PatrickPretty.com

Tag: JSS Tripler

UPDATE: Joe Reid, Pitchman Who Led DNA and OWOW Recruits To Disaster, Described As ‘Absolute Legend’ In Text Cash Network’s 90-Day Anniversary Call; Like DNA, TCN Claims Florida ‘Processing Center’ And ‘Tax Benefits’
The pitchman hosting a 90-day anniversary call yesterday for Text Cash Network introduced fellow TCN pitchman Joe Reid as an “absolute legend.”

“In this industry, folks, facts tell, and stories sell,” a pitchman identified as “Eddie” said in remarks introducing Reid.

“This gentleman is a legend — an absolute legend in the industry,” Eddie said. “This gentleman makes money. This gentleman makes BIG money. He’s made millions and millions of dollars over the years in the network-marketing industry . . .”

But “Eddie” said nothing about Reid’s involvement in Data Network Affiliates (DNA) and One World One Website (OWOW), bizarre and crashed opportunities linked to Reid business associate and fellow MLM huckster Phil Piccolo amid claims that affiliates were not getting paid. Piccolo also has been linked to TCN.

Among other things, DNA claimed it could help the AMBER Alert program rescue abducted children, later claiming it offered a “free” cell phone with “unlimited” talk and text for $10 a month.

DNA appears to have assisted in the rescue of no children, but it did complain that the AMBER Alert program had a bloated budget. It later removed its cell-phone offer, claiming it had been duped into making the offer by a huckster. OWOW, for its part, claimed it had products that cured or treated cancer — while also claiming a “magnetic” product helped prevent leg amputations and helped produce tomatoes that would grow to twice their ordinary size — all while assisting dairy herds in producing more milk. (Use the search button in the upper-right corner of the PP Blog for more info on DNA and OWOW and their series of ambiguous and confounding offers.)

As he is doing now for TCN, Reid led cheers in videos or conference calls for DNA and OWOW. (TCN is using the same conference-call software as DNA.) While researching an offer by OWOW, the PP Blog was advised by the Des Moines Police Department (Iowa) that certain addresses that appeared in online promos for OWOW were nonexistent. Lower in this story, you’ll find a reference to something the Boca Raton Police Department reported after the PP Blog asked it to visit a local building.)

An Emerging Bromide

Despite “Eddie’s” assertion that “facts tell,” he provided no substantiation of his claims about Reid and offered no information on Reid’s DNA/OWOW ties, apparently preferring instead to focus on the “stories sell” part of his emerging bromide.

Reid’s story yesterday offered platitudes that “exciting things are happening” at TCN, with Reid adding that the purported text-advertising firm had “tremendous leaders” who’d created “great excitement.”

Reid, whose TCN cheerleading appeared to be somewhat subdued during the call, then passed the call back to Eddie.

Without providing any factual foundation and again apparently defaulting to the “stories sell” part of his bromide, Eddie again assured listeners that Reid was a “legend.” He added that TCN had set all of the following records:
- Fastest to 10,000 members.
- Fastest to 20,000 members.
- Fastest to 50,000 members..
- Fastest to 100,000 members.
- Fastest to 200,000 members.
“And most recently, folks, we were the fastest company to 300,000 members — in under 90 days.”

Participants who weren’t excited about those numbers need to check their “pulse,” Eddie ventured, predicting later that there would be “seven-” and “six”-figure earners.

Like DNA and OWOW, strange events and incongruities have marked TCN’s existence.

The TCN Photo Mystery

Despite oddities such as the existence of a promotional photo that shows TCN’s name affixed to a glistening office building in Boca Raton and a public statement by the Boca Raton Police Department that the name is not affixed to the building, Eddie asserted that TCN is a company that “makes sense.”

TCN Tax Claims — After Similar DNA Claims

TCN also may be playing with fire by wooing recruits with claims about the purported tax advantages of joining.

Eddie asserted in the 90-day anniversary call that joining TCN for the “tax benefits” was a good idea. (DNA made similar claims, and Piccolo was a member of a company in California that paid $1 million, in part to settle pyramid claims and claims that recruits were being lured by advertised “tax write-offs.”)

“What about the tax benefits that you receive from owing a home-based business?” Eddie asked yesterday’s conference-call listeners. “You can literally bring home 3, 4, maybe $5,000 — up to $7,000 a year in tax benefits. So many people are completely unaware that, just by being a part of a home-based business, they can save thousands of dollars every year by being a part of a home-based business.

“Guess what? Join us with Text Cash Network and start saving today . . .” Eddie instructed while focusing on the purported tax advantages.

Screen shot: Like DNA, TCN puports to operate a "processing center" in Boca Raton.

Another oddity associated with TCN and DNA is that both firms

Screen shot: Like TCN, DNA purports to operate a "processing center" in Boca Raton.

claimed to operate “processing centers” in South Florida, but the addresses appear to be rental services.

Meanwhile, both TCN and DNA have OWOW — another Piccolo-associated entity — in common somewhere in the food chain.

The earliest promos (early November 2011) for TCN appeared on OWOW’s website.

Like DNA, OWOW appears to be a defunct corporation that continues to produce a website that sometimes goes missing and sometimes is rerouted to other sites.

The management structure of TCN, DNA and OWOW also has been murky, with all three firms claiming to be operated by top professionals while simultaneously publishing ambiguous information. Some TCN promoters, for instance, have claimed TCN is owned by “The Johnson Group.”

Promos that originated through OWOW, however, added an ampersand and extra proper noun, declaring that TCN was owned by the “Johnson & Johnson Group.”

Affiliates of TCN, DNA and OWOW have complained publicly about not getting paid. All three firms have explained away those concerns in largely the same fashion: that payments have come or will come once a series of launches and prelaunches and website adjustments are completed.

Each of the schemes spread in part through social-media sites such as YouTube and Facebook.

One poster on a Facebook TCN site dubbed the “Text Cash Network- Official Group Page” complained today that “power line stats” are not working.

“It stopped on the 12/28/2011,” the poster claimed.

On another Facebook site — one dubbed simply “Text Cash Network” — a poster spammed an offer for JSS Tripler. Promoters of JSS Tripler are under investigation by CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator.

See our TCN archive.
Feb 2, 2012
In Wake Of CONSOB Action, Affiliate ‘Press Release’ Calls JSS Tripler Members ‘Investors’ EIGHT Times And Suggests U.S. Government Approves Purported ‘Program’ That Advertises Return Rate That Dwarfs Madoff

You can’t make this stuff up . . .

A week after CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, announced it was opening a probe into the activities of JSS Tripler promoters amid claims the absurd “program” advertised returns that would make Bernard Madoff blush, a new “press release” ignores the CONSOB development, calls participants “investors” (eight times) and suggests the U.S. government has approved the JSS Tripler “program.”

The issues in the Italian probe are whether JSS Tripler and promoters are selling unregistered securities as investment contracts unlawfully as part of a multilevel online scheme that offers preposterous returns that compute to an annualized rate of 730 percent — with compounding “bonuses” and two-tier downline commissions totaling 15 percent on top of the advertised returns.

Madoff, jailed for 150 years in the aftermath of the collapse of his massive Ponzi scheme, generally offered annualized returns between 48 and 73 times lower than the advertised JSS Tripler returns.

Dated today, the “press release” appears to have been issued by a JSS Tripler affiliate and is available through Google News. The release does not mention the week-old CONSOB probe. Nor does it identify either the affiliate or the purported company as individuals or entities authorized in any jurisdiction to sell securities.

Moreover, the release does not seek to qualify customers in any way. The only apparent customer qualification is access to a bank or payment account to send money to JSS Tripler and wait for ludicrous profits in return.

A Patent Absurdity

“Thousands of high return programs on the internet have been created for people who want to work from home,” the release begins. “However, the majority of these fast money work home (sic) programs are not sustainable. Frederick Mann solved this problem with his recently US patented system JustBeenPaid! and its subprogram JSS Tripler.”

“JustBeenPaid” (JBP), an exceptionally murky entity, is the purported operator of JSS Tripler. Frederick Mann, JBP’s purported operator, once advertised that he was a promoter for AdSurfDaily, which the U.S. Secret Service has described as an online Ponzi scheme involving at least $110 million.

JBP itself is advertising a U.S. patent, a specious and hollow claim. Regardless of whether a patent exists as part of JBP’s purported software platform, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office does not regulate securities markets or approve the issuance of securities.

Those responsibilities rest with the world’s securities-regulatory bodies, including — for just two examples — CONSOB in Italy and the SEC in the United States. Virtually all developed countries have such regulatory bodies. In the United States and Canada, individual states and provinces also have regulatory responsibility over securities.

Scams routinely make specious claims and divine a connection to government as a means of disarming doubting prospects. The relatively new “patent” claim in the context of JSS Tripler, however, could be a sign that the “program” is becoming increasingly desperate to raise cash and has dialed up its deception to achieve that end.

The nationality of the press-release author was not immediately clear. But he is using a Google Gmail address and appears also to be presenting the release in U.S. English, based on the spelling of the word “program” (as opposed to the chiefly British “programme”) and certain elements of punctuation associated with U.S. English.

The release, which is accessible from the United States, has five embedded JustBeenPaid affiliate links, each of which rotates to a pitch page with a signup prompt page that asks investors to register using a Gmail address.

Among the incongruities about JBP/JSS Tripler is that the purported opportunity continued to solicit customers to register with Gmail addresses — even after Google-owned YouTube deleted promos for the “opportunity” last year.

One promoter on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum asserted that he could overcome the deletions because he exercised control over hundreds of YouTube accounts.

“No sweat, I own over 500 Youtube accounts, so I’ll just keep making videos like normal, plus I can always use Viddler and Windows movie maker and facebook video as well,” MoneyMakerGroup poster “gtprosperity” claimed.

Apparently oblivious to the CONSOB probe, the serious concerns about the unlawful sale of securities and the bizarre JBP/JSS Tripler developments over many months, the author of the news release asserts that the “program currently has over 125,000 members, and over 2,000 new investors join each day.

“Investors can earn a 2 percent daily, with over 60 percent earned in a month,” the release claims. “Investors earn 2 percent daily on each position they purchase. New positions can be bought with money or earnings. Daily earnings can also be cashed out by sending them to one’s JSS account for withdrawal. Withdrawals take 24 hours to process.”

“Work Home Fast Money Making System To Earn Extra Income Recently US Patented,” the release headline reads.

A JPB/JSS Tripler claimed on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum yesterday that he planned to buy a “motor home” with his profits and travel the United States.

Among the potential problems with the claim is that it likely demonstrates that JBP/JSS Tripler is selling unregistered securities as investment contacts to U.S. citizens — even as it is doing the same thing in Italy and other countries.

Jan 30, 2012
UPDATE: JSS Tripler Promoters On Ponzi Boards Scoff At CONSOB Action, React By Making ‘I Got Paid’ Posts; Like AdSurfDaily, Purported ‘Opportunity’ Calls Payouts ‘Rebates’ And Employs Confluence Of Payment Schemes

“I dont care what the CONSOB or whatever says because I am not an Italian.” — TalkGold poster known as “WallStreetIsAPonzi,” Jan. 28, 2012

Even as CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, is publishing an announcement on its website that promoters of a bizarre HYIP known as JSS Tripler are under investigation amid preposterous claims that investors receive an annualized return of 730 percent, promoters on Ponzi forums such as MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold are thumbing their noses at the news.

JSS Tripler is an arm of “program” known as “JustBeenPaid” (JBP). Whether JBP plans to assist any of the companies or individuals identified in the CONSOB announcement in navigating the regulatory waters and preparing a defense in the weeks ahead is unclear.

What is clear is that some JBP promoters are reacting to the news by posting fresh “I got paid” posts on the Ponzi boards, even as JBP continues to use its website to advertise returns of “2%+ per Day” and “60% per Month!”

Visitors are advised they can “Increase Earnings with Daily Compounding” and glean affiliate “bonuses” totaling 15 percent over two tiers — on top of the annualized returns of 730 percent.

In the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case in 2008, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer described “a confluence [of ASD] payment schemes” very similar to the payment schemes purportedly in place at JBP. JBP, though, is advertising a return rate double that of ASD, whose operator, Andy Bowdoin, later was arrested on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.

Bowdoin faces up to 125 years in federal prison and fines in the millions of dollars, if convicted on all counts.

In her 2008 ruling in the ASD case in which she refused to release money seized by the U.S. Secret Service as part of an international Ponzi probe, Collyer noted that ASD called its payouts to members “rebates.”

Separately, documents from Canadian investigators show that the word “rebates” was used in international scams, including Flat Electronic Data Interchange (FEDI) and the mysterious “Alpha Project.” At least one FEDI promoter is jailed in the United States, as is FEDI operator Abdul Tawala Ibn Ali Alishtari, also known as “Michael Mixon,” who was convicted on charges of operating an investment-fraud scheme and financing terror.

At MoneyMakerGroup yesterday — on the heels of the CONSOB news — a poster published seven purportedly recent payment proofs from JSS Tripler. Each of them used the word “rebate,” demonstrating that the purported opportunity also is using the same language as ASD and FEDI to describe payouts to members.

The MoneyMakerGroup member said he planned to buy a “motor home” and “start traveling the US” with his JSS Tripler money.

In the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case, several automobiles were seized as the alleged proceeds of a criminal scheme. A boat and marine equipment also were seized, along with computers and real estate valued at more than $1 million. All in all, the cash seizures to date in the ASD case total more than $80 million, including cash seized from individual promoters in at least four U.S. states.

U.S. federal prosecutors say that ASD in part tried to mask its $110 million Ponzi scheme by calling its payments to members "rebates." JSS Tripler, an arm of a "program" known as "JustBeenPaid," also refers to its payouts to members as a "rebate," according to this post yesterday at the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum.

Although Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JBP/JSS Tripler, is described by supporters as a business genius and creator of a “masterpiece,” the program is using the same sort of language and bizarre presentations that drew the attention of law enforcement in the ASD and FEDI cases.

Elsewhere on MoneyMakerGroup, a member described the CONSOB development as “NONSENSE!”

Another member observed yesterday that JBP payouts came from an email address on a domain styled BigBooster.com. Why the payouts are associated with the BigBooster domain is unclear, but the BigBooster domain previously has been linked to the alleged ASD Ponzi scheme and Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JBP/JSS Tripler.

Separately, the TalkGold forum deleted a link to a PP Blog report on the CONSOB action. In the ASD case, a forum known as “Surf’s Up” routinely deleted links to the PP Blog. ASD members who relied on the Blog for information were described on the forum as troublemakers, and posters willing to consider the government’s point of view were described as “rats,” “maggots” and “cockroaches.”

ASD figure and purported “sovereign citizen” Kenneth Wayne Leaming was arrested by the FBI in November 2011 on charges of filing bogus liens against at least five public officials involved in the ASD case, including a federal judge, three federal prosecutors and an active-duty agent of the U.S. Secret Service who did some of the early legwork in the case.

The Secret Service employed undercover operatives in bringing the ASD prosecution.

One MoneyMakerGroup poster yesterday suggested that the CONSOB action was “crap” and claimed outright that JSS Tripler had “paid out over 10 million bucks.”

Whether the poster ever had seen the verified, audited books of JBP/JSS Tripler and other financial records such as bank and payment-processor statements to substantiate his claim is unclear. But even if the $10 million claim is true, the claimed sum was not broken down by recipient — and online scams are infamous for siphoning cash and concentrating it in the pockets of program sponsors and insiders.

Promoters of fraud schemes often pass along company lies and deceptions to recruits and prospects, a situation that U.S. government agencies, including the Secret Service, the SEC and the CFTC, have noted in prosecutions involving individual, commission-based promoters.

The same MoneyMakerGroup promoter also ventured the CONSOB action came because “governments are not getting a cut of this revenue,” further asserting that “the only reason they are starting to do probes and crap (sic) not because they care about protecting you from loosing (sic) your money.”

ASD members made similar claims. Like JBP/JSS Tripler, ASD also was promoted on the Ponzi boards — as were at least three purported ASD clones, all of which have ceased to operate. The cost to investors is unknown.

Like ASD, JSS Tripler also appears to have a clone — one that actually uses JSS Tripler’s name to form its own name. That “program,” known as JSS Triper 2 or T2, appears now to be changing its name to T2MoneyKlub. Regardless of the name, T2 also was hawked on the Ponzi boards and appears even to have given birth to itself on a Ponzi board as a result of a dispute with JBP/JSS Tripler.

Federal prosecutors said ASD also changed its name, morphing from just plain AdSurfDaily into ASD Cash Generator. Court records suggest that changing names was part of ASD’s criminal plan and that the change occurred after the initial ASD Ponzi collapsed and after certain payment conduits began to come under government scrutiny.

Among the MoneyMakerGroup posters who published “I got paid” posts for JBP/JSS Tripler yesterday was “10BucksUp” — his second such post since the CONSOB action became public.

“10BuckUp” previously pushed Club Asteria, anotherPonzi-forum darling that came under CONSOB scrutiny. In addition to displaying no apparent respect for CONSOB, “10BucksUp” let it be known in September 2011 that he also was a pitchman for Cherry Shares, a collapsed program referenced in June by Canadian regulators.

Cherry Shares also was a Ponzi-forum darling.

Whether “10BucksUp” and other JBP/JSS Tripler promoters planned to tell their existing recruits and prospects about the fact CONSOB is targeting individual promoters in a 90-day suspension order related to the purported JBP/JSS Tripler program is unclear.

Also unclear is whether JBP/JSS Tripler will inform existing participants and prospects about the CONSOB action.

Members of any “opportunity” that purports to pay an absurd return always are at great risk. The risk becomes even greater if they are denied information about investigations. Promoters who do not disclose the presence of an investigation or simply rely on the company line (or lack thereof) potentially are at greater risk of prosecution as individual promoters.

In the ASD case, for instance, federal prosecutors said the company was collecting money from new members and funneling it to original members affected by ASD’s first collapsed Ponzi — without informing new enlistees and prospects that their money was being used to prop up losers from the initial scheme and to help the second Ponzi gain a head of steam.

The personal assets of a number of individual ASD promoters were targeted in forfeiture actions or affidavits, with the government seizing sums in several bank accounts in multiple U.S. states. These sums totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to court records.

Jan 29, 2012
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: JSS Tripler Promoters Targeted By Italian Regulator CONSOB In Securities Probe

URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: Your time soon may be up if you’re flogging the absurd HYIP known as JSS Tripler.

CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, has opened a probe into the activities of multiple promoters amid concerns the purported “program” is being offered to Italian citizens unlawfully as a security. JSS Tripler is an arm of “JustBeenPaid,” a Ponzi-forum darling that has been serving up a heavy dose of the bizarre for months.

The agency has issued a 90-day suspension order.

Details of the CONSOB probe and the precise number of investigative targets were not immediately clear to the PP Blog, owing to the lack of a quality Italian-to-English translation. But the websites of multiple entities or individuals who appear to be JSS Tripler affiliates are referenced by CONSOB in a 90-day order dated Jan. 20 and made public Jan. 23.

JSS Tripler’s name also is referenced in the order.

If a JSS Tripler-related domain cited in the translation is accurate, the domain appears to be hosted in the United States.

Among the bizarre claims associated with JSS Tripler promoters were that the company was moving to “offshore” servers and performing a restart.

Affiliates were required to affirm they were not government spies or media lackeys.

JustBeenPaid is known to have promoters in common with ClubAsteria, a “program” that came under CONSOB’s lens last year. The purported opportunity also is known to have promoters in common with the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme.

Some JSS Tripler affiliates identify Frederick Mann as the honcho-in-chief. In May 2008, Mann positioned ASD as a “cash cow,” claiming he pocketed $6,000, according to records. Last year, the purported JustBeenPaid “opportunity” was trading on celebrity names such as Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey — and even fictional space man “Mr. Spock.”

Here is the CONSOB announcement — via an English translation by Google Translate.

Another “program” apparently named “System Explosion” also is referenced in the CONSOB suspension order. The domain for that program, which appears to be an HYIP or arbitrage program of some sort, also appears to be hosted in the United States.

Among the payment processors listed on the JSS Tripler-related domain and the System Explosion domain are AlertPay, SolidTrustPay and LibertyReserve.

An ad for JustBeenPaid appears on the SystemExplosion domain. When clicked, it appears to route to a subdomain of the JustBeenPaid domain, which beams this bizarre and vacuous message:

“JustBeenPaid! (JBP) and Its (sic) related programs are Licenced (sic) under United States Patent 6,578,010.”

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, however, is not the agency that regulates securities programs and purported business opportunities, even if JustBeenPaid could demonstrate that some sort of patent exists. As a practical matter, it is virtually impossible to conceive that market regulators in any country could be thwarted from opening probes based on claims that a system was patented.

If anything, such a claim in the context of programs that purport to pay a return may only intensify regulatory scrutiny. CONSOB, for instance, referenced JSS Tripler’s purported returns of 2 percent a day.

JSS Tripler is not to be confused with JSS Tripler 2 (T2), an equally bizarre “program” that appears to be a knockoff on the name of JustBeenPaid’s JSS Tripler arm. T2 also uses AlertPay.

Like JSS Tripler, T2 also was promoted on Ponzi forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup.

Jan 27, 2012
T2’s ‘Dave’ Suggests Police Stood ‘Idly By’ As Trouble Engulfed His ‘Program’ That Advertises Daily Return Of 2 Percent; MoneyMakerGroup Suspends T2 Naysayers After Poster Claims Mod Pitched Dozens Of ‘Programs’ Now In Scams Folder

EDITOR’S NOTE: Our first reference to JSS Tripler 2 (T2), which is trading on the name of an obvious fraud scheme known as JSS Tripler, is here. JSS Tripler is part of a larger fraud scheme known as JustBeenPaid, which was pushed by members of the alleged AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme and any number of Ponzi-forum scammers. ASD President Andy Bowdoin was indicted 13 months ago for wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities. He faces a maximum term of 125 years in federal prison, if convicted on all counts of a seven-count indictment.

We published a T2 follow-up here, and an update to the follow-up here. We also published a story on a decision last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit that upheld the 27-year prison sentence of Tennessee-based Ponzi schemer Dennis Bolze, whose operation recruited senior citizens and resulted in a two-level “vulnerable victim” sentencing enhancement for Bolze.

Online Ponzi purveyors and forum fraudsters may be particularly susceptible to the vulnerable-victim enhancement. Indeed, their “programs” cast with a wide net, gain a head of steam through willful blindness and practiced, serial disingenuousness on Ponzi boards and within the purveyor and promotional ranks — and often mushroom to involve thousands of participants, thus increasing the odds they’ll recruit vulnerable members of society into their schemes . . .

“Dave,” the purported operator of an increasingly bizarre HYIP that advertises a daily payout rate that projects to an annualized return of 730 percent, appears now to be blaming an unidentified law-enforcement agency for standing “idly by” as trouble engulfed his “program” after a onetime business partner’s AlertPay account was frozen.

Oddly, though, “Dave” now appears to be grateful his business partner was not arrested on “Dave’s” word, asserting that the partner “is working with us to put this situation back on track.”

At the same time, “Dave” asserts T2 is implementing a restructuring plan amid reality-bending claims it is “NOT in a weak position” despite a “month of no withdrawals” caused by “Chris,” the onetime business partner whose AlertPay account apparently was used to gather funds for T2 and now cannot be accessed.

T2 members have been left in the lurch for weeks.

The T2 “program” purportedly will restart on Feb. 1 with a new “algorithm” and a new name: T2MoneyKlub. The name change, according to a T2 members’ update, will occur because the program “no longer wish[ed] to be confused with Justbeenpaid.com.”

Claims about “algorithms” and other mathematical magic frequently accompany fraud schemes. So do name changes at mid-stream. AdSurfDaily, for example, allegedly changed its name to ASD Cash Generator after a Ponzi collapse and did not inform incoming members that their funds were being used to pay back investors scammed when the original iteration collapsed.

Ponzi collapses can be brought on by theft, account closures or seizures by banks and payment processors or by actions by law-enforcement to freeze accounts to stop a scheme from mushrooming. Details surrounding AlertPay’s apparent decision to freeze the account of “Chris” are unclear.

“Dave’s” move to change the program’s name is in stark contrast to earlier, mind-bending claims that trading on the name of JustBeenPaid’s JSS Tripler arm somehow was appropriate. The T2MoneyKlub domain was registered Jan. 12 — as T2 members were publicly fretting about not getting paid. The new domain is being powered by servers that use JSS Tripler 2’s name, according to records.

Existing T2 Members May Face New Risk

Even now, according to “Dave’s” members’ update, the program is taking advantage of an “SEO” strategy to expand its audience. If true, the program could be expanding its own risk of attracting vulnerable investors.

“We will be setting up a quantity of forums and blogs, and each one will need to receive page views from the members, also there will be blog commenting tasks and forum posting tasks,” “Dave” asserts.

“This is to build up a high alexa rank with a massive amount of original content and high pageview count which sets a great foundation for SEO and advertising revenue etc,” he continues in the members’ update. “We will give attention to each website for approx one month for forums and 2 weeks per blog.”

Separately posting on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum as “Peakr8,” “Dave” painted himself a man of considerable business experience who’d been condemned unduly by the media and left twisting in the wind by an unidentified “police” agency.

‘Police Standing Idly By’

“Yes we have had a few problems both technical and the [AlertPay] problem,” “Dave” conceded as “Peakr8” in a post yesterday on MoneyMakerGroup. “[T]his is not unlike any business offline or online, apart from it’s like trying to run your business with a mob walking up and down outside your business premises waving banners screaming ‘scam, scam, scam’ and also the newspapers saying you are a liar and a cheat with absolutely no evidence to back up their claims… when you have done nothing wrong and the police standing idly by saying that they are allowed to do it.”

“Dave” has not identified the police agency to which he allegedly complained about “Chris” and apparently now is complaining about. He earlier asserted that his complaint would result in the arrest of “Chris.”

“Dave’s” public complaint on MoneyMakerGroup followed on the heels of his apparent decision to block the public from the T2 forum and a separate claim by “Dave” that he would “viciously” oppose a T2 member who declared the program a “SCAM,” encouraged fellow members to file an AlertPay dispute and said he’d try to get his money back from SolidTrustPay, another payment processor used by T2.

Whether the member “Dave” claimed he’d oppose “viciously” for trying to get back his money and complaining about the program planned to file a consumer complaint with any of the world’s law-enforcement agencies is unclear.

What is clear is that it is common for fraud purveyors and their forum shills to discourage members from filing payment disputes amid claims that such complaints harm a “program” and its members.

MoneyMakerGroup Doles Out Suspensions To Naysayers

Separately, MoneyMakerGroup announced it had suspended some members who’d raised questions about T2. Those suspensions were attributed to “mmgcjm,” a “Global Moderator.”

“Dave,” who purports to be posting from Thailand after jetting from England several days ago while T2 members were clamoring for their cash, appears to have approved of the suspensions.

“Isn’t it nice here[?],” he crowed. “Should have been done months ago and they also ought to get a life ban for their dreadful behaviour.”

T2 sells “dream positions” and “dream matrices” amid claims that even “passive” members can earn returns of 2 percent a day over the course of 75 days. The “program” has asserted it has “multiple income streams,” and “Dave” has preemptively denied T2 was operating a cross-border Ponzi scheme. T2 says its has 8,838 members, a claim that leads to troubling questions about whether vulnerable victims were reeled in by T2’s wide net on the web.

“Chris,” a onetime business partner of “Dave,” is responsible for the “program’s” troubles, according to “Dave,” who earlier asserted that “Chris” would be arrested.

If a police investigation actually ensues, it almost certainly would lead to questions about the extent of T2’s purported income streams, whether those purported ventures were profitable enough to sustain themselves — let alone T2’s (precompunding) annualized return of 730 percent on top of referral commissions — and whether Dave’s public pleas for members not to file AlertPay disputes were designed to keep a Ponzi scheme intact.

Another possible area of inquiry is whether “Dave” — who appears to have closed the T2 forum to public viewing even as he suggests on MoneyMakerGroup that people who file disputes with SolidTrustPay will be opposed “viciously” — is trying to chill his own members.

The MoneyMakerGroup suspensions of T2 doubters attributed to “mmgcjm” appear to involve at least three members and were carried out after a poster asserted that “[a]lmost 3 dozen opportunities” that mmgcjm “promoted as being “good”, “Great”, “Fantastic” and so on in 2011″ are now in the SCAM/CLOSED folder.”

“mmgcjm” justified the suspensions by asserting that, under the guidelines of the MoneyMakerGroup forum, “programs” in the folder were not necessarily scams.

As an advertisment on the right side of the T2 thread at MoneyMakerGroup lured readers with a suggestion that another program known as “Moon Fund” paid 8,850 percent “After 24 Hours,” “mmgcjm” claimed that the T2 critic was posting “false information.”

The suspensions followed a short time later, with a prompt from “mmgcjm” for the T2 naysayers to “Enjoy your vacations!”

Jan 15, 2012
MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi Forum ‘Temporarily’ Closes ‘JustBeenPaid’ Thread After Bickering Between Former Club Asteria Pitchman And Pitchman For ‘New’ Program Trading On JustBeenPaid’s Name

We’ve mentioned it before — and we’ll mention it again. In July 2010, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) described the HYIP sphere as a “bizarre substratum of the Internet.”

It was as good a description as any, and here is yet another case in point:

The MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum said today that it “temporarily” closed its thread for the “JustBeenPaid” Ponzi scheme owing to bickering between “10BucksUp” and “lolalola.” JustBeenPaid, which is trading on the names of Warren Buffett and Oprah Winfrey, makes users affirm they are not government spies and purportedly began a transition in August to “offshore” servers. Members have been grumbling for weeks.

“10BucksUp” rose to Ponzi forum prominence earlier this year through his efforts to promote the Club Asteria HYIP, which is trading on the names of the World Bank and the American Red Cross. “10BucksUp” also promoted the JustBeenPaid HYIP while discouraging members from filing chargebacks with AlertPay for the good of all JustBeenPaid investors.

“lolalola” now is hawking something called JSSTRIPLER2 or T2, which apparently is trading on the name of JustBeenPaid’s purported JSS Tripler arm.

Although “10BucksUp” insists the purported new program is merely a “copycat” of the JustBeenPaid program, “lolalola” claims that, “[F]rom what I understand from the Admin is they did not trademark the brand or do they hold a copyright on the name… so he is free to use it.”

In essence, two fraud programs now appear to be trading on the same name — but both “10BucksUp” and “lolalola” appear to be more concerned about clashing with each other than whether the schemes have (or are) stealing cash on a grand scale.

Or something like that . . .

“lolalola” is simultaneously promoting something called Zeek Rewards.

“10BucksUp” recently has promoted Club Asteria, JustBeenPaid, Ad2Million and Cherry Shares. All of the programs are in a state of decay or outright disappearance. Cherry Shares is cited in litigation in Canada, and Club Asteria is cited in litigation in Italy.

MoneyMakerGroup is listed in U.S. federal court filings as a place from which Ponzi schemes are promoted. So is TalkGold, another Ponzi forum.

Oct 31, 2011
UPDATE: YouTube Is Removing Videos For ‘JustBeenPaid,’ Program Hawked By Serial Hucksters; MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi Forum Poster Suggests His Hundreds Of YouTube Accounts Will Enable Him To Circumvent Video Removals

YouTube is removing videos for JustBeenPaid, a “program’ linked to Frederick Mann and popularized by scammers on Ponzi boards such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup.

JustBeenPaid promos feature claims of remarkable returns.

The removed videos carry messages such as “This video has been removed as a violation of YouTube’s policy against spam, scams, and commercially deceptive content” and “This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.” Some JustBeenPaid videos remain on the popular video site. It was unclear if YouTube plans to remove all of them.

JustBeenPaid appears to feed itself through a “program” called JSS Tripler and also appears to be tied to something called Synergy Surf. The program, which is foundering, became a Ponzi darling in the days after Club Asteria slashed payouts and then suspended them altogether earlier this year.

Ponzi forum posts identity Mann as the JustBeenPaid braintrust.

There is a claim today on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi cesspit that JustBeenPaid members were provided the likenesses of celebrities to promote the “program.”

Just last month, an image of actor Will Smith was featured in a Club Asteria promo. The image was removed after the PP Blog contacted Smith’s publicist. It is common for fraud schemes to trade on the names of celebrities and to plant the seed that celebrities endorse a specific program when no such endorsement exists.

One apparent Just Been Paid fan on MoneyMaker Group suggested his control over hundreds of YouTube accounts would enable him to circumvent any ban YouTube enacts against Just Been Paid.

“No sweat, I own over 500 Youtube accounts, so I’ll just keep making videos like normal, plus I can always use Viddler and Windows movie maker and facebook video as well,” MoneyMakerGroup poster “gtprosperity” claimed.

Oct 11, 2011
Club Asteria Members Posting On Ponzi Boards Turn Their Attention To ‘JSS Tripler’ Amid Claims Daily Payout Of 2 Percent ‘Indefinitely Sustainable’; ‘Bizarre Substatum’ Gets Crazier Yet
From a YouTube promo for JSS Tripler.

We’ve previously noted that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has described the HYIP sphere as a “bizarre substratum of the Internet.”

That substratum now is getting crazier yet.

Three weeks ago, Club Asteria was a great darling of the Ponzi boards. But weekly payout rates that purportedly have been slashed — coupled with a purported freeze of Club Asteria’s PayPal account — appear to have put the “program” in a death spiral.

Club Asteria stopped short of announcing it had placed a call to the coroner, but did announce a “downward spiral,” according to a post on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi scheme and criminals’ forum.

Not to worry, though: Some Club Asteria promoters on the Ponzi forums have turned their attentions to JSS Tripler, whose site appears to be accessible through multiple domains, including a site known as JustBeenPaid (JBP).

JBP appears to be tied to something called Synergy Surf, which appears to be another darling of the Ponzi boards.

“I buyed (sic) new 8 positions for that,” a MoneyMakerGroup poster announced.

JPB encouraged enrollees to “[s]et up your AlertPay account and fund it, or link your credit card to it,” according to web records.

These instructions also were provided.
- Upgrade in JBP by making your $10 or $20 payments.
- Enter your AlertPay email address in the JBP Member Area.
- Buy and/or sponsor downline members.
- Study and apply ‘Upgrade Your Brain’ and the ‘Big Success Breakthrough’ — see ‘Access Our Products’ in your JBP member area.
- Make JBP’s Synergy Surf (JSS) your primary moneymaker.
In the spring of 2009 — as the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf was in its death throes before a fatal gurgle — the AVG braintrust pointed the finger of blame at the membership.

Other surfs that launched in the aftermath of the seizure of tens of millions of dollars from Florida-based AdSurfDaily did the same thing. These included AdGateWorld, which once referenced ASD in what appeared to be a copy-and-paste lift from ASD’s Terms of Service, and BizAdSplash, whose purported “chief consultant” was ASD/Golden Panda Ad Builder figure Clarence Busby.

Fast forward two years, and Club Asteria, which lists Andrea Lucas as managing director, appears to be doing the same thing — along with serving up some Busby-like syrup for the soul:

“Greed is a very powerful motivation, but the kindness, generosity and goodness in all of us all are even more powerful,” Club Asteria is reported on MoneyMakerGroup to have intoned.

“The challenges that we are facing recently have been caused by a small percentage of our members misusing their membership privileges,” Club Asteria is reported to have told members. “As any good company would have done to protect their members and future members, we had to reinforce our Code of Ethics and Conduct, to ensure that our message of a better life for all of us is presented honestly and accurately.

“We are working very hard to make sure that any benefit from Club Asteria and all of our products and services are accurately represented. Any company, no matter how good their products and services are, can be destroyed with misleading information, bad publicity, false rumors and inactivity of their members/customers.”

Two years ago, AVG’s death spiral began as the ASD grand jury was meeting in the District of Columbia. The surf first slashed payouts — something Club Asteria reportedly is doing right now — and then eliminated them altogether, while at once announcing an 80/20 program would become mandatory after AVG completed an audit of itself.

One of the issues complicating matters for AVG was the purported misuse of a member-to-member cash button. Club Asteria members also purportedly misused a money-transfer facility.

“Bizarre substratum of the Internet” just about covers it — except for the heartache and myriad nightmares created by the various HYIP darlings, of course.

Thinking Outside The Box

Our friends at RealScam.com report another nightmare in the making. It’s bizarrely called Insectrio — and it bizarrely has an “Egg” plan purported to pay 103 percent after one day, a “Larva” plan purported to pay 120 percent after five days and other plans advertised to pay even more.

The sales pitch for Insectrio, apparently an emerging HYIP, touts MoneyMakerGroup, TalkGold and DreamTeamMoney.

Given JBP’s prompt for enrollees to “upgrade” their brains — which we view as a prompt to think outside the box — the PP Blog concludes this post by providing readers an outside-the-box way to look at the Insectrio offer:

InSECtrio.

Indeed, the three letters centering the HYIP’s name are real attention-getters.
May 27, 2011
Post On Infamous Ponzi Forum Claims PayPal Has Frozen Club Asteria Funds; Virginia-Based Firm Reportedly Slashes Weekly ‘Earnings’ Payout And Arbitrarily Withholds Payments To Members
UPDATED 9:37 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) A post on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi scheme and criminals’ forum claims that PayPal has frozen funds of Club Asteria (CA), a Virginia-based firm that trades on the name of the World Bank and does not publish verifiable financial data.

There was no independent confirmation of the claim on CA’s landing page or the news section of its website this morning, which leads to questions about whether prospects contemplating joining the “opportunity” know about the purported PayPal development and its negative effect on CA’s operations.

Whether CA’s current members have been instructed by the company to let prospects know about the purported PayPal development is unclear. If the PayPal news is true, prospects denied access to it at sign-up could create problems for the company and its promoters, potentially setting the stage for a flood of refund requests.

Under PayPal’s user agreement, the company reserves the right to hold funds and limit account access for up to 180 days if it detects unusual or fraudulent activity. CA, according to the MoneyMakerGroup post, now is urging members to use offshore processors.

CA, according to the MoneyMakerGroup post, said it had done nothing wrong — but pointed the finger of blame for the purported freeze at certain members who allegedly had “fraudulently misused their Club Asteria membership and PayPal accounts.”

MoneyMakerGroup member “10BucksUp,” who is promoting CA alongside “programs” known as JSS Tripler and Ad2Million amid claims that JSS and Ad2Million pay 60 percent a month, attributed the news of the PayPal freeze to Andrea Lucas, CA’s managing director.

“Last week PayPal has discontinued their services to our members due to no fault of Club Asteria,” the remarks attributed to Lucas read.

“Unfortunately their immediate action was to discontinue our services without further consideration and freeze all of the funds that our members had paid to Club Asteria via PayPal,” the remarks attributed to Lucas read.

The MoneyMakerGroup post suggests that CA withheld the PayPal news from members for a week while apparently still collecting fees from existing and incoming members through offshore processors such as AlertPay, CashX and Towah. The amount purportedly frozen by PayPal was not specified.

Regardless, the purported PayPal freeze “occurred when approximately 50 members fraudulently misused their Club Asteria membership and PayPal accounts and we asked PayPal for assistance in dealing with this issue,” the remarks attributed to Lucas read. “PayPal’s response to our request for help was to discontinue their service to us.”

When the ASAMonitor Ponzi scheme and criminals’ forum mysteriously shut down last fall, its website initially was set to redirect to CashX. Like the MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold forums, ASA Monitor also is referenced in federal court filings as a place from which Ponzi schemes are promoted.

The current CA thread on MoneyMakerGroup consists of 200 pages; the current CA thread on TalkGold has 120 pages. The degree to which CA is being promoted on known Ponzi and huckster forums leads to questions about whether its revenue stream is polluted by fraud proceeds.

Whether CA reported the purported PayPal hijinks of its members to law enforcement was unclear. Also unclear was how CA apparently had arrived at the conclusion that “approximately 50” of its members had engaged in fraud.

What is clear, according to forum posts at MoneyMakerGroup and elsewhere, is that “earnings” from Club Asteria plunged to 0.66 percent this week in the aftermath of the purported PayPal freeze. Members of CA have claimed on the Ponzi boards in recent weeks that the company typically paid 3 percent to 4 percent a week. Members also have said that CA threatened to file lawsuits against some promoters.

Despite the purported dip to 0.66 percent, one MoneyMakerGroup member — “akledba” — speculated that CA would “give” 7 percent next week.

“Everything is intelligently calculated,” akledba ventured. He did not say whether his analysis was based on an examination of CA’s books or explain how he had arrived at the conclusion that next week’s payout would increase more than tenfold.

In any event, akledba noted that he was not worried.

“For me I have nothing to loose (sic) as I got the break even 3 months ago,” akledba wrote. “Thank God for the profit!”

Some CA members have published spreadsheets and earnings projections that claim CA pays up to 10 percent a week. Other members have said or implied that a simple monthly payment of $20 to Club Asteria is enough to elevate members out of poverty and create a cash cow that will pay $1,600 a month in less than two years.

An unidentified lawyer for CA was interacting with PayPal to restore services, according to the remarks attributed to Lucas. The remarks expressed disappointment at PayPal’s actions and noted that “[o]ur revenue this week has been severely affected and gone down substantially as a result of both our members and e-commerce clients not being able to purchase our goods and services by paying with PayPal.

“In fact,” the remarks attributed to Lucas continued, “many of their purchases had to be returned because payment could not be accepted.” The MoneyMakerGroup post did not specify how many purchases were reversed and the degree to which the reversals had affected CA’s cash flow.

Whether CA had a duty to inform prospects visiting its website about the purported PayPal freeze to aid them in making an informed decision about joining the “opportunity” was not addressed in the remarks attributed to Lucas.

Members have described Lucas as a former “chairman” and “vice president” of the World Bank. CA has been operating for about a year. The World Bank said in March that a person named Andrea Lucas last was employed by the institution in 1986, nearly 25 years ago. The bank described Lucas as a former department head.

Only members who signed off on the CA’s two-week-old “Code of Ethics and Conduct, Terms of Service and Policies and Procedures, have kept their subscription up to date and have read the [Club Asteria] News within the past 5 days, have participated in today’s revenue sharing,” the remarks concluded.

The remarks were dated May 12. The number of CA members who did not receive a payout this week was not disclosed. Some CA members have said the firm has more than 300,000 members and is surging toward 500,000.

If the claim on the notorious MoneyMakerGroup board is true, it may mean that CA is unable to access PayPal funds, accept incoming payments for purchases through PayPal or send money via PayPal. The PP Blog reported on April 4 that legions of CA members were promoting the program as a “passive” investment opportunity. Such promos raise a question about whether CA and its affiliates are selling unregistered securities as investment contracts.

In bizarre promotions for CA, many members have preemptively claimed that the firm is not operating a Ponzi scheme.

On May 1, the Blog reported that a YouTube video promoting CA encouraged members to fund their accounts with PayPal. The text portion of the YouTube promo asserted that CA pays members “$400 USD EVERY WEEK,” and the video portion appears to have violated the copyright of Warner Music Group (WMG).

PayPal’s Acceptable Use Policy expressly bans items that “support pyramid or ponzi schemes, matrix programs, other ‘get rich quick’ schemes or certain multi-level marketing programs,” according to the policy.

PayPal customers that act as a money transmitter, sell stored value cards, securities and investment interests require preapproval from the processing giant, according to the policy. Although CA has insisted it is not in the investment business, thousands of its own members appear to disagree. Promos for the firm have claimed a $20 monthly payment turns into an annual income of more than $20,000 in less than two years — with the money doubling if there is a second account in a household.

One promo for CA viewed by the PP Blog this morning used two bullet points and the language of the investment trade to coach members and prospects:
- Invest only what you can afford to loose (sic).
- Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket.
Although the promo reproduced the information attributed to Lucas on the MoneyMakerGroup board, the promo appeared on a Blog separate website titled the “DoNothingMoney Blog.”

PayPal’s policy also bans purchases associated with “off-shore banking” and transactions that involve “currency exchanges.” CA members say their electronic “earnings” payouts bear the name of a Hong Kong entity and that CA is in the business of facilitating money exchanges. Virginia-based CA says on its website that its Terms of Service “are governed by the laws of Hong Kong.”
May 14, 2011