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Tag: IMMFWG

  • UPDATE: JSS Tripler 2 And Associated Scams Get More Bizarre By The Day: After Purported Bout With Dengue Fever, ‘Dave’ Purportedly Gets Married; Cashouts Now Reportedly Delayed Due To Wedding And Script Glitch — As Members Encouraged To Carry Out Blog-Posting ‘Tasks’

    This will be a familiar refrain to many readers of the PP Blog: In July 2010, the Blog reported that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) had launched a public-awareness campaign about HYIP fraud. FINRA called the HYIP sphere a “bizarre substratum of the Internet.”

    Just a month earlier — in June 2010 — the U.S. Department of Justice pointed to a threat assessment by the International Mass-Marketing Fraud Working Group (IMMFWG) that declared “[t]here are strong indications that the order of magnitude of global mass-marketing fraud losses is in the tens of billions of dollars per year.” (Emphasis added).

    In publicizing the IMMFWG document, which noted that international scammers use threats and coercive tactics to sustain schemes and chill “uncooperative victims,” the Justice Department alleged that the Pathway to Prosperity (P2P) HYIP scheme had reached into at least 120 countries and gathered $70 million.

    P2P was only one of hundreds or even thousands of HYIP scams operating on the Internet.

    Flash forward to late 2011 and the birth of “Dave’s” JSS Triper 2, which apparently based its name on JSS Tripler, the “opportunity” purportedly operated by Frederick Mann. JSS Tripler 2 reportedly stopped making payments within weeks of launch, blaming an AlertPay account freeze. After that, “Dave” suggested that an unidentified law-enforcement agency that had failed to act in his interests was at least partly responsible for JSS Tripler 2’s problems.

    Among other things, “Dave” has asserted he was conducting a “scan” of critics. Naturally, a “program” relaunch purportedly occurred, Ponzi-forum cheerleaders helped “Dave” advance the scheme (as they drove traffic to their other schemes) and JSS Tripler 2 changed its name to T2MoneyKlub and hatched a companion scheme known as Compound150.com — all while “Dave” reportedly was battling back from a bout with Dengue fever.

    “Dave,” who preemptively denied JSS Tripler 2 was a Ponzi scheme, now appears to have duped members into performing “tasks” such as making comments on Blogs/websites to dupe prospective purchasers of the sites into believing they’re buying established sites with built-in readership. The theory — apparently — is that “Dave” can monetize the sites, sell them at a handsome profit and use the cash to fund his various investment programs, thus muting the Ponzi critics and taking concerns of illegality off the table.

    Some of “Dave’s” members claim they’ve carried out the “tasks” — in effect, to “do what’s best for the ‘program.’” Whether they’re concerned that they’re helping “Dave” scam a new crop of suckers who’d end up with junk websites is unclear.

    What is clear is that they want to get paid — and perhaps are willing to say anything while carrying out the “task” of posting comments on Blogs in purported bids to make them more attractive to purchasers.

    One bizarre and homophobic “comment” on a purported “Dave” Blog (CarryMyBaby.com) reads as such:

    “[W]ell obviuosly [sic] the more sex you have the greater the chances of becoming pregnant unles [sic] you r [sic] one of those queer couples. then no matter what you two do together neither party wll [sic] get pregnant,,,capisce [sic]?”

    Meanwhile, a bizarre comment on a purported “Dave” Blog (IBeatForeclosure.com) reads as such:

    “its [sic] got be [sic] tough to have to decide if you have to foreclose on your house but the this [sic] mortagage [sic] crisis happened [sic] people had not [sic] choice not [sic] and [sic] easy thing to go through.”

    The Blogs appear to be hosted in Utah. Ownership is unclear.

    But even with the “tasks,” JSS Tripler 2 payments reportedly have been suspended again, owing to “Dave’s” wedding, the need to accommodate international travelers and a purported script glitch that caused some members to get paid twice.

    Some members — including members who previously sold JSS Tripler as a “passive” investment opportunity — now claim that members unwilling to assist Dave in posting fake comments are “lazy.”

    On the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, a “Dave” cheerleader posted a list of 26 websites for JSS Tripler 2 members to visit to post comments.

    So, the JSS Tripler 2 “program” includes these elements:

    • An HYIP scheme that purportedly provided an annualized return of 730 percent and started out by naming itself after an existing scheme that also purported to pay 730 percent a year. (Think FINRA and its memorable “bizarre substratum of the Internet” line in July 2010.)
    • A preemptive denial that a Ponzi scheme was under way — even as well-known Ponzi forum cheerleaders helped the scheme gain a head of steam. (As part of FINRA’s July 2010 educational campaign on the dangers of HYIP fraud,  it issued a public warning about social-networking fraud.)
    • A purported payment-processor freeze that left members in the lurch for weeks.
    • Incongruous suggestions that “law enforcement” had failed to act in the best interests of the “program.”
    • Attempts to chill/ostracize members. (The sort of coercive tactics referenced in the June 2010 IMMFWG document publicized by the U.S. Department of Justice.)
    • Cheerleading by willfully blind participants. (Think Matt Gagnon and the Legisi HYIP Ponzi scheme.)
    • A name change. (Also an element in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case.)
    • The launch of companion “programs.” (Another element in the ASD Ponzi case.)
    • A purported bout with Dengue fever. (Purported illnesses and violent windstorms are longtime HYIP clichés.)
    • Payment delays blamed on a wedding. (Imagine a legitimate broker/financial adviser telling you that you’d have to wait for the branch manager to return from her honeymoon in Southeast Asia  before you could withdraw the sum you need to buy groceries or cough medicine for your children or pay a tuition bill.)
    • Payment delays blamed on script problems and/or double payments to members. (See this story from our ASD files.)
    • A purported duty to post comments on Blogs to drive up their sale value, so the money can be used to fund investment “opportunities.”

     

  • Pathway To Prosperity Case A Subject Of Discussion In Washington’s Highest Power Corridors; Website Of U.S. Attorney General Includes Link To Case Info As Part Of ‘Mass-Marketing Fraud’ Educational Campaign

    From the June 2010 International Mass-Marketing Fraud Working Group report.

    In November 2009, President Obama formed the interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force (FFETF). By January, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who answers to Obama,  publicly warned fraudsters that “if you propagate an investment scheme, if you are complicit in an act of financial fraud, you are writing your ticket to jail.”

    It now turns out that the investigation into the business practices of Nicholas Smirnow and unnamed co-conspirators in an alleged $70 million, HYIP Ponzi scheme known as Pathway To Prosperity (P2P) was undertaken by elements of the FFETF.

    It further turns out the the U.S. Department of Justice — under Holder’s command — is using the P2P probe and the criminal charges it led to against Smirnow to educate the public on a global scale about “mass-marketing fraud.”

    The P2P case was mentioned prominently in a news release yesterday by the Justice Department to publicize international, cooperative efforts among seven governments to curb the proliferation of fraud that occurs on the Internet, over the telephone, through the mails, through group meetings and through other forms of mass communication.

    Last week, federal prosecutors thanked the Rotterdam-Rijnmond Regional Police in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Filipino authorities, and the Ontario Securities Commission in Canada for assisting in the P2P probe.

    Meanwhile, an entity known as the International Mass-Marketing Fraud Working Group (IMMFWG) has released a “threat assessment” to provide governments and the public with a current assessment of the nature and scope of the threat that mass-marketing fraud poses around the world.

    IMMFWG’s participating countries include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Nigeria and the United Kingdom, as well as Europol, the European police agency.

    “The IMMFWG seeks to facilitate the multinational exchange of information and intelligence, the coordination of cross-border operations to detect, disrupt, and apprehend mass-marketing fraud, and the enhancement of public-awareness and public-education measures concerning international mass-marketing fraud schemes,” the group said.

    In the Justice Department news release yesterday to publicize IMMFWG’s threat assessment, prosecutors pointedly referenced the P2P case.

    “Last week the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois charged an individual for allegedly engaging in an international Ponzi scheme that was operated through a website,” the Justice Department said. “The scheme allegedly resulted in a total of $70 million in losses to more than 40,000 investors in more than 120 countries.”

    The news release included a link to information on the P2P case, and the letterhead in the document featured the logos of both the Justice Department and the Task Force Obama created in November.

    Despite very public warnings from Holder that the United States is serious about sending financial fraudsters to jail and a declaration in the complaint against P2P’s Smirnow that “[a] large percentage, if not all, HYIPs, are Ponzi schemes,” members of Ponzi-pushing forums such as ASA Monitor, MoneyMakerGroup, TalkGold and MyCashForums are still out in full force to push Ponzi schemes on the U.S. and world public.

    For its part, IMMFWG said in its threat assessment yesterday that “[t]here are strong indications that the order of magnitude of global mass-marketing fraud losses is in the tens of billions of dollars per year.”

    IMMFWG also said “[m]ass-marketing fraud has gradually transformed from a predominantly North American crime problem into a pervasive global criminal threat.”

    “For some victims,” IMMFWG said, “the risks extend well beyond loss of personal savings or funds to include physical threats or risks, loss of their homes, depression, and even contemplated, attempted, or actual suicide.”

    IMMFWG noted that “[l]arge-scale criminal mass-marketing fraud operations are present in multiple countries in most regions of the world” and that “similarities between such operations include targeting victims in other countries, foreign outsourcing of operations, and involvement of organized criminal enterprises.”

    Read the Justice Department news release that references P2P in the context of IMMFWG’s global effort to educate the public about mass-marketing fraud and the hideous economic and social consequences of such fraud.

    Read IMMFWG’s threat assessment as published by the interagency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force.