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Tag: MoneyMakerGroup

UPDATE: ‘Bacon’ Program Pushed By ‘Achieve Community’ Hucksters Reportedly Put On Hold By ‘Admin’; Second Program May Be DOA After Purported Payza Freeze
“BRING THE BACON HOME” purportedly is operated by an “admin” who is a “young trustworthy girl from Singapore,” according to a Ponzi-board post. If this graphic is to believed, the “program” will produce a happy marriage and bring you children — along with a palm-tree-lined oceanfront mansion near a convenient airport, a big car, lots of U.S. cash and delicious, oversized fruit.

UPDATED 6:20 A.M. ET U.S.A. “BRING THE BACON HOME,” a bizarre Ponzi-board “program” purportedly operated by “Sherilyn” from “Singapore” and pushed on YouTube by Achieve Community hucksters Rodney Blackburn and Mike Chitty, reportedly collapsed during a so-called Beta launch this week and has been put on hold.

The “program” purportedly turns $40 into $1,800. Achieve Community purportedly turns $50 into $400, although it has been dogged by problems for more than two months and now is the subject of an investigation by the Colorado Division of Securities.

“BRING THE BACON HOME” appears to have enabled subscription purchases, but the early haul before the failed Beta is unclear. “Sherilyn” is quoted on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum in a post dated Jan. 26 as saying, “Just buy the subs and let us do the ‘magic’ for now.”

“My Beta Bacon got Burnt,” one Ponzi-board wag ventured.

Separately, a “program” known as Cycles 24/7 that was advertised on the Achieve Community private forum last month may be dead. Cycles 24/7 initially collapsed at launch, but rebirthed itself — at least long enough to grab some cash.

Cycles 24/7 purportedly is operated by “Rick Fleming.” Like Achieve, Cycles 24/7 purported to turn $50 into $400.

On Jan. 24, a poster on MoneyMakerGroup claimed this about Cycles 24/7: “I have 45$ in payza balance, but admin say that his payza money Frozen, how i can withraw [sic] to egopay?”

The MoneyMakerGroup claim about Payza freezing Cycles 24/7 funds followed by two days a claim on the Blog at EgoPay.com that EgoPay had been hacked and that a “gap” in cash reserves existed.

Cycles 24/7 and “BRING THE BACON HOME” both listed EgoPay and Payza among their processors. Like Achieve Community, Cycles 24/7 is serving ads for other HYIPs.

One ad for “BRING THE BACON HOME” observed today by the PP Blog on the Cycles 24/7 site referenced “Unison Wealth,” yet another Ponzi-board “program” pushed by Achieve Community members.

The ad was titled “Bring Home The Bacon.” A text line read, “Did you miss Unison Wealth on the 1st day?” When clicked, the ad led to the “BRING THE BACON HOME” site.

Unison Wealth also is beaming ads for other HYIP schemes.

It is not unusual for one HYIP venture to try to prop up another through advertising or even to invest in other scams. Beginning in 2005, for instance, the CEP scam allegedly plowed money into at least 26 other schemes.

In 2012, after the collapse of the $897 million Zeek Rewards “program,” a venture known as Wealth Creation Alliance published ads for one HYIP scheme after another. The schemes typically are Ponzi schemes or pyramid schemes — or sometimes both. They engage in securities fraud and the sale of unregistered securities across national borders.

People who openly profess Christian beliefs or faith in God often are at once the marks and the purveyors of such schemes. AdSurfDaily Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin, an apparent advocate of The Prosperity Gospel who encouraged his MLM flock to envision money “flowing” to them, once declared himself a Christian “money magnet.”

Federal prosecutors tied Bowdoin to at least four fraud schemes, including at least two that surfaced after the collapse of ASD in 2008. He is now in federal prison.

One of Bowdoin’s schemes was called “One X.” “I believe that God has brought us OneX to provide the necessary funds to win this case,” Bowdoin claimed in 2011.

The “this case” to which he referred was the ASD Ponzi prosecution. Bowdoin lost on all fronts, eventually pleading guilty to wire fraud.

Bowdoin also was associated with a scam known as AdViewGlobal that once threatened to litigate against its own members for asking questions. AVG, as it was known, also created a private forum after its public scam outreach started to create problems.

Achieve Community recently has added a private forum.

Another current Ponzi-board HYIP scheme pushed by one or more Achieve Community promoters is called “Trinity Lines.” Among other things, Trinity Lines claims to be the purveyor of “high quality scriptural vignettes.” It also claims:
- “Although this opportunity is geared for those who appreciate the Scriptures, we welcome anybody to join our community.”
- “We at Trinity Lines do believe in God and believe in the power of ‘His Word’.
Though not writing about any specific MLM HYIP schemes, the associate pastor of an evangelical church in Massachusetts this week called “The Prosperity Gospel” a “pyramid scheme” and “a form of oppression.”

The column is titled, “Why the Prosperity Gospel Is the Worst Pyramid Scheme Ever.”

From the column by Nicholas McDonald at The Gospel Coalition (italics added):

Step One: A snazzy entrepreneur wants to make a lot of money. Said snazzy entrepreneur tells two little old ladies that if they sell his “Wow-What-A-Sham 3000,” they can make some dough to pay off their cat-sitting bills. That will cost them a startup investment of $401.76. And yes, Wow-What-A-Sham 3000 is a gimmick. But that’s okay, it’s not really about selling the product anyway; it’s about recruiting more salespeople.

McDonald is associate pastor at Carlisle Congregational Church, according to his bio line in the column.
Jan 29, 2015
Ontario Securities Commission Issues Warning On ‘Rockwell Partners,’ A Ponzi-Board ‘Program’

Rockwell Partners SA, an HYIP “program” that has a 218-page thread at the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, now is the subject of a warning from the Ontario Securities Commission.

A Facebook site that claims an association with Rockwell Partners asserted in March 2014 that “[w]e would like to remind you that Rockwell Partners is not just another fly-by-night HYIP but a stable and safe place to invest your funds!”

Rockwell Partners purportedly was based in Costa Rica.

The first post in a MoneyMakerGroup thread in which Rockwell Partners was pushed in March 2014 claims a daily payout of between 1 percent and 3.5 percent. By June 2014, reports surfaced that the “program” was on the rocks. The website no longer resolves to a server.

Current schemes being promoted at MoneyMakerGroup include Achieve Community, which claims $50 turns into $400.

Any number of Achieve Community promoters now are pushing other Ponzi-board schemes.

Jan 15, 2015
SPECIAL REPORT: ‘Achieve Community’ Promoter On YouTube Shows Her Back Office For ‘Unison Wealth,’ Revealing Ponzi-Board Bonanza
As “Achieve Community” promoter Kristen Jennifer shows her back office in the “Unison Wealth” program, ads for other “programs” appear, including some “programs” on well-known Ponzi-scheme forums.

EDITOR’S NOTE: In litigation related to Zeek Rewards, a Ponzi-board “program,” court-appointed receiver Kenneth D. Bell has raised a concern that network-marketers may be proceeding from one fraud scheme to another. Bell has asked a federal judge to take “judicial notice” of certain YouTube videos.

** ______________________**

UPDATED 10:07 P.M. ET U.S.A. “Unison Wealth” is a “program” on MoneyMakerGroup from which a promoter claims “Turn $35 One-Time Into $1545.” It’s also on TalkGold. Both MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold are forums listed in U.S. federal court files as places from which Ponzi schemes are promoted.

One such reference to the forums is in the context of Nicholas Smirnow, the operator of the Pathway To Prosperity HYIP fraud who was arrested in Canada this month after being charged by the United States in 2010 and spending time in the Philippines.

Pathway To Prosperity allegedly plucked people from 120 countries for $72 million. An affidavit by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in the Smirnow case specifically references MoneyMakerGroup and TalkGold. The affidavit has been available online for more than four years and is published by the office of Stephen R. Wigginton, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois.

A “program’s” presence on the Ponzi boards is a crimson-red flag that a scam is occurring. Thousands of promoters of Zeek Rewards, a Ponzi-board “program” alleged to gave gathered on the order of $897 million, now face litigation aimed at clawing back their “winnings” from Zeek. At least one payment vendor for Zeek claims it was rendered insolvent through its business relationship with North Carolina-based Zeek.

The individual litigation nightmares for Zeek fans and vendors may include crushing legal bills, the need to respond to subpoenas and sit for depositions or otherwise make an appearance in North Carolina federal court even if the litigation targets do not reside in North Carolina. The experience alone can be financially and emotionally draining, perhaps even more so if a person is deemed an “insider” or “winner” who received in excess of $1,000 from the Zeek enterprise.

On another Ponzi-board front, promoters and vendors of TelexFree — an alleged $1.2 billion fraud — also are facing Zeek-like litigation nightmares.

Like Pathway To Prosperity, Zeek and TelexFree, “Achieve Community” also has a Ponzi-board presence. This potentially sets the stage for new HYIP litigation nightmares from law-enforcement, receivers mandated by court order to round up fraud proceeds and class-action lawyers. And because some Achieve Community promoters are simultaneously promoting other Ponzi-board “programs,” any litigation that emerges could be amplified across multiple courts. Achieve, for example, appears to be operating in Michigan and Colorado.

In theory, an Achieve promoter living in, say, Florida (or any other state) could be compelled by court order to appear in a federal court in another state to produce documents, sales materials, promos and business records.

Back-Office Tour By Achieve Promoter Is Revealing

Promoting Achieve is bad enough. But some Achieve promoters now are pitching other Ponzi-board “programs.” One YouTube promo dated Dec. 20 for Unison Wealth by an Achieve promoter takes prospects inside the Unison Wealth back office.

Remarkably — and without comment from Achieve/Unison promoter Kristen Jennifer — the promo shows one ad after another for HYIP schemes loading in the Unison back office. (The ads load as Kristen pitches Unison.)

The first of these is “MyTrafficValue.” As Kristen tries to sell viewers on Unison, a banner ad for MyTrafficValue claims “invest to earn 110% within 4 days or daily payments until 125%.”

Who placed the ad is unknown, but the mere presence of the ad shows that Unison is driving traffic to a Ponzi-board “program” with a 141-page thread at MoneyMakerGroup.

On Dec. 17, the PP Blog reported that an ad for a Ponzi-board “program” known as Cycles 24/7 was appearing inside a promo for Achieve by Mike Chitty. The Chitty ad showed the Achieve back office.

Lo and behold, an ad for Cycles 24/7 also appears in the Unison back office of Achieve promoter Kristen. (BehindMLM.com has a report dated today on Cycles 24/7.)

What obviously is occurring is that one scam is giving synergy to another. It hardly ends with Cycles 24/7.

Indeed, even as Achieve promoter Kristen is narrating her ad for Unison, ads for other Ponzi-board “programs” load on the screen. Ads for each of these “programs” (and others) appear:
- BitcoinCycler.
- TrinityLines.
- OneTenMethod. (URL appears to be OwnMatrix.com, with “OWN” an acronym for Online Wealth Network.)
- HeavenPaid. (“THIS DONT [sic] SUCK” is among the claims.)
- MyAdvertisingPays.
- ClickAdPays.
- Super 2×7 Matrix.
- EveryoneCycles.
During the same 13:18 YouTube promo by Achieve member Kristen for Unison, ads for other “programs” appear on the screen. (In some cases, these may include descriptors, rather than the actual “program” name.) This lineup includes Auto Mass Traffic, Dollar Funnel, $20 Quality AdPack, AdBoardMarketing, Private Cycler, ~~Seven~~ Save In Gold & Silver from $25 (edited Jan. 5, 2015), NetPennyStocks.com (” . . . Makes You Earn 101,970.75 And Get Paid Weekly”).

A couple of ads for what appear to be “leads” program also appear. Some other names that appear in the ad are too fuzzy to be recognizable.

Regulators have been warning for years about scams spreading on social media.

In the Unison Wealth video, Kristen says, “I’m gonna keep you posted on this, but I have to be mindful of YouTube because YouTube doesn’t really like me posting result videos for some reason.”

Perhaps Kristen hasn’t heard about the SEC’s warnings about scams spreading on YouTube. (See April 8, 2014, PP Blog story: BULLETIN: In New ‘Advertising’ Ponzi-Scheme Takedown, SEC Points To YouTube Video Allegedly Used By Scammers To Drive Sales — And Feds File Criminal Charges

Also see April 30, 2014, PP Blog story: SEC: TelexFree’s Sann Rodrigues On YouTube: God Started MLM And Made ‘Binary’; ‘I Am Never Going To Stop This’

Also see June 5, 2013, PP Blog story: YouTube Video Pitchmen For Profitable Sunrise Hit By Subpoenas From SEC.

There are other instances, including the eAdGear case in which the SEC contacted YouTube owner Google for information. The eAdGear case speaks to the issue of a scam trying to sanitize itself by touting supposed links to legitimate companies. Achieve promoters are doing the same thing when they assert Achieve couldn’t possibly be a scam because certain well-known financial vendors do business with it.

Think of Enron, a colossal fraud. That famous financial firms did business with it was immaterial to the issue that Enron itself was a huge scam.

Kristen also ventures there may be certain tax advantages when one joins Unison Wealth. Veteran MLM huckster Phil Piccolo of TextCashNetwork, DataNetworkAffiliates and OWOW — disasters one and all — is infamous for making such claims.

Is there any doubt that network marketers are falling off one cliff after another and, in one “program” after another, putting on blindfolds? These scams are gathering billions of dollars.

Friends, Kristen very well could be one of the nicest, most sincere people you’d ever want to meet. But she is grossly misinformed about Achieve and Unison Wealth.

The Zeek and TelexFree litigation alone offers compelling examples of decidedly unpleasant things that can happen when HYIP “programs” crater or attract regulatory scrutiny. For promoters to ignore these cases is to ignore peril.

Achieve promoters currently are explaining away criticism as the tool of “haters.” Zeek and TelexFree promoters did the same thing.
Dec 26, 2014
BULLETIN: Lucrazon ‘Program’ Sued In Massachusetts, Amid Allegations Of Fraud

BULLETIN: (Updated 10:18 a.m. ET Dec. 24 U.S.A.) Lucrazon Global, a purported revenue-sharing program pushed on Ponzi boards such as MoneyMakerGroup, has been sued in federal court by private plaintiffs who allege fraud.

Named defendants in the Dec. 9 complaint in Massachusetts federal court are Lucrazon LLC and Lucrazon Global LLC, both of Delaware and California. Plaintiffs are Scott Bonarrigo of Massachusetts and Todd Betlejewski of California.

Oscar Garcia and Alex Pitt are identified in the complaint as officers or employees of Lucrazon.

Former TelexFree huckster Faith Sloan at one time pushed Lucrazon. Sloan was accused by the SEC of securities fraud earlier this year in a case that alleged TelexFree was a massive, international fraud.

Some promoters of the WCM777 Ponzi scheme broken up by the SEC earlier this year also were targeting prospects for Lucrazon and seeking to get them to buy in at $8,000. The PP Blog noted in April that Lucrazon was promoting “Luxury Car Giveaways” and touting appearances by politicians/business figures such as Carlos Gutierrez, Mitt Romney and Vicente Fox at a Los Angeles confab.

Garcia and Pitt are accused in the complaint of making repeated false and misleading representations “that the [Lucrazon] daily bonuses ‘could go to $20 a day, $50 a day . . . who knows.’” However, this was never possible and based upon faulty (as well as meticulously and deliberately skewed) mathematical statistics promulgated to entice Plaintiffs and others into buying into Defendants’ scheme.”

Bonarrigo bought in for $46,000, with Betlejewski paying Lucrazon “approximately $110,000,” according to the complaint.

“Further, Defendants and Oscar Garcia and Alex Pitt (again, falsely and in an attempt to mislead Plaintiffs) represented that Defendants would assemble some 10,000 merchant accounts each making $10,000 into a $100 million bundle, akin to mortgage bundles, and then sell them to the banks at many times monthly recurring commissions,” the complaint alleges. “This never happened and Defendants never intended to do so.”

From the complaint (italics added):

Defendants also advised Plaintiffs that online accounts were worth 10 times the monthly commissions, retail accounts were worth 30 times commissions, and medical accounts were worth 60 times monthly earnings, and that Plaintiffs could sell those accounts every month, or keep them for an alleged large payoff when the bundles were sold. This was not true [sic?] never offered to Plaintiffs nor did Defendants make any attempts to secure such sales that would provide Plaintiffs the ability to elect to either sell or retain their merchant accounts . . .

. . . As further enticement, Defendants repeatedly advised Plaintiffs and others that when these “bundles” were sold, each Brand Partner position (to which both Plaintiffs purchased several) was entitled to a share of this pool of money, and that leaders of said accounts, like Plaintiffs, would be offered interest into another bundle. This was not true [sic?] never offered to Plaintiffs nor did Defendants make any attempts to secure such sales that would provide Plaintiffs the ability to elect to either sell or retain their merchant accounts or be offered the opportunity to re-invest their proceeds towards another endeavor . . .

Despite Defendants’ false and misleading representations, and due solely to Plaintiffs’ own work ethic and business acumen, Plaintiffs began to successfully develop business accounts and profit, which, per Defendants’ representations, was to be passed onto Plaintiffs as part of the aforementioned “daily bonuses.” In fact, said “bonuses” were to commence in January of 2014. Not surprisingly, Defendants never paid any amount of “bonuses” to either Plaintiff . . .

Despite this, and for vague and illusory reasons, these bonuses owed and due to Plaintiffs were then postponed to February of 2014, then yet again to March of 2014, then again in April of 2014 . . .

As such, Plaintiffs [believe] that there simply was no intent whatsoever to actually pay out these “bonuses” but instead Defendants’ representations to the contrary were simply part and parcel of an overall fraudulent scheme to secure as much monetary benefit as possible from Plaintiffs at Plaintiffs’ expense and detriment.

What is more, when daily bonuses did finally begin to commence, they were nothing like what was promised to issue, both in terms of amount and frequency of disbursement. Then mysteriously, all bonus payments simply stopped . . .

However, despite this demonstrable cessation of payments, Plaintiffs’ back office reporting evidences that Defendants falsely and deceptively reported these payments or “bonuses” has having been successfully transmitted, when no such payments were in fact issued to Plaintiffs in any fashion. Put bluntly, Defendants is intentionally and knowingly withholding money that rightfully belongs to Plaintiffs.

NOTE: Our thanks to the ASD Updates Blog. View complaint here.

Dec 23, 2014
UPDATE: In Impossibly Butchered Messaging, ‘Achieve Community’ Promos Marry Three-Month, 800-Percent ROI ‘Program’ To Santa Claus While Encouraging Participants Not To ‘Sell Out’ To Banks For ‘Tiny’ Annual Returns

From an Achieve Community Facebook promo posted Dec. 20.

The “Achieve Community,” a Ponzi-board money-cycling “program” targeted at Christians and positioned by some network marketers as an alternative for people who don’t want to “sell out” to banks and their “tiny little 1% annual return,” would like you to know that Santa Claus and an elf are on the team.

By buying one “EXTRA” $50 Achieve position on Christmas Day, Achievers will come into possession of “the gift that Keeps On Giving!” according to a bizarre new promo published on Facebook Saturday by Achieve co-founder Kristi Johnson.

A fellow Facebook poster, however, laments, “Kristi, Can you please answer this question? I tried the whole weekend to purchase new positions. But every time it says, an error occur[r]ed, your payment is declined. I called already to MasterCard and nothing is wrong with my Card. Problem seems to be with readytoachieve. I sent already 4 messages to readytoachieve, but i get no answer.”

Volunteers purportedly now are assisting Achieve, which appears to be transitioning to new financial vendors after parting company with Payoneer weeks ago, with support duties. Johnson has claimed she’s typically too busy to answer questions, that members should turn to the website FAQs and a recently installed private forum for assistance and that co-founder Troy Barnes “won’t be around much anymore” because of pressing family issues.

Separately, Achieve boosters parroting each other continue to circulate a promo that reads, “We are not investing in a stock or buying shares in a company. We are using our God given universal right to spend our money the way we want. We choose not to sell out to the banking system for their tiny little 1% annual return.”

The claim appears in both video and text form. It is common for HYIP promoters to invoke God and seek to fuel contempt against banks. Some Achieve promoters appear to have hijacked the original claim and worked it into their individual promos. The original source of the claim is unclear.

No authority that God had granted any such “universal right” is provided. Nor does the promo explain why banks are not doing the same thing Achieve is doing or how Achieve will get by if banks and payment vendors it relies on pull the plug on Achieve. If the assertion that banks pay 1 percent annually is true, however, it would mean that Achieve pays 800 times that percentage in three months or less.

Because banks have greater economies of scale than Achieve and greater opportunities to employ vertical integration, they could pound Achieve into the sand by simply adopting the Achieve business model — and yet they don’t do it.

The reason why is that the banks would be creating a liability of $400 for every $50 they accepted for the purchase of “positions” and that regulators and class-action litigants would attack any disclaimer language as an obvious attempt to sanitize a Ponzi scheme and create a license to steal tremendous sums of money.

Even though Achieve appears to have generated cash flow by switching to an offshore processor known as iPayDNA after the Payoneer divorce in late October or early November, Achieve very well could be insolvent today. This is because it is not meeting obligations when they become due. Payouts due Achieve members who joined or repurchased positions on Sept 12 were due to be paid in early November, but reportedly have not been paid.

That Achieve also appears to be playing payment processor roulette potentially adds to its attractiveness for class-action litigation against both itself and payment vendors on the theory of racketeering and “deepening insolvency.” (See this document from private litigants in the TelexFree bankruptcy case. Like Achieve, TelexFree was promoted on Ponzi boards such as MoneyMakerGroup. So was Zeek Rewards, a “program” that also has encountered class-action litigation. )

Achieve says $50 turns into $400. Multiple “positions” can be purchased. Some promos have extrapolated returns in the hundreds of thousands of dollars or even in excess of $1 million.

Members reportedly have not received payouts from Achieve since the relationship with Payoneer ended.

From an Achieve promo playing on YouTube. Masking by PP Blog.

Also see Dec. 17 PP Blog report: UPDATE: Competing Cycler Advertised Inside ‘Achieve Community’ Forum Collapsed At Launch Yesterday

Also see Dec. 12 PP Blog report: Federal Prosecutors Have No Immediate Comment On ‘Achieve Community’ Call In Which Senior Citizen With 86-Year-Old Ailing Husband Was Told, ‘You Are Exactly The Type Of Person That The Achieve Community Is Built Around And For’

Also see Dec. 9 PP Blog report: SPECIAL REPORT: We’re Like ‘A Ride At Disney World,’ Achieve Community Cycler Bizarrely Claims

Also see Dec. 7 PP Blog report: ‘The Achieve Community’ Promoter Records Commercial At ATM In Hawaii; YouTube Text Promo Claims Achieve A ‘True Lifetime Income Plan!’

Also see Nov. 17 PP Blog report: RECOMMENDED READING: Two Stories/Threads At BehindMLM.com On ‘The Achieve Community’

Dec 23, 2014
IRONY: Scheme Whose Actual Name Is ‘PlanB’ Tackled By European Authorities

One of the core signatures of an HYIP scam is highlighted when a “program” is presented as a “Plan B,” typically in the context of creating “multiple income streams” or “in case Plan A fails, you’d better have a “Plan B.”

Zeek Rewards A-lister Keith Laggos gushed about Lyoness, his “Plan B” program. Zeek collapsed in a pile of Ponzi rubble and Lyoness later caught the attention of authorities in Australia.

Fellow Zeek A-Lister T. LeMont Silver pushed an ill-fated series of Plans B such as JubiMax/JubiRev and GoFunRewards/GoFunPlaces.

Zhunrize, remarkably, touted itself as both a “Plan A” and a “Plan B” scheme.

Now it has come to pass that a “program” whose actual name is Plan B reportedly has encountered a police raid in Europe in which money and expensive cars were seized. Perhaps showcasing its Stepfordian mindlessness, the “program” added “4you” to its name, becoming “PlanB4You.”

AdVentures4U, a similar MLM fraud, tried a similar tactic before crashing in 2009. That “program” was a “Plan B” for MLM scammers who earlier had joined the AdSurfDaily and AdViewGlobal MLM scams.

This story about PlanB4You is in Dutch. An English translation by Google Translate suggests there were police raids in the Netherlands and perhaps other countries, including Belgium.

If the PlanB4You name wasn’t enough of a giveaway that the “program” was one to be avoided, PlanB4You’s presence on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum provided another one. (It’s on TalkGold, too.)

Or you could have read the July 2014 BehindMLM.com review of PlanB4You as yet another scam in progress.

Dec 18, 2014
UPDATE: Competing Cycler Advertised Inside ‘Achieve Community’ Forum Collapsed At Launch Yesterday

This ad (see top of screen shot) for “Cycles 24/7,” a Ponzi-board “program,” appears in the Achieve Community forum. Source: YouTube promo for Achieve.

UPDATED 2:12 P.M. ET U.S.A. A competing cycler advertised inside the supposedly private “Achieve Community” forum and promoted on the MoneyMakerGroup forum collapsed at launch yesterday, triggering a classic uproar among willfully blind Ponzi-board scammers.

The name of the cycler is Cycles 24/7. The PP Blog learned of the “program” only because Achieve promoter Mike Chitty recorded an Achieve commercial and posted it on YouTube on Dec. 15. Chitty’s Achieve promo shows a banner ad for Cycles 24/7 inside the Achieve forum, raising the specter that the unknown individual who posted the banner is an Achieve member promoting another scam.

The ads inside the Achieve forum will show “different things that keep coming out,” Chitty said in his video. The ad for Cycles 24/7 claims, “Non Stop Earning For Everyone[.] JUST LAUNCHED[.] Automated Hybrid Straight Line Cycler[.] Turn $10 Into $30 or Turn $50 Into $400[.] Receive $1.00 or $5.00 Bonus[.] JOIN NOW!”

Cycles 24/7 appears to have made its debut Dec. 10 on MoneyMakerGroup. With a prefunding period and a launch set for yesterday, the Cycles 24/7 server appears first to have showed to a crawl and then collapsed, triggering questions about whether a scamming “admin” had fled with the cash or was merely incompetent when choosing a hosting platform.

Ponzi forum legend “Ken Russo,” formerly of the Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme and many others, apparently was not amused. “Just sent a support ticket with my refund request,” the huckster wrote at MoneyMakerGroup. “If it is not honored I will file a dispute with [Solid Trust Pay]. Just went through this with the AdBubbler fiasco!”

Although the Cycles 24/7 website appears to be back online today, this message appears: “CYCLES 24/7 is relaunching soon!”

Another Ponzi-board post claims “Rick Fleming” is the “admin” of the program. Cycles 24/7 members, according to a MoneyMakerGroup post, received an email that read (italics added):

Good day All C247 Members,

You will notice that my FB account has been suspended and reported by one of the members of Cycles24/7 group.

This is too personal and unprofessional behaviour to an admin who is offering a genuine and life changing opportunity online.

We can’t find any programs out there that Cycles 24/7 is offering to the members – instant payout, no preloaded positions to name a few.

Cycles 24/7 members will expect transparency, honest and fair play at all times.

The reason I am not showing you my photos is I am protecting myself and my family for possible threat or extortion.

Involving in the money making program will always have risk despite of good intentions that you will bring to the members there are still others you can’t please.

Cycles 24/7 was well plan and offering a generous compensation plan to the members. Admin only earn from 10% commissions every cycled position, other than that the remaining money is always given to the member’s position cycling out.

Let’s continue remain positive and hope this will not affect the success of Cycles 24/7.

The FB Group will remain open with the help of hardworking admins. All future updates will be send through our newsletter.

Kind Regards,

Rick Fleming

Chitty hosted an Achieve conference call last week with fellow Achiever Rodney Blackburn that revealed one or more senior citizens were Achieve members. Blackburn, a onetime Iraqi dinar enthusiast, now has backed away from certain claims he made during the call, although he still claims Achieve is a great “program.”

In his Dec. 15 YouTube promo, Chitty identities himself with the “Legendary Income Solutions Team” and asserts that “once those [Achieve payment] processors get in and we get everybody locked into the system, I really feel like — and this is a personal feeling; I’m not trying to make any forecasts for the Achieve Community itself — but the way I saw it before and the way I’m seeing it now, when that processor gets locked in, guys, hang on. Because we’re gonna blow up. And it’s gonna go absolutely insane again. Be ready. Have a repurchase plan.”

Achieve, which purportedly turns $50 into $400 and enables participants to buy multiple $50 “positions,” reportedly lost its ability more than a month ago to do business through Payoneer. An ad for Payza as shown on the Achieve forum also appeared in Chitty’s Dec. 15 promo, although it is unclear if Achieve is moving to Payza. The court-appointed receiver in the Zeek Rewards Ponzi-scheme case said in an Oct. 30, 2014, report to the court that he is continuing his “investigation and pursuit of outstanding funds from Payza” and other processors used by Zeek, including SolidTrustPay.

Some Achieve members reportedly have grumbled or expressed concerns that anti-Achieve “spies” may be reading posts in the private forum. Chitty’s Dec. 15 video, however, shows that Achievers themselves may be creating leaks.

From the video alone, the PP Blog was able to see multiple thread titles inside the forum and posts by some individual Achieve members.

Dec 17, 2014
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: Nicholas Smirnow, Pathway To Prosperity HYIP Ponzi Figure, Arrested At Airport In Canada

Nicholas Smirnow. Source: INTERPOL Wanted notice.

URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: (6th update 9:35 p.m. ET U.S.A.) Nicholas Smirnow, still listed by INTERPOL as a person wanted by the United States in the alleged Pathway To Prosperity (P2P) HYIP Ponzi scheme that affected people in 120 countries, has been arrested at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, Canadian media outlets are reporting.

U.S. federal prosecutors charged Smirnow, believed now to be 56 or 57, in 2010. He has been listed by INTERPOL since that time.

CTV News, via the Canadian Press, is reporting that U.S. authorities are aware of the arrest. Smirnow also has been charged with crimes in Canada.

P2P was an instance of international mass-marketing fraud, U.S. authorities said in 2010. Though large for its time in the 2008 to 2010 time frame after allegedly gathering more than $70 million and affecting 40,000 investors, P2P since has been eclipsed in dollar volume and victims count by other mass-marketing fraud schemes such as Zeek Rewards and TelexFree.

Professor James E. Byrne, an HYIP expert consulted by the U.S. government in the P2P case, said in 2010 that “the investment scheme described in the materials that I have reviewed are not legitimate but resemble and are classic instances of so-called high yield frauds and fraudulent pyramid schemes. The proposed returns are excessive for even the most risky legitimate investments and are simply preposterous for investments whose principal is supposedly guaranteed.”

From Byrne’s P2P analyis (italics added):

The funds are turned over to the investment and “earn” returns that range from 1.5% daily for a 7 day plan Plus the return of the initial investment to 2.67% daily for a 60 day plan or 160.2% plus the return of the initial investment. The weekly returns on the 7 day investment would amount to approximately 540% per year without taking into account the principal and the 60 day plan would return approximately 950% annualized.

Like many HYIP schemes before and after, P2P had a presence on well-known Ponzi scheme forums such as TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup. Both forums are referenced in P2P-related court filings. TalkGold got a mention last week in the Liberty Reserve money-laundering case.

Like current schemes with a Ponzi-board presence such as “Achieve Community,” the P2P tentacles spread far and wide and sucked in vulnerable people such as senior citizens. From a PP Blog story on May 31, 2010 (italics/bolding added):

The scheme was almost unimaginably widespread, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said in an affidavit.

“Financial records of payment processors utilized by P-2-P to collect investment funds from investors show that approximately 40,000 investors in 120 countries established accounts with P-2-P,” a postal inspector said. “Despite the fact that the investment was supposedly ‘guaranteed, investors lost approximately $70 million as a result of [Smirnow’s] actions.”

The probe began when the U.S. government received a referral from the Illinois Securities Department “concerning an elderly Southern District of Illinois resident who had made a substantial investment in P-2-P,” the postal inspector said in the affidavit.

“In addition to P-2-P’s own website, I discovered that P-2-P’s investment scheme was marketed on other websites, including High Yield Investment Program forums, which I was able to access directly through the internet,” the inspector said.

Before long, the inspector determined that the scheme cost investors losses in 48 of the 50 U.S. states, and 18 of the 38 counties that comprise the Southern District of Illinois, prosecutors said.

Such penetration in Illinois may suggest Smirnow had a promotional arm in the state. The complaint spells out a case against conspirators “known and unknown,” and the complaint notes that family members told other family members about the scheme.

“When P-2-P’s funds were depleted and when investors did not receive a return of their funds as they had been promised, [Smirnow] caused a posting on P-2-P’s private forum warning investors not to complain to payment processors about P-2-P’s failure to return their money or they would find themselves ‘on the outside looking in,’” prosecutors charged.

The postal inspector has spoken to “hundreds of P-2-P investors” during the course of the investigation, according to court filings.

“Hundreds [of people] sent me copies of printouts they had made of P-2-P’s website, postings that had been made on the P-2-P’s members forum, and internet sites touting high yield investment programs which contained postings related to P-2-P,” the postal inspector said.

With “Achieve Community,” promoters claim that $50 turns into $400 in three months or less. Participants are encouraged to roll over profits.

Achieve Community promoters have published extrapolations that show “earnings” in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and even the millions of dollars.

Dec 16, 2014
FEDS: Liberty Reserve Figure Mark Marmilev Shilled On TalkGold Ponzi Forum And Also Hired Shills To Do So; Memo Speaks To Vast Wasteland Of Online Criminality

Mark Marmilev, the technology specialist for the cross-border Liberty Reserve money-laundering operation favored by HYIP scammers and other criminals before its May 2013 collapse, shilled on the TalkGold Ponzi forum, U.S. federal prosecutors said in a sentencing memo.

Marmilev, 35, of Brooklyn, N.Y., also hired forum shills and separately tried to hatch an SEO scheme to “clean up” accurate online references to his boss Arthur Budovsky, the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of the Southern District of New York said in the memo.

U.S. District Judge Denise L. Cote yesterday sentenced Marmilev to five years in federal prison.

In Marmilev’s mind, the SEO scheme was needed because a press release by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office about Budovsky’s indictment in a 2006 case was causing problems.

“Marmilev proposed that the SEO expert publish information on the Internet falsely suggesting that the ‘Arthur Budovsky’ behind Liberty Reserve was a different person from the ‘Arthur Budovsky’ who was convicted by the Manhattan District Attorney, but who simply happened to have the same name,” prosecutors advised Cote. “Marmilev’s evident purpose in doing so was to distance Liberty Reserve from Budovsky’s criminal conviction, in an effort to promote an appearance of legitimacy for Liberty Reserve.”

Said Bharara, “Mark Marmilev spent years designing and maintaining the technological architecture that allowed Liberty Reserve to operate a global payment processor and money transfer system that catered to criminals. Now, he will pay for that crime with five years in federal prison.”

There are all kinds of remarkable tidbits in the Dec. 9 sentencing memo, which was posted at the RealScam.com antiscam forum by “NikSam.”

RealScam, which covers international mass-marketing fraud, recently was targeted in an SEO campaign designed to link it to Jihadists and Islamic terrorists. (See PP Blog reference here. See RealScam thread here.)

Court references to the TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup forums as places from which Ponzi schemes are promoted date back years.

In a current case of trying to confuse the public, veteran HYIP scammer “Ken Russo,” also known as DRdave, is using MoneyMakerGroup in a bid to deflect criticism of the emerging “Achieve Community” scheme.

In a Dec. 10 conference call, Achieve Community was positioned as a good outlet for female senior-citizens with ailing husbands to direct cash.

As BehindMLM.com reported today (italics added):

Liberty Reserve’s two founders have yet to be sentenced, but you can bet they’re going to be receiving similar if not harsher penalties than Marmilev’s 5 year sentence.

The jailing of a Liberty Reserve executive comes on the eve one of the larger Ponzi schemes in operation today gears up to announce their new payment processor.

After a short-lived run with Payoneer, they terminated their relationship with Achieve. The scheme has yet to hook up with a replacement payment processor.

Last week news broke that incoming investment into the scheme was now being handled by iPayDNA, but nothing yet has materialized on the withdrawal front.

iPayDNA appear to be accepting investments from Achieve affiliates using multiple unrelated business entities originating out of China.

The PP Blog hopes readers will take the time to read the sentencing memo posted by NikSam. Here’s another tidbit (italics/bolding added):

Aftermath of Liberty Reserve Shutdown. Following the shutdown of Liberty Reserve in May 2013, law enforcement agents monitoring various online criminal forums (such as “hacking” or “carding” forums) observed numerous postings by users of these forums bemoaning Liberty Reserve’s closure and the resulting loss of funds that they had on Liberty Reserve’s system. Many users complained of losing tens of thousands of dollars or more that they had in their Liberty Reserve accounts. By contrast, very few Liberty Reserve users have contacted the Southern District of New York seeking to recoup their Liberty Reserve funds on the basis that they were conducting legitimate business on the site. When the Liberty Reserve takedown was announced to the public in May 2013, users were instructed to contact the Southern District of New York if they wished to recoup their funds.

Notwithstanding that Liberty Reserve had more than 5 million registered user accounts, only 32 persons have contacted the Southern District of New York from May 2013 to September 2014. Similarly, notwithstanding that numerous Liberty Reserve accounts were doing a high volume of business as Liberty Reserve “exchangers,” only one Liberty Reserve exchanger has contacted the Southern District of New York about a potential claim since May 2013, and that claim was ultimately not pursued

NOTE: Our thanks to the ASD Updates Blog.

Dec 13, 2014
BULLETIN: Italian Securities Regulator CONSOB Issues Warning On ‘TureProfit,’ HYIP That Claims It Accepts Sums From $10 to $500,000

BULLETIN: CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator, has issued a warning and suspended the trading of an HYIP “program” known as TureProfit that appears to be operating as both a macro- and a microscam while using the name of Bitcoin.

On its English website in a prompt dated Aug. 17, 2014, TureProfit purports it has “gained huge profit from BitCoin Futures market. As raward [sic], today we have added a special plan: 200% after 1 day . . . Min deposit: $500 . . . Max deposit: $500,000.”

In recent months, HYIP scammers have sought to trade on the name of Bitcoin to loosen purse strings. A number of regulators have issued warnings on scams that use a Bitcoin theme.

TureProfit, which appears to be a reincarnation of a Ponzi-board “program” that surfaced in 2011 and later collapsed, also says it gathers sums as low as $10. This and greater sums purportedly will earn “8% daily for 50 days,” with “compounding available.”

The time of the apparent resurrection may suggest scammers hoped to pick more pockets in advance of the Holiday season. Some “programs” may collect money for months and even make payments — but then suddenly go missing during the holidays. The phenomenon is known as “Back December.”

There is at least one report on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum that TureProfit was hacked in 2013. (Claimed hackings are part-and-parcel to the HYIP sphere.) By May 13, 2013, a Ponzi-board huckster noted, “looks as if this one is gone.”

But more than a year later — in August 2014 — TureProfit appears to have resurrected itself. Its website claims it is accepting Bitcoin, plus “Perfectmoney, EgoPay, Payeer . . . to ensure maximum safety of your funds. ”

Meanwhile, the “program” says, “Now we accept SolidTrustPay deposit. [T]his is good choice for US investors.”

Text on the TureProfit website bizarrely claims that when “[Liberty Reserve] failed, we had to shut down our program.”

In 2013, federal prosecutors in the United States described Liberty Reserve as a payment vessel that had helped HYIP scammers and other criminals launder $6 billion. A number of Liberty Reserve figures were charged criminally.

From the CONSOB warning (italics added):

Consob has suspended, as a precautionary measure and for a period of 90 days, the offering to the public resident in Italy of the investment programme named “Tureprofit” active via the website www.tureprofit.com (Resolution no. 19070 of 27 November 2014).

The offer is also intended for the public residing in Italy. Despite being prepared in English, the website where subscriptions are collected also features a function to automatically translate the content into Italian. It should also be noted that there is no specific disclaimer stating that the content refers only to residents of countries other than Italy.

The “Tureprofit” offer of financial products has the following characteristics: (a) for the purpose of subscription, a minimum payment of 10 US dollars is required; (b) in exchange for this payment, it promises a daily return, for 50 days, of 8 percent; (c) the client has no independent management. It would therefore appear to satisfy the characteristics of a financial investment, considering the simultaneous presence of: (i) an investment of capital; (ii) an expectation of a return of a financial nature; (iii) the assumption of a risk associated with the investment of capital.

However, in relation to the offer programme, there has been (a) no prior communication to Consob, and (b) no transmission of a prospectus intended for publication. Therefore, there is a well-grounded suspicion that this is an offer to the public of financial products carried out in breach of Art. 94, Section 1 of the Consolidated Law on Finance. As the offer is still underway, the Commission has adopted the precautionary measure of declaring a suspension in accordance with Art. 99, subsection 1, letter b) of said Decree.

(in “Consob Informa” no. 46/2014 – 1 December 2014)

Visit the CONSOB website. (As of today, Dec. 1, 2014, a brief on the TureProfit suspension action appears near the top of the CONSOB site, under the “Warnings” section.)

Dec 1, 2014
AdClickXpress, Successor Scam To 2 Earlier Scams, Stirring Again — And Gets Bad Press In South African Media

“6. I affirm that I am not an employee or official of any government agency, nor am I acting on behalf of or collecting information for or on behalf of any government agency. I affirm that I am not an employee, by contract or otherwise, of any media or research company, and I am not reading any of the Ad Click Xpress pages in order to collect information for someone else.” — From the AdClickXpress Terms of Service, Nov. 29, 2014

The carcass of AdClickXpress (ACX) is stirring — just in time to cast a spell on suckers hoping to find some extra money for the holidays. Like predecessor scams JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid and ProfitClicking in the same criminal family, ACX fancies itself the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) of online schemes.

In short, ACX ropes “customers” into an international financial conspiracy theoretically designed to be offshore everywhere. But deliberately taunting government investigators in its Terms of Service (see breakout quote above from the Terms) appears only to have been a first act. The “program” now appears to be taunting its own members and prospects.

From a Sept. 10, 2014, post on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, quoting from the taunt (italics/bolding added):

Note: if members are found to have posted negative information about ACX, even if it is absolutely true, their account could be penalized significantly. ACX Management will be the sole determinant as to how much damage the member has caused other ACX Members.

Like the bizarre and incongruous AdViewGlobal scam before it, ACX fancies itself a “private association.” But even if it were one of those — and even if in theory it could hamstring government investigators and reporters with a vomitous word salad — it is a “private association” that threatens its own members in ways the Mafia wouldn’t consider.

So, at least by Sept. 10, ACX began serving up BannersBroker-like word-sewage. It’s all designed to confuse and to obfuscate, of course.

By the Terms alone, ACX makes co-conspirators of its members. And after this artifice is carried out, it divines a construction by which it will penalize “significantly” and unilaterally calculate damages purportedly caused by those same members who’d dare post “negative information . . . even if it’s absolutely true.”

Separately, there are unconfirmed reports on MoneyMakerGroup that Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS/JPB and the de facto inspiration behind the follow-up scams, has died. Mann, a former pitchmen for the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme, once directed traffic to videos featuring Francis Schaeffer Cox, the now-convicted Alaska “sovereign citizen” and militia man implicated in a plot to murder public officials.

In 2012, Mann described government workers as “part of a criminal gang of robbers, thieves, murderers, liars, imposters.”

On Nov. 22, IOL, a South African group of independent newspapers, published a story titled “Massive losses in scams only a click away.”

Among other things, the paper reported people in that Strand/Somerset West area of the Western Cape appear to have become ACX victims.

Nov 29, 2014