INetGlobal

UPDATED 9:24 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones of the District of Minnesota refused to say today whether the government’s probe into the business practices of Inter-Mark Corp. and INetGlobal is over. “[W]e never confirm or deny the existence of investigations,” said Jeanne Cooney. The firms announced yesterday that prosecutors […]

Dear Readers, This is actually Post No. 1,007 since the PP Blog switched to the WordPress platform two years ago this month. We’d hoped to commemorate our 1,000th WordPress post in the actual 1,000th post, but missed the chance because of Breaking News concerning the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force’s Operation Broken Trust. Several hours […]

BULLETIN: UPDATED 9:18 A.M. ET (U.S.A., DEC. 8.) A Mexican company listed as a customer of Steve Renner’s Cash Cards International (CCI) in a 2005 scam known as MegaFund now has been charged by the CFTC with running a massive Forex fraud scheme that gathered at least $28 million from more than 800 U.S. customers. […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: The remarks below are excerpted from a speech last week in New York by Assistant U.S. Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer. As the PP Blog has previously reported, the Justice Department and agencies such as the FBI and U.S. Secret Service have been using undercover operatives to infiltrate criminal operations and networks used […]

BULLETIN: In a case that could send shockwaves across the culture of promoting scams and accepting payments from scams, a New York woman who turned a blind eye to Richard Piccoli’s long-running Ponzi scheme in New York state has been sentenced to 18 months in federal prison for misprision of a felony and willful failure […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: The ASA Monitor Ponzi forum now has reopened its thread on the MPB Today MLM program — with a warning in red to “Play nice . . .” UPDATED 9:54 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A forum infamous for promoting Ponzi schemes and other criminal pursuits has locked the thread from which the MPB Today […]

BULLETIN: (UPDATED 9:32 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) William L. Walters has been extradited to the United States from Argentina to face Ponzi scheme charges in Colorado, prosecutors announced. “This extradition is the culmination of years of work and cooperation between my office and the FBI,” said Colorado Attorney General John Suthers. “In this case, justice delayed […]

INetGlobal, a Minneapolis-based autosurf firm under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service and the IRS, has lost an appeal. On May 28, U.S. Magistrate Judge Franklin Noel issued an order that permitted investigators to make contact with witnesses in the case under certain conditions. Paul Engh, an attorney who said he represented INetGlobal employees, filed […]

UPDATED 4:51 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A convicted felon who emerged from prison and almost immediately launched a $1 million fraud scheme known as PPSN threatened to prosecute and sue a consumer who had filed an online complaint, federal prosecutors said. Although the threat caused the consumer to withdraw the complaint against Philip Pestrichello, Pestrichello’s bid […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: It has become increasingly clear that regulators and the law-enforcement community are rallying around a common theme that web-based promoters are using discussion forums and social-networking sites in bids to sanitize HYIP Ponzi schemes by positioning them as attractive investment opportunities and even a thrilling form of gambling that pays commissions. Today the […]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story originally was published June 30. The PP Blog later encountered a database problem, which caused the site to go down and resulted in the temporary loss of some data. The data now has been retrieved. This story is about a new site known as “WebsiteTester.biz,” but some background is in order. […]