“Beejay,” the purported “admin” of a “program” known as “Digadz,” is “seriously injured and [his] whole body is paralyzed,” according to chatter circulating on Facebook and on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum.
The purported cause was an automobile accident at an unspecified location, according to the chatter. Beejay purportedly was the admin of a previous scheme known as AdBonuz.
Skeptics immediately questioned the paralysis claim. The PP Blog cannot independently confirm the report that Beejay suddenly confronted a grave medical circumstance.
Parts of the report appear to conflict with one another. Although the claim was made that Beejay’s entire body was paralyzed, another part of the same report claims “he can move one finger and can speak a little but cannot write.”
The report was attributed to “his wife,” who purportedly sent out a text message to someone who’d been trying unsuccessfully for weeks to contact “Beejay.”
“His wife,” according to the report, “forbid him to work.”
Claims of sudden illnesses and medical emergencies inflicting “program” figures are common in the HYIP sphere. So are claims of violent windstorms affecting payouts or claims that an admin had to travel to attend a funeral or a wedding.
“Dengue fever” was a purported element in the JSSTripler 2 Ponzi-board fraud in 2012. JSS Tripler 2, which apparently stole its name from another Ponzi-board scam and hatched at least two other companion frauds (T2MoneyKlub and Compound 150), later disappeared.
A Massachusetts-based scam known as World Marketing Direct Selling (WMDS) and OneUniverseOnline (1UOL) and aimed at Cambodian immigrants blamed Hurricane Katrina for payout delays. In 2014, reports surfaced that a scheme whose admins went missing was affected by Typhoon Vongfong. This scheme was known as “BitcoinTrader.”
URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: Costa Rica-based Liberty Reserve, a payment processor favored by HYIP scammers and other criminals, is offline — and there are reports that its operator is under arrest in Spain on money-laundering charges.
“We lost Huge $$$,” a poster on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum complained. The poster’s forum signature was advertising AdHitProfits, with a pitch of “125% – Superfast Earning.” It also was promoting GoldAllianceFunds, with a pitch of “4.5% for 45 Business Days.”
From The Tico Times, a newspaper published in Costa Rica (italics added):
Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, 39, on Friday was arrested in Spain as part of a money laundering investigation performed jointly by police agencies in the United States and Costa Rica.
Costa Rican prosecutor José Pablo González said Budovsky, a Costa Rican citizen of Ukrainian origin, has been under investigation since 2011 for money laundering using a company he created in the country called Liberty Reserve.
Local investigations began after a request from a prosecutor’s office in New York. On Friday, San José prosecutors conducted raids in Budovsky’s house and offices in Escazá, Santa Ana, southwest of San José, and in the province of Heredia, north of the capital.
Budovsky’s businesses in Costa Rica apparently were financed by using money from child pornography websites and drug trafficking.
Separately, BehindMLM.com is reporting that Liberty Reserve’s website is throwing a server error. The PP Blog confirmed the site will not load and that there appears to be no page-source information on the landing page.
Recent scams that have used Liberty Reserve include JustBeenPaid/JSSTripler, “Expert Invest Group,” T2MoneyKlub (one of Ponzi schemer “Dave’s”) purported “programs,” Insectrio, Imperia Invest IBC and many more.
Imperia scammed deaf people, the SEC said in 2010.
EDITOR’S NOTE: In Ponzi Land, HYIPs that suggested returns of 1 percent (or more) per day “worked” to line up lambs for the slaughter. So did autosurfs that planted the 1 percent a day (or more) seed. Now, 1 percent a day (or more) “auction” sites are “working.” Will they mushroom globally like HYIPs and autosurfs, setting the stage to fleece participants in unprecedented numbers?
Apparently now fully recovered from his purported bout with Dengue fever, legendary HYIP huckster “Dave” is back — this time with something called “DailyCashMania” (DCM) that appears to be married to a nascent penny-auction site known as “HawkPay” that is luring affiliates amid DCM promises it will offer a “mega-prize” of a $10,000 cash voucher.
One MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum promoter of DCM declared it “The ONLY Matrix supported by a [sic] Auction site.”
HawkPay says it will offer “scratch” auctions. A graphic for a “test listing” (Canon camera) on the site reads “SCRATCH TO SEE YOUR PRICE.” When that graphic is clicked, this message loads: “Your scratch will cost 1 bid and the product price will be lowered with $.10.”
ASD’s chatter about the Presidency quickly brought out the U.S. Secret Service, which discovered ASD affiliates were being paid with money from other affiliates: a classic Ponzi scheme. The Secret Service also discovered that political donations made by ASD President Andy Bowdoin came from Ponzi money.
Other prelaunch hype for BidsThatGive claimed that affiliates of the “program” could get filthy rich, so rich the company would pay to name a hospital or orphanage after them.
Meanwhile, the Zeek Rewards MLM “program,” which is married to a penny-auction site known as Zeekler, has announced a new slate of officers at Rex Venture Group, the purported parent company of the Zeek businesses. Even as the company was making the announcement, posters on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi board were sharing “I Got Paid” posts. Another poster placed a link to something called ZeekCalc, a purported earnings calculator apparently created by a Zeek fan.
“This is a online FREE Zeekrewards Profit Calculator that allow [sic] you [to] predict your profit from the Zeekrewards Program,” the calculator site claimed. “With this tool it’s easy and fast [to] calculate your future income or future earnings of the new people who join the program.”
Among the apparent Zeek affiliates bragging about their Zeek payouts at MoneyMakerGroup in the run-up to Zeek’s announcement about its new officers yesterday was legendary Ponzi promoter “strosdegoz,” a former cheerleader for “Dave’s” scams, along with the OneX scam and the ClubAsteria scam — and many others. “strosdegoz” has claimed to be a member of 35 HYIP boards.
Among other things, Club Asteria traded on the names of the World Bank and the American Red Cross. Hank Needham, one of Club Asteria’s purported managers, was a former AdSurfDaily pitchman and cash-gifting enthusiast shown on videotape opening packages of cash from at least two countries.
“Just received two payments now,” “strosdegoz” posted of Zeek on MoneyMakerGroup on July 29. He simultaneously was promoting Bidify, yet another emerging penny-auction site. Others joined “strosdegoz” in the Zeek “I Got Paid” cheerleading chorus on MoneyMakerGroup, including a poster known as “jumpin.”
“You’ve got cash!” a post yesterday from “jumpin” began. “Rex Venture Group LLC . . . just sent you money through Payza.”
The post went on to claim a July 30 Zeek payment of $23.98 from Rex Venture, Zeek’s purported parent company.
“Ken Russo,” another Ponzi forum legend, also has made “I Got Paid” posts that cited payments from Rex Venture. In May, “Ken Russo” claimed on the TalkGold Ponzi forum that he’d received $34,735 from Zeek since Nov. 14, 2011. “Ken Russo” posts on Talk Gold as “DRdave.”
Just plain “Dave” of the emerging DCM scam perhaps is most infamous for a “program” known as JSS Tripler 2, which appears to have based its name on the JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid “program” purportedly operated by Frederick Mann, a former ASD pitchman. JSS Tripler 2 soon morphed into something called T2MoneyKlub and launched a companion scam known as Compound150.
T2 Money Klub and Compound150 appear to have collapsed after “Dave” purportedly was battling back from a bout with Dengue fever.
But now “Dave” appears to be back with DCM and its work-in-progress “scratch” auction.
The new Rex Venture Group officers announced yesterday, according to Zeek’s news Blog, include Greg Caldwell as “acting COO”; Josh Calloway as CTO; Clifton Jolly “to head up PR”; Angie Fiebernitz as CFO; and Alex de Brantes as executive director of training and support services.
Meanwhile, according to the Zeek Blog, Peter Mingils “is rockin’” over the “Certified Trainers course curriculum as Zeek’s Training & Incentives Coordinator,” and “Robert Mecham and OH Brown are banging out video after video and Zeek’s “FANTASTIC NEW BUSINESS CARDS!”
Dawn Wright-Olivares is Zeek’s new “Chief Marketing Officer,” after previously serving as “acting COO,” according to the Zeek Blog.
Under the terms of his plea agreement, AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin effectively has been banned from multilevel marketing, Internet opportunities and businesses that employ mass marketing.
The agreement contains this provision, and Bowdoin consented to it in writing as a condition of release before he is formally sentenced: “Your client shall not participate in any business venture using the internet, multi-level marketing, or mass marketing.” (Italics added.)
Language in the agreement suggests the bans could last until Bowdoin is well into his eighties — until Bowdoin, now 77, serves any prison or probationary term imposed. No sentencing date has been scheduled. Bowdoin’s next court date is set for June 12 “to determine if he should be incarcerated pending his sentencing,” federal prosecutors said.
Bowdoin pleaded guilty yesterday to wire fraud for the web-based ASD scam. The information in the numbered entries (below) was confirmed by Bowdoin himself in a “Statement of Offense” that bears his signature. It is in stark contrast to earlier online claims by the ASD patriarch that he had been railroaded and that ASD members should send him money to pay for his criminal defense.
Second Key Win For Government
Bowdoin’s guilty plea marked the second recent win by the government in a major online HYIP case. Gregory N. McKnight, the operator of the Legisi HYIP and Ponzi scheme, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in February. The Legisi and ASD schemes fetched a combined haul of more than $180 million, according to court filings. Bowdoin’s scheme was a form of HYIP fraud known as “autosurfing” in which participants were promised enormous returns for viewing advertisements. The schemes spread in part through social networking and shilling sites such as the TalkGold and MoneyMakerGroup forums.
The U.S. Secret Service was involved in both the ASD and Legisi probes.
ASD Discussed In HYIP’s Conference Call Day Before Bowdoin Guilty Plea
A current HYIP scheme known as JSS Tripler/JustBeenPaid continues to make inroads online. Frederick Mann, the purported operator of JSS/JBP, was identified in 2008 promos as an ASD pitchman. Bowdoin’s legal problems were among the subjects of a JSS/JBP conference call Thursday that appeared to be heavily populated by U.S. residents, including some who expressed worry about the “program.” JSS/JBP purports to provide a daily return of 2 percent, twice that of ASD.
Less than 24 hours after Thurday’s JSS/JBP call ended, Bowdoin pleaded guilty in open court and subjected himself to a possible prison term of 78 months, along with three years’ supervised release. Under the terms of his plea agreement, Bowdoin potentially faces court supervision for the next 9 and a half years.
During Thursday’s call, Mann — an older man, like Bowdoin — did not rule out the possibility that his program could encounter an ASD-like intervention by the government.
“The slavemasters don’t want their slaves to escape,” Mann said, casting the U.S. government as wicked.
“What you need to realize is that the de facto U.S. Constitution is ‘anything goes’ that we can get away with. So, that’s how Obama operates. That’s how Romney would operate if he were elected President. That’s how George Bush operates.”
Like ASD, JSS/JBP may have ties or be sympathetic to the so-called “sovereign citizen” movement. “Sovereign citizens” have an irrational belief that laws do not apply to them. JSS/JBP is so secretive that the “opportunity” does not identify where it is operating from and makes members affirm they are not with the “government.”
After a caller asked Mann Thursday about ASD, Mann said this:
“If they want to arrest people and take their money, they will find some pretext.”
HYIPs operate as virtually pure Ponzi schemes. Victims can pile up by the tens of thousands in a single scheme. The schemes redistribute wealth from the masses and put it in the hands of a select few.
Bowdoin’s Statement
ASD's Andy Bowdoin
Before getting into some of the specifics of Bowdoin’s signed statement — a statement also signed by Bowdoin’s attorney Charles A. Murray and a federal prosecutor — it perhaps is worth noting that Bowdoin’s plea agreement contains this provision to which Bowdoin agreed in writing: “Your client represents to the Court that his attorney has rendered effective assistance.” (Italics added.)
Though boilerplate language, it is important in the context of Bowdoin’s history. Indeed, he has a history of publicly blaming lawyers for his problems. In 2011, for example, he appeared in a video solicitation in which he asked the people he now admits he defrauded to pay for his criminal defense. Bowdoin blamed his prior counsel, a federal judge, two federal prosecutors and three agents of the U.S. Secret Service for his predicament. The final page of the plea agreement contains this language to which Bowdoin agreed in writing:
“I have read this Plea Agreement and discussed it with my attorneys, Michael McDonnell, Esq. and Charles Murray, Esq. I fully understand this Plea Agreement and agree to it without reservation. I do this voluntarily and of my own free will, intending to be legally bound. No threats have been made against me nor am I under the influence of anything that could impede my ability to understand this Plea Agreement fully. I am pleading guilty because I am in fact guilty of the offense(s) identified in this Plea Agreement.” (Italics/bolding added)
Because of the plea agreement and the MLM/Internet/mass-marketing bans, Bowdoin’s role as an an online pitchman for a program known as “OneX” has ended.
In essence, because of what Bowdoin did in ASD — and allegedly what he continued to do even after being arrested for running a Ponzi scheme — Bowdoin has been banned from MLM, kicked out of the business side of the Web and barred from making mass solicitations in any form.
Prosecutors said last month that OneX was a “fraudulent scheme” and “pyramid” that was recycling money to members in ASD-like fashion. Bowdoin was arrested on ASD-related charges in December 2010. In October 2011 — 10 months after his arrest — he told OneX prospects that God had provided the OneX program and that he intended to use money from the scheme to pay for his criminal defense.
On Tuesday — just three days before Bowdoin pleaded guilty to a felony for his operation of ASD — a fellow OneX pitchman described Bowdoin as “our Mentor.”
Here, now, some highlights from Bowdoin’s signed “Statement of Offense” — along with editorial notes. Bolding added by the PP Blog . . .
1.) “Bowdoin called ASD’s operation a revenue-sharing advertising program . . .” (NOTE: All kinds of HYIP schemes use the phrase “revenue sharing” as a means of masking the Ponzi elements. The phrase, for example, appears on the website of JSS/JBP. It “works” because it sounds plausible. After all, many businesses share revenue legally. The connection many new HYIP enlistees do not make is that scammers have co-opted the term to sanitize their fraud schemes.)
2.) “But, contrary to its representations, the advertising packages sold by ASD generated insufficient revenue to fund the returns it promised to the members. Instead, ASD operated as a ‘Ponzi’ scheme.” (NOTE: ASD members Dwight Owen Schweitzer and Todd Disner sued the government last year, alleging that ASD was a legitimate business. Bowdoin now publicly disagrees with them, based on his admission that ASD was a Ponzi scheme.)
3.) “Throughout ASD’s operation, Bowdoin was aware that ASD was an illegal money making business, and that he was intentionally defrauding ASD members.”
4.) ASD, according to Bowdoin’s statement, actually gathered more than “$119 million” from members. (NOTE: This figure is about $9 million higher than the rough amount of $110 million cited by the government in previous filings. The PP Blog will check next week to see if it can confirm that the $119 million figure is the final sum identified after investigation. As things stand, both Bowdoin and the government agree on the $119 million figure.)
5.) ASD made more than $45 million in Ponzi payments and spent more than $10 million on operations. About $1.161 million was directed at Bowdoin or his family.
6.) During ASD’s initial iteration at AdSurfDaily.com, Bowdoin realized “[a]fter only a few months of operation” that ASD was in over its head “because he was not selling any independent products or services sufficient to generate an income stream needed to support the returns and commissions ASD was paying . . .” (NOTE: The JSS/JBP scheme has a commission-payout scheme (two tiers, one paying 10 percent the other 5 percent) that is virtually identical to ASD. Incredibly, JSS/JBP says it can pay double ASD’s daily return of 1 percent on top of the two-tiered commissions.)
7.) “In approximately March 2007, Bowdoin ceased ASD’s operations because it was paying out money to its employees and members faster than it was taking in new money.” (NOTE: Bowdoin’s concession proves the government’s longstanding theory that ASD collapsed in its original iteration because of the Ponzi pressure. At one point, according to court filings, Bowdoin blamed ASD’s inability to pay on script problems and a purported theft of $1 million by “Russian” hackers.)
8.) Bowdoin — instead of getting out of the Ponzi business — thereafter launched ASD under a new name at a new website: ASDCashGenerator.com. Bowdoin, according to his statement, admits he made some cosmetic tweaks — lowering the return from 150 percent to 125 percent, for example. “By not changing ASD’s business model in any meaningful way, Bowdoin continued to intentionally defraud members.” (NOTE: It is common in the HYIP fraud sphere for “admins” to claim they’ve employed tweaks to take Ponzi issues out of play. An obvious Ponzi scheme known as JSS Tripler 2 appears recently to have employed some Bowdoin-like tweaks, including a name change to T2MoneyKlub — while adding to its claims that the “opportunity” had income streams sufficient to pay an absurd return of 2 percent a day on top of referral commissions.)
9.) Bowdoin never told his second group of fraud victims that they were paying for the fraud Bowdoin committed against his first group of victims.
10.) “Bowdoin also intentionally failed to explain to old and new members that, in the 1990s, he was convicted in Alabama of three securities-related crimes, charged in Alabama in at least 13 additional indictments alleging securities fraud, and barred from ever selling securities in Alabama.”
11.) Bowdoin compounded lies told about his lack of a criminal record by permitting lies to be told about an award for business achievement purportedly given Bowdoin by President George W. Bush. The “award” actually was a memento from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) that was “entirely dependent” on a Bowdoin money contrbution to NRCC of $25,000 “and was not based on Bowdoin’s business acumen or any other evaluation of his prior business practices.”
UPDATED 4:05 PM EDT (U.S.A.): It’s MoneyMakerGroup’s fault that JSS Tripler 2 (T2) — also known as T2MoneyKlub — has collapsed.
And it’s also the fault of “Elmer,” a forum poster who apparently committed the unpardonable sin of questioning the legitimacy of a scheme that advertised a return of 2 percent a day — after naming itself after another scheme that advertised 2 percent a day and after T2 gave birth to itself in a forum referenced in U.S. court filings as a place from which massive HYIP Ponzi schemes such as Legisi and Pathway to Prosperity were promoted.
The bizarre assertions were made by T2 Admin “Dave,” a self-described newlywed apparently fully recovered from a recent bout with Dengue Fever but no longer able to ward off a case of Ponzi topplitis fatalis.
“CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!!” the T2 site screamed last night in all-caps and red type. “DUE TO INCESSANT UNDERMINING BY THE STAFF AND A SELECTION OF ‘STAFF ASSISTED’ MEMBERS OF MONEYMAKERGROUP.COM.”
Only days before, “Dave” announced that members who plowed money into the scheme would begin receiving payments to make them whole and put them in profit. Whether those payments were made remains an open question. Serial scammers and willfully blind Ponzi recruiters who populate the Ponzi boards and organize their public and private sales pitches to speed the flow of cash to the schemes as a means of harvesting commissions as illegal broker-dealers may be the only winners — other than “Dave” himself.
Whether “Dave” assigned himself a Ponzi “rake” is unclear. In the AdSurfDaily online Ponzi case, federal prosecutors said ASD President Andy Bowdoin and a “silent partner” who was Bowdoin’s sponsor in the 12DailyPro online Ponzi scheme agreed to a rake of 10 percent of ASD’s “gross sales.”
The U.S. Secret Service said ASD had gathered at least $110 million. Bowdoin was charged in 2010 with wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities. He faces a Ponzi trial in September and a bond-review hearing May 18. Investigators say he continued to scam after the Secret Service raided ASD in August 2008.
Ponzi-board posts suggest “Dave” had access to hundreds of thousands of dollars sent in by T2 members, beginning late last year and at least into the early part of 2012. But a problem with an offshore (from a U.S. perspective) payment processor purportedly developed, a situation that purportedly led to a freeze on cashouts. “Dave” claimed he was operating the program from both Britain and Thailand, while also venturing to countries such as Cambodia.
The collapse of T2 occurred just days after the conclusion of a conference in Israel at which INTERPOL President Khoo Boon Hui described two recent online scams operating in Asia that had gathered billions of dollars and resulted in 220 arrests.
Some of the suspects were trying to make a fast getaway at an airport, Hui said, describing the purveyors as transnational criminals.
“[Eighty] per cent of crime committed online is now connected to organized gangs operating across borders,” Hui said, citing figures from a study by London Metropolitan University. “Criminal gangs now find that transnational and cybercrime are far more rewarding and profitable than other riskier forms of making money.”
MoneyMakerGroup is referenced in both the Legisi and Pathway To Prosperity cases as a place from which Ponzi and fraud schemes are promoted. The combined hauls of those schemes exceeded $140 million, according to court filings.
The combined hauls of ASD, Legisi and Pathway To Prosperity exceeded $250 million, according to court filings. Like Legisi, Pathway To Prosperity and T2, ASD also was promoted on the Ponzi forums. Federal prosecutors now say that OneX — yet another “opportunity” promoted on the forums — is a “fraudulent scheme” and “pyramid.”
Bowdoin now is accused of promoting OneX.
Although the closure announcement on the T2 site did not reference Elmer, remarks attributed to “Dave” (as Peakr8) on MoneyMakerGroup made it plain that “Dave” holds Elmer equally accountable for the collapse of the T2 scheme, which recently started a Ponzi feeder program known as “Compound150.”
Here’s “Dave” as Peakr8 yesterday on MoneyMakerGroup (italics added):
I got an email from [MoneyMakerGroup Admin] Yippee some months back. Included in it was one line I will never forget.
Elmer and his friends will NEVER be banned from MMG, the owner wants them there. To create ‘interesting discussion’.
My kids found this doing a search about T2MK… The youngest is 9 years old, the oldest is 13… they cried.
Hope you feel great about that Elmer and friends.. Hope you all feel great!!
I am closing both programs down as of NOW, and i will leave it to the processors to distribute the funds.
Yippee said hogwash.
“This is a BOLD FACED LIE!” Yippee exclaimed.
Elmer said “Dave’s” Ponzi experienced a meltdown and that “Dave” had become the “newest member of the ‘Crazy admin excuses’ club.”
“Why don’t you just tell the truth Dave? Elmer quizzed. “Your ponzi imploded. It ran out of cash to pay with.”
As part of its fraud, T2 maintained its own fraud forum. In a moment of almost-perfect fraud symmetry, legendary fraudster “Ken Russo” made the last “I got paid” post in T2s subfraud forum for its Compound150 fraud.
Whether “Ken Russo” had plowed into Wealth4All any of his purported May 11 net payout of $535.95 from “Dave’s” multifaceted T2 Ponzi venture is unknown.
“Ask About My Matching Loan Offer,” “Ken Russo” prompted in his ad for Wealth4AllTeam at “Dave’s” forum for the combined T2 frauds.
In March, “Dave” asserted that the PP Blog and “all your lackies” had “completely undermined your credibility . . . from the word go” in stories and comments about T2.
The T2 death notice followed about two months after “Dave’s” assertions on the PP Blog.
This will be a familiar refrain to many readers of the PP Blog: In July 2010, the Blog reported that the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) had launched a public-awareness campaign about HYIP fraud. FINRA called the HYIP sphere a “bizarre substratum of the Internet.”
Just a month earlier — in June 2010 — the U.S. Department of Justice pointed to a threat assessment by the International Mass-Marketing Fraud Working Group (IMMFWG) that declared “[t]here are strong indications that the order of magnitude of global mass-marketing fraud losses is in the tens of billions of dollars per year.” (Emphasis added).
In publicizing the IMMFWG document, which noted that international scammers use threats and coercive tactics to sustain schemes and chill “uncooperative victims,” the Justice Department alleged that the Pathway to Prosperity (P2P) HYIP scheme had reached into at least 120 countries and gathered $70 million.
P2P was only one of hundreds or even thousands of HYIP scams operating on the Internet.
“Dave,” who preemptively denied JSS Tripler 2 was a Ponzi scheme, now appears to have duped members into performing “tasks” such as making comments on Blogs/websites to dupe prospective purchasers of the sites into believing they’re buying established sites with built-in readership. The theory — apparently — is that “Dave” can monetize the sites, sell them at a handsome profit and use the cash to fund his various investment programs, thus muting the Ponzi critics and taking concerns of illegality off the table.
Some of “Dave’s” members claim they’ve carried out the “tasks” — in effect, to “do what’s best for the ‘program.’” Whether they’re concerned that they’re helping “Dave” scam a new crop of suckers who’d end up with junk websites is unclear.
What is clear is that they want to get paid — and perhaps are willing to say anything while carrying out the “task” of posting comments on Blogs in purported bids to make them more attractive to purchasers.
One bizarre and homophobic “comment” on a purported “Dave” Blog (CarryMyBaby.com) reads as such:
“[W]ell obviuosly [sic] the more sex you have the greater the chances of becoming pregnant unles [sic] you r [sic] one of those queer couples. then no matter what you two do together neither party wll [sic] get pregnant,,,capisce [sic]?”
Meanwhile, a bizarre comment on a purported “Dave” Blog (IBeatForeclosure.com) reads as such:
“its [sic] got be [sic] tough to have to decide if you have to foreclose on your house but the this [sic] mortagage [sic] crisis happened [sic] people had not [sic] choice not [sic] and [sic] easy thing to go through.”
The Blogs appear to be hosted in Utah. Ownership is unclear.
But even with the “tasks,” JSS Tripler 2 payments reportedly have been suspended again, owing to “Dave’s” wedding, the need to accommodate international travelers and a purported script glitch that caused some members to get paid twice.
Some members — including members who previously sold JSS Tripler as a “passive” investment opportunity — now claim that members unwilling to assist Dave in posting fake comments are “lazy.”
On the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, a “Dave” cheerleader posted a list of 26 websites for JSS Tripler 2 members to visit to post comments.
So, the JSS Tripler 2 “program” includes these elements:
An HYIP scheme that purportedly provided an annualized return of 730 percent and started out by naming itself after an existing scheme that also purported to pay 730 percent a year. (Think FINRA and its memorable “bizarre substratum of the Internet” line in July 2010.)
A preemptive denial that a Ponzi scheme was under way — even as well-known Ponzi forum cheerleaders helped the scheme gain a head of steam. (As part of FINRA’s July 2010 educational campaign on the dangers of HYIP fraud, it issued a public warning about social-networking fraud.)
A purported payment-processor freeze that left members in the lurch for weeks.
Incongruous suggestions that “law enforcement” had failed to act in the best interests of the “program.”
Attempts to chill/ostracize members. (The sort of coercive tactics referenced in the June 2010 IMMFWG document publicized by the U.S. Department of Justice.)
A name change. (Also an element in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi case.)
The launch of companion “programs.” (Another element in the ASD Ponzi case.)
A purported bout with Dengue fever. (Purported illnesses and violent windstorms are longtime HYIP clichés.)
Payment delays blamed on a wedding. (Imagine a legitimate broker/financial adviser telling you that you’d have to wait for the branch manager to return from her honeymoon in Southeast Asia before you could withdraw the sum you need to buy groceries or cough medicine for your children or pay a tuition bill.)
Payment delays blamed on script problems and/or double payments to members. (See this story from our ASD files.)
A purported duty to post comments on Blogs to drive up their sale value, so the money can be used to fund investment “opportunities.”
Compound150 says it is a spinoff of T2MoneyKlub, while targeting "compounding lovers" like a sandwich joint targets lovers of cheeseburgers.
The ink was barely dry on the most recent civil judgments for millions of dollars against serial HYIP pitchman Matthew J. Gagnon when Compound150 launched yesterday. On Tuesday, the SEC announced $4.2 million in new court-ordered assessments against Gagnon, who’d earlier been hit with more than $2.5 million in assessments in a related case and became the subject of a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Secret Service.
Gagnon was a web-based pitchman for the Legisi HYIP Ponzi scheme and other high-yield “opportunities,” including a “program” in which his alleged partner was a twice-convicted felon. The SEC essentially charged Gagnon with turning a blind eye to obvious fraud schemes — repeatedly.
Apparently not taking the clue that HYIP promoters are at risk of both civil and criminal prosecution, the operators of JSS Tripler 2 have launched the Compound150 feeder scam, a companion to the original JSS Tripler 2 scam. After suspending member payouts in December 2011 amid reports of an AlertPay freeze, JSS Tripler 2 — also known as T2 — gave itself a new name: T2MoneyKlub.
The addition of the Compound150 scam means that the entity — purportedly operated by “Dave” from locales ranging from Britain to Cambodia to Thailand — means that the original JSS Tripler 2 entity now has a third entry in its scam lineup.
But the strangeness does not end there: Indeed, JSS Tripler 2 reportedly based its original name on JSS Tripler, a purportedly unrelated “program” whose affiliates became the subjects in January of a probe by CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator. Compound 150 reportedly launched during a period in which “Dave” was building prelaunch buzz while simultaneously battling (or recovering from) a bout with Dengue fever.
In the fraud sphere, it is common for “opportunities” to refer to illnesses, server problems or catastrophes such as typhoons. In upholding the 20-year prison sentence of pyramid schemer Seng Tan, the U.S. Court of Appeals last month pointed out that Tan — who targeted the scam she ran with her husband at Cambodian émigrés in the United States — blamed the scam’s inability to make payouts on Hurricane Katrina.
Tan’s husband — James Bunchan — ultimately received sentences totaling 60 years because he discussed murdering witnesses and the federal prosecutor who brought the case.
How strange could the JSS Tripler2/T2MoneyKlub/Compound150 “opportunity” get? The answer, perhaps, is that the sky is the limit. Perhaps positioning itself as a category creator, Compound150 says “compounding lovers” are among its target audience.
Compound150 apparently believes it is to multilevel marketing (MLM) what a fast-food chain is to lovers of cheeseburgers
Compound150 opened its doors amid a weekend flap at the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum in which “Dave” — posting as Peakr8 — protested the forum’s description that the emerging opportunity was an HYIP, not an MLM opportunity.
“So are we a HYIP?” Dave asked.
“Hell no!” he answered himself, even as Compound150 was claiming on its website that it pays participants “1% daily for 150 days up to 150%.”
In effect, Compound 150 is advertising a (precompounding) annualized return of 365 percent, about the same purported ROI that led to the 2010 indictment of AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin amid allegations he was operating an international Ponzi scheme.
If convicted on all counts in his September 2012 Ponzi trial, Bowdoin, 77, faces up to 125 years in federal prison and fines in the millions of dollars. As part of the ASD Ponzi investigation, the U.S. Secret Service seized the bank accounts of some individual ASD promoters.
Ten of Bowdoin’s personal bank accounts were seized — and five bank accounts allegedly involved in the operation of Golden Panda Ad Builder, a companion autosurf, were seized.
“Dave” was joined in his protest by JSS Tripler2/T2MoneyKlub/Compound150 shill “lolalola,” who insisted that Compound150 was an MLM.
In the civil portion of the ASD case, ASD also insisted it was an MLM. A federal judge was unmoved, ordering the forfeiture of more than $80 million, including more than $65.8 million from Bowdoin’s personal bank accounts.
An “opportunity” can at once be both an HYIP and an illegitimate MLM “program.” (Simply calling a program an ‘MLM” does not cure a program of legal defects, and some scams mix-and-math elements of both pyramid schemes and Ponzi schemes. Such programs may be described by investigators as pyramid-style Ponzi schemes.)
Compound150 appears to have a confluence of payout schemes very similar to the schemes that led to at least FOUR ASD-related forfeiture actions, the filing of a racketeering (RICO) lawsuit against Bowdoin, the seizure of tens of millions of dollars, millions of dollars in ASD-related civil judgments — and the ultimate filing of wire fraud and securities- fraud charges against Bowdoin.
Bowdoin also was charged with selling unregistered securities.
Like Bowdoin, Seng Tan also insisted her “opportunity” was an MLM.
Although accused Ponzi schemer and AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin appears not to be among the promoters of JSS Tripler (T2), T2 appears to be relying on a Bowdoin-like playbook in announcing a restart after having earlier suspended payouts.
The bizarre international spectacle created by JSS Tripler 2 (T2) is continuing — and gets stranger and more insidious by the day. The purported “opportunity,” which is trading on the name of a murky entity known as JSS Tripler and apparently cloning its Ponzi business model, has announced a restart after weeks of existing in a state of suspended animation purportedly caused by the freezing of a one-time T2 business partner’s AlertPay account.
T2 now claims it has regained access to the frozen AlertPay funds.
A week or so prior to T2’s purported restart, promoters of JSS Tripler, the purported “opportunity” upon which T2 based its name, became the subject of a securities investigation in Europe. Ponzi-forum hucksters — some of whom are promoting both T2 and JSS Tripler — scoffed at the CONSOB probe and flooded the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum with “I got paid” posts.
It is axiomatic that all successful Ponzi schemes pay. That an “opportunity” pays is not evidence that no underlying criminality exists. The timing of T2’s restart — indeed, the restart occurred after the Italian regulator CONSOB announced that JSS Tripler promoters were being scrutinized — demonstrates that the serial hucksters driving T2 are turning a blind eye to the serious issues being raised in Europe.
The development is hardly unprecedented, given that core groups of scammers who populate the Ponzi boards and simultaneously maintain their own fraud sites thumbed their noses after law-enforcement moved against “opportunities” such as Pathway To Prosperity, Legisi, Gold Quest International, Imperia Invest IBC and others, including AdSurfDaily.
Like its namesake JSS Tripler, T2 advertises a return rate of 2 percent a day, twice that of ASD. In 2008, the U.S. Secret Service called ASD an international Ponzi scheme. Tens of millions of dollars were seized from bank accounts, and ASD operator Andy Bowdoin later was arrested on charges of wire fraud, securities fraud and selling unregistered securities.
At least $110 million found its way into ASD or related coffers, prosecutors said. Several million dollars were moved into Canada just prior to the seizure of ASD-related assets in August 2008, according to court filings.
In early 2007, according to prosecutors, ASD suffered a Ponzi collapse that in part was blamed on “Russian” hackers. Bowdoin claimed the hackers stole $1 million, but he never filed a police report.
Like T2 did between at least December 2011 and February of this year, ASD existed in a state of suspended animation for months in 2007. Bowdoin eventually restarted the “opportunity” under a different name and different website — ASDCashGenerator, as opposed to AdSurfDaily — and began the process of picking pockets anew, federal prosecutors said.
Unlike ASD, T2 did not claim its payout problems were caused by Russian hackers. Instead, the “opportunity” claimed a onetime business partner known as “Chris,” purportedly living in England, was to blame.
Like ASD, however, T2 claimed it was changing names, morphing from JSS Tripler 2 to T2MoneyKlub. The name change was explained to be part of an overall restart plan in which T2 would create revenue streams by building prefabricated websites and offering them for sale at a tremendous profit. The plan, which appeared to be exceptionally forward-looking while making preposterous assumptions, presented fallacies of logic such as these:
That T2, operating with an in-house skeleton crew and volunteer members, no declared base of operations and no compliance arm despite reaching into dozens of countries each with a unique set of laws, could at once be a web-service provider while managing a “program” that promised a return rate of 2 percent a day or 730 percent a year on top of recruitment-commission payments.
That web-service customers would pay a premium for sites built by a murky entity whose operators simultaneously were offering investors returns that would make Bernard Madoff blush.
That the fees generated by the sale of websites at a future point uncertain somehow could sustain a scheme that promised to pay out twice as much as ASD, whose operator already was under indictment on Ponzi-related charges and had advertised the same sort of payment schemes.
That there would be any reason at all for T2 to continue to offer an investment program that advertised a ludicrous return if its purported sale of websites could result in handsome, self-sustaining profits for the web-service venture. (Longtime PP Blog readers will recall that the AdViewGlobal (AVG) autosurf claimed at one time that it, too, was morphing into a company that would offer web services as a means of propping up an initial investment scheme. AVG, like ASD, promised to pay out half of what T2 claims. AVG disappeared in June 2009, only weeks after its morphing announcement.)
Also like ASD, T2 preemptively denied it was a Ponzi scheme, despite an absurd confluence of payment schemes in which T2 claimed an ability to pay an annualized return of 730 percent on top of recruitment commissions.
As previously noted, T2’s advertised return rate was double that of ASD, which prosecutors said had no meaningful revenue streams beyond payments by members. Those payments simply were recycled and returned to other ASD members in the form of classic Ponzi payouts.
Even though T2 — like ASD — purported to be changing its name, the name change appears to have hit a snag. T2 initially announced it would emerge as T2MoneyKlub on Feb. 1. That didn’t happen, according to Ponzi-forum chatter, because T2 did not have an AlertPay account in its new name.
T2, according to chatter, then defaulted back to its original name, a circumstance that apparently means the purported “opportunity” can both receive and send money, shelve its new name for the time being and reposition itself under its “old” name to reach into the pockets of new investors.
“Dave,” the purported operator of T2, according to Ponzi-forum chatter, once was a member of JSS Tripler, one of the entities referenced in the CONSOB action. It appears as though “Dave” was unmoved by the CONSOB action, so much so that he restarted JSS Tripler 2 even though claims about namesake JSS Tripler are under scrutiny and the already-radioactive name easily could become even more radioactive in the weeks ahead.
T2 payouts will come from “AlertPay, SolidTrustPay and LibertyReserve,” Dave announced on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum, posting as “Peakr8.” All three of the named processors have reputation for being friendly to fraud schemes. Both AlertPay and SolidTrustPay are referenced in court files in the ASD Ponzi case.
MoneyMakerGroup member “jieroz” quickly fired up an “I got paid” post for T2 today, saying the $25 payment had come from AlertPay.
“Congrats, that was fast … As usual . . .” strosdegoz blathered.
A poster purportedly from India and using the handle “hemsagar” also joined in the cheers.
“WTG! WTG!” he exclaimed in approval.
A link under the approving post of “hemsagar” led to a “benefactor” promotion in which he claims he’ll pay people to join T2 by sending them money through AlertPay.
Amid the cheerleading in the MoneyMakerGroup T2 thread, “Dave,” posting as “Peakr8,” announced he was taking a trip to “Cambodia.” This trip apparently follows on the heels of a trip “Dave” purportedly had taken earlier from England to Thailand during a period in which T2 was not paying members.
“Dave” conceded that T2’s restart had resulted in problems at T2’s in-house cheerleading forum.
“I know there are bugs, but we will stamp on em one by one when I get back from Cambodia,” Dave posted on MoneyMakerGroup as “Peakr8.”
Below that post, another post from “hemsagar” appears. Although his brief MoneyMakerGroup bio at the left of the post claims he is from India, his post about the bugs in the T2 forum makes this claim:
“Its back up here in the Ukraine.”
Whether “hemsagar” is a citizen of India now living in Ukraine is unclear.
Serial huckster “strosdegoz” later proclaimed “we need to pump up” the T2 forum and “also . . . every place else.
“I have to do my dozens of forums too,” strosdegoz acknowledged.
Regulators have warned the public repeatedly that scams involving hundreds of millions of dollars are spreading virally on the Internet through forums and social-media sites. Pathway to Prosperity, which was pushed on the Ponzi forums, eventually made its way to 120 countries, according to court filings.
The scheme had a take of more than $70 million and created at least 40,000 victims, according to court filings.
ASD may have created a similar number of victims, according to court filings. Legisi and Imperia Invest IBC also created victims by the thousands, investigators said.
Included in the Imperia victims’ count were thousands of people with hearing impairments, investigators said.
“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.
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!”
“Beejay,” the purported “admin” of a “program” known as “Digadz,” is “seriously injured and [his] whole body is paralyzed,” according to chatter circulating on Facebook and on the MoneyMakerGroup Ponzi forum.
