UPDATED 2:56 P.M. EDT (APRIL 3, U.S.A.):After an outage that lasted more than 24 hours, the JustBeenPaid website is back online — although there are reports it is not accessible in all parts of the world. Our earlier story is below . . .
** [UNCONFIRMED] ** Some members of the JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid “program” have reported that the JBP website is experiencing a DDoS attack. The PP Blog cannot independently confirm the reports, which have appeared on the MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold Ponzi forums and on at least one JBP affiliate Blog.
The JBP domain has been returning a “timed out” error message for hours.
JSS/JBP purports to pay a daily return of 2 percent and a monthly return of 60 percent. The “opportunity” purportedly has more than 400,000 members. Similar “programs” have operated as virtually pure Ponzi schemes.
In a March 15 conference call, Frederick Mann, JSS/JBP’s purported operator, told members from the United States and Canada that JSS/JBP is paying them with money sent in by “new members.” Using “new” money to pay “old” members is the central element of a Ponzi scheme — although Mann did not use the phrase.
In the days that followed, JSS/JBP removed certain material from its website, including recordings of conference calls hosted by “Carl Pearson,” the purported COO of JSS/JBP. Images of certain JSS/JBP affiliates and customer-service personnel also were removed from the website.
JSS/JBP purportedly has been installing new servers. Members have grumbled in recent days about downtime at the site, delays in posting purported “earnings” and delays in sending payments.
Mann repeatedly has declined to identify JSS/JBP with a nation-state, leading to questions about whether members have any consumer protections at all.
If a DDoS attack is under way, the event may lead to questions about whether JSS/JBP has reported the attack to a law-enforcement agency or whether the “opportunity” would be reluctant to make such a report out of fear its base of operations would be exposed.
JSS/JBP has no known securities registrations, but Mann has advised members that it was OK to call JSS/JBP an investment program. Such guidance potentially could make both JSS/JBP and its affiliates targets of securities-related probes in various jurisdictions around the world.
The Italian securities regulator CONSOB announced a JSS/JBP-related probe on Jan. 23.
In a 29-page court order announced yesterday by the SEC, U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh of the Eastern District of Michigan laid out the case of willful blindness against serial HYIP pitchman Matthew John Gagnon.
That case now has resulted in court-ordered judgments of more than $4.2 million against Gagnon, who also was named in a criminal complaint by the U.S. Secret Service in November 2011.
But in the HYIP sphere, which FINRA described in 2010 as a “bizarre substratum of the Internet,” not even the huge judgment against Gagnon announced yesterday appeared to unnerve the serial scammers on the TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forums.
Posting as “DRdave” on TalkGold, huckster “Ken Russo” announced he’d received a new payment of $482.08 from JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, a “program” whose purported daily payout rate of 2 percent dwarfs the purported payout rate of Legisi, one of the “programs” that led to Gagnon’s demise.
In a March 15 conference call, Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS/JBP, told members that the company was making the payouts from money sent in by “new members.” Paying “old” members with money from “new” members is the central element of a Ponzi scheme.
Even as “Ken Russo” was making the announcement, the online security company McAfee was publishing a “Warning: Dangerous Site” message about the JustBeenPaid website.
“We tested this site and found it’s risky to visit,” McAfee’s Site Advisor reported.
In 2010, the SEC declared Gagnon a “danger to the investing public” for his serial promotion of scams. (See paragraph 11 of May 2010 SEC complaint.)
Assessing Gagnon more than $4.2 million in disgorgement, prejudgment interest and penalties, Steeh found that:
Gagnon promoted the Legisi HYIP online, through emails and through a forum.
Even though Gagnon promoted the program, he was not associated with a registered broker-dealer and had never been registered with the SEC in any capacity.
Gagnon understood HYIP frauds and Ponzi schemes, and yet gleaned about $3.6 million from Legisi operator Gregory McKnight and did not disclose details of his agreement with McKnight to solicit investors for Legisi.
Gagnon helped orchestrate the “massive” Legisi Ponzi scheme and initially had come into contact with McKnight after Gagnon had recruited McKnight into an MLM business that sold dietary supplements.
Legisi was selling unregistered securities.
Gagnon was selling unregistered securities.
Gagnon did not qualify investors in any way. (In essence, the only necessary qualification was to have money to send to Legisi.)
Gagnon performed no “due diligence” on the profitability of the Legisi program. He did not retain or review trading records, bank or brokerage accounts statements or e-currency account records.
Gagnon knew or “recklessly disregarded” warnings that Legisi was a scam, did not know where McKnight was keeping the money or how McKnight was calculating profits and losses.
Eventually Gagnon distanced himself from McKnight (after learning about an SEC probe, according to the agency), but proceeded to pitch other scams touting the illegal sale of securities. A twice-convicted felon was Gagnon’s alleged partner in one of the scams, but Gagnon performed no legwork up front.
Gagnon eventually learned that a man with the same name as his partner had been convicted of fraud, but “accepted” his partner’s “representation that it was not him.” Gagnon did not investigate his partner’s denials, which were false.
Gagnon then proceeded to another opportunity touting unregistered securities, effectively using the same blueprint he’d used when touting Legisi and the other scam in which his partner was a convicted felon. As in the other scams, Gagnon did no legwork and “recklessly ignored several warning signs.”
Even as he touted the third program, Gagnon had received “several” bad checks from the purported “successful” trader. Gagnon continued to tout the program.
Gagnon then touted a fourth program, apparently one operated by a Ugandan national Gagnon had met on the Internet. (Gagnon stopped promoting this program, according to the SEC, only after the agency subpoenaed his bank records.)
Gagnon has shown “no remorse” for his conduct “and has tried to downplay his culpability.”
Whether “Ken Russo” has conducted any “due diligence” on JSS/JBP is unknown. Whether “Ken Russo” has any qualifications to sell securities is unknown. Whether “Ken Russo” qualified investors in any way is unknown. Whether “Ken Russo” retained or reviewed JSS/JBP records, bank or brokerage accounts statements or e-currency account records is unknown.
What is known is that “Ken Russo” proceeds from scheme to scheme to scheme.
“I would caution everyone not to listen to anyone who is posting negative comments about this program,” “Ken Russo,” posting as “DRdave” on TalkGold, urged today. “JBP/JSSTripler has changed many lives during the past 13 months and it is one of the best programs I have seen since I first entered the industry back in 1996!”
Here, according to the SEC, is how Gagnon, who’d been pitching programs online “since at least 1997,” described Legisi:
“IN ALL OUR EXPERIENCE IF (sic) HIGH YIELD PROGRAMS THIS IS THE ONLY GENUINE PROGRAM THAT WE HAVE EVER FOUND!”
McKnight, like Gagnon, is facing millions of dollars in civil judgments. And McKnight pleaded guilty last month to a criminal charge of wire fraud.
It turned out that Legisi was not “GENUINE” at all.
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.
"Blue Hedge Investments," like JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, is out there for all of Canada (and other countries) to see.
UPDATED 2:57 A.M. EDT (U.S.A., MARCH 27) Vague information about JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid is all over the web. The “opportunity” purportedly operated by Frederick Mann is targeting investors in Canada, the United States and many other countries through conference calls, videos and text pitches.
The PP Blog has listened to recordings of four JSS/JBP conference calls with Mann as the featured guest. Persons who asked questions during the calls have identified themselves as residents of the Canadian provinces of “Alberta” and “British Columbia” and several U.S. states. One caller suggested he was Jamaican — and Jamaica, like Canada and the United States, has had more than its share of problems with massive fraud schemes.
One of the hallmarks of HYIP fraud is vagueness about an “opportunity.” JSS/JBP, for example, purports to pay a daily return of 2 percent, with Mann accorded the description of “mathematical genius.”
But Mann — despite the various superlatives attached to his name and the various preposterous claims — does not tell investors in Canada or the United States (or any other country) where the JSS/JBP “program” is operating from.
As an exercise in identifying red flags, the PP Blog today is proposing that readers visit the website of “Blue Hedge Investments.” (The URLs are below.)
Among other things, “Blue Hedge” describes itself as a “truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
Promoters of JSS/JBP use similar language when promoting their “program.”
And “Blue Hedge” — also in vague, JSS/JBP-like fashion — also says this: “BlueHedge Investments is led by a team of well-respected Canadian specialists with vast experience in the offline and online investment market . . .”
If anything, though, JSS/JBP is even more vague than “Blue Hedge.” JSS/JBP, for example, doesn’t even identify itself with a nation-state.
Unlike JSS/JBP, “Blue Hedge” plants the seed that its investors earn 9 percent a month, a relatively modest claim in the HYIP sphere. JSS/JBP, on the other hand, claims 60 percent a month, more than 6.6 times the “advertised” monthly return of “Blue Hedge.”
While “Blue Hedge” asserts it is interested in “the financial stability of our people today,” JSS/JBP promoters also claim their program is about the people — specifically, “average people.”
Many people instantly would question any claim that appears on the “Blue Hedge” website, even though its purported payout is far lower than the payout advertised by JSS/JBP and thousands of its affiliates.
But the sad reality is that many people would question neither the claims of “Blue Hedge” nor the even more extreme (or even more opaque) claims of JSS/JBP.
Like “Blue Hedge,” JSS/JBP has a “Platinum” program. And like “Blue Hedge,” JSS/JBP is out there for all of Canada (and all of the United States and other countries) to see.
“Blue Hedge” provides a learning opportunity for all JSS/JBP promoters. The PP Blog encourages readers to visit the “Blue Hedge” site.
It perhaps is best to start with this page to get a sense of the interest rates while comparing them to JSS/JBP. You’ll see “Invest Now” buttons on the page, but perhaps it is best to avoid clicking on them until you’ve visited the “Blue Hedge” FAQs page and finally this page to assess its content and watch the short video.
After that, click on the “Invest Now” button and assess its content. It might be one of the best clicks you make all year. (See button on this page.)
“Where does JustBeenPaid get the money to pay that kind of interest?” — Caller “Michael” from “San Francisco” in March 15 JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid conference call
“Well, first of all, JBP or JSS Tripler is a revenue-sharing program, so that means some of the money comes from new members buying positions. Then, we are in the process of developing additional income streams, so that’s relevant. And eventually the additional income streams may be sufficient to pay the 2 percent — maybe not.” — Response by Frederick Mann, purported JBP/JSS operator, to “Michael’s” question, March 15, 2012
Frederick Mann
UPDATED 7:26 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) In yet-another bizarre conference call for JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, the “program’s” purported operator told listeners from the United States and Canada (and possibly from Jamaica) that JSS/JBP is paying them with money sent in by “new members.”
Using “new” money to pay “old” members is the central element of a Ponzi scheme — although Frederick Mann did not use the phrase. Still, it was the white elephant in the conference room, and Mann’s explanations during the March 15 call became increasingly complex, vague and incongruous.
Mann, for instance, declined to say where the program was operating from, repeating his practice of nondisclosure from previous calls.
What’s important, he explained, “is that our programs are not U.S.-based. We don’t have any offices in the U.S. Our servers are not in the U.S.”
The explanation caused a chuckling U.S. caller to quip, “Yeah. I agree. Somewhere out in the galaxy.”
“Yes,” Mann replied to the caller’s “galaxy” remark. The caller earlier had described himself during the March 15 call as a “financial planner” for 22 years. In a previous call, the caller said he was in “California” and had family in Iowa.
And Mann advised listeners that it was OK to call JSS/JBP an investment program when they were recruiting new members — guidance that seemed to catch even the conference-call host off-guard.
“And I know that, in the [separate conference] room, we do try to say ‘purchase’ and ‘repurchase’ as opposed to ‘invest’ and ‘reinvest,’” the female host said.
It is common for HYIP scams and their purveyors to seek to avoid the language of investments when promoting “programs” — on the errant belief that avoiding such language insulates them from prosecution.
The female host did not say why the other room was giving one set of instructions and Mann another. Regardless, internal inconsistencies are one of the hallmarks of HYIP scams, and it is well-known that wordplay designed to disguise securities fraud cannot insulate purveyors from prosecution — rather like a robber who uses a gun to snatch the purse of an 80-year-old woman cannot avoid prosecution by calling the robbery an innocent exercise in arranging a loan and insisting that the gun was a harmless piece of metal that just happened to be at the scene.
Mann, whose name appears in 2008 materials identifying him as a promoter of the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, said nothing about whether JSS/JBP had any securities registrations or whether promoters of the “program” were risking a legal calamity by recruiting downlines into a scheme that does not identify itself with a nation-state and whose payout corresponds to a preposterous annualized return of 730 percent .
The bank accounts of some individual ASD promoters were seized by the U.S. Secret Service in the ASD Ponzi case, according to court filings. JSS/JBP purports to pay a daily return double that of ASD.
Income Streams Are Theoretical; ‘Free’ Members Dominate JSS/JBP
The most troubling explanation — among any number of troubling explanations during the 1:11 call — was Mann’s assertion in response to a question from “Michael” of “San Francisco” about where JSS/JBP gets the money to pay a return of 2 percent a day. (The exchange is noted in the breakout quotes at the top of this story.)
Conceding that the company uses money from “new members” who buy “positions” to make the payouts, Mann simultaneously acknowledged that the “program” was “in the process” of developing new income streams and that those still-theoretical streams may be insufficient to sustain the scheme.
But the company’s “restart” feature, Mann suggested, was enough to defeat any concerns that the firm’s liabilities exceeded its assets.
“The 2 percent that the company pays is effectively a liability to the company,” Mann said. “But what the ‘restart’ makes possible is to convert some or even all of these liabilities into assets in the form of JSS positions.”
Even so, members needed “to bring in new members with new money,” Mann said. He later asserted that only “about 25 percent” of new registrants “put in money.”
“Maybe 75 percent of people do nothing,” Mann said, a problematic response because the program advertises that it provides registrants a $10 credit (described during the March 15 call as a loan) for joining and pays them interest of 20 cents a day until they realize a profit of $5 after 75 days.
When JSS/JBP debits a member’s account to recapture the purported loan, which apparently is made at an interest rate of zero percent, the company still is on the hook for the $5 due the new subscriber.
Speaking with a South African accent but using an American baseball metaphor, Mann said the lion’s share of JSS/JBP new members (about 75 percent) do nothing after enrolling
If the JSS/JBP program were baseball, Mann suggested, “The pitcher would pitch the ball, and they would watch it go by, they would just stand there.”
If Mann’s assertions are true, it means that only 25 percent of JSS/JBP’s members are propping up 100 percent of the enterprise, including the purported $5 profit due new registrants in 75 days and much larger payments due other members. Even if JSS/JBP enforces a cash-out minimum higher than $5 to prevent a flood a small redemptions, such a device leads to questions about whether the purported $10 credit is just a smaller scam within a larger scam that permits accrued liabilities to be ignored.
Much remains mysterious about JSS/JBP’s purported restarts and its in-house accounting methods. Other HYIPs have used similar devices to duck the Ponzi issue. But with its “restart” explanation, JSS/JBP may be inviting questions about whether is has introduced Enron-like accounting tricks into the morass.
Enron’s 2001 collapse revealed one of the greatest financial scandals in U.S. history. It destroyed not only the company, but also the Arthur Andersen accounting firm. (See “Enron scandal” Wikipedia entry.)
Is JSS/JBP a miniature Enron-in-waiting?
Among the callers who asked questions during the call was a JSS/JBP member who described himself as “Earl,” a 79-year-old man interested in leaving money for his daughter.
Also on the line was a man who suggested he hailed from Jamaica and wanted to start a JSS/JBP account for a “nonprofit, for a school that I have, that I attended in Jamaica.”
Other callers identified themselves as residents of the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta and the U.S. states of California, South Dakota, Texas, Georgia, Missouri and Louisiana.
One caller asked Mann why electronic payments from JSS/JBP came from “Michael” at a BigBooster.com email address, not an email address associated with the JSS/JBP domains.
“Michael is a business partner, and he handles some of the finances,” Mann said. He did not identify “Michael” by a last name.
Mann also advised callers that JSS/JBP had two representatives in Italy, but did not speak to the JSS/JBP-related probe involving the program’s affiliates announced by the Italian securities regular CONSOB in January.
One caller informed Mann that his downline recruits has put in “substantial” sums. Another complained that his account had been debited weeks in advance of the anticipated debit. Another complained that the website was unattractive to potential recruits and looked like a scam. Yet another fretted that the site appeared to lack a secure connection (https). Still another complained that his “matrices” did not appear to be cycling properly.
HYIPs are infamous for creating one set of expectations and then changing the rules at midstream. They’re also infamous for their convoluted explanations and fuzzy — if not downright impossible — math.
Like ASD’s Andy Bowdoin — now under indictment amid charges that he orchestrated an international Ponzi scheme that had gathered at least $110 million — Mann has been accorded the description of “genius” in promotions for the program.
This ad for a purported Thailand escort service appears today in the United States on AdLandPro, a site whose operator is threatening a class-action lawsuit against RealScam.com, an antiscam forum. The PP Blog captured this screen shot today and edited it to remove the images of EIGHT AdLandPro members whose photographs were displayed in the left sidebar and created the appearance that the AdLandPro members also were members of (or approved of) the escort service. When the Blog reloaded the ad, the page displayed the images of EIGHT other AdLandPro members. A third reload served up an image of an entire family, including three young children who appear to reside in the South Central United States.
In November 2011, the PP Blog reported that Bogdan Fiedur of AdLandPro had threatened antiscam site RealScam.com with litigation. The bid to chill RealScam in the age of international mass-marketing fraud featured the registration of a domain styled RealScamClassActionSuit.com.
With Fiedur trolling for suckers and hoping to make his intellectual dishonesty go viral, RealScam did not buckle at his obvious bid to chill it.
Good for you, RealScam!
It’s hard to condense all the AdLandPro absurdities that followed over the next several weeks, but we’ll summarize them as such: A sampling of Stepfordian shills and mindless apologists stepped up to the plate for Fiedur, “fake” law students purportedly from a major American university entered the fray to add to the bid to chill — and the matter devolved into Threatre of the Absurd in that Internet-only sort of way.
By the end of December, the chill bid appeared to end: Content on the purported class-action site went missing, and the site began to resolve to an AdLandPro page.
We would be remiss if we did not point out that, in addition to being solicited to register for HYIP scams such as AdSurfDaily, Finanzas Forex and JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid (730 percent a year) by purported “Christians” on AdLandPro over the past few years, American visitors (and others) also were solicited for cross-border sales of pharmaceuticals.
If drugs weren’t on their purchase list, AdLandPro visitors were told how to find used underwear and arrange — umm, how should we put this? — the temporary services of scantily clad women in various nations from India eastward after demonstrating a way to pay?
At least some of the risqué ads have gone missing, but their URLs remain. When they’re clicked, they resolve to pages that show the faces of AdLandPro members who had nothing to do with the placing of the ads. Did we mention that AdLandPro purports to be a great guardian of privacy and the interest of its members?
And did we mention that not all of the risqué ads have gone missing — and that, when they’re clicked, they load images of AdLandPro members who had nothing to do with placing the ads and that AdLandPro wants members to believe it was a sort of Facebook before Facebook became the craze?
“The most exclusive, classic and attractive companions in Bangkok are here waiting to join you, at your hotel, apartment, or villa,” one ad on AdLandPro reads today. “All our princesses are hand picked by our management for their beauty, demeanour and friendly attitude.”
The ad is on the “community” subdomain of the AdLandPro.domain. When the PP Blog viewed the ad earlier today, the photographs of EIGHT AdLandPro members showed up in a sidebar only inches to the left. The headline above the sidebar read, “Our Members.” Less than an inch away, a photo of a presumptive “escort” wearing a pink-lace bra and a pink-lace wrap over her genital area appeared. The photo appeared to display two red telephones, with the woman posing seductively on what appeared to be a bed or mat.
When the PP Blog reloaded the page, the images of eight different AdLandPro members were displayed. A third reload resulted in the display of images of an AdLandPro family whose matriarch identified herself in her AdLandPro profile as a mother and grandmother from the South Central United States.
Two adults in the photo were holding young children, one of whom appeared to be an infant. A third child also appeared in the photo. Below that photo, the full-face image of a lone AdLandPro member — a woman — appeared. Below the woman’s photo, an ad for “OneX” appeared.
OneX is a program accused Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin of AdSurfDaily said he was using to raise funds to pay for his criminal defense.
“I believe that God has brought us OneX to provide the necessary funds to win this case,” Bowdoin said in an October 2011 pitch.
So, if you’re an AdLandPro member and had nothing whatsoever to do with the placement of the escort ad and do not endorse Thailand “princesses” purportedly “hand picked by . . . management,” say, because you oppose human trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women, AdLandPro is making it appear as though you’re on board the Thailand escort train.
A link prompt below the photos of the eight AdLandPro members reads, “See All 185753 Members.” The URL points to the AdLandPro membership directory.
By coincidence, the U.S. Department of Justice announced today that Marcus Choice Williams, 36, of Fort Worth, Texas, was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison followed by 30 years of supervised release for various felony offenses related to a conspiracy to traffic women for prostitution.
“The court’s sentence clearly reflects the seriousness of these awful sex trafficking crimes,” said Thomas E. Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “The victims suffered physical assaults, sexual abuse and daily degradation all because of this defendant’s greed and callous disregard for them as individuals. We are committed to prosecuting sex traffickers and vindicating victims’ rights, as they were vindicated today.”
Williams, prosecutors said, operated “adult escort web sites” as part of a human-trafficking scheme that also included money-laundering.
He “recruited vulnerable women, specifically single mothers from troubled backgrounds, and, in some cases used a combination of deception, fraud, coercion, threats and physical violence to compel the women to engage in prostitution, requiring each young woman to secure a daily quota of money, and if operating out of town, to wire the funds to him,” prosecutors said.
Crazier By The Moment
Just when one began to believe that AdLandPro had abandoned its absurd litigation threat against RealScam, guess what’s back? (You’d be right if you guessed the class-action site.)
And if ads on AdLandPro from “Christian” HYIP peddlers and purveyors of used underwear and illegal, cross-border pharmaceutical sales (after Google had agreed in August 2011 to pay the United States $500 million to settle claims of illegal cross-border solicitations for pharmaceuticals) were not enough, Fiedur’s purported class-action site is quoting a notorious YouTube cyberstalker and raunchy Internet gadfly, positioning him as an authoritative critic of RealScam.com.
It’s enough to make decent people from all corners of the world cringe as they contemplate whether intellectual corruption as practiced on the web has gained the upper hand.
WordPress suspended this JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid affiliate Blog earlier today. Google had indexed a post on the site only hours earlier.
UPDATED 12:20 P.M. ET (U.S.A.) Within six hours of Google indexing (earlier today) a JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid affiliate Blog using WordPress as a free platform from which to attract investors, Word Press caused the post to disappear.
Kudos to WordPress!
Visitors to the Blog URL of dailyrevenueresourcegroup.wordpress.com now see a message that the Blog “has been archived or suspended for a violation” of the WordPress Terms of Service.
The keyword title of the post, which now cannot be seen, was “How To Invest In JustBeenPaid.” The title ended with an exclamation point.
The post appeared to be a reposting of companion JSS/JBP-related content that appeared on Blogger, yet another free Blogging platform. The Blogger post remains active.
Amid claims that JSS/JBP’s advertised daily payout rate of 2 percent “is not a bad rate,” the now-missing WordPress post asked investors to compare JSS/JBP to a bank and planted the seed that prospects should choose the absurd program over the bank.
“Look at the banks [sic] they are only offering you .05-1% apr on yearly basis for savings accounts,” the now-missing WordPress post claimed.
In its introduction, the now-missing post claimed, “In this article it is my intent to help those that are unsure of how JustBeenPaid works and how to invest in it.”
Despite the WordPress ban, the same phrasing continues to appear on the Blogger site at Blogsport.com — along with at least three JSS/JBP affiliate links. The Blogger post is dated today.
It is common for promoters of highly questionable “opportunities” and even outright scams to rely on free hosting services in bids to recruit new affiliates and “earn” downline commissions.
Claims about JSS/JBP have been under investigation by CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, since at least Jan. 23.
JSS/JBP does not disclose where it operates from. The scheme’s preposterous purported daily payout rate of 2 percent is double that of AdSurfDaily, which the U.S. Secret Service described in 2008 as an international Ponzi scheme that had gathered tens of millions of dollars.
Frederick Mann, JSS/JBP’s purported operator, described himself in 2008 promos as an ASD pitchman. In December 2010, ASD President Andy Bowdoin was indicted on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.
JSS/JBP has no known securities registrations. The “program” operates in an MLM-like fashion in which prospects are told they’ll receive a return of 60 percent a month for their “positions” — on top of two-tier affiliate commissions totaling 15 percent for recruiting prospects who send money to the company via offshore payment processors.
Among other things, the Terms for JSS/JBP makes members affirm they are not government spies or media lackeys.
An ad banner accompanying the still-active Blogger post solicits prospects to “Start collecting Unlimited $15 payments Straight to your Alertpay account.” When the banner is clicked, it lands on a JBP affiliate page that asserts, “Quickly Get CLEVER[.] GET PAID FOREVER!”
“[F]raudulent commercial schemes are not noted for their internal consistency.” — Professor James E. Byrne, consultant to FBI and Scotland Yard (among others) and HYIP expert hired by U.S. government to assess the alleged Pathway To Prosperity scheme in 2010
Frederick Mann
In a bizarre conference call for the JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid “program,” a caller who identified himself as a former AdSurfDaily member raised the issue of the ASD Ponzi scheme case brought by the U.S. Secret Service in 2008, questioning whether JSS/JBP was safe from regulatory scrutiny or “getting too big and drawing certain attention.”
The implication of the remark was that the attention of the U.S. government would be unwanted.
With listeners identifying themselves as U.S.-based members of JSS/JBP on the line, Frederick Mann suggested that his purported program was outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement.
“Just Been Paid is not based in the U.S.,” Mann replied to the caller, after the female host of the call had paraphrased the caller’s query to Mann. The host paraphrased the question because Mann said he didn’t catch it the first time around.
” . . . [H]e was making reference to AdSurfDaily and that they were closed down, and he wants to know what we have in place to protect Just BeenPaid for it not to happen like AdSurfDaily,” the host said to Mann.
“Just Been Paid is not based in the U.S., and our servers are not in the U.S.,” Mann replied. “We don’t have an office in the U.S.”
But Mann’s answer did not speak to costly civil and criminal litigation that could ensue against JSS/JBP’s U.S.-based members, all of whom are using wires that run through the United States to participate in the purported program and some of whom are using U.S. wires to recruit downline members. Nor did the answer speak to actions the United States could take against JSS/JBP itself.
In 2008, marketing materials identified Mann as an ASD promoter. In January 2012, the Italian securities regulator CONSOB announced a JSS/JBP-related probe and issued a 90-day suspension order. JSS/JBP purports to pay out at a daily rate of 2 percent, double that of ASD. On an annualized basis, the payout rate of JSS/JBP corresponds to a return that is between 48 and 73 times the typical rates that put Bernard Madoff in prison for 150 years. ASD President Andy Bowdoin was indicted on Ponzi scheme charges in December 2010.
Bowdoin specifically was accused of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities. The U.S. Secret Service seized 10 of his personal bank accounts in August 2008, amid Ponzi allegations. Other court filings that became public in 2010 showed that the Secret Service also had seized bank accounts linked to some individual ASD promoters.
Mann previously has declined to identify JSS/JBP with a nation-state, meaning investors do not know where the “program” is operating from. JSS/JBP has no known securities registrations, and its U.S. affiliates very well could be selling unregistered securities to U.S. citizens via wire while at once implicating themselves and their recruits in a Ponzi scheme that is trying to disguise itself as a legitimate business.
Even if it is presumed to be true that the United States could not act against the company itself — and that’s a big “if” because U.S. law enforcement has a number of options should it choose to exercise them — U.S.-based affiliates of the “program” likely are running afoul of any number of civil and criminal statutes.
Internal Inconsistencies
In 2010, Professor James E. Byrne — who has consulted with the FBI and Scotland Yard and was hired by the United States to offer an expert opinion on the Pathway To Prosperity (P2P) HYIP scheme — observed that “fraudulent commercial schemes are not noted for their internal consistency” and that materials he examined in the P2P case displayed such inconsistencies.
After a probe by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, P2P operator Nicholas Smirnow was charged criminally and accused of running an international financial scam. The purported return rate of JSS/JBP is somewhat on par with the rates of the alleged Smirnow/P2P HYIP scheme.
Internal inconsistencies were on full display during the March 8 JSS/JBP call featuring Mann.
As one example, a caller who identified himself as “John” and appeared to be speaking in U.S. English asked Mann for some specifics about the program, voicing that he was confused.
“All your marketing material — your website and now this conference call — has confused me more than anything I’ve ever heard in my life,” John said.
“You don’t have any answers for the [gentlemen] that have asked questions,” John said.
Mann suggested that John “submit a help request.”
Apparently growing agitated and increasingly confused, John shot back, “I submit that I just would like to have a straight answer.”
Mann again pointed John to the company’s web-based explanations and resources.
“The basic approach” to JSS/JBP, Mann explained, is to “find one thing that you understand and then find another thing that you understand, and that way you keep on finding things that you can understand.”
Unmoved by Mann’s response, John shot back, “I have two master’s degrees and I’m telling you that I do not understand it.”
John was the seventh caller to have asked Mann questions during the March 8 call. An eighth caller then came on the line. He identified himself as “Rick” (or by a name that sounded like Rick), saying he was from “California.” (Note: Garbling during the recorded call sometimes made it difficult to hear a name clearly.)
Rick questioned whether callers such as John should be asking Mann such “basic” questions, asserting that Rick, unlike John, had no master’s degree but nevertheless understood the program.
At that point, Mann observed that online money-making programs may have a “bigger learning curve.”
After Rick exited the line, a caller who identified himself as “Michael” from “San Francisco” stepped up to the plate for Mann and JSS/JBP.
Michael asserted that, like John, he has a “master’s degree,” adding that “I have lots of degrees” but noting that his academic pedigree was “really not applicable to online money-making.”
As guidance, Michael suggested that JSS/JBP promoters sign up for “all” of the payment processors used by the program — but Michael did not tell listeners that all of the processors with which JSS/JBP has associated itself are operating offshore (from a U.S. standpoint), are known to be friendly to fraud schemes and may deny customers U.S. consumer protections.
More Internal Inconsistencies
Other examples of internal inconsistencies presented themselves during the call, a recording of which was about 48 minutes in length.
One caller who identified himself as residing in “Florida” asked Mann about the importance of the “patent” claim on JBP’s website.
Mann initially replied that the “patent” claim is “not important at all.”
The response, however, gives rise to questions about why JSS/JBP even would mention a patent if it was “not important at all,” particularly since the “program” had altered the patent claim over time.
Prior to a website alteration that appears to have occurred last month, JSS/JBP made this specious claim: “JustBeenPaid! (JBP) and its related programs, including JSS-Tripler, are licensed under United States Patent 6,578,010.”
Those words were changed to read, “JustBeenPaid! (JBP) and its related programs operate in accordance with United States Patent 6,578,010 (now public domain).”
After reflecting on the caller’s patent question, Mann said this, “In any case, the patent is public domain. It doesn’t actually protect anything. But what is relevant about it is that a patent that covers some of what we do was issued and was approved by a government agency.”
In the United States, patents are issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a government entity. The office is not the nation’s securities regulator.
It is common for scammers to try to associate a scheme with the government as a means of planting the seed that the government has full knowledge of the “program” and has endorsed it. The ASD scheme, for example, traded on the name of the President of the United States — something that caught the attention of the U.S. Secret Service, which has the twin duties of guarding the President’s life and protecting the U.S. financial system from criminals.
Callers also expressed confusion about “commission” payments from JSS/JBP and raised questions about an emerging JSS/JBP “Platinum” program that would accompany an existing “Premium” program through which some earlier members had paid higher fees believing they would “cycle” faster and make more money.
Based on comments made during the call, it appears as though the “Platinum” program is priced higher than the “Premium” program — and members are concerned that their earlier “Premium” purchases would be for naught if new “Platinum” purchasers effectively could pay more money to cut in line and “cycle” faster than them.
EDITOR’S NOTE: For the purposes of this column, the PP Blog is reporting on only a small number of references to JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid in the past 24 hours, as compiled by Google’s “Past 24 hours” feature. Google also has a “Past hour” feature. At the time of this post, Google is reporting “About 3,970” indexed “results” for jss tripler during the 24-hour time period, yesterday to today. A good number of the returns are in languages other than English. (Editor’s note continues below screen shot.)
JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid is an exceptionally murky “program” that purports to pay a return of 2 percent a day. That’s an absurd 60 percent a month — or, on an annualized basis, 730 percent, an ROI that would make Bernard Madoff gag. The “program,” which purports to be “indefinitely sustainable” and makes members affirm they are not government spies or media lackeys, has a strong presence on forums listed in U.S. federal court files as places from which Ponzi schemes are promoted.
On Feb. 27, the PP Blog reported that a website linked to Frederick Mann, the purported operator of the “program,” is publishing two videos and links to nine more that highlight Francis Schaeffer Cox, a purported “sovereign citizen” implicated in an alleged murder plot against public officials in Alaska.
“Sovereign citizens” have an irrational belief that laws do not apply to them. They have been implicated in numerous fraud schemes and may engage in what has become known as “paper terrorism” — i.e., the filing of false liens against members of law enforcement, false libel lawsuits against publishers and other bids to chill and nuisance the law-enforcement community or members of the media.
Mann declined to tell conference-call listeners on Feb. 23 even where the enterprise was operating from.
Despite these disturbing events, JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid has achieved Internet virality and may be recruiting thousands of new affiliates daily. The bullet-point brief below condenses some of the affiliate claims in just the past 24 hours.
Despite repeated promotional references to the sum of $10, JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid members do not have to limit their “purchase” to only one $10 position. The scheme could be raking in tremendous sums during an era of securities hucksterism that sometimes involves massive — if not epic — sums of money. It is not unusual for large sums to go missing, leaving defrauded investors holding the bag for tremendous losses. At a minimum, those losses contribute to the undermining of economies on a local level, perhaps particularly if groups of individuals from the same area become investors.
Source: Blog titled “Easy Online Money” with a kicker of “Change a life today!” Among the claims: “You are guaranteed to earn a daily 2% on the positions you purchase, thereby making a decent amount of passive income online working from home.”
Source: Blog at URL that is a subdomain of blogspot.com, a free Blogger platform hosted by Google. Among the claims: “You can fund your account with as little as $10, and earn 2% per day with no work.”
Source: Blog at another blogspot subdomain. Among the claims: “JSS-Tripler now has 294,651 members — having grown by just over 6,000 new members during the past 24 hours. Thank you to our many promoters for doing such a great job!”
Source: Text accompanying video on Google-owned YouTube. Among the text claims: “Once you are in JSS tripler . . . Click on ‘Financial’ tab . . . Scroll down you will have $10 in your jss tripler account . . . Click on ‘Buy Jss Tripler Position’ . . . Purchase 1 free position with the $10 you receive in your account . . . You will be getting 2% earnings on $10 [sic] i.e. $0.20 every day without doing anything . . . After the 75 days you make $15 dollars [sic] without any more investments or referrals. Then you invest back in $10 or whatever you like and you make more and more each day. Simple system really [sic] More position [sic] you purchase or get from referrals the more you make. Very simple process.”
Source: Blog titled “Money Making Tips.” Among the claims: “The level of support is better than any other program i have seen, the Daily Web Conferences with Carl Pearson are terrific. You can usually get your questions acknowledged instantly, you are kept up to date with what’s going on with this company, they provide training including tutorials and videos. You can access the conference area 24/7 [sic] a moderator is there to answer all your questions. JBP had just hired a new marketing leader, Louis Paquette[,] to help educate members in any areas where they need help.” [Note by PP Blog: Louis Paquette is referenced in this Feb. 4 PP Blog story, which reported that a JSS Tripler-related domain hosted in Utah mysteriously began to redirect to the Netherlands after a JSS Tripler-related action by CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator.]
Source: Blog at empowernetwork.com URL. Among the claims: “JSS Tripler Gives You the first $10 for FREE: My Total ‘2%’ Earnings Thus Far $4757.00.”
Source: Blog with a kicker of “Social Media Marketing Consultant.” Blog has accompanying YouTube video: Among the Blog claims: “I would like to help JBP grow, in any way I can contribute . . . It is my goal to add 60 active referrals over the next 6 months or less.” Among the video claims: “Makes It So Easy to Make Money Online that a Baby can Almost do it!” The text accompanying the video engages in considerable keyword stuffing with the phrase of “Make Money At Home” and similar phrases.
Source: Entry on apsense.com. Among the claims: “I just want to pay it forward and help others . . . get ‘$10 free money’ in your accounts . . . Buy a JSS-Tripler position and start earning 2% per day! . . . Inbite [sic] new members. There is an endless supply of people online looking for money making opportunities.”
Source: Blog styled “Success Instantly.” Blog has accompanying YouTube video. Among the video claims: “Compound your Earnings To INCREASE Your Daily Payout.”
“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.
“In law enforcement, we look into the IP address and whether is real or not (proxy). Then your service provider gives the account information with the customer’s name and address, then a warrant is made, then a police task force is dispatched with agents to raid your home or office, arrests you and seizes all your computers. That’s if you are a terrorist.” — “MoneyMakingBrain,” in March 11, 2012, post on RealScam.com
“And Patrick, the day your host is subpoenaed by court determination to provide all the RealScam.com web logs, it will be the beginning of end of your credibility and your PatrickPretty.com blog. I am sorry, but you did to yourself, and you will go down in flames.” — “MoneyMakingBrain,” in March 11, 2012, post on RealScam.com
Amid new suggestions he is in “law enforcement” — and while planting the seed he can cause subpoenas for log files to be served or motivate others to serve them or otherwise nuisance the PP Blog and cause it to “go down in flames” — “MoneyMakingBrain” again has used RealScam.com as a platform to hatch new and deeper conspiracy theories concerning the PP Blog and others.
The latest disturbing developments unfolded within hours of “MoneyMakingBrain’s” arrival Saturday at the PP Blog from a website linked to other harassment bids targeted at the PP Blog and some of its posters. “MoneyMakingBrain” appears to be in search of information — however disingenuous and laden with vulgarity and sexual innuendo — to confirm his own biases.
On Saturday, “MoneyMakingBrain” arrived at the PP Blog from the WorldLawDirect forum — specifically from a page set up by the notorious cyberstalker “unclefesta26” weeks ago in a bid to discredit RealScam.com. “unclefesta26” once videotaped a cartoon representation of himself hectoring the PP Blog by typing the compressed phrase “kissmyarse” into the Blog’s contact form and posting a video of his harassment on YouTube. (See screen shot from “unclefesta26” YouTube video below.)
The notorious cyberstalker "unclefesta26" uses his free platform at YouTube to attack various people, including individuals who post on the PP Blog. "MoneyMakingBrain" also is using a free Google platform — Blogger — to harass the PP Blog and some of its posters.
Known mostly by his principal handle, “unclefesta26″ once posted a video on YouTube that, in cartoon form, depicted Lynn Edgington,” a male reader of the PP Blog and the chairman of a California nonprofit entity that educates the public about scams, as a diaper-wearing pole dancer squeezing his own breasts.
In 2009, “unclefesta26” — posting at the PP Blog as “Pistol” and coming off an unsuccessful bid to register as “Hugh Jorgan” (read: Huge Organ) at a site that once carried news and commentary about the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme — was banned from the PP Blog for chronic harassment and creating maintenance problems.
“unclefesta26” retaliated by adding the PP Blog to his list of hectoring targets at his YouTube site, at one time trying to tie the Blog to the word “anal.” In October 2011, “unclefesta26” sought to overcome his PP Blog ban and post with a different user identity — under the proposed user ID of “lurch” and in a thread in which the Blog reported that Edgington had been quoted by a St. Louis newspaper in a story about steering clear of online fraud schemes.
The October 2011 posting bid appeared to feature a bogus email address entered into the Blog’s Comments form.
“MoneyMakingBrain” now has been attacking Edgington for days. And like “unclefesta26,” MoneyMakingBrain also is carrying out his sordid campaign from a free platform owned by Google.
Edgington has “no escape” from MoneyMakingBrain’s Google-hosted site, MoneyMakingBrain has asserted on RealScam, while suggesting other hectoring campaigns may be under way and the force of it all will destroy Edgington’s marriage.
“I feel sorry for you and your wife actually, who must be putting up with so much crap from anonymous callers, and who knows what else,” MoneyMakingBrain asserted on RealScam.com on March 7. “If you don’t stop being a deceptive person, though, she is gonna divorce you.”
On March 8 on RealScam, “MoneyMakingBrain” appears to have tipped his hand that one of his research sources for purported information on Edgington was “unclefesta26’s” YouTube hectoring site.
“You are not even a funny cartoon of a man to watch, as some people have depicted you,” he ventured.
Among the latest MoneyMakingBrain claims on RealScam are that the PP Blog is “soapboxmom,” one of the administrators of RealScam, and that the PP Blog runs RealScam.
Both claims are false.
“MoneyMakingBrain” also claims the PP Blog posted as scam critic “Lil Ol’ Radical Me” (LORM) on its own Blog on March 10 — and then answered its own post with the PP Blog identity.
Those claims are false.
Meanwhile, “MoneyMakingBrain” claims that the PP Blog also posts as “LORM” and “nomaxim” on RealScam — all while suggesting the PP Blog also posts as “ProfHenryHiggins” and Edgington, the chairman of Eagle Research Associates.
Each of those claims is false, as are the claims that the PP Blog posts with a proxy at RealScam and then changes proxies.
The PP Blog does not post with proxies at RealScam — or at any other site. One of the reasons the Blog does not use proxies is that it operates in an environment in which threats are directed at it on a somewhat regular basis, and the Blog needs to be able to demonstrate the threats were targeted at the Blog’s actual Internet Service Provider (ISP) account or hosting connection site (the website IP of the PP Blog).
The Blog uses its ISP account to access the Internet, and its IP account to publish the Blog. Veiled threats against the PP Blog’s ISP account date back to 2009. The Blog’s hosting IP was crippled by waves of DDoS attacks in October and November of 2010. The Blog then had to arrange new hosting, which drove up its monthly publishing costs substantially.
Even under its upgraded hosting and security architecture , the Blog occasionally has been targeted by traffic floods that briefly have collapsed its server. In April 2011, the Blog received a claim of responsibility for the attacks from the HYIP sphere.
Although “MoneyMakingBrain’s” most recent conspiracy theories are getting harder to follow as they conflate one artificial reality after another, he also appears to be suggesting that the PP Blog also posts on RealScam as “Whip” and “laidback.”
Those claims are false. The PP Blogs user ID at RealScam is PPBlog. It is the only name under which the Blog posts at RealScam. The Blog, which is an ordinary member of RealScam — i.e., it has no administrative credentials and no access to RealScam logs — has a total of 23 posts at the RealScam forum.
The PP Blog and RealScam do have posters in common, and the PP Blog is concerned about various bids to chill RealScam.com in the age of white-collar crime and international mass-marketing fraud.
After “MoneyMakingBrain” planted the seed yesterday that he was in law enforcement and could cause subpoenas to be served, some RealScam skeptics questioned his credentials. “MoneyMakingBrain” initially then backed away from the law-enforcement claim.
“And, I never said I was a police agent, you moron,” MoneyMakingBrain claimed to RealScam poster (ProfHenryHiggins) yesterday, while falsely asserting the poster was the PP Blog. “I don’t have to be in law enforcement to detect [a] scumbag like you, Patrick. It doesn’t matter under what user you post: Radical, Whip, Professor, whoever, I know exactly how many users are at anytime in this thread.
“So, go to the hell Patrick, you and this ‘real scam’ forum of yours. There are people who are dying to know who is behind this crackpot forum. Now they know what to do with those web logs from your host.”
“MoneyMakingBrain” did not identify the people purportedly “dying to know who is behind this crackpot forum.” Nor did he explain whether he coached people to “know what to do with web logs” or say precisely how he purportedly had obtained RealScam logs or whether he was distributing logs to the people purportedly “dying” for the information.
In any event, the PP Blog does not own, operate or run RealScam.com. Nor does the Blog share hosting with RealScam. Nor is the Blog acquainted with RealScam’s hosting arrangement.
CAUTION WARRANTED: As the PP Blog previously noted, it may be unwise to click on any link that “MoneyMakingBrain” posts on RealScam. A phishing bid of some sort may be under way.
Although “MoneyMakingBrain” yesterday backed away from his “law enforcement” claim, he asserted it again today, planting the seed that he might be able to put people “behind bars” or dispense fines.
“Maybe I am that guy trying to make a few bucks online with money making programs, or may (sic) I am the developer of IP DETECTOR, maybe I am going to put you behind bars or make you pay a big fine for cyber bullying, or simply expose you to prove the product works, or, maybe I am in law enforcement and you are being monitored, keep guessing,” he posted on RealScam.
“MoneyMakingBrain” started out as a “defender” of Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid, a “program” that purports to pay a return of 2 percent a day.
Using a proxy to send an email threat to the PP Blog on Feb. 29, “MoneyMakingBrain” asserted he’d defend Mann “so help me God.” He further suggested he might seek to interfere in an Eagle Research Associates banking relationship, all while asserting that Edgington was the operator of RealScam.
After the Feb. 29 email threats to the PP Blog, “MoneyMakingBrain” asserted on RealScam (March 9) that “the MMB is no longer interested in defending Fred Mann, but accusing Lynn Edgington . . .”
Yesterday, though, “MoneyMakingBrain” asserted he had “cleared” Edgington from an earlier MoneyMakingBrain allegation that Edgington was “LittleRoundMan,” another RealScam.com administrator.
Visit RealScam.com. (Please take heed that clicking on any link MoneyMakingBrain posts may be unwise.)
