Troy Barnes, ‘Achieve Community’ Ponzi Schemer, Sentenced To 33 Months
Troy A. Barnes ran “The Achieve Community” (TAC) scam along with Kristine L. “Kristi” Johnson. Barnes, 53, of Riverview Mich., now has been sentenced to 33 months in federal prison, the office of U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose announced. Johnson, of Colorado, earlier was sentenced to 21 months. Achieve was a Ponzi-board program that used a […]
Kristine Johnson Of ‘The Achieve Community’ Scam Sentenced To 21 Months
2ND UPDATE 8:38 P.M. EDT U.S.A. Kristine Louise “Kristi” Johnson, one of the two principals of “The Achieve Community” (TAC) Ponzi- and pyramid scheme, has been sentenced to 21 months in federal prison, the office of U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose of the Western District of North Carolina said moments ago. The SEC sued Johnson […]
BULLETIN: Paul Burks Of Zeek Rewards Sentenced To More Than 14 Years; Judge Comments On ‘Cheerleaders’
3RD UPDATE 4:52 P.M. ET U.S.A. Paul Burks, the principal behind the $939 million Zeek Rewards Ponzi- and pyramid scheme broken up by the SEC and the U.S. Secret Service in August 2012, has been sentenced to 176 months in federal prison, the office of U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose of the Western District of North Carolina […]
Dawn Wright-Olivares Of Zeek Rewards Sentenced To 7.5 Years In Federal Prison
BULLETIN: Dawn Wright-Olivares, the former COO of Zeek Rewards, has been sentenced to seven and one-half years in federal prison. The sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge Max O. Cogburn Jr. of the Western District of North Carolina. The office of U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose prosecuted Wright-Olivares for investment- and tax-fraud conspiracy. Daniel Olivares, […]
EDITORIAL: With Conviction Of Zeek’s Burks, Another Senior MLMer Faces Prospect Of Decades In Prison
UPDATED 4:31 P.M. EDT U.S.A. Zeek Rewards was always inexcusably horrid, fueled by serial willful blindness and the sort of practiced disingenuousness that props up so many MLM “programs.” In dollar volume, Zeek ended up being more than seven times larger than the $119 million AdSurfDaily MLM Ponzi scheme that put ASD operator Andy Bowdoin in federal […]
FEDS: Having Pocketed $11 Million In 2011, Burks Plowed Forward With Zeek, Despite Knowledge Of AdSurfDaily Ponzi Case
“Rather, [Andy] Bowdoin manufactured the revenue numbers to deceive members into believing that they could reasonably expect to receive an average daily return on their investment with [AdSurfDaily] of at least 1%. This percentage in no way corresponded to the daily revenue that ASD was generating, but had been determined by ASD’s operators to be […]
Sentencing Hearing Postponed For Zeek Rewards’ Executive Dawn-Wright Olivares
Sentencing for Dawn Wright-Olivares, a former Zeek Rewards’ executive who pleaded guilty in February 2014 to investment-fraud conspiracy and tax-fraud conspiracy, has been postponed, the office of U.S. Attorney Jill Westmoreland Rose of the Western District of North Carolina said today. Wright-Olivares, whose age was listed as 45 by federal prosecutors at the time of her guilty plea, […]
FEDS: ‘Achieve Community’ Scam Raked Victims In More Than 140 Countries; Justice Department’s ‘Mega Victim Case Unit’ Called To Duty
Unlike the boffo web-based schemes of TelexFree, Zeek Rewards and AdSurfDaily, the “Achieve Community” scam in which participants were told they’d glean returns of 700 percent did not perform well (relatively speaking) at the MLM Pyramid/Ponzi Scheme Box Office. Achieve’s haul topped out at about $6.8 million, with alleged unfunded liabilities in the range of $50 […]