UPDATED 11:57 A.M. EDT (U.S.A.) There are widespread reports this morning that AdVentures4U (ADV4U), the new darling of the autosurf world, is suspending “revenue sharing” and that its owner was threatened.
The reports come on the heels of various reports that the surf slashed payout rates and poured money into a gold-buying business known as TradingGold4Cash. ADV4U purportedly had more than 60,000 members and positioned itself as a “marketer’s dream.”
These remarks were sent members today and were attributed to Steve Smith, the purported owner of AdVentures4U.
Smith purportedly acknowledged that he put his family in danger by starting an autosurf.
“We have been threatened and my family is more important to me than most will know,” Smith purportedly said. “We Never (sic) ever said the revenue share was a set % and in order to move other income forward I made a decision that put my family in danger and I will not tolerate that.”
“99% of the members understood where we were going but the small % that I am scared of I just cannot risk because we really are who we said we are and we really did intend to move us into the future,” Smith purportedly said. “We will not be answering scary support or answering the phone anymore until we have completed the cashout requests.”
Smith purportedly urged members not to contact offshore payment processors to file complaints, saying any suspension of offshore accounts would result in members getting lower refunds.
“We cannot control the Members so please give us to Aug 4th (sic?) to process all payments because if members complain to the payment proccessors (sic) and they Freeze our accounts we will not be liable for any of the cashouts and the Revenue Share monies will held by the payment processors and we will not have control and they will only pay a portion of the monies back to the members,” Smith purportedly said.
It was not immediately clear why the message cited the Aug. 4 date — a date in the past.
AdVentures4U purportedly conducted business with a Hotmail address. The gold site purportedly is a subsidiary.
The ADV4U website appears still to be functional, although an audio message that once started up upon the loading of the page appears to have been disabled.