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Tag: Offer Hubb

  • BULLETIN: Zeek Receiver Opposes Appointment Of ‘Examiner’; Zeek Cheerleaders, ZTeamBiz Missives Get A Mention; Let Them ‘Employ Counsel At Their Own Expense,’ Bell Urges Judge

    “The ZeekRewards scheme has claimed hundreds of thousands of victims who lost hundreds of millions of dollars at the hands of the scheme’s winners who solicited their participation. Now, apparently not appreciating the irony, the lawyer for hundreds of the largest net winners asks the Court to pay him to be an ‘examiner’ or ‘representative for the affiliates,’ yet again at the expense of the scheme’s victims. The requested appointment is unnecessary and ill-advised because it would duplicate and complicate this Court’s, the Receiver’s, and the SEC’s efforts to compensate the victims, not to mention directly reduce the Receivership Assets available to pay them. Furthermore, the individual whom the net winners recommend for appointment (or more correctly who recommends his own appointment) ignores the inherent conflict of interest in seeking to somehow represent both the scheme’s ‘winners’ and ‘losers,’ two groups with irreconcilably adverse interests.” — Zeek receiver Kenneth D. Bell, Dec. 17, 2012

    Section from an email received by the court-appointed receiver in the Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme case. Source: federal court files.
    Section from an email received by the court-appointed receiver in the Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme case. The note asks the receiver to oppose efforts by Zeek winners to intervene in the case. Source: federal court files.

    Shortly after the SEC described Zeek Rewards on Aug. 17 as a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid scheme, Zeek figure Robert Craddock solicited donations purportedly to hire an attorney and form a “protected” group of affiliates. Whether Zeek losers gave to the effort conducted at ZTeamBiz through Fun Club USA, Craddock’s Florida-based entity, remains unclear.

    On Aug. 29, PP Blog guest columnist Gregg Evans questioned how Zeek winners and losers ever could be on the same side.

    Today the court-appointed receiver effectively was asking the same question. His conclusion was that they could not — and he asked Senior U.S. District Judge Graham C. Mullen to reject a contention by certain Zeek “winners” that they could.

    “The net winners have already been put on notice that they will be asked to return their winnings to the Receiver for reimbursement to the net losers,” Bell said in court filings. “On the other hand, the net losers hope that they can recoup some of their losses from the gains of the scheme’s net winners . . . Thus, the winners and losers are plainly opposed in their respective interests regarding the winners’ efforts to keep their winnings.”

    Presumptive Zeek clawback targets Dave Kettner, Mary Kettner and David Sorrells asked Mullen last month to appoint Dallas attorney Michael Quilling as “examiner” over all Zeek affiliates. That should not be permitted to happen, Bell contended, because Quilling “has appeared in this case already as an attorney for Fun Club USA and represents the interests of those net winners.”

    In a bid to bolster his claim, Bell cited Craddock ties to Dave Kettner through ZTeamBiz and quoted from a letter attributed to Kettner.

    “In a similar vein, Mr. Kettner sent a letter seeking donations from affiliates that stated, “The SEC has tried to make us all believe that Zeek Rewards was an ‘investment’ and a Ponzi scheme. All the pages that were submitted by the SEC indictment [sic] has [sic] all been one sided and what we believe to be a misrepresentation of the truth and facts of what Zeek Rewards was as a viable and legal business,” Bell advised the judge in a footnote that included the URL to ZTeamBiz.

    Beyond that, Bell argued, the Craddock entity, the Kettners and Sorrells had no standing in the case brought by the SEC.

    And Bell said he has heard from Zeek members who want him to oppose the appointment of Quilling as examiner.

    Here, according to Bell, is a passage from one such Zeek member who contacted Bell after learning about the “examiner motion”:

    As one of the many losers in Zeek Rewards I wish to encourage you to do whatever is possible to block the motion filed on behalf of Fun Club USA (Robert Craddock) David & Mary Kettner and David Sorrells, asking that their personal attorney Michael J Quilling be appointed as the Examiner to oversee and represent the interest of ALL former Zeek Rewards affiliates.

    To many of us this is just another way for another attorney firm to slow up your process of recovery and to diminish the amount of funds to be returned to those of us who are in hopes of being able to recover some of our losses.

    Personally I feel that their agenda is also to help block your efforts to recover funds from the 1200 who received subpoenas.

    The Kettners and Sorrells potentially have exposure of nearly $2 million in receivership clawback litigation, Bell said.

    At least two apparent Zeek winners represented by attorney Ira Lee Sorkin also oppose the appointment of Quilling as examiner, according to filings last week.

    Todd Disner, a Zeek affiliate and figure in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi scheme story, once was on a conference call with Craddock.

    In recent remarks, Craddock said Disner was in Hong Kong with a “lost” passport.

    Reports now have surfaced that Craddock is pitching a “program” known as Offer Hubb that uses a Wyoming mail drop as its address. Disner’s name was listed on the Offer Hubb pitch, according to BehindMLM.com.

  • Potential Zeek Clawback Target Pitched Collapsed Regenesis 2X2 Cycler: ‘Giddy Up. Get Involved. [It’ll] Be The Best Decision You Ever Made’

    gilmondregenesis2x22UPDATED 7:55 A.M. ET (DEC. 23, U.S.A.) In May 2009, before the launch of the alleged Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme, a Zeek promoter who has hired famed attorney Ira Lee Sorkin appeared in a check-waving video for an “opportunity” known as Regenesis 2X2.

    Check-waving is used as a form of “proof” that an “opportunity” that “pays” is not a scam.

    “Giddy up,” intoned Trudy Gilmond of Vermont. “Get involved. [It’ll] be the best decision you ever made.”

    Gilmond, according to the video she narrated while waving two checks from Regenesis 2X2 totaling $1,200, sent by Priority Mail and drawn on Bank of America, was “fired up.”

    She’d been in Regenesis 2X2 only since May 1, and already had received a nice payout, Gilmond explained.

    “Knew this company would work,” she said, before alluding to a Biblical tale of an apostle who insisted on proof of the resurrection of Jesus.

    “A lot of people are nonbelievers, doubting Thomases, didn’t believe it,” Gilmond said. She then presented checks as a form of proof that Regenesis 2X2 paid.

    About two months later — in July 2009 — the U.S. Secret Service applied for search warrants in federal court in Washington state, the purported home of Regenesis 2X2. From a PP Blog story on Aug. 3, 2009 (italics added):

    Agents, according to court filings, observed complaint letters directed at the firm being discarded into a Dumpster that was kept under constant surveillance. Also found in the Dumpster were copies of checks sent in by customers, other documents that included customers’ names and information to identify them personally, complaint faxes sent by customers and a letter from a law firm complaining about false, misleading and deceptive advertising.

    In one case in which agents were observing one of the adult principals in the case, they observed a youth described as a teenager exiting a vehicle and “struggling with a large arm full of opened business and UPS Priority Mail envelopes,” the Secret Service said in court filings.

    The juvenile entered a building and “then immediately came back outside and discarded the materials into an alley [D]umpster,” agents said.

    Agents identified the adult under surveillance as a person “arrested by the Internal Revenue Service out of Las Vegas, Nevada[,] for felony violations related to Illegal Money Laundering from Securities Fraud and Wire Fraud” in a previous case.

    How the Regenesis 2X2 probe proceeded is unclear.

    What is clear is that Zeek eventually came to the fore. In court filings, Sorkin has noted that Gilmond has potential clawback exposure of more than $1.364 million from the court-appointed receiver in the Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme case.

    Gilmond once was listed on a Zeek website as both an “Employee” and “Official Rep.” So, too, was Zeek pitchman OH Brown of USHBB Inc., which produced ads for both Zeek and the collapsed Narc That Car pyramid scheme. For a while, at least, Zeek and Narc That Car appear to have used the same North Carolina-based bank: NewBridge.

    Checks displaying the name of NewBridge showed up in independent affiliate promotions on YouTube in 2010. After one Narc affiliate quit the program, he moved to another one. The check-waving for the new “program” began at the one-second mark. Literally.

    BehindMLM reported yesterday that Brown may have a tie to a burgeoning “opportunity” known as Offer Hubb.  AdSurfDaily and Zeek promoters Todd Disner and Jerry Napier also appear to be in the communication chain of Offer Hubb. The U.S. Secret Service has described ASD as a “criminal enterprise.” The U.S. Department of Justice has described ASD as “insidious.”

    A source told the PP Blog last week that Zeek figure Robert Craddock now was pitching Offer Hubb. Craddock is a purported Zeek “consultant” raising money to contest elements of the SEC’s Ponzi-scheme complaint and the court-appointed receivership. In July, Craddock sought to have the website of Zeek critic K. Chang removed from the Internet. Craddock was successful briefly, but the “K. Chang” Hub at HubPages returned.

    By Aug. 4 — just 13 days prior to the filing of a emergency action by the SEC alleging that Zeek was a $600 million Ponzi- and pyramid scheme — Zeek used its Blog to blast unspecified “North Carolina Credit Unions” for raising questions about the “program.”

    For years, questions have been raised about whether fraud schemes within the MLM sphere were recycling money between and among schemes and putting banks and other financial-service companies in possession of tainted funds. Purported “Wiring Instructions” of Offer Hubb imply that the Wyoming-based entity is soliciting sums of up to $10,099 from prospects and is using City National Bank.

    From a section of the BehindMLM report that describes an address used by Offer Hubb (italics added):

    As mentioned in the introduction of this review, “1712 Pioneer Avenue” is the headquarters of “Corporations Today”. The address is apparently so well-known in tax haven circles that Reuters used the 1712 Pioneer Avenue building itself for a 2011 article on corporate secrecy in the United States.