4th Update 1:15 p.m. EDT U.S.A. “Daily-Earnings,” yet another Ponzi-board scheme pushed by Achieve Community huckster Rodney Blackburn, appears to have met its demise. The “https” dotcom for Daily-Earnings is publishing a “Your web space is ready to go!” message, suggesting front-page content has been moved from the site.
Not all pages of the site, however, are offline. An FAQ page, for instance, is publishing ads for “programs” called SecretSocietySystem and “ILuvBanners.” There’s also an ad at Daily-Earnings for Intellashares, a “program” that collapsed earlier this year but now is trying a relaunch.
Ads for these “programs” also are being published at Daily-Earnings:
MassiveWealthCycler. (“4daily position $17 only per sub prelaunch JOIN NOW.”)
V Stream TV. (“FREE Cable TV Sign Up for FREE No Monthly Fees Join NOW.”)
Demonstrating the interconnectivity of certain types of MLM schemes, the ILuvBanners’ site is publishing ads for:
10In20Back. (NEW! 10in20back..ONLY $10 PER SHARE. PAYZA & STP.”)
PassiveIncomeADay. (Claim of “Daily Passive I . . . PASSIVE INCOME A DAY! Turn $5 into $7.5 150%,” but dotcom currently is generating a server error.)
Blackburn pushed Achieve Community, which the SEC described in court filings on Feb. 12 as a combined Ponzi- and pyramid scheme. He also has been associated with “Trinity Lines,” a collapsed “program” trading on the name of God, and Automatic Mobile Cash, which appears to have collapsed in March.
The huckster also created a combined ad for Achieve Community, TrinityLines and UnisonWealth. The SEC declined to comment on the promo.
At one point, the MooreFund and RockfellerBiz “programs” came into the fold, with Blackburn blessing both of them.
His promo for “Daily-Earnings” appears to have been published on Feb. 28, a little more than two weeks after the SEC’s Achieve Community action.
At the time, the actual Daily Earnings site was displaying ads for other scams while hawking “AdPacks.” The “program” possibly operated from Istanbul, Turkey.
IntellaShares, a collapsed “program” with a presence on the Ponzi boards and purportedly prepping for “relaunch,” now is under scrutiny by Save the Children.
Jeremy Soulliere, a spokesman for Save the Children USA, confirmed the inquiry to the PP Blog this morning. Save the Children USA is an arm of Save the Children Federation Inc., the internationally prominent charity.
“We are going to look into this matter further,” Soulliere wrote.
The PP Blog reported yesterday that IntellaShares was publishing a graphic of a check on its website that implied a donation of $478 had been made or will be made to “Save The Children Foundation.” The memo line of the check reads, “Charity Spotlight – Feb/2015.”
Text accompanying the check reads, “The Following Amount Will Be Donated For the Period Feb. 17-28/2015. Thank You To All Members For Making This Possible!”
Another page on the IntellaShares website claims that the “program” donates “20% of Total Collected Membership Fees to THE FEATURED CHARITY.”
This potentially means that Save the Children will not be the sole nonprofit whose name gets dangled by IntellaShares. The site suggests that the Global Music Project was the featured charity last month.
Precisely who controls the purported blacklist wasn’t specified by IntellaShares. The language, however, was menacing.
“So be careful what you do now it could result in loss of ability to become a member of any program in short order,” IntellaShares advised members, according to BehindMLM.
A post on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum today includes content attributed to IntellaShares. It declares “[t]oday is a beautiful day in the internet world” because “INTELLASHARES WILL BE OPEN FOR NEW SIGN UPS AND FUNDING TODAY!”
This hashtag was attributed to IntellaShares: “#TOOBADABOUT30PEOPLEWEREBLACKLISTED.”
At least one Ponzi-board poster was not amused.
“They think that threatening people can suppress peoples opinion, that doesn’t sound like people that are for the people,” the poster ventured. “Sounds like facism to me. What a joke.”
Scams trading on the Ponzi boards and on social-media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are infamous for trying to enforce rigid thinking and mute criticism — sometimes by threat. At the same time, it is not unusual for such schemes to use the names of a famous charity or famous for-profit business as part of a bid to create a veneer of legitimacy.
IntellaShares, which plants the seed “program” participants will receive $3.25 for every $2.50 they send in, appears to have collapsed shortly after launch earlier this year.
Thuggery is not unusual in the HYIP sphere of MLM or network marketing.
In early 2014, a “program” known as Banners Brokers threatened to lock the accounts of members “found to be contributing to the negativity on the Internet.” Participants further were threatened with a forfeiture of earnings and encouraged to report doubters to management.
Banners Broker tried to sugarcoat its thuggery by calling it an effort to implement a “Community Watch” program.
By October 2014, documents filed by the the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in July 2014 surfaced. These documents described Banners Broker as a “pyramid scheme that over time evolved into a straight Ponzi scheme in which new victims were recruited to stave off requests for withdrawals and complaints from older ones.”
Investigative documents in Canada describe Banners Broker as a “criminal enterprise.” The U.S. Secret Service used the same phrase when describing the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme.
Like Banners Broker and ASD, IntellaShares purports to be an “advertising” program.
IntellaShares may be trying to skirt securities laws by claiming on its website that “REVENUE SHARING IS NOT GUARANTEED.”
ASD, which once purported to have gifted 100,000 “ad packs” to a charitable venture, made a similar claim in 2008 . So did the Zeek Rewards scheme in 2012.
Both ASD and Zeek collapsed after interventions by law enforcement.
The SEC yesterday declined to comment on IntellaShares.
IntellaShares reportedly is threatening members who file disputes — all while trading on the name of Save The Children. Photo source: 4/1/2015 screen shot from website of IntellaShares.
UPDATED 11:31 A.M. EDT U.S.A. In 2010, the Federal Trade Commission took action against an online venture known as iWorks. This allegation appeared on Page 7 of the FTC’s Dec. 21, 2010 complaint:
“They have also attempted to drive down their chargeback rates by threatening to report consumers who seek chargebacks to an Internet consumer blacklist they operate called ‘BadCustomer.com’ that will ‘result in member merchants blocking [the consumer] from making future purchases online!’”
BehindMLM.com is reporting today that a “program” known as “IntellaShares” appears to be threatening participants with entry on a “BLACKLIST.”
IntellaShares appears to have launched earlier this year and then experienced a prompt collapse. Despite this, the “program” claims on its website that it has or will donate $478 to the “Save The Children Foundation.”
It is unclear if IntellaShares actually was referring to Save the Children Federation Inc., the internationally prominent Connecticut charity that operates at SaveTheChildren.org.
BehindMLM has described IntellaShares as a “$2.50 micro Ponzi investment scheme.”
The “program” has a presence on well-known Ponzi-scheme forums such as MoneyMakerGroup. There are assertions of an imminent “relaunch.”
Such scams may use social media such as forums, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook to target marks. Some may imply they are linked to a charity or perform good deeds with money sent in by participants.
In 2009, for instance, a Ponzi scheme known as AdViewGlobal purported to be involved in an effort to preserve the rain forest. AdViewGlobal, which was a knockoff of the 2008 AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, later disappeared.
Like IntellaShares, AdViewGlobal purported to be in the “advertising” business. It also had a presence on the Ponzi boards.
In 2011, a Ponzi-board “program” known as “Club Asteria” promised weekly payouts of up to 8 percent while trading on the name of the American Red Cross. During the same year, a TalkGoldPonzi forum promoter pitching both Club Asteria and a separate scam known as JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid (730 percent a year) claimed that filing disputes with payment processors meant that “all members will suffer.”
IntellaShares may be operating out of New York.
The SEC this morning declined to comment on IntellaShares. The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Update 11:31 a.m. The FTC said this morning that it “hasn’t brought any enforcement actions involving IntellaShares.”
Whether it would remains an open question. The agency has an aggressive enforcement history when consumers end up on the receiving end of threats or are duped into joining work-at-home “programs.”
4th Update 1:15 p.m. EDT U.S.A. “Daily-Earnings,” yet another Ponzi-board scheme pushed by Achieve Community huckster Rodney Blackburn, appears to have met its demise. The “https” dotcom for Daily-Earnings is publishing a “Your web space is ready to go!” message, suggesting front-page content has been moved from the site.
