EDITOR’S NOTE: Information from Tennessee was received after this story was published. The Tennessee info is published in the Comments thread below . . .
UPDATED 8:18 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) Louisiana has issued an Investor Alert on the Profitable Sunrise HYIP, joining a growing list of U.S. states and Canadian provinces to have done so.
Profitable Sunrise has a presence on well-known Ponzi-scheme forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup. The “program” purportedly is operated by Roman Novak and is trading on Bible verse.
“Consumers who have invested with Profitable Sunrise are encouraged to contact the Securities Division of the Office of Financial Institutions at (225) 925-4512,” the office of Louisiana Commissioner of Securities John Ducrest said.
With Louisiana’s action, the unofficial total of U.S. states or Canadian provinces issuing Investor Alerts or cease-and-desist orders against Profitable Sunrise now stands at 27. (See current list here.)
From the statement by Ducrest’s office (italics added):
Investments are purportedly used to provide short-term loans to companies at 3% interest per day. The company’s website also states that investors may earn money by recruiting others through a referral program that pays 5% of deposits generated from recruits.
Consumers should be aware that neither Profitable Sunrise, nor its investment products, are registered in Louisiana as required by the Louisiana Securities Law. High-yield investment programs often have common red flags of fraud that consumers should be looking for, such as unusually high yields; lack of information regarding the investment operator; unclear methodology for achieving returns; off-shore operations; incentives to recruit new investors; and online advertisements containing typographical errors and grammatical mistakes.
Link to Louisiana news release.