UPDATED 11:15 P.M. EDT U.S.A. Still pushing UFunClub (or Unascos) and absurd propositions such as UToken? Follow the narrative of the Spanish National Police and see if it reminds you of anything you’ve heard before. Any number of digital-currency scams currently are fleecing people globally.
Indeed, National Police have announced the arrests of 20 individuals and the seizure of millions of dollars after an investigation into a purported digital currency known as unete or unetes offered through a “program” known as “Unetenet.”
From the English translation (italics added/no editing performed):
National Police agents have broken up an alleged criminal organization specialized in the commission of massive fraud by the method of the “pyramid schemes”. The group had obtained more than 50 million euros through scams 50,000 people, 6,000 of them located in Spain. After more than year and a half of investigation, agents were able to confirm the existence a company that captured his victims through publicity events, as events in luxury hotels, promotional videos or educational talks and offered them extra income quickly inserting ads company network. Money that was developed by the company in a con artist invented virtual currency, I really had no value, and thus impossible to recoup their investments.
Arrests were made in Madrid, Valencia, Malaga, Seville, Langreo, Alicante and Arrecife (Las Palmas), police said.
El Pais, the Spanish newspaper, reported last month that the currency was devised by Spaniard José Manuel Ramírez Marco. The publication carried a photo of Marco posing in front of a building dubbed “Dubai Internet City.”
Any number of recent schemes have claimed ties in Dubai.
Authorities investigating unete got a break when a former employee of the company filed a complaint, apparently at the Interior Attaché in Bolivia. Complaints also came in from various parts of Spain, police said.
In a money-laundering probe, police seized at least 18 computers, hard drives and CPUs, three tablets, “numerous documents related to fraud and money laundering,” 15,505 euros and two luxury cars.
“In addition, an account has been locked in Latvia with millions of US dollars [possibly $22 million or $27 million], plus Canadian dollars, British pounds [presumptively] and Australian dollars.
A Louisiana man ripped off investors in a multifaceted Ponzi scheme and used some of the cash to buy a “new Chevrolet Camaro for one girlfriend and breast augmentation surgery [for] another girlfriend,” according to a bill of information filed against him.
John Sposato, 64, of Slidell, has been charged with wire fraud, the office of U.S. Attorney Kenneth A. Polite of the Eastern District of Louisiana said.
Much of the charging document describes typical Ponzi fare. When payments were delayed, for instance, Sposato allegedly blamed events on the weather, family illnesses and “issues with the international financial institutions in which the funds were supposedly invested.”
Perhaps hinting that prime-bank fraud was part of the swindle, the charging document references “international bank instruments.”
Sposato also made “lulling payments” from “new investor money” to keep the Ponzi alive and to dupe investors into believing the scheme was legitimate, according to the charging document.
In addition to the purported “international bank instruments,” Sposato also allegedly pushed supposedly “cutting edge oil remediation and recovery” and real-estate investments. The Sposato-linked companies referenced by prosecutors included Pegasus Investment & Development Corporation LLC; Pegasus Investments; Oil Eaters LLC; Organic Miracle Incorporation; S&J Corporate Properties LLC; Pegasus Demolition & Debris Removal Service LLC; and Pegasus Truck Lines Inc.
The investments were described as “never at risk,” according to the charging document.
As is the case in many schemes, Sposato’s investors allegedly were told “their principal investments were immune from market volatility and were secure from any losses.”
Read the Sposato charging document that alleges a Ponzi swindle of more than $811,000. Prosecutors said the scheme was “national” in scope , that 48 individuals in the United States invested with Sposato and that he “provided prospective investors false or fraudulent documents to make the investments appear legitimate and to conceal the true nature of the Ponzi scheme.”
UFunClub/UToken, apt to have gathered a far greater sum than either Achieve or Sposato, may have affected tens of thousands of investors worldwide, including hundreds or more in the United States. As was the alleged case with Sposato, UFunClub/UToken may be operating through multiple companies.
‘Dominator’ Michael Mansell tells the UFunClub/UToken troops that opponents of the program are like the disease-spreading zombies on ‘The Walking Dead’ television series. Source: YouTube promo dated May 4, 2015.
If you want to sell UFunClub/UToken, you have to understand that you’ll encounter opposition from “sheeples,” according to American promoter Michael Mansell of the UFUN Dominators Team.
These sheeples will be trapped in their miserable lives to the point of being brain dead, and therefore will not understand that the visionary Dominators seek to “change the status quo,” “don’t expect the norm” and “do not accept ordinary.”
How to deal with the sheeples? Well, you bash their heads with baseball bats, he jokes.
“You gotta push through those crowds of people,” he says in a 1:13:55 YouTube promo featuring three other American Dominators while UFunClub/UToken is under investigation in Thailand, where people are being arrested and property and assets are being seized.
“I liken it to pushing through a bunch of zombies from ‘The Walking Dead.’ They’re gonna bite you; they’re gonna try to scratch you; they’re gonna try to infect you with their disease,” Mansell continues.
“But you gotta keep swinging that bat at their brains to make sure they don’t get in your way. And you gotta keep pushing through those zombies until you get to the other side, where you create your own new world.”
There may be up to 3,000 Americans in UFunClub/UToken, even though there is no official office in the United States, according to the video.
Precisely how so many Americans became involved remains unclear. If the 3,000 number is correct, however, it would mean that Americans potentially dumped more than $1.9 million into the cross-border scheme. Promoters advertised a minimum buy-in of $635. Buy-in sums of $1,230, $6,040, $12,100 and $57,500 also were advertised, meaning that American involvement in UFunClub/UToken could far exceed $1.9 million.
Mansell was not advocating for actual violence against the purportedly brain-dead opposition; he was simply playing off a baseball-bat theme handed him by Rodney Burton, a fellow American Dominator.
American MLMers/network marketers, Burton suggests, should be like slugger Babe Ruth: They should swing for the fences and not worry about fanning. After all, he says, people remember Ruth for his homeruns, not the number of times he whiffed.
As for the American UFunClub/UToken Dominators?
“We’re going to stand and keep on swinging until there’s no more bat left,” Burton says.
He also contended during that call that UFunClub/UToken has an office in the United States that hasn’t opened. He didn’t say where, but claimed U.S. members would be able to fund their accounts through ACH transactions tied to an ewallet gateway.
Which illegal scheme was that? Why, Rex Venture Group LLC, the operator of the cross-border Zeek Rewards scheme that ultimately gathered $897 million.
Any UFunClub/UToken ACH vendor could be at the same risk. In the context of UFunClub/UToken, the risk even could be amplified.
Why?
The case of TelexFree, an alleged $1.8 billion cross-border Ponzi- and pyramid scheme, may provide a strong clue. Records show that Brazilian regulators opened probes into its activities in that country in 2013.
Any number of TelexFree promoters turned a blind eye to the Brazil developments and continued to promote the purported opportunity. U.S. regulators later charged several American TelexFree promoters with securities fraud.
In other news from the Dominators’ video, American promoter Jamison Palmer was said to be back in the United States after promoting the scheme from Thailand.
UPDATED 7:57 A.M. EDT U.S.A. UFunClub and its purported digital currency known as UToken are the latest examples of grandiose absurdities in the MLM/network-marketing HYIP sphere. These transnational schemes pose an untenable economic and political danger. They must be destroyed.
To the people of Thailand and likely an incredibly large number of people in other nations, UFunClub/UToken is what a combine/knife cutter bar is to a field of grain: The people — living, breathing human beings — have been reaped, threshed and winnowed by equal-opportunity MLM/network-marketing scammers operating with reckless abandon.
The heart of the scam is that people are being duped into believing they’re investing in something Bitcoin-like, only on the ground floor, only better and only without any inherent risks such as price volatility and imbalances in supply and demand. As the screen shot above demonstrates, investors are told UToken values only can rise and never can fall.
The identity of UToken’s official scorer and the location from which he or she delivers this purportedly permanent miracle are unknown.
What is known is that harebrained schemes in this sphere are infamous for con men such as AdSurfDaily’s Andy Bowdoin, a “man behind a green curtain” who fabricated numbers to make the impossible appear to be plausible. This was done prior to the collapse, of course.
After the 2008 collapse — and prior to the imposition of a prison sentence against Bowdoin — investors were falsely told the government didn’t understand the “program” and the new way of doing business electronically.
Burks’ green curtain allegedly was situated in a North Carolina building with an attached coin-operated laundry. Bowdoin’s was in a former flower shop in Florida. UFunClub/UToken appears to have arranged a much better backdrop for photos: an office tower.
Drones And Cops
Despite the arrests of his colleagues and an ongoing pyramid/Ponzi investigation by the police in his host country, Jamison Palmer, an American UFunClub/UToken promoter living in Thailand, has positioned himself as an insider.
In the aftermath of Ponzi/pyramid police raids against UFunClub/UToken in Thailand, it’s important to have the “proper perspective,” Palmer drones on video, building a narrative that the police have been misinformed and that the “media” is the real culprit.
UFunClub/UToken is not a Ponzi or pyramid scheme and is not the problem, he contends. The problem is that “the media in Thailand is notoriously corrupt.”
For good measure, Palmer adds, “Here in Thailand, it’s possible to pay off the media. UFun has a lot of jealous competitors, and so that may be what we’re looking at here. There’s obviously some type of agenda.”
It is common for MLM/network-marketing firms and affiliates to blame events on competitors with axes to grind. (Read here how Dawn Wright-Olivares did so at Zeek Rewards before the SEC shut down the “opportunity” and before she was sued civilly and charged criminally.)
Even Thailand’s Prime Minister has recognized that the country’s media lies and twists things, Palmer contends.
The Prime Minister, according to Palmer, is on record saying that “he’s going to shut the media down” if reporters keep telling lies. Palmer did not explain how the head of a Democracy answerable to 67 million inhabitants would go about the draconian business of halting presses, blocking broadcast signals and preventing web publishing.
In the wake of the Thailand investigation, UFunClub has been working with their “teams of attorneys” and is preparing “a calculated response,” Palmer says, prodding investors not to lose faith.
“We’re planning on acquiring as many UTokens as we possibly can,” he says of his recruitment team.
But even the core stories surrounding UToken are hard to reconcile. Some promoters say at least 22 percent of its value is backed by gold. Palmer claims that UToken holds “money-generating assets” such as interests in Asian commercial developments and the “marble-mining project, which has an estimated value of tens of billions of dollars.”
These dollars prop up the purported UToken “reserve,” Palmer says.
Even as the Thai probe moves forward, questions have been raised about whether UFunClub/UToken has found political cover in Malaysia. If the answer proves to be yes, it will only add to the cross-border horror. (Please see Concluding Note at bottom of column on a PP Blog theory of what could be contributing to the impression that UFunClub/UToken is operating with impunity in Malaysia.)
Thai police have been on the case since at least April 10, the date raids were conducted and the first arrests were made. The dollar volume involved may exceed $1.17 billion (U.S.).
UFunClub/UToken likely is based in Asia. Exactly where is unclear, even though there is a glistening office building in Bangkok that promoters point to as proof no scam exists. The “program” may be operating through layered nominees in multiple Asian nations and through corrupt Asian distributors who effectively are the local faces of the “program,” but are puppets on a string to the true braintrust.
How deeply it has penetrated the United States is unclear. But if you look at the screen shot below from a UToken promo in English and then visit this story and review some of the graphics and narratives from the TelexFree and AdSurfDaily Ponzi-scheme stories, you will quickly learn that UFunClub/UToken promoters used the same insidious marketing methods that put nearly $2 billion on the table for TelexFree and ASD combined.
Compare these instructions given to UFunClub/UToken recruits to those given recruits of TelexFree and AdSurfDaily.
There have been reports that some UToken investors, unnerved by reports of investigations, are trying to offload their holdings. The same thing happened with TelexFree “AdCentrals.”
Make no mistake: UFunClub, like TelexFree before it, is doing things that encourage black-market profiteers. And because serial scamming is part and parcel to this noxious sphere, scammers within the larger scam can be relied upon to expand the black market.
Some UFunClub/UToken figures are considered international fugitives. Some of these figures may not be managers or principals at all. Rather, they may be individuals who rented their faces or credentials to the “program” to give it a veneer of legitimacy.
The UFunClub/UToken Band Plays On
Despite the well-documented actions of Thai police to contain the damage, the UFunClub/UToken band plays on in Malaysia. Propaganda videos from American cheerleaders for the schemes appeared online over the weekend. They show Dato Daniel Tay, UFun’s purported executive chairman, being given the welcome of a rock star. Never mind that he is a suspected international felon allegedly involved in a colossal cross-border fraud.
Zeek Rewards was an alleged $897 million Ponzi- and pyramid scheme. Zeek was promoted in part as a “private, invitation-only” program.
How is UFunClub/UToken being promoted? Well, as a “private member registration only” program. In short, UFunClub/UToken’s script apple didn’t fall very far from Zeek’s insidious tree.
Zeek may have scalded 800,000 or more investors while also triggering Ponzi clawback litigation against thousands and thousands of alleged “winners” across the world. The claim that Zeek was “private” did nothing to forestall these lawsuits.
In Thailand so far, the prospect of Zeek-like clawback lawsuits has not been raised. Instead, in the early days of the probe, police appear to have concentrated on seizing vehicles, homes and other personal property. MLM/network-marketing fraud schemes typically are labyrinths with interconnected rabbit holes.
What else does one see online about UToken? Convenient, shoehorned daily claims that UToken is better than Bitcoin and has perfected a means by which the UToken value, unlike Bitcoin, only will rise and never will fall. As noted above, there are companion claims that UToken is backed by gold. The odd thing about that is that gold values fluctuate — and yet UToken purportedly does not.
How is UToken’s purported permanent upward movement possible? Well, to hear the cheerleaders tell it, UFunClub also has investments in mineral mining (marble) and major construction projects that are indefatigable cash cows, apparently whether building occupancy and retail activity is zero percent or 100 percent and whether consumer and corporate buying power rises or falls.
Remember the 2008 economic crisis that swept across the world and caused, among other things, waves of foreclosures in the United States at rates unseen since the Great Depression? Remember those sad and disturbing images of the stick-shells of homes and commercial sites sitting empty, their partially installed, tattered insulation flapping in the wind?
To hear the UFunClub/UToken Happy Land cheerleaders tell it, UFunClub/UToken apparently insulates investors worldwide from all of that — in fact, from any negative that could come down the pike.
UFunClub’s apparently perfect investments in marble and development projects apparently also serve as a hedge against drops in the price of of government-issued currency, further guaranteeing that UToken never will go down. The natural extension of this fantastic line of logic is UToken will go up even if gold and real estate go down and even if the dollar crashes.
It’s purportedly win-win with UToken in perpetuity, 24/7/365, apparently even if a recession occurs across the world, even if terrorists carry out a political assassination or an attack against masses of people that panics the markets, even if a major power grid goes offline through infrastructure neglect or actions by terrorists, even if an earthquake ravages a major population center and destroys commerce in that area or releases a radiation cloud.
Reduced to its essence, nothing can cause UToken to go down, not even the current criminal investigation that likely will expand into other countries. The narrative holds that income from UToken will be “passive,” there will be “splits” when it reaches a certain dollar value, the wealth will rain down on members as a whole and create an endless number of “millionaires,” and UToken will start trading on NASDAQ in 2016.
Wouldn’t you just love to see an SEC registration statement or a prospectus for an offering tied to a digital currency that purportedly is backed by a “private” reserve and can never go down in value? Can you imagine a jaw-dropping footnote that reads, “UToken’s value is perennially guaranteed to increase because we hold investments in marble and profit-generating construction projects?”
Of course, UFun also purportedly engages in the sale of products such as cosmetics and perhaps juices. There’s not much talk about it, though. Almost all of the talk is about the miraculous marriage of businesses that apparently are unaffected by general marketplace conditions, inflation, interest rates, supply-chain issues, cross-border logistics and regional differences in money values.
Precisely who is keeping the books isn’t clear. Also unclear is how UFunClub/UToken deals with compliance issues in the dozens of countries in which it conducts operations.
The three screen shots in this PP Blog editorial are from the same online promo for UFunClub/UToken. Among the information not shown in the shots are references to a “home run” and these text lines (italics added/not in order as they appear in the text):
Talks and Agreements are also being held between the Chinese Governrment [sic] and UFUN Management to Officially Upgrade Utokens as China’s Recognized Digital Currency.
With so many more projects in The pipelines, It is no longer a SECRET that The Top Elites in Asia are Rushing to buy THEIR UTOKENS! And now it’s the English speakers turn to get their slice of this ever-growing massive pie!
NOTE
Please hold all bank wires until further notice
Hello Team,
I just got finished messaging with Jamison and have been told that we need to put a stop to sending wires altogether. They are on the verge of releasing their payment gateway and have asked that the wiring of funds cease. I do not have any further info about the payment gateway as of yet, but once that it established, we can move forward full steam ahead.
Based on the text lines, it seems clear that UFunClub/UToken has solicited investors across the world to wire money to the “program.” At some point, a marching order went out to stop using wires. This adds yet another layer of general murkiness.
A Special Message For American Promoters
This PP Blog column is mostly for “serial” American MLMers/network marketers who boarded the UFunClub/UToken train and became promoters: You are making your trade look ridiculous on a global scale. You are injuring people while you turn a blind eye and pursue illicit profits. You are making your country look ridiculous.
Some of you started as exporters of Ponzi and pyramid schemes. Now, you’re importing them to your friends, neighbors, family members and loved ones. It is not macular degeneration that afflicts you; it is willful blindness. You are not promoting capitalism and “freedom”; you are promoting naked greed and anarchy.
UFun/UToken is, at its essence, an insidious scam that relied on disguised, cross-border crowdfunding and claims about future IPOs to advance a preposterous offering fraud that is tied to an equally preposterous digital currency. The suggestions that Thailand is a “little” country and therefore there’s nothing to fear from the probe ring every bit as hollow as the claims that Profitable Sunrise investors had nothing to worry about because North Carolina was a “small” state.
History shows that the claims that TelexFree investors had nothing to fear because the original action was brought by the “small” Brazilian state of Acre were equally vapid.
More than anything else, UFunClub/UToken demonstrates there is no ceiling to the willful blindness and criminality within MLM and network marketing. A pulse is the only thing needed to become a target.
And once you become immersed in the lunacy, some of the lunatics who melted your brain even may try to get you to turn against your own country.
America got a new Attorney General yesterday. She very likely will have a relatively short stint, given that President Obama will leave office in early 2017.
Loretta Lynch nevertheless will have a chance to cement an enduring legacy. It could start with an all-out assault against the insidious schemes that are weakening America and its allies even as these words go to print.
Prospects across the world are being told to buy into UFunClub/UToken for sums ranging from $575 to $57,500 and that the “program” plans to begin trading on NASDAQ in 2016.
Concluding Note
Malaysia is coming under editorial fire for not cracking down on UFunClub/UToken. There are companion reports that a member of the prime minister’s family somehow is involved with the “program.”
There is do doubt that various MLM/network-marketing scams have tried to influence the political process and have thrown around money to politicians. This happened in the United States with AdSurfDaily, Zeek Rewards and WCM777, and prosecutors have pursued all three “programs” aggressively.
These schemes are heavily layered and murky. All investigations require time to “follow the money.” Dozens and dozens of money-moving conduits, shell companies and nominees could be in play. One way to reverse-engineer a scheme is for a government to inject capital into it and watch how and where the money moves. After that, a government can introduce chokeholds to stop the flow of illicit cash.
There is no doubt this happened in the United States with AdSurfDaily and TelexFree. It very likely also happened with Zeek, given that there are multiple active criminal prosecutions.
Looking at the current situation involving UFunClub/UToken in Malaysia, the PP Blog would not rule out the possibility that what appears to be inaction on the part of the government is not that at all. Viewing the seeming inaction in a favorable light, the PP Blog theorizes that the government may not fully understand the system and may be creating time to determine the extent to which the “program” established ties in the country and with whom.
We know, for example, that U.S. government agents working undercover were in rooms in which TelexFree cheerleading sessions were taking place — even as the scheme operated. Undercover investigators also interacted with AdSurfDaily promoters.
Could the same thing be happening in Malaysia with UFunClub/UToken? Could Malaysian agents be observing events and introducing money into the system to better understand what the government is dealing with?
Copycat scams are infamous in MLM/network marketing. To be sure, international criminals are observing events in both Thailand and Malaysia and will look to introduce ruinous schemes if they detect so much as a crack in national defenses.
The narratives surrounding UFunClub/UToken are shopworn, fantastically bizarre and betray colossal ignorance. Malaysia, a constitutional monarchy, has to understand this. Don’t rule out that it does and that it has infiltrated the “program.”
If it hasn’t or if it is covering up the actions of the political elite, it might as well post a sign that says it welcomes thieves drunk on their own narratives operating within its borders.
As Thailand investigates UFunClub and UToken, U.S. regulators may be asking questions.
UPDATED 10:52 A.M. EDT U.S.A. The Colorado Division of Securities said it “will look into the extent” of promotional ties the UFunClub “program” now under investigation in Thailand may have in the state.
Whether other U.S. states would follow Colorado’s lead was not immediately clear. Earlier cross-border MLM/network-marketing schemes such as Profitable Sunrise and WCM777 met stiff resistance from state-level regulators.
The dollar volume of UFunClub’s alleged fraud may be mushrooming. Early reports pegged it at about $307 million (U.S.). Citing Thailand police, the Bangkok Post yesterday reported the sum could rise to 38 billion baht, the equivalent of more than $1.17 billion (U.S.).
If the number holds, UFunClub would rival in dollar volume the $1.8 billion TelexFree scheme shut down by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in 2014 and surpass the $897 million allegedly collected by the Zeek Rewards scheme before its 2012 shutdown by the SEC.
Prior to Monday, the Colorado Division was unfamiliar with UFunClub, said Lillian Alves, Colorado’s Deputy Securities Commissioner.
Some UFunClub promoters have claimed that Jamison Palmer, a purported UFunClub “VIP,” moved from Colorado to Asia to promote the “program” and a companion digital currency known as “UToken.”
Palmer, according to posts attributed to him online, has claimed UToken is the “future” of digital currency. He further has claimed the United States is using the “dollar” and its “banking system” to “blackmail the rest of the world.”
Palmer’s full name is Michael Jamison Palmer. He is associated with several Colorado businesses and has used a Colorado Area Code and addresses in Centennial, Broomfield and Superior. He has not been accused of wrongdoing.
These Palmer businesses include Max Response LLC, Red Spider Media LLC, Insider Secrets Club LLC, MasculineLife, a magazine for men, and Woman’sLife, a magazine for women.
On April 19, the PP Blog reported that an individual who spoke on an April 14 conference call for a “program” known as SVM Global Initiative made a veiled reference to UFunClub during the SVM call. The person identified himself as “Nelson” and said he was calling from “Saskatchewan, Canada.”
Before getting off the SVM line, “Nelson” described the United States as “the Republic of the United States of America.” It is a term associated with “sovereign citizens.”
SVM operator Sheila V. Tabarsi has claimed she is under investigation by the FBI. She also has claimed the “Bush administration” had the aim of shutting out 99 percent of the world population from wealth flows.
Tabarsi conducted another SVM call on April 20.
During this call, she claimed to be a “professional intuitive” — a fancy name for a psychic.
She also repeatedly dropped the name of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and also the name of Ruth Hassell-Thompson, a state Senator who represents the Bronx in New York.
SVM may operate in part from the Bronx and Manhattan.
During her business career, Tabarsi said, she became “one removed” from Kerry, and “John Kerry was helping with, you know, with whatever my needs were as I was in the process of developing this further . . . That’s Secretary of State John Kerry.”
It is not unusual for MLMers/network-marketers to drop the names of famous people or members of the government as a means of creating a veneer of legitimacy for a scheme. (As just one example, Zeek Rewards clawback defendant T. LeMont Silver, in a 2014 promo for a Bitcoin-themed scheme known as BitClub Network, dropped the names of California Gov. Jerry Brown, “China’s Central Bank Governor” and Gerogy Luntovsky, “deputy chairman of the bank of Russia.”)
At one point, Tabarsi referred to Kerry as just plain “John,” almost as though she could pick up the phone and get him on the line with no trouble at all.
Tabarsi further contended that she had the ability to read minds over the Internet, perhaps particularly the minds of SVM critics who’ve raised questions about the “program” on Blogs such as BehindMLM.com, which covers emerging MLM schemes.
“I used my own abilities as an empath and a telepath to read their body and read their feelings and read their minds and hear what they’re really thinking behind what they’re saying,” she claimed.
UPDATED 11:15 P.M. EDT U.S.A. Still pushing UFunClub (or Unascos) and absurd propositions such as UToken? Follow the narrative of the Spanish National Police and see if it reminds you of anything you’ve heard before. Any number of digital-currency scams currently are fleecing people globally.
