zeekrewardsAfter first reading David MacGregor’s Motion to Dismiss clawback litigation recently filed against him, my reaction was to wait for a decision on the matter to be made.

For those unfamiliar with MacGregor (full name: David Ian MacGregor Fraser), he was recently sued by Receiver Kenneth Bell for stealing $89,722 from Zeek Rewards victims.

Zeek Rewards was an $850 million dollar Ponzi scheme, shut down by the SEC in August of 2012.

Earlier this morning I read an article covering MacGregor’s Motion to Dismiss over at Patrick Pretty.

David-Ian-MacGregor-Fraser-zeek-rewards-investor-new-zealandIn it, MacGregor (right) is described as being a Sovereign Citizen. In my own readings, MacGregor’s Zeek username “sovlife” never clicked.

In any event it’s been my experience that whenever the phrase “sovereign citizen” appears in conjunction with MLM, batshit crazy rhetoric typically follows.

Some individuals who may identify with the word “sovereign” have participated in various fraud schemes, have painted their fellow human beings as slaves (see Frederick Mann) government-owned property (see Kenneth Wayne Leaming) and have expressed an irrational belief that laws do not apply to them.

Other “sovereigns” have made wild claims that they hold diplomatic immunity and thus cannot be prosecuted or are answerable only to Jesus Christ.

And so with that in mind I began my own research.

Before we get into what I found, I’ll borrow from Patrick Pretty’s coverage to give you a basic rundown:

David Ian MacGregor Fraser, a New Zealand resident who allegedly used the Zeek Rewards’ username of “sovlife,” has challenged a U.S. Court’s jurisdiction over him in a clawback lawsuit filed in February by Zeek receiver Kenneth D. Bell.

Fraser, through the American law firm, is seeking dismissal of the complaint for lack of jurisdiction. He also is seeking to quash process in New Zealand, even though he acknowledges he has been served.

Among Fraser’s specific defense claims is that he was an “innocent participant” in Zeek.

Fraser further contends he had “no specific knowledge that ZeekRewards was initiated from the United States.” He also contends he was “unaware that ZeekRewards originated in North Carolina.”

Those three claims (bolded) are of significance as, along with challenges to personal jurisdiction, they form the backbone of MacGregor’s defense.

Those defenses I’d already read myself though in the same document Patrick Pretty referenced. It was this additional research though that caught my eye:

The moniker “sovLife” appears repeatedly on the website theclassifiedsplus.com through which videos play. Some of these videos point to MLM “programs” such as the Empower Network in which “sovLife” is used as the affiliate ID.

Other videos at theclassifiedsplus point to a web entity known as sovereignlife.com. This domain is styled “SovereignLife” and identifies its operator as “David MacGregor.” There is a corresponding YouTube account in that name through which videos viewable through theclassifiedsplus.com play.

One of them with an upload date of July 3, 2013, is titled “My July 4 Message for the America That Was.” In the video, a man (presumptively “David MacGregor”) holds forth that he once was a big supporter of the United States.

That support, however, apparently has evaporated in that the man contends in the video that the United States is “Dare I say it? A force for evil.”

Web records suggest MacGregor Fraser used the shortened name of “David MacGregor” when pitching Zeek online through GetResponse.com, an email service sold in the United States and other countries.

I can’t recall quite how I did it, but I managed to go up a level on the GetResponse email Patrick Pretty found.

This gave me access to over 300 marketing emails MacGregor sent out between August 2011 and September 2014.

We’ll start with the Sovereign Citizens stuff, which MacGregor is obviously big a fan of.

As Patrick Pretty discovered, MacGregor runs the website Sovereign Life, which has its own free structure attached to it.

In one email MacGregor markets Sovereign Life as being for individuals looking to

  • Declare your personal independence
  • Protect your money via offshore banking
  • Buy gold & silver to protect against currency devaluation
  • Protect your assets with an offshore trust or company
  • Leverage your wealth by investing offshore
  • Maximise your freedom with a fully portable occupation and
  • Obtain a second residency or passport as “life insurance”

Originally hundreds of dollars was charged for this information, but now it seems to be some sort of cheap reseller deal (you pay a fee for access and then recruit others who pay you for access etc.).

To further elaborate on the type of content MacGregor provides through Sovereign Life, here’s a few snippets pertaining to the selling of passports (May 2012):

When you have a second passport or residency you have a vitally important life option – that of being able to live somewhere else legally.

I have two passports myself, and I certainly urge anyone who sees the value in having such an arrangement to do the same, sooner rather than later.

Quoting a passport service Sovereign Life is affiliated with ($749 for a package), MacGregor continues;

Escape a world where respectable members of a community can now be classified as criminals for violating unknown “laws”.

We even have a bullet proof escape plan to Brazil for those needing to escape permanently with peace of mind. After you arrive in Brazil and go through our program, you will not be extradited back to the country you escaped from.

One of the programs that can not be freely discussed allows certain people (U.S. people are excluded) to escape within six months of application with a passport that has VISA free travel to over 100 countries and costs approx. $16,500 for the basic program.

We’ve seen firsthand what Brazilian based Ponzi masterminds do when the law catches up to them.

In the lead up to the SEC shutting down TelexFree, a $1.8 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, co-founder Carlos Wanzeler fled to Brazil.

Wanzeler has since been indicted on criminal charges in the US, but believes his Brazilian dual-citizenship will see him spared extradition.

Brazilian and US authorities continue to work together, with criminal charges against Wanzeler looming in the US.

My point? By association and marketing of such services, MacGregor seemingly has no problems with Ponzi criminals stealing millions of dollars and then “escaping”.

As far as piecing together MacGregor’s Zeek Rewards related history, he seems to have gotten involved in late 2011.

Prior to that MacGregor was promoting Trivita, but seems to have dropped that once his investment in Zeek started to pay off.

Ditto Wazzub, which MacGregor marketed in December 2011 as being

F*R*E*E Forever (NO FEES) + NO AUTOSHIPS + NO JOBS TO DO + NOTHING TO SELL + NOTHING TO BUY + NOTHING TO DOWNLOAD = THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY

Yes, you will be able to make money from this – with absolutely no cost on your part.

Wazzub of course turned out to be a colossal failure, but the marketing copy above does shed light on what MacGregor was looking for in an MLM opportunity.

And that brings us to Zeek Rewards.

MacGregor initiated “beta testing” of Zeek Rewards towards the end of 2011, with an email update revealing MacGregor by that stage was intimately familiar with Zeek’s compensation plan:

Since I sent out my update on the Rotator promotion yesterday, I did receive an email from a beta test group member asking why I had made it a condition of participating that one had to be a Diamond affiliate.

Leverage is the mechanism by which you accelerate your earnings by referring others. But not everyone wants to refer others – and fair enough.

And in such cases I suggest they simply join at the Silver Level, or if buying a significant amount of sample bids, to perhaps join at the Gold level.

However, if you do intend to refer, then it is most definitely to your advantage to be at the Diamond level.

Why? Because as a Diamond affiliate you earn a greater reward on the sample bid purchases of your referred affiliates, and also those they refer.

You also trigger the matrix commissions once you have referred two people.

By January 2012, MacGregor was claiming his daily Zeek ROI was enough to pay for all of his living expenses:

I’m a great fan of what I call a portable business – an online business that gives you the freedom to live the life you desire, no matter where in the world you are living.

So when evaluating any such business I’m asking questions like: Can anyone really do this? Does it take a high level of skill? Can a realistic income be earned?

Well, I can say with confidence that by the end of January I expect to be earning enough each month to pay all my living expenses, and will have achieved this goal working no more than 30 minutes a day, and within a period of just three months.

Acknowledging that all he did was “work no more than 30 minutes a day”, remember that MacGregor contends today that he was just an “innocent participant in Zeek”.

MacGregor’s marketing of Zeek continued throughout early 2012, running on a platform of “replacing your existing job”:

By the the (sic) start of February I will be drawing an income that is sufficient to pay all my living expenses – and I can tell you, that’s a first as far as my previous experience with affiliate-based business opportunities is concerned.

If you’re looking to make extra money online, or even looking to completely replace your existing job, then I seriously urge you to look at this.

As we barreled towards the August 2012 shutdown of Zeek Rewards, MacGregor’s marketing of Zeek Rewards got even more lucrative:

Sometimes you’ve just gotta share good news!

And the good news is this: after three months of live testing I have proven the viability of a unique online business.

If you’d like to be earning $1,000 – $2,000 a month online – starting 90 days from now and with only 15 minutes work each day – then you really need to take a look at what I’ve discovered.

But there are some conditions…

* You need reliable daily access to the internet

* You need to be competent online and on the computer

* You need to have 15 minutes available every day – 24/7

* You need $5,000 – $10,000 in available working capital

Does that really sound like someone who had no idea Zeek Rewards was a Ponzi investment scheme?

On February 8th, 2012, MacGregor laid out his Zeek Rewards investment strategy:

Make sure to keep an eye out for your cash out balances, as this is your money and you should do something with it.

Of course you can withdraw it immediately if you want, but perhaps a more strategic use of it would be to buy more bids.

By “buying more bids”, MacGregor is of course referring to re-investment back into Zeek Rewards.

When to Start Withdrawing Earnings

This is entirely subjective of course. However, you should have a plan and a goal.

Basically you need to have a bid point balance in mind as your goal, so that when you reach it you turn on the 80% repurchase facility so that each day 20% of your daily profits go to your cash account.

 

Speeding things up

After you’ve been doing this for a couple of months, and seen how the system works, you will quickly realise how to build up your bid account balance so you can begin earning faster.

And there are really only two ways to do it.

1. Buy more sample bids

2. Refer more people

So if you think your bid account balance is growing too slowly, then give some thought as to how you can use one or both strategies to accelerate things.

1. Invest more funds into Zeek Rewards

2. Recruit more investors

According to MacGregor, those were the “only two ways” to “speed things up” in Zeek Rewards.

Pertaining specifically to MacGregor’s claim he had no idea Zeek Rewards was based out of the US, updates about Zeek Rewards’ compliance issues suggest otherwise.

In early 2012 Zeek stopped providing their customers with email addresses to dump bids onto. This was due to a “legal opinion” citing compliance issues specifically pertaining to regulatory concerns in the US.

Written on February 28th 2012, here was MacGregor’s immediate response to the announcement:

I must say I really can’t make much of the accompanying legal opinion – as it seems hard to tie it in with what Zeek is actually doing.

The obvious conclusion would appear to be that this news is “bad” news for most Zeek affiliates, in the sense it disrupts how they have been acquiring customers – via the 5cc.

Obviously this latest rule change will have a big impact and possibly unintended or unpredictable consequences, and I’m sure I need to dwell on this for a few days before reaching any final conclusions.

MacGregor never posted a followup with his conclusions, but a month later on March 24th he was pushing a third-party company selling email addresses for Zeek affiliates to dump bids onto:

It appears the company that provided customers for the 5CC is now independently offering them via the following website: zcustomers.com

I have not used this company myself, but the website looks legitimate and the service looks to be exactly what some affiliates may be looking for.

Whether MacGregor eventually did sign up for email address selling service to dump bids onto is unclear.

What is clear however is that as Zeek Rewards was going down in flames towards mid-2014, MacGregor began to investigate and pitch different opportunities to his email list.

May 7th 2012 –

As someone on my Zeek team I thought you may be interested to know about another opportunity I’ve recently become involved in.

I’m only telling those of you on this team list, as I have no intention of spreading this far and wide.

Essentially, this can be a 100% hands-free operation – and still be very profitable. But, as with any business model that does not require referrals, you do need some working capital to get started.

How much? Ideally around $1,600 or more – but it is possible to start with as little as $550.

A “100% hands-free operation” that you can get started in with “ideally $1600 or more”? And MacGregor is pitching this specifically to his Zeek Rewards team?

What MacGregor saw Zeek Rewards as should well and truly be crystal clear by now.

The name of the opportunity he’s promoting wasn’t named in the May email, but I had a look at my own archives and found Infinity Money Line reviewed in late April.

For $550, Infinity Money Line affiliates qualified themselves to receive $550 gifting payments from subsequently recruited affiliates.

Infinity Money Line used a 1-up style compensation plan, meaning if an affiliate signed up for two positions ($1600), they could sign up under themselves and “cheat” the system (passing up commissions from their second account to their first).

The only part that doesn’t fit is MacGregor’s claim that the opportunity “does not require referrals”. Otherwise Infinity Money Line is a perfect match.

I can’t say for sure Infinity Money Line was what MacGregor was pitching, but it’s a pretty close match against his sales pitch.

On May 12th, again MacGregor wrote an email update containing information specific to US-based Zeek Rewards affiliates:

As know (sic), for some time now the Compliance Training Course has been a work in progress. But now it’s live, if you don’t already know.

There is some ambiguity as to who HAS to do this, something I trust will be clarified shortly. But currently it is saying that it is mandatory for US-based affiliates.

This compliance course was written by a US based company, to specifically address regulatory compliance in the US.

But again, MacGregor contends he had no idea Zeek Rewards was based out of the US.

MacGregor’s May updates bring us to the end of his Zeek Rewards marketing efforts.

The SEC shut down Zeek Rewards on August 18th 2012. No marketing emails were sent out from MacGregor’s JustResponse account between August 10th and September 17th.

From September, MacGregor focused his efforts on pushing paid memberships to his Soverign Life website.

Just short of a year after Zeek was shut down, MacGregor dropped thousands of dollars to go “all in” in Empower Network:

As you can no doubt probably guess, I’m stoked about EN/BIM.

I see it as the perfect combination – a product range that teaches you HOW to become a badass internet marketer, a pay plan that
enables you to make excellent money while you’re learning the ropes, and a marketing system to die for. What more could you want?

What you may or may not know, is that I’ve only been with EN and BIM for two weeks myself, but today I made a decision to “go all in” as the two Daves like saying.

It would be great if anyone from my team could join me, for sure.

MacGregor heavily promoted EN throughout the second half of 2013. In 2014 he published just one Empower Network related email, advertising Vick Strizheus’ Internet Traffic Formula on April 1st.

2013 also saw MacGregor get involved with Smart Media Technologies, a recruitment-driven scheme shut down by regulators in late 2014.

For most of 2014 MacGregor used his email list to publish dozens of emails marketing BitCoin hype, as well as BitBillions.

Preliminary research suggests BitBillions is a BitCoin-based recruitment-driven pyramid scheme. Following payment problems in early 2015, BitBillions now appears to have collapsed.

My question to you is: Reading everything David MacGregor published about Zeek Rewards, knowing his ties to the Sovereign Citizens movement and the types of opportunities he involved himself in after Zeek Rewards;

Was David MacGregor truly an “innocent participant” of Zeek Rewards, an $850 million dollar Ponzi scheme he didn’t know was being run out of the US?

Stay tuned for a decision on MacGregor’s Motion to Dismiss…

 

Footnote: You can access David MacGregor’s JustResponse marketing email archive here.

The emails are sorted reverse-chronologically, so you have to use the navigation buttons at the bottom of the page (32 pages in total, with ten emails on each page).