after another.
Blacks, Catholics and other people of goodwill who are JSS/JBP members may recoil in horror if they spend so little as 10 minutes on the VaticanAssassins site and read the ramblings of their fellow pitchman for the “opportunity.”
On Feb. 7 — presumably in his pre-JSS/JBP days — the pitchman wrote this on VaticanAssassins:
“If you do not appreciate reading about the racial TRUTH in the Black Pope’s pro-Black, anti-White, ‘Holy Roman’ Fourteenth Amendment, Corporate-fascist, Socialist-Communist American Empire (1868-Present) then this website is not for you.”
On March 14, 2011 — while trying to draw a distinction between what he deemed “Majority Savage Blacks and the Minority Civil Blacks” — the pitchman said this:
“28 Majority Savage Black beasts, raised by their fornicating mothers due to seventy-percent of all Black American births being illegitimate, committed this gang rape. Yes, these animalistic Black bastards (for they act like animals’ and are indeed ‘bastards,’ they having no legitimate fathers) have perpetrated yet another unspeakable crime, this time against an 11-year old Hispanic girl.”
Just who is this pitchman?
None other than Eric Jon Phelps, who tells readers on another part of the site that he paid an IRS tax lien for $164,551.30 (presumably prior to his involvement in JSS/JBP) and introduces a conspiracy that the Pope secretly controls the tax-collection agency.
The reader who contacted us yesterday expressed concern, but also confusion.
“I thought they were shut down by the SEC,” he said of JSS/JBP. “I almost bought into this. Is there anything you can do to prevent people from losing [their] money? Or is this a [legitimate] business?”
Equally compellingly — in a JSS/JBP conference call Thursday — a distressed woman who said her name was “Ping” implied she was ill with a serious heart condition, was managing three JSS/JBP accounts that had been hacked a month ago and said her “sister borrowed on her house [to] put money in JBP.”
“I need, Mr. Mann, I beg your lifesaving help,” Ping said to Frederick Mann.
Ping recited her ticket number multiple times and asked Mann to intervene personally in her case because JSS/JBP customer support had been unresponsive for weeks.
Mann said, “Well, ah, one of our support staff will check it out.”
But what Mann said was not what Ping wanted to hear.
“Yes, but it has been one month and no one — I told them my situation, I told them my life was on [the] line. But help is so slow. Could you please take my case?”
At that point, JSS/JBP’s female conference-call host — “Dale” — intervened in an apparent bid to reassure the panicked woman that the “opportunity,” which advertises a daily return that corresponds to an annualized return of 730 percent, would look into her case. But Ping, who’d been panting and said she had made a recent trip to “the ER,” either did not hear what “Dale” was saying or was not satisfied that her complaint had been heard and would be escalated and resolved.
“Dale” then became agitated at Ping’s persistence.
“Ping, yes,” Dale barked. “We’re gonna try to handle that on this end. OK?”
Although Dale did express concern for Ping’s health, the remarks came off as patronizing because of the agitation she had displayed toward Ping. The scene had the deeply disturbing feel of the surreal/unreal: a woman who may be seriously ill and whose second language was English was on a conference call begging an HYIP that does not even disclose its base of operations for help. Why? Because support doesn’t respond, not even when a person’s home may be at risk.
My God.
Here is Ping’s Ticket No: 836560. May it become the most famous ticket number in the sordid history of HYIP frauds — and may Ping get the help she needs.
As the PP Blog was preparing a report on Thursday’s JSS/JBP call, it received the report about the promo on VaticanAssassins.org. We present that development below — with Ping still very much on our mind . . .
In a YouTube video dated April 7, 2009, Eric Phelps shares a vision of a "white" America.
UPDATED 12:29 P.M. EDT (JUNE 3, U.S.A.) JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid is being promoted on a website whose operator touts a vision of “white” America, advances conspiracy theories, bashes Catholics, claims the Motion Picture Association of America is “ruled” by the “Black Pope’s Knights of Malta” — all while the conspiracy site is linked to a purported church that says it preaches the “True Gospel Of The Risen Lord Jesus Christ to White-raced peoples of North America, Europe, Southern Africa and Australia.”
The website is known as VaticanAssassins.org. Meanwhile, the church is known as Reformation-Bible Puritan-Baptist Church. Both entities have conspiracy theorist Eric Jon Phelps, also known as Brother Eric Jon Phelps, in common — and Phelps now has emerged as a JSS/JBP pitchman.
Whether the site has received the blessing of JSS/JBP is unclear.
Phelps’ sales pitch asks prospects to obtain a Gmail account, register for JSS/JBP and to acquire accounts at the offshore payment processors AlertPay and SolidTrustPay — and start earning 60 percent a month.
“Your Editor is delighted to inform his readers of JSS Tripler,” Phelps gushes on VaticanAssassins in a post dated May 21. “It has been existence for over a year now with nearly one million members. This is a way we can make a little extra cash to help with daily needs or we can buy more Tripler positions and continue to make money over a period of time and benefit from greater returns.”
One of the most popular posts on Vatican Assassins is titled, “Three Savage Black American Soldiers Rape 12-Year Old Japanese Girl, 1995.”
Here is a snippet (italics added):
Meanwhile, no one, not one news room or major daily reported these merciless, heartless, savage bullies were Black. To add insult to injury, all articles in the Pope’s Trilateral Commission-controlled Japanese Press have removed every reference indicating these criminals were Black! Under orders from Jesuit-ruled Washington, Jesuit-ruled Tokyo removed this blatant fact of race, further generating a hatred for all Americans in general, as though we White Protestants and Baptists are equally guilty of such wicked and shameful behavior.
The post went on to assert that “Majority Savage Blacks were never taught to behave in civil White Protestant culture and thus have been released upon us Reformation Bible-believing Whites to further destroy our once White Protestant and Baptist American culture founded upon the Reformation’s AV1611 English Bible and a White Protestant Presbyterian Constitution with its attached White Baptist-Calvinist Bill of Rights.”
Both JSS/JBP and the payment processors have members who are black and/or Catholic. Mann has publicly claimed that JSS discriminates against no one — with the possible exception of government workers who are “part of a criminal gang of robbers, thieves, murderers, liars, imposters.”
Whether Mann or the payment processors would repudiate Phelps’ views was not immediately clear. For now, at least, Phelps has active affiliate links for both JSS/JBP and the processors.
Also unclear was whether Phelps had any licenses or registrations required to sell securities. The business model of JSS/JBP is similar in key aspects to the business model of AdSurfDaily, a Florida-based scam broken up the U.S. Secret Service in 2008. ASD President Andy Bowdoin pleaded guilty last month to wire fraud in the ASD case.
Federal prosecutors said ASD had gathered at least $110 million over the Internet, including tens of millions of dollars in just weeks during the spring and summer of 2008. ASD is known to have had “sovereign citizens” within its membership ranks. In 2008, JSS/JBP’s Mann was identified as an ASD pitchman — and a website linked to Mann has showcased videos on Francis Schaeffer Cox, a purported “sovereign citizen” implicated in an alleged murder plot against public officials.
Whether Phelps has any sympathies with the purported “sovereign citizens” movement is unclear. What is clear is that his presence as a JSS/JBP pitchman could become divisive. JSS/JBP purports to have a membership of about 1 million. It is a virtual certainty that a group of that size would include people of all races, belief systems and political persuasions — and Phelps potentially could alienate a large part of the JSS/JBP base.
In a YouTube video dated April 7, 2009, Phelps said he’d contemplated visiting Mexico to take in its culture, venturing that if he made such a trip he’d enjoy observing women in “beautiful Mexican dresses” and men in their “Mexican wedding shirts.”
And Phelps also ventured that he’d enjoy eating “tacos.”
But when it became time to leave Mexico, Phelps said, “I want to go back to my country that’s white. We speak English. We have organic hamburgers on wheat bread.”
The United States, he ventured, is experiencing an “alien invasion of Mexican Roman Catholics.”
“Mexico could be a wealthy country, but why it is broken is because of the Papacy, because of the Vatican . . .”
In his “new white nation,” Phelps ventured, “all the junk food’s gone.”
And then the man who’d one day become a JSS/JBP pitchman hatched a conspiracy theory involving “sugar processing” and the “Jesuit Order.”
Larry M. Myers, a self-described “sovereign citizen” and fugitive who remained on the lam for 14 years before his August 2011 arrest, has been sentenced to 78 months in federal prison.
Myers, 63, was found guilty by a jury on Valentine’s Day of conspiracy, mailing threatening communications in a bid to extort and obstructing justice.
In March, the office of the Treasury Inspector General For Tax Administration (TIGTA) described Myers as member of a bogus entity known as “The Constitutional Court of We The People In and For The United States of America.”
The entity also was known as the “Constitutional Common Law Court” and “The Supreme Court of the Constitutional Court of We the People — In and For the united [sic] States of America.”
Known informally as CLC, the confabulations were “pseudo-judicial, non-governmental, and unofficial enterprise[s], created and established in 1992 in Tampa, Florida,” TIGTA said.
“Myers and his co-conspirators mailed a CLC arrest warrant to a Chief Judge of a Florida State court,” TIGTA said. “They also issued a CLC contempt of court order and ‘militia’ arrest warrant to a District Judge. By use of threats and threatening communications, Myers and co-conspirators attempted to influence, intimidate, obstruct, and impede jurors and officers in and of the Courts of the United States. For instance, they endeavored to intimidate a jury panel with a CLC ‘contempt of court order,’ in which they threatened arrest by ‘militia’ for alleged acts of treason.”
The office of U.S. Attorney Robert E. O’Neill of the Middle District of Florida described Myers as president of the so-called “Pinellas Patriots” in the Tampa region.
“He claimed that he was not a citizen of the United States, but a so-called sovereign citizen who was not subject to U.S. statutory laws,” O’Neill’s office said. “Myers participated in a sham ‘Common Law Court’ in a number of capacities, including as a ‘judge’ and a ‘militia enforcement officer.’ Between March 1994 and March 1996, Myers participated in a conspiracy with others, to obstruct justice by conveying threatening communications to state and federal judges, petit and grand jurors, and others, in order to obtain federal rulings in criminal cases, dismissals of indictments and release from incarceration for individuals who had been lawfully convicted.”
U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday ordered the 78-month sentence.
TIGTA and the FBI led the probe.
Curtis Richmond, a mainstay in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme story, was a member of a similar sham entity in Utah.
A website linked to an emerging HYIP known as JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid has showcased videos of purported Alaska “sovereign citizen” and “militia” leader Francis Schaeffer Cox. Cox and others are on trial amid allegations they hatched a plot against government officials.
Cox allegedly participated in a so-called common-law court that operated at a Denny’s Restaurant.
The sham entity with which Richmond was associated was known derisively as the “Arby’s Indians” because it once held a meeting at an Arby’s restaurant in Utah. Richmond was sued successfully under the federal RICO statute, and once was found guilty of contempt in California for threatening federal judges.
In a Utah case involving Richmond, a bogus lien for $250 million was placed against a county attorney and a false claim for $300,000 was made against a Family Services worker in the state. The bogus “tribe” conducted a “Supreme Court” that used the address of a Utah doughnut shop and also relied on a bogus “arbitration” panel to make mischief in the state.
Richmond repeatedly sought to intervene in the ASD case, at one time accusing the judge overseeing the case of “treason” and suggesting she and federal prosecutors were guilty of dozens of felonies.
Richmond’s theory of the ASD case was that the government was guilty of interfering in commerce. The U.S. Secret Service described ASD as an international Ponzi scheme that had gathered at least $110 million from the small town of Quincy in northern Florida.
Kenneth Wayne Leaming, another ASD story mainstay and purported “sovereign citizen,” is jailed near Seattle on charges of filing bogus liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD case.
Purported JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid COO Carl Pearson. From: YouTube.
It sometimes is the case in the corrupt universes of HYIPs that a change in the status quo signals panic or devastating news. It’s also sometimes the case that significant developments get explained away as meaningless or part of a plan that had been in place all along in response to explosive growth.
It is almost always the case that HYIPs such as JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid and their various purveyors reveal incongruities and internal inconsistencies — and a few big ones now are in play at JSS/JBP.
Within the past several days, audio recordings of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid “conference calls” featuring pitchman and purported COO “Carl Pearson” have gone missing from the JSS/JBP website. The recordings previously had been embedded on the site below the embedded recordings of Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS/JBP. Although Mann’s recordings remain, the recordings of Pearson have vanished.
No recording from Mann was added to the site last week, meaning the last embedded Mann recording carries a date of March 15. No recording was posted for March 22, meaning that the streak of posting a recording of every Mann Thursday conference call dating back to Feb. 16 had been broken.
In the March 15 call, Mann told members that JSS/JBP was paying them with money from “new members” and that it was OK to call JSS/JBP an investment program. Using money from new members to pay old members is the central element of a Ponzi scheme. And because Mann himself described JSS/JBP as an investment program, promoters could find themselves confronting assertions they are selling unregistered securities as investment contracts.
JSS/JBP members who identified themselves of residents of the United States or Canada were on the March 15 call (and also on previous calls). Their nationalities and citizenship are potentially important because JSS/JBP has no known securities registrations, meaning that regulators from either the United States or Canada could move against the enterprise and perhaps even some of its promoters.
Mann has declined on multiple occasions to identify JSS/JBP with a nation-state — and promoters still are pushing the scheme, despite the fact they appear to have no clue about the internal workings of JSS/JBP and how they (and their recruits) ever could recover their investments in the event of a collapse or a government intervention.
In January, the Italian securities regulator CONSOB announced a JSS/JBP-related action — and affiliates still promoted the program, with JSS/JBP itself claiming it was posting record numbers of new members daily.
At least a few JSS/JBP members have noted the removal of the Pearson calls. Earlier today, the PP Blog viewed an affiliate’s Blog for JSS/JBP in which an assertion was made that Pearson had become too busy with other duties to host calls.
“Due to the unprecedented growth of JBP, Carl Pearson will no longer be doing the weekly conferences,” a comment from a reader asserted. “He is prioritising now full time in the back office operations of JBP.”
The comment was dated March 21. A follow-up comment dated March 22 suggested the recordings had been removed for security reasons and that other information also might be removed.
“From the conference room yesterday at around 8pm Dominick got on the mic and announced it,” the post claimed. “He also said that staff members could have their pictures and information removed from the site if they wanted to and Carl as well as other staff members decided it would be best to have that information removed. He said that they are growing so fast that they could be targeted by crooks and hackers.”
But what the explanation did not reveal is why Mann’s recordings remained on the site if concern about crooks and hackers was great enough to trigger the removal of the Pearson recordings.
As often is the case in the HYIP sphere, the information was posted anonymously, meaning it could not be verified. Even so, the information is potentially disturbing in the sense that it defaults to well-known HYIP clichés such as introducing the prospect of hackers — while ignoring the potentially damning information contained in the jettisoned material as a factor in the removal decision and the obvious fact that information that remains on the site may be equally damning.
With a straight face, for example, JSS/JBP purports to pay a daily return of 2 percent and a monthly return of 60 percent.
JSS/JBP openly advertises that it pays a return of 60 percent a month on TOP of affiliate commissions totaling 15 percent over two tiers.
In 2007, when the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme stopped making payments to members (even as its operator allegedly was making political donations with Ponzi money), ASD President Andy Bowdoin allegedly blamed the halted member payouts on script problems and “Russian” hackers who’d allegedly taken $1 million.
Bowdoin never filed a police report about the purported theft of $1 million, federal prosecutors said.
In 2008 promotional materials attributed to Mann, Mann was identified as an ASD pitchman. As the ASD prosecution moved forward, it became apparent that certain ASD members either were “sovereign citizens” or sympathizers. Some “sovereign citizens” hold extreme antigovernment views and have an irrational belief that laws do not apply to them.
In November 2011, ASD figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming was arrested by an FBI Terrorism Task Force in Washington state on charges he had filed false liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD case, including a federal judge, three federal prosecutors and a special agent of the U.S. Secret Service.
On Feb. 27, the PP Blog reported that a website linked to Mann included links to 11 videos concerning Francis Schaeffer Cox, a purported “sovereign citizen” under indictment in an alleged murder plot against public officials in Alaska.
One poster on the JSS/JBP-related Blog from which the “hackers” explanation was advanced had a different take on conference-call-related developments.
“Heat is also the REAL reason why Carl Pearson has moved off the conference calls,” the poster speculated.
“The Government has provided over 2742 pages of discovery consisting of: liens, police reports, [Bureau of Prisons] records, pictures, surveillance photos, internet search records, audio subpoenas and over 1000 pages of documents seized.” — From March 5 court order in false-liens case involving accused AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming and former Leaming business associate David Carroll Stephenson
Kenneth Wayne Leaming
If the scheduling holds, accused AdSurfDaily figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming will go on trial in the Western District of Washington on Sept. 17 with his former business colleague David Carroll Stephenson, one week before ASD President Andy Bowdoin is set to go on trial in the District of Columbia in a Ponzi scheme case involving at least $110 million.
Leaming, 56, of Spanaway, Wash., is accused of filing false liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD case, including a federal judge, three federal prosecutors and a special agent of the U.S. Secret Service. In addition, he is charged with being a participant with 56-year-old Stephenson, a federal inmate in a fraud case, in a scheme to file false liens against at least two federal prison officials.
At the same time, Leaming is charged with concealing two federal fugitives involved in an Arkansas-based, home-business fraud scheme involving millions of dollars, being a felon in possession of firearms and uttering a false “Bonded Promissory Note” with a purported face value of $1 million.
The docket of U.S. District Judge Ronald B. Leighton of the Western District of Washington now shows a trial date of Sept. 17 for both Leaming and Stephenson.
Leaming, who has a 2005 felony conviction for piloting an aircraft without a valid pilot’s certificate, originally was scheduled to go on trial March 20. That trial date was rescheduled for April 2 after a superseding indictment was returned against Leaming after his initial arrest on a criminal complaint in November 2011 — and now has been moved to September to give Leaming and Stephenson more time to prepare, according to court filings.
Bowdoin, 77, was indicted in 2010 on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities. In August 2008, the U.S. Secret Service seized tens of millions of dollars from 10 of his personal bank accounts, amid allegations that Bowdoin was presiding over an international Ponzi scheme operating over the Internet.
Both of the Arkansas fugitives allegedly found with Leaming in Washingston state also are purported “sovereign citizens.” They were identified as Timothy Shawn Donavan, 64, and Sharon Jeannette Henningsen, 67. Donavan currently is detained in Oklahoma, and Henningsen is detained in Texas, according to records.
Leaming and Stephenson both are detained near Seattle.
As was the case with the original court filings in the 2008 civil action that led to the criminal prosecution of Bowdoin, investigators have produced surveillance photos pertaining to the Leaming and Stephenson prosecutions.
Records suggest that Leaming came under surveillance in Washington state by an FBI Terrorism Task Force by at least August 2011.
In addition to the surveillance photos, the government also has produced, liens, police records, unspecified “pictures,” prison records, Internet search records, “audio subpoenas” and “over 1000 pages of documents seized,” according to court filings.
All in all, according to the filings, the government has produced at least 2,742 pages of discovery in the Leaming and Stephenson cases.
Leaming has asserted he is proceeding to trial under “duress.”
In March 2009 — while the ASD Ponzi case was still a civil matter — Bowdoin claimed a January 2009 decision he made to submit to the forfeiture and stop pressing claims for the money seized from his bank accounts was made under “severe duress.”
He made the claim while acting as his own attorney, and further claimed that his decision to relitigate the case after earlier abandoning his claims was “legally accomplished as a matter of law” simply because he had filed papers saying so.
A month later — in April 2009 — federal prosecutors made a bombshell announcement in court that, prior to submitting to the forfeiture and dropping his claims to the seized cash, Bowdoin had signed a proffer letter and acknowledged the government’s material allegations were all true.
In September 2009, prosecutors said Bowdoin was telling ASD members one story — while telling a federal judge another.
Final orders of forfeiture were entered in the ASD civil case in January 2010. Bowdoin appealed, but lost in March 2011.
In the earliest days and weeks after the August 2008 seizure, some ASD members — ignoring the lessons of history — began to promote other schemes that advertised preposterous payouts, claiming they were safe because they were “offshore.”
One current HYIP scheme is JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, whose advertised daily payout rate is 2 percent — twice that of ASD. Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, identified himself as an ASD pitchman in 2008 web promos three months before the Secret Service raid on ASD headquarters in Quincy, Fla.
In a Feb. 23, 2012, conference call, Mann declined to say precisely where JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid was operating from. On Feb. 27, the PP Blog reported that a site linked to Mann featured videos of Francis Schaeffer Cox, a purported “sovereign citizen” implicated in an alleged murder plot against public officials in Alaska.
On Feb. 29, the PP Blog received threatening communications from an individual describing himself as “MoneyMakingBrain.” Among other things, “MoneyMakingBrain” claimed he’d defend Mann “so help me God.”
On March 12, the PP Blog reported that “MoneyMakingBrain” had asserted the Blog would “go down in flames.”
On Feb. 18 — at RealScam.com, a forum that educates the public about mass-marketing fraud — “MoneyMakingBrain” published a link to the Mann-associated site that beams the Cox videos. It is unclear if “MoneyMakingBrain” understood that Cox was under arrest on serious criminal charges and is identified with the “sovereign citizen movement.”
NOTE: The PP Blog believes it is ill-advised to click on any link left by “MoneyMakingBrain” at RealScam.com.
One of the surveillance photos in the ASD Ponzi case: Source: Court files.
More lawsuits against international “winners” in the Zeek Rewards cross-border Ponzi-and pyramid-scheme case are coming, receiver Kenneth D. Bell has advised a federal judge.
For starters, Zeek affiliates being approached by upline sponsors and email/website appeals to send in money “to defend Zeek Rewards and all of our independent businesses as per our legal rights of due process” might want to read this 
