U.S. Secret Service

Paul Burks will be sentenced Feb. 13 for his criminal role in Zeek Rewards, and the court-appointed receiver is soliciting letters from victims of the combined Ponzi- and pyramid scheme that affected hundreds of thousands of people. Zeek gathered hundreds of millions of dollars in a massive fraud scheme broken up by the SEC and […]

UPDATED 3:51 P.M. EDT U.S.A. Peggy Hunt, a partner at Dorsey & Whitney in Salt Lake City, is the court-appointed receiver in the SEC’s Ponzi- and securities-fraud case against Traffic Monsoon and Charles David Scoville. Her impressive Dorsey bio says she has worked in the areas of bankruptcy and receivership law for more than 25 years […]

UPDATED 1:15 P.M. EDT U.S.A. It has happened in previous cases involving alleged violations of federal securities laws, and now it’s happening with Traffic Monsoon. “The Peiffer Rosca Wolf law firm is investigating Traffic Monsoon, LLC and Charles Scoville’s alleged Ponzi scheme on behalf of investors – whom Traffic Monsoon called ‘members,’” the firm said […]

UPDATED 11:51 A.M. EDT U.S.A. Zeek Rewards’ receiver Kenneth D. Bell had no comment this morning on reports that some Zeek clawback defendants also were participants in Traffic Monsoon, alleged last week by the SEC to have been a Ponzi scheme that had gathered at least $207 million. The reports appeared on RealScam.com. In March […]

Remember when Simon Stepsys — now with the cross-border MyAdvertisingPays scheme — was pushing the uber-bizarre Banners Broker cross-border scheme? New court filings in Canada by the receiver and liquidators in the Banners Broker case now estimate the total haul of the alleged double-your-money pyramid scam at more than $156 million. That’s up from an […]

URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: (5th Update 9:15 p.m. ET U.S.A.) The SEC has gone to federal court in the Western District of North Carolina and charged Zeek Rewards’ figure Trudy Gilmond with securities fraud, selling unregistered securities and failure to register as a broker-dealer. Among the allegations: Gilmond knew Zeek was under investigation in 2012 […]

Still promoting your securities scam on YouTube? As the PP Blog reported on Oct. 3, YouTube promos for the alleged DFRF Enterprises’ Ponzi scheme were cited in two of three wire-fraud counts against accused operator Daniel Fernandes Rojo Filho. Filho, allegedly at the helm of a fraud that gathered tens of millions of dollars, has […]

Uncharged in the Zeek Rewards’ case, Robert Craddock nevertheless has received prison time after pleading guilty to swindling more than $117,000 from the Deepwater Horizon oil-spill fund. U.S. District Judge Gregory A. Presnell of the Middle District of Florida yesterday sentenced Craddock to two six-month terms in federal prison to be served concurrently, followed by three […]

EDITORIAL: In April 2015, the PP Blog reported that a promo on YouTube put words in the mouth of President Obama and depicted him as a pitchman for MyAdvertisingPays, a cross-border scheme with  promoters in common with the alleged Zeek Rewards and TelexFree Ponzi- and pyramid schemes. “My AdvertisingPays pays its members every 20 minutes,” a mimicked […]

In October 2014, federal prosecutors alleged that the Zeek Rewards MLM “program” shut down by the SEC two years earlier was in part a scam that caused “victim-investors to file inaccurate tax returns for phantom income they never actually received.” Now, a year later, a member of the TelexFree MLM scheme shut down by the […]

On Jan. 20, 1981, Ronald Reagan became President of the United States — America’s 40th. He almost died in an assassination attempt outside the Washington Hilton Hotel a little more than two months later, on March 30. It was the 69th day of his Presidency. Today America is remembering the life of Jerry S. Parr, […]