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Tag: Frederick Mann

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Det/Sgt Ian Nichol of Toronto Police Mass Marketing Section says there are 1000’s of victims worldwide in Banners Brokers pyramid scheme ^sm

— Toronto Police (@TorontoPolice) December 9, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dec 9, 2015
Black December Fears Over AdClickXPress, Successor Scam To ‘JustBeenPaid’ And Others

As the PP Blog reported nearly a year ago, AdClickXpress (ACX) was a continuation of an absurd scam that began years ago as JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid, with antigovernment zealot and “sovereign citizen” sympathizer Frederick Mann at the helm.

Just in time for the 2015 holiday season, there are reports that ACX has suspended payouts or is making selective payouts. In HYIP Ponzi Land, this is consistent with “Black December,” the collapse of a “program” because too many people are trying to withdraw or the operator just decides to keep all the Ponzi cash.

“I have not be able to withdraw,” a self-identified ACX membeer told the PP Blog today. “They keep changing their withdrawal policy and now we are all [convinced] it is a scam.”

See the PP Blog’s tag archive of references to “JustBeenPaid.”

From the PP Blog on Nov. 29, 2014 (italics added):

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.

In 2012, Mann described government workers as “part of a criminal gang of robbers, thieves, murderers, liars, imposters.”

Nov 13, 2015
ZEEK: New Zealand Clawback Defendant With Alleged Username Of ‘sovlife’ Challenges U.S. Court’s Jurisdiction

UPDATED 9:37 P.M. EDT U.S.A. David Ian MacGregor Fraser, a New Zealand resident who allegedly used the Zeek Rewards’ username of “sovlife,” has challenged a U.S. Court’s jurisdiction over him in a clawback lawsuit filed in February by Zeek receiver Kenneth D. Bell.

Bell alleged that David Ian MacGregor Fraser received $89,722 from Zeek’s “unlawful combined Ponzi and pyramid scheme.” The receiver, who contends the U.S. Court has jurisdiction in international clawback actions in part because Zeek operated from North Carolina and sent money from the state to participants such as MacGregor Fraser, is seeking a judgment in that amount, plus interest. He alleges the money came from Zeek victims.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission described Zeek in 2012 as a massive, cross-border fraud scheme that had gathered hundreds of millions of dollars. In October 2014, alleged Zeek operator Paul R. Burks was charged criminally with wire- and mail-fraud conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, and tax-fraud conspiracy.

Earlier in 2014, Zeek figures Dawn Wright-Olivares and her stepson Daniel Olivares pleaded guilty to criminal charges filed in 2013 — Wright-Olivares to investment-fraud conspiracy and tax-fraud conspiracy and Olivares to investment-fraud conspiracy.

Web records suggest MacGregor Fraser used the shortened name of “David MacGregor” when pitching Zeek online through GetResponse.com, an email service sold in the United States and other countries.

A Zeek promo in which the username “sovlife” and the name “David MacGregor” appear begins in this fashion, according to Google search results. (Italics added):

Hi Friend

If you haven’t caught up with the latest news, or weren’t on the conference call the other day, then I just wanted to highlight the main points.

Screen shot of promo for Zeek. Red highlight by PP Blog.

MacGregor Fraser, who is represented in the clawback lawsuit by North Carolina attorney June K. Allison of Shumaker, Loop & Kendrick in Charlotte, answered Bell’s complaint as “David Fraser.” The answer, however, acknowledges the longer version of the name as it appeared in Bell’s complaint. So does an affidavit submitted to the U.S. court by David Ian MacGregor Fraser.

The moniker “sovLife” appears repeatedly on the website theclassifiedsplus.com through which videos play. Some of these videos point to MLM “programs” such as the Empower Network in which “sovLife” is used as the affiliate ID.

Other videos at theclassifiedsplus point to a web entity known as sovereignlife.com. This domain is styled “SovereignLife” and identifies its operator as “David MacGregor.” There is a corresponding YouTube account in that name through which videos viewable through theclassifiedsplus.com play.

One of them with an upload date of July 3, 2013, is titled “My July 4 Message for the America That Was.” In the video, a man (presumptively “David MacGregor”) holds forth that he once was a big supporter of the United States. That support, however, apparently has evaporated in that the man contends in the video that the United States is “Dare I say it? A force for evil.”

Other videos in the David MacGregor account have titles such as “Bitcoin Debit Card – How to Get One,” “You Can Now Be a Reseller For SovereignLife And Keep All The Money!,” “Tax Slave or Sovereign Individual?”

Some individuals who may identify with the word “sovereign” have participated in various fraud schemes, have painted their fellow human beings as slaves (see Frederick Mann) or government-owned property (see Kenneth Wayne Leaming) and have expressed an irrational belief that laws do not apply to them.

Other “sovereigns” have made wild claims that they hold diplomatic immunity and thus cannot be prosecuted or are answerable only to Jesus Christ.

Zeek Clawback Defense

Compared to the “David MacGregor” video suggestion that America is evil, the David Fraser response to Bell’s clawback complaint before Senior U.S. District Judge Graham C. Mullen of the Western District of North Carolina includes no inflammatory rhetoric or claims of evildoing by the United States.

Fraser, through the American law firm, is seeking dismissal of the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. He also is seeking to quash process in New Zealand, even though he acknowledges he has been served.

Among Fraser’s specific defense claims is that he was an “innocent participant” in Zeek, having joined the program in “November 2011” while he was a “resident of Malaysia” and maintaining “a Post Office Box in New Zealand.”

In possible conflict with the information shown in the screen shot above that references a sum ($5,000 in U.S. cash), the Super Bowl played in the United States and Super Bowl tickets that have “cash-out values for those not in the USA,” Fraser further contends he had “no specific knowledge that ZeekRewards was initiated from the United States.”

He also contends he was “unaware that ZeekRewards originated in North Carolina.” This, too, may be in possible conflict with information generally known about Zeek, in that Zeek openly operated from North Carolina and invited participants to events held in that state.

At one point in its history, Zeek openly advertised auctions for sums of U.S. cash — even as it preemptively denied it was operating a pyramid scheme and complained that the U.S. Social Security system was a “legal” and “collapsing” pyramid scheme.

Precisely why Zeek was making political statements on its website is unknown.

Accused Zeek Ponzi schemer Paul R. Burks lived in North Carolina. In 2012, Federal Election Commission records showed that Burks gave money to the campaign of U.S. Presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul.

From a U.S. standpoint, Zeek used offshore payment processors such as SolidTrustPay and AlertPay, both of which provided services for the $119 million AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme broken up by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008.

Now-jailed AdSurfDaily Ponzi-scheme operator Andy Bowdoin also made donations to a political cause, according to the 2010 indictment against him.

AlertPay eventually transitioned into Payza. Bell has said he is continuing to investigate STP and Payza transactions, and federal prosecutors in the District of Colombia have been soliciting information on Payza for more than a year.

In his defense filings, Frazer said he “made or received” Zeek payments through AlertPay over the Internet, but maintained he’d never set foot in North Carolina.

Now, he contends, he unfairly is being “haled” to appear in court in North Carolina.

“To ask him to defend this suit halfway around the world on account of falling into the [Zeek] Insider’s international Internet scheme would clearly offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice,” his lawyer argued.

“Defendant Fraser never ordered or directed that anything of value be sent to him in either Malaysia or New Zealand from North Carolina,” his lawyer argued. “Rather, based on the way the website operated, amounts he earned on-line were credited to his on-line Payza account by ZeekRewards . . . Defendant Fraser did not know from what country or state the funds originated . . .”

In court filings, Fraser says he has been a citizen of New Zealand since 1978 and was born in Great Britain. He is a citizen there, too, according to his affidavit.

NOTE: Our thanks to the ASD Updates Blog.

May 10, 2015
Zeek Rewards’ Dawn Wright-Olivares Loses ‘Several Motor Vehicles’ To Receiver In Cross-Border Ponzi Case; More Actions Coming Against International ‘Winners’ And Vendors

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.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia has been soliciting information on Payza since at least December 2013. Last month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission identified SolidTrustPay as a vendor for the alleged CashFlowBot (Dollar Monster) Ponzi scheme that operated out of the U.S. state of Georgia.

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.”

Wright-Olivares, an alleged Zeek “insider,” has been charged criminally and civilly by U.S. authorities. She has settled the federal civil charges and pleaded guilty in the criminal case. In addition, she faced litigation from Bell.

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.

Bell has raised concerns that some MLMers/network-marketers are pitching one fraud scheme after another.

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.

UFunClub/UToken possibly gathered more than $1.17 billion, according to reports in Thai media. Questions have been raised about whether North American “sovereign citizens” were involved in the “program” and a separate venture known as SVM Global Initiative.

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.”

NOTE: Our thanks to the ASD Updates Blog.

May 1, 2015
AdClickXpress, Successor Scam To 2 Earlier Scams, Stirring Again — And Gets Bad Press In South African Media

“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.

In 2012, Mann described government workers as “part of a criminal gang of robbers, thieves, murderers, liars, imposters.”

On Nov. 22, IOL, a South African group of independent newspapers, published a story titled “Massive losses in scams only a click away.”

Among other things, the paper reported people in that Strand/Somerset West area of the Western Cape appear to have become ACX victims.

Nov 29, 2014
Launch Of Murky BitClub Network ‘Program’ Appears To Be Under Way

From a BitClub Network promo on a page in Indonesian today. Red blocks by PP Blog.

Much remains murky about BitClub Network, a Bitcoin-themed “program” that in typical HYIP fashion missed at least three advertised launch dates earlier this month.

The launch, however, now appears to have gotten under way shortly after “2 p.m. EST” today, a possible indicator that the “program” is using Panama time.

One promo the PP Blog observed shortly after the launch time was in Indonesian. It appeared to claim that BitClub Network paid between 0.3 percent and 0.8 percent a day. If we are reading this claim correctly, it appears as though the promoter is saying recruits who send in $3,000 will earn somewhere between $9 and $24 a day — or between $270 and $720 a month.

We ran the Indonesian claim through Google Translate. Here is part of what the English translation reads (italics added):

. . . the process is run by experts [mining?] bitcoin Digital Currency you just sit at home and receive a daily income of about 0.3 to 0.8% everyday.

The Indonesian pitch also referred to “compounding.” Many HYIP schemes purport that “earnings” can be compounded and that relatively small sums will be become tremendous fortunes over time. Zeek Rewards, which allegedly collected on the order of $850 million in a combined Ponzi- and pyramid scheme that lasted less than two years, was such a “compounding” program.

If our reading of the early info on BitClub Network is correct, it is an upstart offering fraud with a lower daily payout rate than Zeek, which averaged about 1.5 percent. Promos for Bitclub Network claim recruits will get paid for 1,000 days. Zeek had a much shorter term, absent “rollovers.” BitClub Network also may have a rollover feature.

Alleged Zeek Rewards winner Brian Spatola of Randolph, N.J., appears to be on the front lines of BitClub Network. So does alleged Zeek winner T. LeMont Silver, a named defendant in a clawback action by the court-appointed receiver in the Zeek case.

The BitClubNetwork site itself today was using rolling headlines from other sites. One read, “United Way Becomes Largest Nonprofit to Accept Bitcoin.”

Some scams trade on the names of reputable entities as a means of creating a veneer of legitimacy. The names of other famous companies easily could appear in the rolling headlines on BitClub Network, which is presented as a “mining” venture that offers “shares.”

That famous entities may use Bitcoin does not mean that BitClub Network itself is legitimate. Prior to the emergence of Bitcoin, the scammers who promote HYIPs routinely traded on the names of famous banks and credit-card companies, hoping the legitimacy of those enterprises would rub off on the emerging scams.

Regulators have issued repeated warnings about the volatility of Bitcoin values and about scams that seek to tie themselves to Bitcoin.

Here is part of what BitClub Network says about itself on its website (italics added):

BitClub is not owned by any one person, we are a team of experts, entrepreneurs, professionals, network marketers, and programming geeks who have all come to together to launch a very simple business around a very complex industry. Anyone can join BitClub and begin earning a passive income by taking advantage of our expertise in Bitcoin mining and other Bitcoin related services.

Fuzzy ownership and claims about “passive income” lead to questions about whether a “program” is conducting an offering fraud, selling unregistered securities as investment contracts and permitting recruits who have little or no net worth to direct whatever safety blanket they have to murky enterprises with long reach.

Zeek Rewards preemptively denied it was a “pyramid scheme.” On its website, BitClub Network preemptively denies it is a “ponzi scheme .” The “program” claims to be “based in Europe.”

It further claims to operate “virtually with contributors from all over the world.”

And, it claims, “[o]ur main servers and technology for digital mining is located in a very secure and private location that will only be made available by pictures and a live video feed in the near future.”

An earlier HYIP “program” known as JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid appeared to use servers in the Netherlands. Frederick Mann, its murky purported operator, once fretted that the JSS/JBP servers could be subjected to a “cruise missile” attack.

This is from the FAQs at the BitClub Network site (italics added):

Q – If BitClub is already successful at mining Bitcoin then why are you sharing profit? Great Question!s [sic]

A: Because of how mining works it is always getting harder and harder for smaller mines to make great profits. This is quickly turning into a game for the big boys. Bigger orders mean bigger discounts on hardware, less electricity and rent per Ghz, more flexibility in what is mined and many other factors. By starting BitClub Network we know that over the next couple of years we could become one of the largest most profitable mines in the world. We will actually make more money sharing the profits with you. That’s why there are so many mining pools, we are just doing things a little differently. We believe in the motto “Making money is a team sport.”

Despite the fact BitClub Network says it does not promote that “a share will have set return and we don’t offer 100% ROI claims,” the site in Indonesian is making a claim that the daily payout will range between 0.3 percent and 0.8 percent. If people send in $3,000 and purportedly make between $9 and $24 a day with it, they’d make between $9,000 and $24,000 in BitClub Network’s purported term of 1,000 days.

Bernard Madoff would not have dared to be so bold.

A graphic of a smiling miner wearing a button-down shirt and swinging a pick appears on the site in Indonesian. Another graphic at the site shows Bitcoin and an Automated Teller Machine — as through BitClubNetwork will be the easiest thing in the world, that laborers worldwide will be smiling.

The site in Indonesian also carries graphics of nice automobiles. A photo displays people standing in front of a “HOLLYWOOD” sign — presumptively in California. The banner in part reads, “MALAYSIA.”

Another “MALAYSIA” banner appears in the foreground of a shot that shows people and pine trees set against a backdrop of snow.

Following a recent pattern in HYIP promos, famous landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe also appear on the site in Indonesian.

Sep 16, 2014
MORE MLM WHACK-A-MOLE: (1) Quebec Securities Regulator Issues Warning On Karatbars International; (2) Cross-Border Colleagues Follow Suit; (3) Former Zeek Ponzi Scheme Pitchman Defends ‘Program’ As Others Push It Alongside TelexFree

Source: Online pitch for Zeek.

UPDATED 12:21 P.M. EDT (MARCH 28, U.S.A.) Whack-A-Mole. Here’s the latest disturbing incarnation: On March 20, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) published a warning on a gold “program” known as Karatbars International GmbH. BehindMLM.com spotlighted the warning yesterday.

From the AMF warning (bolding added): “With the company’s ‘Affiliates’ program, investors can make Internet-based purchases through Karatbars plans and they are encouraged to recruit two other Affiliates. These Affiliates are in turn encouraged to recruit two other Affiliates each, and so on. Affiliates are lured by the possibility of earning large payouts, in particular through a percentage of amounts collected from the Karatbars plans and gold products purchased by referrals.”

After AMF published its warning, the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) republished it. So did the Financial Markets Authority of New Zealand (FMA).

These things apparently meant little to former Zeek Rewards’ pitchman Lloyd Merrifield, who “defended” Karatbars International on BehindMLM. Zeek was an international Ponzi scheme that gathered at least $850 million, according to court records.

You’ll see a reference to Merrifield in the Comments thread below this Dec. 17, 2010, PP Blog story: “URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: Secret Service Has Seized More ASD Cash; Forfeiture Complaint Filed Today Against Bank Accounts Controlled By Erma ‘Web Room Lady’ Seabaugh And Robyn Lynn Stevenson.”

ASD (AdSurfDaily) was an international Ponzi scheme that gathered at least $119 million, according to court records. Meanwhile, you’ll also see a reference to Merrifield below this June 25, 2009, PP Blog story about AdViewGlobal, an ASD reload scam: “AdViewGlobal ‘Surf’ Firm Suspends Member Cash-Outs, Threatens Media With Copyright-Infringement Lawsuits.”

AdViewGlobal was an international Ponzi scheme that gathered an unknown sum before vanishing mysteriously in 2009. U.S. federal prosecutors linked it to ASD in April 2012.

Merrifield also was a pitchman for Ad-Ventures4u (ADV4U), an ASD-like HYIP scam tied to shiny-object scam known as “TradingGold4Cash.” And why not Tazoodle, a search-engine “program” whose “board” consisted of former ASD members who had the big idea they were going to unseat Google? Yep. Merrifield was there, too.

Along with ADV4U and Tazoodle, Merrifield pitched something called “20Clicks” as part of an overall package known as “The Golden Eggs.” (In 2009, the 20 Clicks website said it was “Powered by USHBB.com.” USHBB later was associated with the Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme and is listed as a “winner” in a document assembled by the court-appointed receiver in the Zeek Ponzi/pyramid case.)

At least one HYIP pitchfest site that describes Merrifield as a “featured speaker” for Karatbars International has led cheers for “programs” such as AdHitProfits and MyFunLife and BannersBroker — and an emerging darling known as FlexKom. The site also has pushed “ProfitClicking,” one of the JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid reload scams linked to former ASD pitchman Frederick Mann.

Mann, among other things, may have ties to the “sovereign citizens” movement.

Merrifield, perhaps ignoring this 2010 FINRA warning on HYIP schemes and social media, pitches Karatbars International on YouTube and coaches viewers to line up recruits via craigslist.

Source: YouTube

On BehindMLM, Merrifield says he’s been “in the Investment Banking industry for over 35 years.”

As always, HYIP “programs” and similar ventures that may lack licensing in individual jurisdictions across the world raise the prospect that banks and payment processors are coming into possession of funds tainted by fraud. In some cases, those funds have circulated between and among various schemes.

A quick Google search shows that some pitchmen are promoting Karatbars International alongside TelexFree, a “program” under investigation in North America, South America and Africa. TelexFree also has been promoted in concert with the WCM777 MLM scam.

From a video pitch that simultaneously pushes Karatbars International and TelexFree.

Mar 26, 2014
MORE FROM MLM LA-LA LAND: Is It A Taunt? Purported Successor Firm To WCM777/Kingdom777 Uses Image Of Golden Pyramid

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.

Promoters of the alleged TelexFree pyramid scheme also recently have used images of a pyramid in promos.

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.

Feb 26, 2014
Banners Broker Cultists Rip Play From Zeek, AdSurfDaily, AdViewGlobal HYIP Scambook

Banners Broker members who log into their accounts are seeing this pop-up message: Source: Graphic published at RealScam.com

Whoever is pulling the linguistic strings at the Banners Broker HYIP cult operating globally online now is channeling Zeek Rewards, AdSurfDaily and AdViewGlobal in their final days.

Zeek, an $850 million Ponzi- and pyramid fraud that once suggested participants should change their toilet-paper dispensing habits if instructed to do so, threatened to ban members who didn’t stick to the company’s insidious, Stepfordian chant. It also planted the seed that it would use the courts to gag doubting voices and sue credit unions that dared to speak ill about its “program” that averaged a payout of 1.5 percent a day. And through proxies, Zeek made sure that other MLM companies and executives who’d dare question its outrageous claims knew that the Zeek eye in the sky was watching them.

AdSurfDaily, a $119 million Ponzi scheme that promised to pay 1 percent a day, announced that it had filled a pot with $750,000 in cash and would sue critics for tens of millions of dollars. (The U.S. Feds were so moved by the claim that they made sure it was included in an evidence exhibit used to seize more than $80 million in ASD cash.) Prior to the seizure, ASD’s Stepfordian wing made sure that doubters knew their doubts would be reported by right-thinking loyalists to “ASD legal.” After the seizure, some of the ASDers planted the seed that any fellow member who filed a remissions claim through the U.S. Department of Justice would get sued by their fellow members.

In 2009, after forming itself from the carcass of ASD’s MLM fraud scheme and on the brink of collapse itself, AdViewGlobal threatened to sue critics for purported copyright infringement. (Zeek, through purported “consultant” Robert Craddock, later would work the “infringement” gambit into its arsenal while planting the seed one or more Zeek lawyers would go after critics.)

To cement its thuggery, AVG, a Zeek- and ASD-like 1-percent-a day “program” that gathered millions of dollars, said it was watching what members said about it online and planted the seed it would seek to have the Internet connections of in-house critics shut down. AVG bizarrely (and incongruously) did these things while purporting to have “protectors” in its ranks and while purporting to enjoy U.S. and Florida Constitutional speech and commerce protections from its purported base of operations in Uruguay.

Now comes word that Banners Broker, an almost indescribably bizarre “program” whose online steroidal puppeteers have been stringing people along and picking pockets since at least 2012, has accidentally announced that it, too, has become a factory from which MLM thuggery is manufactured. Not only is Banners Broker watching members, the “program” says, its members also are watching members. The news first appeared on the RealScam.com antiscam forum.

Banners Broker, of course, wants members of its cyberspace cult to remain in their Stepfordian trances and not to notice they’re being manipulated like robots, so it has given its strong-arm bid an innocuous (if not wholesome-sounding) name: “Community Watch.”

Ready to projectile vomit?

Given the monitoring policy, individual members who’ve posted negative content should remove it, the “program” instructs. And members who observe other members posting negative content should contact the doubters and provide a copy of the “program’s” policy that bans negativity and threatens management-led account seizures.

On Feb. 12, Banners Broker will begin to take “a firmer stance against people that are speaking badly against Banners Broker,” the “program” bizarrely bleats.

“Affiliates found to be contributing to the negativity on the Internet will have their accounts locked,” the “program” threatens. “[T]hey will be banned from participating in the Banners Broker system and they will forfeit all of their inventory and revenue.”

Banners Broker appears also to be trying to chill nonmember critics.

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

In June 2012, the PP Blog reported that a website selling “customers” to Zeek recruiters also was directing traffic to double-your-money Banners Broker and the 2-percent-a-day (precompounding) JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid HYIP scam purportedly operated by Frederick Mann.

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

For additional background on bids to chill reporters or program members who publish information about scams and highly questionable “opportunities,” see this Dec. 27, 2012, PP Blog post: Our Choice For The Most Important PP Blog Post Of 2012.

Feb 8, 2014
TelexFree Affiliate Pitches Appear To Have Been ‘Scraped’ To Drive Traffic To Purported Gold And Silver Venture In Panama; Spam Link Leads To Site That Showcases ‘First Zeek Red Carpet Event’ And ‘Banners Broker’ In Folder Labled ‘aaronsharazeek’

UPDATED 7:36 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) Let’s say you’re out there feverishly flogging the TelexFree MLM even as the pyramid-scheme probe moves forward in Brazil, a judge and prosecutor have been threatened with death and TelexFree executive Carlos Costa is pulling an Andy Bowdoin and telling the world that God used him to bring the purported opportunity to the flock.

There’s always risk associated with HYIP schemes. Now, however, it seems those risks are becoming even greater.

With us so far? We’ll connect the dots below.

At 5:56 p.m. on Friday, the PP Blog received a would-be “comment” that targeted this Nov. 17 story thread: NEW RECORDING: TelexFree Members Told To Pay The Piper 20 Percent Within 10 Days Or Lose Positions.”

Here is a key fact: The sender used an IP based in France that has been associated by Project Honeypot with comment-spamming — pitches for porn sites and sites that purport to give you a good price on designer goods in advance of a predicted “downturn,” for example. (Basic message: You can look wealthy even if you’re not, even after the economy tanks. Buy your knockoffs now and look good when the sky is falling on your life.)

The sender, now adding HYIP schemes to the porn and designer-good mix from that specific IP, used a handle that incorporated the word “Silver” within its overall handle and sought to plant a URL at the PP Blog to a Panamanian venture that advertises a custody service for precious metals. The PP Blog is declining to publish the URL and the name of the enterprise which, among other things, reproduces on its website the logos of an internationally famous insurer based in London and an internationally famous accounting firm based in Chicago. The site also publishes various contact phone numbers in the United States, Panama, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong. Although there is a chance that the service is legitimate, the PP Blog questions why someone or some thing is spamming links to the precious-metals site and loading them up further with links to “positive” coverage of seemingly unrelated HYIPs.

For the purposes of this PP Blog post, the Panamanian venture is a sidebar tidbit. Far more interesting was the body content of the spam, which appears to be a compendium of gushing affiliate pitches for TelexFree that appear on the net. The spam appears to have been cobbled together by a human scraper or scraping device of some sort that had visited one or more TelexFree-related websites. Links embedded in the spam are the “real story” in the context of this PP Blog post.

So, for starters, TelexFree’s name is being used as part of a bid to drive traffic to a precious-metals website on which visitors curiously are told they must provide 15 days’ notice if they wish to visit the office in Panama City. The PP Blog likely was targeted by the spammer simply because the word “TelexFree” appears here many times in reports about TelexFree-related events in Brazil and the United States.

The spammer — be it bot or human — appears to have made the calculation that TelexFree members might be the perfect customers for the precious-metals venture. Contained within the spam were three links: One to a site styled TelexFreeUnitedStates and two to a URL-shortening service that redirected visitors to Photobucket, the popular image-hosting and story-sharing website.

Here’s where the story really begins . . .

One of the picture stories told at at the Photobucket site was told inside a subfolder of a folder labeled “aaronsharazeek.” (Emphasis added.) The subfolder was slugged “First Zeek Red Carpet Event April 18th 2012.” Zeek conducted a Red Carpet event on that date.

Exactly a month earlier — on March 18, 2012 — the popular BusinessForHome Blog listed “Aaron and Shara” as top Zeek earners. Whether the Photobucket site is operated by the same Aaron and Shara is unclear. Here’s a link to the BusinessForHome story. (If you’re not a Platinum member of Business For Home, you’ll need to purchase a subscription to read the entire story.) The PP Blog referenced the BusinessForHome story within a June 14, 2012, story titled, “Did Zeek Give Puff Piece To Rep Who Signed Petition For U.S. Senate To Investigate AdSurfDaily Prosecutors And U.S. Secret Service Agent?”

The SEC moved against Zeek on Aug. 17, 2012. On the same date, the Secret Service said it also was investigating Zeek. Court records suggest the SEC began the Zeek probe at least by April 17, 2012, one day before the April 18 Zeek Red Carpet event highlighted within the “aaronsharazeek” folder on Photobucket.

On April 17, 2012, according to court filings, the SEC tasked an IT specialist to “conduct Website/video capture” of ZeekRewards.com.

Paul Burks appears to have been in deep thought on April 18, 2012, one day after the SEC tasked an IT specialist to capture content from Zeek Rewards.com. This is a slice of a photo from a larger photo that appears on Photobucket in a folder labeled “First Zeek Red Carpet Event April 18 2012.”

Precisely when Zeek operator Paul R. Burks found out about the SEC probe remains unclear. But photos inside the “First Zeek Red Carpet Event April 18th 2012” subfolder at the Photobucket site show a Burks who appears to be in deep thought. One can only wonder what 66-year-old Burks was thinking about on that date. His health? His wife’s stress level, given the noise Zeek was creating in the small town of Lexington, N.C.? His ability to keep Zeek going? The prospect that investigators were closing in?

There are 18 other photos in the Red Carpet event subfolder, some showing Zeek luminaries such as former SEC defendant Keith Laggos, former Zeek COO Dawn Wright-Olivares, former Zeek videographer OH Brown (looking happy), former Zeek trainer Peter Mingils (identified in one photo as the “V.P. of the Association of Network Marketing Professionals”). Other photos of Zeek personalities/staffers appear in the folder, as do photos showing attendees.

Absent the “Silver”/TelexFree spammer, the PP Blog likely never would have seen these photos.

Also within the “aaronsharazeek” folder at Photobucket is a subfolder slugged “Zeek Trip,” and subfolders slugged “Banners Broker” and “telexfree.” The “Zeek Trip” folder appears to contain four photos of Zeek-related real estate in Lexington, N.C. (In the ASD Ponzi case, affiliates suggested that ASD couldn’t possibly be illegitimate because ASD had an office. The same thing has been asserted by TelexFree promoters.)

Meanwhile, the “Banners Brokers” folder contains a video of a sales pitch, and the “telexfree” folder contains images of government documents from the state of Massachusetts and the country of Brazil that appear to have been designed to plant the seed that TelexFree couldn’t possibly be a scam.

Taken as a whole, the various folders and photos demonstrate the interconnectivity of MLM HYIP schemes, regardless of who actually controls the Photobucket site. It is known from other sources that some Zeekers also were in the JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid scam and the exceptionally murky Profitable Sunrise scam shut down by the SEC and various state regulators earlier this year.

Banners Broker is an uber-bizarre Ponzi-board program. On July 2, 2013, the PP Blog reported that MLM attorney Kevin Thompson said that the name of his law firm had been used by scammers in a bid to dupe members of Banners Broker and Profit Clicking, the JSS/JBP-associated “program” linked to Frederick Mann that may have ties to the extremist “sovereign citizens” movement. The July 2 PP Blog post was titled, “Law Firm’s Name Used In Bid To Dupe Members Of Banners Broker, Profit Clicking, MLM Attorney Says.”

Within the July 2 post, the PP Blog reported that it had received menacing messages in apparent “defense” of Banners Broker. As the Blog reported at the time (italics added):

WARNING: The next paragraph includes quoted material from one of the Jan. 18, 2013, spams, and the PP Blog is reproducing it to illustrate the bizarre and often menacing nature of the HYIP sphere. Indeed, the apparent Banner’s Broker supporter wrote (italics added):

” . . . I am Big Bob’s cock meat sandwich. Your mom ate me and made me do press ups until I threw up . . . I am gonna report you. When you make false accusations, you can get done. Maybe you will be seen in court soon . . .”

It is as ugly today as it was on the January date the PP Blog received the communication.

Why “programs” such as TelexFree, Zeek Rewards, BannersBroker and ProfitClicking become popular with people of faith is one of the head-scratching mysteries of current times. Gold fever, of course, is nothing new; it’s been around for centuries. What’s at least relatively new in the Internet Age is that the gold- and silver-sellers appear to be piggybacking off HYIP pitchmen, apparently hoping to rope in customers for shiny-object schemes.

This “comment” sent to the PP Blog on Nov. 22 sought to drive traffic to a precious-metals site by planting a link to the site and also planting links related to TelexFree.

On Oct. 25, the PP Blog reported that an alleged shiny-object scheme had taken root in Zeek’s back yard in North Carolina. On June 19, the PP Blog reported that the receiver in the Legisi HYIP Ponzi case was going after assets linked to E-Bullion, a collapsed payment processor with shiny-object woo. James Fayed, E-Bullion’s operator, is sitting on death row in California after a jury found him guilty of arranging the brutal contract slaying of his own wife.

The Legisi scheme was targeted at Christians, and E-Bullion’s cheerleaders included the Canadian clergyman Brian David Anderson, who was sent to U.S. federal prison in 2010 for the Frontier Assets Ponzi scheme. Anderson also was linked to the Flat Electronic Data Interchange (FEDI) HYIP scheme that put Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, also known as “Michael Mixon,” in federal prison after his September 2009 convictions for financing terrorism and fleecing FEDI investors.

Yes, financing terrorism.

Alishtari traded on his purported ties to prominent politicians, just like ASD’s Andy Bowdoin. At least one of the schemes linked to Alishtari and Anderson used the term “rebates,” just like ASD. The narrative surrounding FEDI read like impossibly outrageous fiction, a mind-bending example of a shiny-object scheme. Ten members of purported “Royal families” in the Middle East were said to have set aside “50 Billion in Gold” ($5 billion each) to advance the scheme. Another entity in the Middle East was said to have supplied a “total of 100 Billion in Gold.” Still another entity was said to have put up “500 Million dollars in liquid gold assets.”

FEDI marks were solicited to purchase what effectively were trading desks that somehow would enable them to profit on the coattails of Middle East royals interested in escrowing huge sums to fund worldwide construction projects, with money purportedly flowing to the “labor” force. If that weren’t enough, the scheme purportedly was married to a venture that purportedly would put vending machines in at least 50,000 locations. The vending machines purportedly would sell debit cards, and were purportedly backed by $150 billion in gold and an insurance policy in Canada.

In March 2012, the PP Blog reported on FTC allegations that three Florida companies and a Florida man had roped customers into a shiny-object scam, a precious-metals boondoogle allegedly carried out by telemarketers.

Imagine what would happen if a scamming telemarketing firm had the customer lists for TelexFree, Zeek, Banners Broker, Profit Clicking, AdSurfDaily, Legisi and others.

If the MLM industry seeks to win favor on Main Street and stop being the brunt of jokes, it needs to act forcefully to eradicate these schemes. MLM attorneys need to stop permitting schemes to trade on their names, thus potentially setting the stage for prospects to believe that no scam could be occurring because no lawyer would permit his name to be used in this fashion.

But even today, what does one get when one visits the website of TelexFree? A pitch in which the alleged TelexFree pyramid scheme announces its pride at having MLM lawyer Gerald Nehra on board.

Zeek traded on the name of MLM attorney Kevin Grimes, who comes off in Red Carpet Day shots as a Zeek crowd prop, and also the name of Nehra. Bidify traded on Kevin Thompson’s name. The lawyers should not permit this to happen. And they should stop making personal appearances at “opportunity” events and start questioning why so many of these “programs” are targeted at people of faith and promise or suggest the likelihood of absurd returns.

Profitable Sunrise — perhaps recognizing that an MLM scheme can be made to appear legitimate if affiliates simply are provided the name of a purported lawyer — appears to have conjured up an attorney’s name out of thin air. It then allegedly proceeded to run off with millions and millions of dollars. When ASD’s Bowdoin switched from the two scams that eventually put him in prison (ASD and AdViewGlobal) and began pitching the alleged OneX pyramid scheme, one of the first things he did was assure the former ASD members he was pitching in a webinar that OneX had an “attorney,” adding that the venture was a great fit for college students. Bowdoin, mixing in God talk during the October 2011 webinar, never identified the purported lawyer by name. Neither did a former ASD pitchwoman pitching the OneX scheme alongside Bowdoin.

One of Bowdoin’s fellow OneX pitchmen was Zeek Rewards figure T. LeMont Silver.

In the absence of self-imposed, self-regulatory restraints in the MLM industry — lawyers restraining themselves from becoming accidental or purposeful stage props and sanitizers of “programs,” for example — MLM prospects may be well-advised to view any MLM “program” with the highest degree of skepticism, regardless of the programs’ wares.

Every single one of the “programs” referenced in this story has ridden on the coattails of a deity and lawyers. It did not matter whether the lawyers were real or imagined.

And it did not matter that the Gods of many faiths were observing it all, perhaps mournfully wondering how the precious Children of the Earth had come to view MLM money as the maximum deity.

Nov 24, 2013
OUR ANSWER: ‘Nuts!’ PP Blog Receives Threat That ‘Authorities’ Will Move Against It If It Doesn’t Remove Content About Profitable Sunrise Figure Nanci Jo Frazer And Others; Email Claims FBI ‘Fully Aware Of All Your Consistent Attempts’ To Harm Frazer Group

“No!” Make that “Hell no!” — or, as Gen. Anthony McAuliffe once famously scribbled at the prompting of Gen. Harry W.O. Kinnard during the Battle of the Bulge, after soldiers for the Nazi Third Reich demanded surrender: “Nuts!”

At 12:11 a.m. ET today, the PP Blog inexplicably received five duplicate emails from an IP in the vicinity of Tiffin, a city in North Central Ohio. The emails were sent through the Blog’s contact form and threatened that “the authorities” would get involved if the Blog did not remove content about Nanci Jo Frazer and other Profitable Sunrise story figures by Nov. 15, nine days from today. The emails were signed “Nanci Jo Frazer,” but the Blog cannot independently confirm Frazer was the sender.

Why the Blog received five emails is unknown. The Blog tested the form after receiving the duplicated submissions, and it appears to be working properly, meaning it does not appear to be sending multiple copies of inquiries from readers. The Blog, however, did experience an outage that lasted approximately two hours yesterday. The outage occurred shortly after an IP from Ukraine made an appearance here at approximately 1:50 p.m. (Bots that leave a Ukranian signature have been circling the Blog for weeks.) The precise cause of yesterday’s outage, which occurred after the Blog reported on an HYIP/prime-bank scam in California outed as part of an FBI undercover operation that began in 2006, remains unclear.

In any event, the Blog will not remove any Frazer or Profitable Sunrise-related content unless ordered to do so by a U.S. federal judge. Nor will it submit to threats that incongruously are mixed with appeals to the Christian faith to make posts go missing. HYIP schemes are all about incongruities and preposterous constructions: “secret” or “safe” or “guaranteed” or “insured” investments that purportedly are “offshore” and able to deliver Christians and other people of faith legitimate interest rates of hundreds or even thousands of percent each year, for instance.

For security reasons, the Blog will not reply to the emails at the Gmail address entered by the sender. Instead, it will publish the content of the emails in this space. The FBI is free to make its own assessment about acts attributed to the agency by the sender in or around Tiffin. The Blog also will continue to publish Profitable Sunrise-related stories. Such stories are in the public interest.

The emails build on a conspiracy theory that has been circulating for weeks: that the Blog somehow acts in concert with fraudsters, cyberstalkers and at least one felon posing as a Christian do-gooder to subject Nancy Jo Frazer and her ministry to harm. Meanwhile, the emails plant the equally false seed that the Blog is part of a group involved in Bitcoin scams.

Among other things, the emails seek to chill the Blog’s reporting by contending that “The FBI is fully aware of all your consistent attempts to keep my name and our FocusUp Ministries Board members, our staff, voluteers and even my husband (who had no connection) tagged to negative , damaging words (such as scam, fraud and Ponzi) along with negative press and stories we are not connected to at all.” (No editing performed by PP Blog.)

“Last week through a phone conversation, the Senior investigator from the FBI, instructed me to have my attorney send you a Cease and Desist and demand for immediate removal of your unauthorized usage of materials, videos, audio, all radio & TV media, articles and all types of communication connected to FocusUp Ministries and our Board Members, staff and volunteers: including Nanci Jo Frazer (Nancy Frazer) and Albert Rosebrock, David Steckel (volunteer), Jon Simmons (staff pastor) also my husband David Frazer,” the emails read in part. (No editing performed by PP Blog.)

The emails did not identify the purported “Senior investigator from the FBI” who purportedly gave the sender instructions on how to accomplish the deletion of PP Blog content the apparent Frazer group supporter finds both objectionable and actionable. The PP Blog is willing, however, to voluntarily provide the IP address of the sender to the FBI, the SEC, the Ohio Office of the Attorney General or other law-enforcement agency in the United States that has an interest in the Profitable Sunrise case.

No subpoena will be necessary; we’ll simply provide the information and copies of the email, once the Blog verifies the request is genuine.

Over the years, the PP Blog has encountered various bids to chill its reporting on the HYIP sphere, including a sustained DDoS attack in 2010 and traffic floods in 2011 for which the Blog received a claim of responsibility. The Blog forwarded the claim to a U.S. law-enforcement agency.

In 2012, during a period of heavy reporting on two specific HYIP schemes, the Blog received repeated threats believed to be from different senders. Two of the threats were not aimed at the Blog. The first was received Aug. 6, 2012, and was aimed at three prominent U.S. politicians: one Democrat and two Republicans. This communication appeared to have been sent from Switzerland and questioned why the American politicians are “still alive and running around.” The email further described an American subject of the PP Blog’s crime reporting as a “true Patriot[]” who, like other purported “Patriots,” believed in “sending out mercenaries to take out those corrupt bankers, USG politicians, agents, judges and attorney’s [sic].”

Such content is consistent with members of the so-called Patriot Movement or similar U.S. extremists who identify themselves as “sovereign citizens.” Because the communication appears to have originated in a country famous for banking secrecy, it leads to questions about whether U.S. domestic extremists were networking with counterparts in Europe or perhaps were there themselves to “defend” HYIP schemes and chill reporting on the outrageous frauds by suggesting that mercenaries and assassins were at their disposal.

The second communication, received Aug. 29, 2012, was aimed at the alleged operator of a huge international Ponzi scheme. This communication appears to blame the accused operator for not properly defending the purported opportunity from investigations by the U.S. government.

“why you don’t stand to back [program name deleted by PP Blog][?]” the communication read in part.

“we lost our money. we will kill you . . .”

The communication concluded by slurring the alleged Ponzi operator as a “dog.” It appears to have been sent from Pakistan.

Yet-another 2012 communication believed to be from a different sender suggested that members of the PP Blog’s family might die if the Blog continued to report on HYIP schemes. The Blog forwarded all of these communications to a U.S. law-enforcement agency.

In 2009, the Blog repeatedly was stalked by an apologist for the AdSurfDaily and AdViewGlobal Ponzi schemes who sought to engineer an SEO campaign against the Blog. This tactic was repeated in 2012 by an apologist for the JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid scheme which, like ASD and AVG, may have ties to the “sovereign citizens” movement.

This specific individual appears to have been inspired in part by an infamous troll whose posts and visits bear an IP signature from the United Kingdom. The troll has been attacking antiscam sites since at least 2009, often incorporating sexual innuendo, antiChristian themes and elements of misogyny into his bizarre and vulgar game plan. In any event, the JSS/JBP apologist he inspired asserted he’d defend purported operator Frederick Mann “so help me God.” He also targeted specific PP Blog readers in an SEO campaign carried out on a free Blogger site — all while spreading absurd conspiracy theories and utterly preposterous lies. At the same time, he appears to have embedded code in certain communications as a means of trying to identify potential federal witnesses and perhaps even obtain/isolate the identities undercover federal agents may use online.

Requests for the Blog to delete content are not always menacing, but can be described fairly as mind-bogglingly bizarre. In 2010, an affiliate of the MPB Today MLM scheme asked the Blog to delete a story that reported President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton were being depicted as Nazis in a promo designed to recruit MPB Today affiliates. A separate script from the same MPB Today recruiter described the Obama family as welfare recipients who aspired to eat dog food and put these words into the mouth of First Lady Michelle Obama: “Hmm, I should prolly call my Food Stamp worker now that I’ve joined MPB.”

The Blog declined the deletion request.

MPB Today operator Gary Calhoun later was jailed in Florida on state-level racketeering charges. Federal prosecutors contended in July 2012 that crimes such as access-device fraud and fraud in connection with identification documents had occurred. Some MPB Today affiliates claimed the purported grocery “program” had been endorsed by the U.S. government and Walmart and that impoverished prospects should sell their Food Stamps to raise the $200 needed to join MPB Today. At least one MPB Today affiliate referenced pipe bombs in a promo.

In May 2009, the PP Blog reported that the AdViewGlobal scam announced it had secured a deal with a new offshore wire facilitator. The AVG announcement was made on the same day the President of the United States announced a crackdown on offshore fraud. The PP Blog later was asked by AVG’s purported facilitator to remove the story. The Blog refused.

The purported AVG facilitator — KINGZ Capital Management Corp. — later was linked to the epic Trevor Cook Ponzi scheme in Minnesota and was booted from the National Futures Association. AVG earlier had collapsed in a pile of Ponzi rubble. Even as it was going down, critics of the “program” and even members concerned about where their money had gone were threatened with lawsuits and ISP terminations for speaking out online.

Federal prosecutors later linked the AVG scam to the $119 million AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme broken up by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008. ASD story figure Kenneth Wayne Leaming, a purported “sovereign citizen,” is serving a federal prison sentence for targeting federal employees involved in the ASD case with bogus liens seeking billions of dollars, assisting a known tax fraudster in the filing of false liens, harboring federal fugitives in a case unrelated to ASD and being a felon in possession of firearms.

HYIP schemes are a cancer on America and the rest of the globe because they permit the murkiest of figures to acquire tremendous sums of money that endanger the United States and other nations. They are a scourge on society in no small measure because they attract “sovereign citizens” and other extremists whose intent is to undermine legitimate markets and create widespread confusion, if not anarchy. People of faith often are targets of HYIP scammers. The scams often switch forms, but the criminality remains largely the same.

In the case of Profitable Sunrise, the SEC has alleged that potentially tens of millions of dollars were driven to an individual potentially operating overseas. This individual’s identity may not be known. The allegations alone are chilling.

Frazer and her associates are not named in the SEC civil action. But Frazer and two of her alleged business associates — husband David Frazer and Nancy Frazer business associate Albert Rosebrock — are named in a Profitable Sunrise-related civil fraud action filed by the state of Ohio in July.

As noted above, the PP Blog will not remove any Frazer or Profitable Sunrise-related content. Here, now, the verbatim content of the emails received by the Blog at 12:11 a.m. today. (The Blog added carriage returns to make the contents more readable.)

The Emails

Dear Patrick;

I am send you this private (not to be published or shared) email to you as a Christian brother, from your Christian sister, in hopes to have your assistance to stop all media coverage concerning our Ministry and our volunteer board members without having to get the authorities involved to get this accomplished.

We understand that you have been trying to find the truth about Profitable Sunrise. The FBI has fully reviewed every document, communication and record we have and has returned everything to us. Our lead investigator stated that it is clear that we were a victim of “innocent ignorance”.

The investigation resulted in no criminal charges being filed. The Federal Government has confirmed we are not being named in this case. Kansas is in the process of dismissing the case and Ohio has stated they do not have enough information to move forward (after losing the majority of the assets at our hearing on August 30th, 2013). We are so thankful that we are finally being vindicated and can speak out soon.

2013 has been a refining year but so many awesome miracles have occurred that I cannot just feel there was no positive purpose. We believed that Profitable Sunrise was the “real deal”. We know that many of you believe that BitCoin is the “real deal” but in Texas, it is now declared a security and to some- part of a Ponzi? We sometimes learn things the hard way.

The FBI is fully aware of all your consistent attempts to keep my name and our FocusUp Ministries Board members, our staff, voluteers and even my husband (who had no connection) tagged to negative , damaging words (such as scam, fraud and Ponzi) along with negative press and stories we are not connected to at all. Thus driving traffic to your website for your own purpose.

Last week through a phone conversation, the Senior investigator from the FBI, instructed me to have my attorney send you a Cease and Desist and demand for immediate removal of your unauthorized usage of materials, videos, audio, all radio & TV media, articles and all types of communication connected to FocusUp Ministries and our Board Members, staff and volunteers: including Nanci Jo Frazer (Nancy Frazer) and Albert Rosebrock, David Steckel (volunteer), Jon Simmons (staff pastor) also my husband David Frazer.

I am requesting that Patrickpretty.com and all associate websites, blogs and media… Cease and Desist immediately from using images, text, tags,YouTubes, Powerpoints, articles, documents and recordings associated in any way with the patrickpretty.com website, which is containing or referring to Nanci Jo Frazer, Nancy Frazer, David Frazer, Albert Rosebrock, David Steckel, Jon Simmons and FocusUp Ministries and/or any of our associate Ministries, as you are not authorized to use our names or image for any purpose without written permission.

We have spent hundreds of hours of research to help authorities in everyway to fully understand and solve this case. We are almost to the point whereas I can share what I have learned to help avoid this event from happening again. I believe in going to my Christian brother first to resolve an issue. I believe that your heart is in the right place.

We need to see that everything is deleted and completely removed from the Internet by Friday, November 15th, 2013 so we can all move on. I hope you honor this and that we can start over and have this be a much better story for all.

Thanks Patrick!
Nanci Jo Frazer

Nov 6, 2013