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Tag: Just Been Paid

  • 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.

     

  • 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.

  • 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!”