NC credit union warns “Zeek Rewards is fraudulent”
Early yesterday morning a Zeek Rewards affiliate reported their downline had been contacted by the North Carolina State Employee’s Credit Union (NCSECU):
I had one of my downline call me yesterday and tell me that the (NC) State Credit Union called his wife and told her (since she got her money order there) that they were giving her a call because it had come to their attention that Rex Venture Group, LLC was fraudulent.
His wife went on to tell the bank employee why Zeekrewards is not fraudulent! Yearly 1099, Compliance Testing, can not be a pyramid in the way it works. And the bank employee said she had no idea how Zeekrewards truly worked.
Then tonight another downline called me worried because (NC) State Credit Union had apparently gotten a letter stating Rex Venture Group, LLC is fraudulent and they wanted to pass that on to their customers.
The report came hot on the heels of ex-Zeek Rewards paid consultant Keith Laggos, warning the FTC has ‘put out letters to the top big four banks asking them not to open up accounts for penny auctions‘,
The reported message was published on Zeek Rewards’ Facebook page on Thursday but has since been deleted by the company.
NCSECU operate out of North Carolina (where Zeek Rewards is based) and state they are a ‘not-for-profit financial cooperative owned by its members, founded June 4, 1937 with 17 members and $437 in assets’.
As of March 2012, SECU serves 1.7 million members with just under $25 billion in assets through 242 branches, 1,100+ ATMs, six Contact Centers.
Naturally when an official banking institution starts calling up and warning their customers that a company is fraudulent, twice no less, people take notice and want to investigate for themselves.
In an attempt to verify the Zeek Rewards affiliate’s claims above, BehindMLM readers contacted NCSECU in an attempt to get some further clarification.
Namely who was advising the credit union Rex Ventures and Zeek Rewards were fraudulent and what criteria was used to arrive at this conclusion.
Reader ‘Al’ sent the following email off to NCSECU,
Is it true that your credit union believes that Zeek Rewards, based in Lexington, NC, may be a massive ponzi scheme and is alerting its customers to exercise caution?
and received the following reply:
Thank you for your inquiry. That is the latest information we have about Zeek Rewards. Thank you.
Note that Al explicitly referred to Zeek Rewards as a ‘Ponzi scheme’, with the credit union responding that indeed that was the latest information they’d received on the company.
From who NCSECU had received this information though still remained a mystery.
At around this time as this was happening, the Zeek Rewards affiliate who made the original now deleted post on Facebook made a further clarification on the call they’d received from their downline:
The downline whose wife was contacted by the bank teller said the bank had received an email regarding this situation.
Again, exactly who had sent the email warning that Zeek Rewards was a Ponzi scheme to NCSECU was not divulged.
At this point I sent off my own correspondence to Leigh Brady, NCSECU’s media contact representative, seeking my own clarification on the matter.
While I waited for a reply, BehindMLM reader Mr. Wallace got on the phone and spoke to ‘Cory’ from ‘ NC Credit Unions Risk Managment‘. Cory
did verify they (NCSECU) are telling there customers to be aware of Rex Ventures.
He would not tell me if they came to this on there own or if it came from AG or FTC.
At this point we had no less than four instances of communications with NCSECU indicating that NCSECU were warning their customers about Rex Ventures and Zeek Rewards.
The reply I then received from NCSECU’s media contact representative however conflicted with all four of these accounts:
No – we have not advised our members that Rex Venture Group is fraudulent.
We do, however, recommend to members that they always practice due diligence in investor education.
Curious as to the stark difference in position between NCSECU’s media contact representative and their other staff, I sent the following in reply,
A Cory from NC Credit Unions Risk Managment has advised that NCSECU are “warning customers to be aware of Rex Ventures” (he wouldn’t advise however who had provided NCSECU this information).
Additionally I’ve been in contact with a Zeek Rewards affiliate who claims NCSECU called his wife up to warn and advise that NCSECU had information that led them to believe Rex Ventures (Zeek Rewards) was fraudulent. His wife then
Is it possible to clarify this information as it seems to differ from what you’ve told me.
Shortly thereafter I received the following reply:
Our Risk Management Group did have a call this morning. Again, SECU has not indicated the Rex Ventures is fraudulent.
SECU is simply asking its members to be vigilant in their due diligence of Rex Ventures.
Stopping short of stating Rex Ventures and Zeek Rewards were a Ponzi scheme and fraudulent as others had been warned, Brady nonetheless confirmed that NCSECU were indeed warning their members about Rex Ventures.
Whether or not NCSECU warn their members about dealings with all companies or are specifically targeting Zeek Rewards and Rex Ventures is currently unclear.
Twenty minutes later after I received my final clarification response from NCSECU, BehindMLM reader ‘Brad’ shared his own experience with NCSECU:
just got off the phone with a representative from the NC State Employees’ Credit Union and he did confirm that they are encouraging members to be careful about Zeek Rewards because Zeek is possibly fraudulent.
The rep answered the questions directly and provided very limited commentary or insight.
I kept pressing him for additional information such as how the NC SECU came to this decision, but he did not say except they think Zeek Rewards is possibly fraudulent.
Completely different to the reply I received from the media contact representative and again confirming NCSECU’s suspicions about Zeek Rewards and Rex Ventures.
Brad also sent in an email to NCSECU,
I have had a few Zeek Reward affiliates approach me to join their lucrative company.
However, I have had some other friends tell me that the North Carolina State Employees’ Credit Union, and possibly other financial intermediaries, believe that Zeek Rewards is fraudulent.
Is that the NC SECU position on Zeek Rewards or are the people who told me this misinformed?
Is Zeek Rewards a fraudulent company?
I cannot afford to lose money and impact my securities licenses if it is.
Thank you for any assistance.
and received the following reply from ‘Jeremy Pittman’, curiously citing Ripoff Report and the Better Business Bureau:
Zeek Rewards is indeed a fraudulent company. Please refrain from entering into any type of business with this company as there have been several claims of fraudulent activity reported with Zeek Rewards.
Numerous reports of fraud have been given to the Better Business Bureau and other reports of fraud are listed on scam reporting websites.
Please visit the links below to familiarize yourself with the company and some of the things that have been said about them.
Thank you for your inquiry and have a great day!
ripoffreport.com/organized-crime/rex-venture-group-ll/rex-venture-group-llc-zeekler-bbb0c.htm
Language wise, Pittman’s reply was the strongest against Zeek Rewards, specifically warning Brad to ‘refrain from entering into any type of business with‘ Zeek Rewards.
With the exception of my own correspondence with NCSECU’s media contact, who confirmed that NCSECU were warning people but not that NCSECU believed Zeek Rewards and Rex Ventures were fraudulent, all other attempts to contact NCSECU by readers since the original Facebook posting have confirmed that, at the very least, the North Carolina State Employee’s Credit Union are warning their members about Zeek Rewards and Rex Ventures.
At worst, they’ve ‘received information‘ (an email from persons unknown) indicating Zeek Rewards is a Ponzi scheme and are urging members to ‘refrain from entering into any type of business‘ with either Zeek or Rex.
Just to reiterate, it’s still not known who warned NCSECU and what criteria was used to verify Zeek Rewards as a Ponzi scheme and Rex Ventures as fraudulent.
Should that information come to light I’ll be sure to update this article.
In the meantime looking at the bigger picture, is it possible that Keith Laggos’ predictions have already come into fruition or are starting to?
I’m of course not privy to the inner workings of banks and credit unions, but I’d imagine it would only be after a thorough investigation and consultation with their legal teams, that they’d be willing to state and confirm that they believe a company is a Ponzi scheme and fraudulent.
At this stage I’m unaware of any other banks or credit unions (in North Carolina or otherwise) warning their members against Zeek and Rex.
I have however read numerous accounts of banks calling up customers to check whether or not credit card charges from Zeek Rewards’ offshore processors are legit or not.
With allegedly millions of affiliates participating in Zeek Rewards, no doubt the volume of these calls going out might certainly have raised a few eyebrows in the banking sector.
Naturally I’ll update the article if any further developments occur.
In the meantime anyone who gets any further information from NCSECU regarding the situation is welcome to share it with us in a comment below.
With uncertainty still looming over NCSECU’s source warning them that Zeek Rewards is a Ponzi and Rex Ventures fraudulent, this is definitely one of the more stranger stories surrounding Zeek Rewards I’ve thus far covered.
Hopefully with time we can get to the bottom of it and find out exactly what’s going on.
One would hope it’d take much more than employees reading some reports over at Ripoff Report, the Better Business Bureau and “scam reporting websites” for them to start proactively warning their members against doing business with a company.
Update 4th August, 2012 – Brad has received the following clarification from NCSECU, quoting one of their senior Vice-Presidents:
It has come to our attention that our responses about Zeek Rewards are being used to present arguments concerning the company.
We have officially taken the position that NCSECU is not confirming our denying fraud, but that we’ve received several reports of fraud.
One of our internal departments has conducted research on the company and received several negative findings.
It is the credit union’s stance that we should always try to keep our members’ best interests at heart.
The information is not to bash or incriminate Zeek Rewards, but merely to inform our membership of the potential dangers of investing in their company.
One of our Senior Vice Presidents had the following to say about the company:
“SECU has not indicated that Rex Venture Group is fraudulent. SECU recommends to members that they always conduct due diligence in investor education, and we are advising members to conduct due diligence of Rex Venture Group.
Additionally, SECU recommends that members contact the NC Attorney General’s office with consumer complaints or the NC Secretary of State’s office with any investor concerns. ”
Still no clarification as to who sent NCSECU the “reports of fraud” they’ve received or what ‘negative findings’ their own investigation revealed.
Despite what several employees have stated, NCSECU aren’t confirming or denying fraud but are warning members about the ‘potential dangers of investing in’ Zeek Rewards, based on ‘negative findings‘ found when NCSECU conducted their own research into Zeek and Rex Ventures.
I think that speaks for itself. A third-party credit union has received information, conducted their own investigation and concluded that Zeek Rewards is worth warning their members over.
When was the last time your bank called you up to warn you about money you were going to invest into a company?
Update August 4th, 2012 – Zeek Rewards is claiming to have contacted NCSECU, who they state were “slandering” the company with information that was ‘unfavorable to Zeek Rewards and false‘.
Newly appointed COO Greg Caldwell claims he
called the head of Risk Management to track down the origin of the memo.
Upon being discovered, the person responsible admitted he really didn’t know anything about the laws regarding direct selling or how to identify a legitimate network marketing company or opportunity.
This indicates that the memo originated internally and differs from NCSECU’s initial claims that they’d “received an email” indicating that Zeek Rewards is fraudulent.
Caldwell claims Zeek Rewards has “intervened” and ‘shut down the misinformation at its source‘, crediting Zeek Reward’s attorneys for “taking action”.
What that means in a practical sense and whether or not NCSECU will continue to warn members about investing in Zeek Rewards is unclear.
Caldwell advises Zeek Rewards affiliates that they are ‘their own worst enemy‘, urging them not to publish any rumours or allegations about the company sourced from a third-party.
Caldwell closes by warning that any affiliates found doing so ‘will be held responsible‘.
While Zeek terminating Keith Laggos is a big story, I think this story is far bigger and has far more ramifications for Zeek members than Keith being terminated.
I say this because of the actions they are taking to warn their members about Zeek. This is action is unprecedented in the financial community. It is also ominous for Zeek members.
I also contacted my personal bank, Bank of America, and they would not comment directly on Zeek Rewards as the NC SECU did.
The representative said they can not share information on other companies; however, she directed me to the BBB and said Rex Venture Group had an F rating. She said I should not share any personal information with Zeek Rewards or give them money based upon this.
I was looking for a more straight forward answer like the one I received from the NC SECU. I tried to see if the FTC or NC Attorney General contacted BofA, but again she kept referring me to the BBB rating.
Oz, if you would like my original correspondence with the NC SECU, but let me know.
Can’t hurt to file it with the article, you can send it via the contact link on the top right of the page. Attachments can be sent with a message.
Out of curiosity, do these representatives have information on file for companies or are they checking with the BBB and Ripoff Report on the fly as people request information?
Seems strange they’d just be able to instantly pull up BBB ratings and what not to quote them to people when people make enquiries about companies, unless they had all this information in an official bank dossier.
I wish they would provide more information besides what we can all see on the internet. The main item of interest was the e-mail I received earlier, which you posted from the NC SECU.
I’ve added an update about this as well. It’s interesting that for the span of a week or two BBB rating was “no rating”. Apparently that was temporary.
Checking the complaint log shows that they are getting steady 3-4 complaints a month since January 2012.
It is not so much the number of complaints the BBB receives about a company that determines their rating, but how the company responds to the complaints and how resolved that has a lot to do with their rating.
I e-mailed Jeremy from the NC SECU to see if his sources are the websites he provided or a government agency such as the FTC or NC Attorney General. I will let you know what he says.
I read this recent account of a Zeek Rewards affiliate’s e-wallet issues with customers and found it somewhat amusing (very Fawlty Towers):
Perhaps indicative of what’s in store (no pun intended) when Zeebates launches and affiliates have to sign up customers?
This affiliate could just request a check. Bank accounts take forever to validate, sometimes not at all due to the licensing situation. Checks from STP take about 10 days in the US to receive, drawn on Bank of Nevada.
@Oz
There’s a flaw in this story. It doesn’t work in the same direction as authorities and banks work. Some major parts of the story are missing here.
FTC or other authorities do NOT send out warnings about one specific company to banks. If they send out warnings to banks, it will be about regulations for a TYPE of business, with a list of companies affected by those regulations attached to it.
The story needs to be slowed down rather than escalated. You’ll need to establish another STARTING POINT here than the comments from readers, and make sure the story works in the correct direction.
Keith Laggo’s part is correct, a warning against penny auctions in general. NCSECU sending out a general warning to customers trying to do transactions is probably correct as it is, but all the detailed questions from different readers are probably the wrong type of questions.
If you ask direct questions about something, the answers can be misleading even if you receive correct answers. And there’s several “wrong type of questions” involved here. Some are “leading questions”, asking for specific answers and not allowing for other answers.
Here’s one example:
Al added the part about Ponzi scheme himself, but FTC has only sent out information about penny auctions in general. But the bank has probably also received information about Zeek being a Ponzi scheme from other sources or from their own investigations. When he asks about it, they will have to answer “YES” to the direct question, to protect Al’s interests as a customer (or whatever role he acted in?).
The question is leading, and the answer will probably be misleading.
There IS a problem here, and the problem can be defined to be “wrong type of questions”, “wrong person or authority”, “asking from the wrong viewpoint” and similar communication problems.
You can compare it to people doing their due diligence about a company, where they have a predefined viewpoint about something — “if it had been a scam, the authorities would have shut it down immediately” or “if it pays, it’s not a scam”. Their predefined viewpoints will cause them to check the wrong parts, and to ask the wrong type of questions to the wrong people.
I’m not suggesting the FTC are the only possible source of the email, merely that it co-incides with what Laggos stated a week ago. I agree it’d be weird if the FTC contacted NTSECU advising them ZR was a Ponzi scheme.
All signs however are pointing to someone doing that and who is a bit of a mystery.
Schroeder cited “legal advice” when he called Zeek out as a Ponzi a few weeks back, that could very well be the case here (all banks have lawyers). And the inclusion by one employee of Ripoff Report and the BBB is also a bit strange.
If it is NTSECU’s lawyers who have warned them about Zeek, then it’d certainly be interesting to poke at what criteria and information they used to arrive at this conclusion.
I know there’s not much chance of getting the specifics of this story out but I thought it was worth putting together as a seperate story for the record, rather than being tacked onto the end of Laggos comments.
The FTC warning on unique bid auctions is a convenient excuse for Zeek to “take the money and run,” figuratively speaking.
I say figuratively because they will do so in a way to make the money usurpation legal, such as pivoting their business model in a way that prevents late comers from having a chance to earn enough to cover their principal.
Instead of blaming the Ponzi business model itself, or focus on being an illegal unregistered investment, they now can just say “US has made it impossible to do banking for the penny auction”.
@Oz
I have pointed out a communication problem in the questions asked. Most of the questions have been LEADING, and not from a neutral viewpoint.
NCSECU’s media contact has tried to correct some of it, and currently that is the official version and the most correct one. Other parts of the story needs to be slowed down.
I believe you should clearly identify the official version as the most official. It IS the official version from the bank.
Brad spent 10 minutes on the phone, trying to push the answers in one specific direction. That method won’t give him neutral answers, but it will give him some answers supporting his own viewpoints. That method should be a warning sign in itself.
Al included the “Ponzi scheme” on his own, and the answer he got was relatively vague, only saying “We have received that information”.
Some major parts are missing here. We don’t know the RULES the bank has to follow when people are asking questions, and when people are acting in specific roles. So the risk management team will probably have to give some specific answers if people are asking them in the role of professionals (rather than as customers).
I don’t think the article reflects the true story here, it only reflects the parts you have had access to. So my advice will be to slow the story down and prevent it from escalating.
I think the neutrality was buried when NCSECU started calling up customers doing money orders with Rex Ventures warning them it was fraudulent. Remember, that’s how all this got started.
“Ponzi scheme” was introduced by a reader but “fraudulent” wasn’t.
I agree the media contact’s response is strange, consdering Brad received an email response claiming, and I quote,
after I received the media officer’s response.
Not sure what you mean by “slowing the story down”, considering at least one employee has clearly stated they (on behalf of the credit union) are convinced ZR is fraudulent (even if this is in contrast to the media officer’s communication).
Note that the media officer stated they hadn’t said ZR was fraudulent (despite Brad’s email, which I have a timestamped copy of), but that they were warning their members (presumably about investing in it, as I don’t imagine they send out general warnings and as evidenced by the affiliate who first raised the alarm, they are seemingly specifically targeting Zeek Rewards/Rex Venture Group with the warning).
I agree there’s chunks of information missing in this puzzle, and I’m hoping they come to light soon enough. That however doesn’t change what’s been said by various employees of NCSECU thus far.
They was warning them about “something”, that’s correct. Rhe “fraudulent” showed up later.
The problem with Brad’s questions is that he has misled the person he asked into believing he asked solely in the role as a professional, worrying about his clients and his own licences. But in reality he asked in a different role, from another viewpoint than he pretended to have.
The risk management team will then give him additional information, not meant to be published as the official information. They will give him enough information to protect his own interests and the interests of his clients, but the information isn’t official.
You’re potentially causing alot of trouble for that one employee, answering what he believed was a professional request from a professional in the same business as him. Professional questions/answers are usually meant to be handled as confidential.
The media officer has a higher rank in the official communication, so you should pay more attention to that than to any “inside information”.
“Slow the story down” means stick to the official part of the story rather than the unofficial, and don’t allow it to go further in any unofficial direction. This is the same type of “damage control” as the media officer tried to use, when he tried to correct some unofficial information.
The unofficial part of the story will probably become true, but wait until it has. So far there isn’t any official information supporting it, only unofficial and partially confidential information.
@M_Norway
Actually if you look at what the original Zeek Rewards affiliate published, they mention the bank called up two of their downline and warned them Zeek Rewards (Rex Ventures) was fraudulent.
I believe showing all responses from NCSECU is fair, otherwise you’re only getting some of the story. I wholly accept that the media officer’s response is the official stance of NCSECU (I informed him as much in our communications).
That said, again it doesn’t negate other responses received from NCSECU in regards to this matter. I think when NCSECU started calling up members and warning them ZR and Rex was fraudulent, that any confidentiality regarding their stance on Rex (official or unofficial) went out the window.
So I called the NCAG office, Consumer Division, 1-919-716-6000. I asked if they would have sent a notice/alert to the credit union, she said that’s not there job, I told her I checked there web-site but there where no alerts on the company I was inqiering about.
I told her about the post I read on a web-site and that the credit union was telling members to be careful dealing with this company, I never mentioned, Rex or Zeek but she said ” I bet I know who you are talking about ” then she said she would transfer me to someone else and I got disconnected.
She did not give her name and I never asked. Lets see if the get in touch with the credit union. Since credit unions are run by it’s members is it possible they did this on there own and why.
Any idea who she was transferring you to?
No, and I did not call back.
Call the number, tell them you called earlier and got cut off. I goota run.
embryonic at best
For some reason I feel that someone with vested interest is behind all this story.
Maybe it’s connected with the “latest issues”?
embryonic would be zeek rewards there otis. The credit unioun blog is just another sorry state zeek rewards will have to lie and twist its way around.
Sorry, but one of your responsibilities as a publisher is “Protect your sources”, in this case a chain of sources. Some of the information received is unofficial an probably meant to be confidential.
It means you can’t use all information you receive, even if it’s true. The best strategy here is probably to slow any unofficial parts of the story down, and use the official part as the main part. The unofficial parts will reveal themselves and become official when the time is right.
The sources you will have to protect is “Cory” and his employer, NCSECU.
That’s an assumption, given that the email correspondence Brad received made no mention of confidentiality (unlike the emails I receive from my own bank).
I don’t recall confidentiality coming up in any of the communications between people invovled.
Again, NCSECU starting calling their members up warning them Rex Ventures was fraudulent. That directive (to call members up) had to come from inside NCSECU… hardly the actions of an organisation wishing to keep the advice they’ve received confidential.
I’ve presented the official line from the media contact along with the “unofficial” communications between NCSECU, its members and the people who initially contacted them. This wasn’t some state secret, they started calling up their members and warning them seemingly out of the blue.
I don’t think they used that expression?
They have warned people about “something”, when they have tried to do transactions or something similar, or maybe also on more general basis.
After that, people have asked leading questions to dig deeper into it, a strategy that often will give misleading answers.
The media officer at NCSECU has tried to correct some of the information, and has given you the official information. That is the professional information you have received, and the other sources are less professional. You will probably have to take some blame if you prefer the unofficial information rather than the official.
A media officer will give you the information you safely can publish, and when a media officer is involved then it’s the meaning you’ll have to go through him to get information. Any other information you’re able to dig out will mostly be your own responibility, and will not be official or backed by sources (correct ones).
The correct strategy here is probably to give the official information the attention it deserves, in the meaning of CLEARLY show it’s the official information from NCSECU.
The other information you received BEFORE that?
No, they are not willing to verify that. And they have already corrected it.
The information you have received AFTER that?
No, they are not willing to verify that. And they can’t understand why you prefer to go through unofficial sources, when you already have been in contact with the only official source.
@M_Norway
Well said.
@Affiliate
What was said could be interpreted in different ways.
However, the fact that something was said at all is remarkable. When has a bank ever called anyone to warn them about any MLM?
When I dealt with the public in my job working for a law enforcement agency, I was warned that there is no such thing as “off the record” or “confidential” when talking to the media or the public in general.
In other words, anything you say is fair game, and expect anything you say to be quoted as an official statement. I’m sure most businesses dealing with the public have similar policies, else they wouldn’t be making comments like this.
Jimmy said it, the fact that they’re warning people about dealing with RVG/Zeek is remarkable in itself. I’ve never heard of a bank warning customers of a particular business possibly being fraudulent.
Just had a thought:
It could be an aggregate report due to all the oddball credit card transactions Zeek’s been pushing to foreign card processors and traced back to Zeek.
Maybe a bit off topic, but Thursday’s payout is starting to be posted and it’s only 0.90%, instead if the usual 1.85~2.00%. As if they manually used the weekend ratio…
I called the AG office listed above and they directed me straight to a recorded message specifically designated to handle the high volume of calls about ZeekRewards.
I didn’t ask about Zeek, rather Rex Venture Group. The message states that they cannot discuss any information about warnings at this time nor comment on the validity of Zeek, but then goes out on a limb to say “However, we can confirm several complaints have been filed with our office!” (scary)
Does anyone really think Zeek is a legit company? It’s clear as day to me they figured out a very elaborate ponzi scheme by hiring attorneys to try and keep them in compliance with the law.
Anyone who really thinks they are providing some form of value to a company by placing an ad on some obscure place on te internet knows nothing about business. The web rankings tell it all, Zeekler is supposed to be the main business yet it’s web ranking is nowhere near Zeek Rewards.
At the end of this there is going to be allot of greedy bag holders who are trying to let their points compound. This reminds me of playing the penny stocks, gotta get in early and get out before the masses.
Yes, but in case of trouble one of the leading officers would have stepped forward, acting as the official source? Or someone higher up in the system?
They don’t. And in case they have done something similar, that information has been corrected now, as the official version. It’s also one of several warning signs in this case. I have identified a few others, too.
I believe most of us can agree on that, “banks don’t warn customers about specific companies”, unless they are forced to do it through the rules they have to follow. This should put up a big red flag immediately in how to handle that information.
Updated the article with a followup email recieved clarifying NCSECU’s official stance on the matter from one of their vice-presidents.
Not according to the affiliate who initially published on Facebook. Read what they initially published on Facebook again.
Josh,
I am assuming you are referring to the NC AG? If not, please let me know.
Yes the consumer line at NC AG
wow! i’ve never heard of a mlm company having complaints filed against it before! indeed that is scary stuff!
(Ozedit: Otis, you can quote and reply to the quote in the same comment. You keep publishing two seperate comments everytime you quote something, instead just put your reply after the second blockquote tag of what you’re quoting.)
XD
Even the bank is out of compliance
Yeah something that’s been a bit overlooked, NCSECU classify Zeek Rewards as an investment.
I have read it. They are clarifying some parts, but also stating the information they consider to be official.
There are some other signs here you should be aware of. They consider the situation to be so serious that they had to go up some levels in the chain of command, to Senior Vice President level. They are indirectly telling you “We have higher ranks than the person you received the first information from. If anyone should give you information it should probably come from us” (or something similar). Well, actually they are telling you alot of stuff between the lines here, and I am only able to identify them vaguely.
You will need a different strategy in this case than what you normally use. NCSECU isn’t very happy about being used as source for that kind of information. They will not verify it if you use unofficial sources from them. You can probably force them to verify something, but that strategy isn’t a good idea.
I will recommend a strategy where you make them feel more relaxed about the situation, rather than pushing the case any further in the unofficial direction (trying to get MORE information from unofficial sources).
This isn’t about facts. You can have all the facts on your side and still make a bad decision. All the “unofficial” stuff here is probably correct as it has been presented.
I can probably identify it within several different areas, and I can start with one of them. The others will have to come gradually.
As a publisher, you’ll have to protect your sources in different ways. NCSECU is your source here for much of the information, even if it comes from different people there. You should probably allow them to make corrections.
If I was contacted by NCSECU with this information, then by all means I’d be protecting my source (which I’ve had to do in the past on numerous occasions).
When NCSECU calling their members up, who in turn openly share this information on a public platform (Facebook) and then readers go and contact NCSECU and publish their finding here before I’ve even contacted NCSECU – I don’t see what there is to protect.
My source was the media contact, whose response I published in full and states only that they’re warning their members about ZR. The other sources are from readers’ own dealings with NCSECU (and more recently the NC AG office).
Strategy wise my interest is only in who provided them the “email” they received. Whether or not they think Zeek Rewards or Rex Venture is fraudulent has already been resolved, as evidenced by the replies people have received. Pending any further developments, I suspect we’ll never know who initially advised NCSECU indicating that Zeek was fraudulent.
If you look at the PR guy’s original response to me, his statement directly conflicts with the email Brad receives, which states in writing that Zeek Rewards is fraudulent (whether the response is official or not, this response was sent by an employee of NCSECU in an official capacity).
The vice-president quoted has clarified NCSECU’s position on the matter, and I’ve included this clarification so I’m not seeing what the problem is. All the information received to date is on the table.
As I understand it, the official response is NCSECU are warning members against investing in Zeek Rewards based on information they’ve received from sources unknown, indicating that Zeek Rewards and Rex Venture Group are fraudulent. NCSECU themselves however have not made a clarification on this point either way, other than that they are not themselves referring to Zeek Rewards or Rex Venture Group as being fraudulent.
This coming from a vice-president naturally overrides previous communications stating that Zeek Rewards is fraudulent and appearing to be in agreement that they are also a Ponzi scheme.
Does anyone have any concerns the commission run for Thursday, August 2nd, posted very late in the day and the percentage was at .09% instead of the usual Thursday 1.9%?
@Otis Campbell, while I enjoy your flare for the dramatic, understand I was merely repeating what the message said. If you want me to pontificate, I believe that the Attorney General’s office probably does receive complaints about many businesses.
What the question you should ask yourself is, why would this particular hometown office feel the necessity to dedicate a long recording to just one business and furthermore, without provocation in the same message, dime out the SEVERAL complaints info?
They are not allowed to legally comment on the validity of Zeek at this time, but almost feel the need to still take a jab at them. Curiouser and curiouser 😉
They corrected it by paying out 1.97%…
If indeed that is true @ Phil Brooks, that would truly be breaking news, can anyone confirm?
On another note, I love this site and @KS Chang’s HubPage. It is very informative and well thought out. It shows excellent organizational skills and tons of effort. What I want to know is why nobody has delivered the smoking gun yet?
I want to see if I may be of assistance, so that there is no further need for debate…I would like for anybody to do what I have already done and watch the Zeekler auction site for a 24 hour period. I know that it is boring, and time consuming, but the “reward” (no pun intended) is magnificent.
While watching the site you will find exactly what you are looking for; rock solid proof that there is no possible way that Zeekler’s site pays the daily profit share for ZeekRewards affiliates. Then we can compare notes and publish our findings.
For example; The day I watched the site 109 auctions were conducted and ended within the 24 hour time frame. The average cost of all closed items was 50.00 USD, the most expensive of those items being an Ipad for a little over a hundred dollars.
Now, let’s give Zeek the benefit of the doubt and say every bid in pennies was a real U.S. dollar. For the day, based on the mathematics, Zeek made a profit of 545,000.00 USD.
Now, for mathematic purposes, let’s also show that to sell all 109 items for this profit (not taking into account the cost of the items) 545,000.00 would require a minimum of 54,500,000 bids. Let’s study both the profit, and the bid amounts as two separate problems.
Being generous to Zeek again, let’s only use the amount of U.S. affiliates they claim to have, roughly 400,000.00 at a minimal average daily balance, and again give Zeek the benefit of the doubt, saying that all 400,000 affiliates do a 100% reinvestment of their profit share daily.
The average daily balance of U.S. Zeek affiliates is in the neighborhood of 1,500 points according to their own profit and loss statement meaning, at the end of the day, 600,000,000 bids are purchased. As you can see, problem #1 shows that 10 times the needed bids to successfully complete every auction for the day were puchased by just U.S. affiliates.
Problem #2 now comes into play. If Zeek takes half of the 545,000.00 profit for the day, leaving the affiliates with 272,500 in the revenue sharing pool, that would be ok. According to their profit and loss statement, the number is somewhere around 165,000 daily so they’re covered right? Wrong!
This mathematical experiment just demonstrated that at minimum, 99.9% of all bids were purchased by the affiliates, not retail customers. So many bids were purchased in fact, that they could have covered the daily bid requirement ten times over!!!
As a result, you can see from a mathematical standpoint, this is PROOF that affiliates are being paid mostly if not solely with their own money. Well, paid points anyway.
Not to be cruel, but if anybody would like to give me 150.00 dollars I will give them 150,000,000 points in return, a 1 million x point superior exchange rate to that of Zeek!!! Not that the points will be worth anything, but neither are your Zeek points, so who cares right?
IM(very)ho, what we’re seeing is a classic “rock and hard place” situation taking place.
US financial institutions are required by law to file SARs (Suspicious Activity Report) with The U.S. Dept of the Treasury agency finCEN.
US financial institutions are prevented by the Bank Secrecy Act from revealing to anyone they have filed such reports.
Many US financial institutions believe they have a fiduciary duty to warn their clients of potential problems.
“Rock”, meet “hardplace”
More proof that those RPPs are MANUALLY entered, not calculated!
I don’t think it’s definitive proof. It is suspicious that they don’t have automation for something so core to their compensation plan, but not necessarily “proof” of fake payoff formula.
When you go to a retail store, the register calculates your change but someone has to manually pay you. Similarly, I can see having a different accounting and payment system.
This is the 2nd time in my life that I was approached to get involved in a Ponzi scheme.
The 1st was year ago, a company called Learn Waterhouse, my friends father in law was getting all of his friends and family into this “overseas investment” I remember calling the father in law up to tell him it was a Ponzi and why, all of a sudden I was the enemy and he proceeded to rant and rave.
Fast forward to today, the father in law has been outcast by all of his friends and family and Randy Treadwell is doing 30 year in the federal prisons.
@Jimmy:
Unless Zeek is run by a bunch of incompetent fraudsters, it’s highly unlikely there’ll be any “definitive proof” until after it’s busted.
They don’t have to come up with a mathematically provable system.
All they have to do is invent a new story.
Updated the article with a response from Zeek Rewards on the issue.
They claim to have intervened with their lawyers and “shut down” the information NCSECU were circulating to their members.
maybe because its often misunderstood, very popular, and obviously different enough that most would want to check it out thoroughly before getting involved. seems normal to me that when fielding so many calls on something that has become so very popular, to direct those calls to a recording.
scary? really? now that guy that says he spent 24 hours watching zeekler and still had his numbers all messed up…that is scary!
One thing you have missed out. The bids that are purchased by affiliates to give away, many are taken by legitimate people to play the auctions.
I’ve just heard that Zeek have taken on another building 30,000 sq ft for the products for the auctions.
Also the new Zeebates is being launched. Doesn’t really sound like they are having major problems with FTC behind the scenes.
You would sit tight and not go for another huge building until you knew where you stood (if there was a problem). Would you?
No, it is still the same. 1.97% is for Friday, not Thursday.
Do that really matter, whether free bids are used or not?
1000 bids spent in an auction will raise the price for an item with $10, and the “winner” will have to pay that extra price (if he buys the item).
I agree with M_Norway, not seeing the relevance of the bids being used. The money is generated when they’re bought by affiliates, not when used.
The 1c each bid drives up the auction price is neglibile as a revenue source when you consider the >100% ROI paid out over 90 days on the money paid for the bid by the affiliate.
The ZR press release has been linked to in the article and can be viewed in full there. I see no need to copypaste spam the discussion here with it, unless you’ve got something to add to what was said.
I most certainly would if I was running an online ponzi and was trying to instill confidence in my victims so they’d send me some more of their hard earned.
I’d ESPECIALLY do so if said victims sent me more money based on what they “heard” was going to happen.
In fact, I’d probably get a few of my friends to spread such rumours intentionally.
Not that any HYIP ponzi promoter would do such a dastardly thing, mind you. h-a-R-R-u-m-p-h
Well… that doesn’t sound intimidating, does it?
“Nice business you got here… it’d be a shame if something… happened to it…”
Were I an affiliate, I’d be pretty turned off by that naked threat.
Probably have Craddock sent that credit union a nasty letter without explaining anything. 😀
Rather irrelevant, since all those bids are paid for by affiliates, so ZR already got their profit. Even BETTER for ZR if the bids are not used.
I see Zeek had chosen to continue the “blame the affiliates” game, even with a new COO.
“had” ?
“always has” then. Sometimes I got my tenses mixed up.
It’s sad that Caldwell chose to use bad argument: you can’t judge us unless you’re with us. Here’s why it’s a fallacious argument.
http://amlmskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/07/you-cant-judge-us-unless-youre-with-us.html
It’s also troubling he promised to go after affiliates who spread such information, instead of “thanks for bringing that to our attention”.
Interesting that the COO provided Oz a response/update to THIS issue, but hasn’t objectied to any of the other 23 articles?
Did you see the ad hominem attack on the “critics”? Never mind that Randy Schroeder called Zeek a Ponzi and Keith Laggos’ information as corroborated many details from these menacing “critics”:
Yeah, you’re right. Sorry, I failed to complete the sentence for some unknown reason.
The lack of precision in their daily profit share makes it feel like a Ponzi, like they don’t care.
Imagine a stock screwing up dividends, or a bond screwing up coupon payments, then just telling you they’ll fix it on the next iteration.
The compounding is different. What if you joined Zeek 91 days ago and your initial purchase expired on Thursday? You’d want the additional 1% on Thurs, not on Fri. Yes, it’s just a small detail, but it goes to show how little regard they have for accurate profit share, and how inept they are at fixing problems – they probably couldn’t go back and fix the profit share anyways because their systems design and programming does not allow it.
Case in point: many affiliates still have not had the 8.9% decimal problem fixed in their points expiration calendar. On 8/23, they will have 10x the points expire until Zeek fixes it.
Not an investment?? How can affiliates say this is not an investment??
It is the easiest and most lucrative. Thing we have ever done….it is my plan b…..it is amazing. We had $4k sitting in an IRA earning maybe 1 1/2 % a year ….put it in Zeek 8 mos ago and making. 1 1/2 % or more daily…..
we never even recruited anyone the first 6 months ….just wihtdrew our original $4k…and will be withdraw ing $10k+ a Mo as of oct…that’s only 20%…leaving 80% to. Grow……
@ Otis Campbell. I provided you with legitimate numbers. Nothing scary about 24 hours watching the Zeekler auction. It’s called research, something you obviously failed to do before joining ZeekRewards.
If you are going to make the statement that my numbers are all “screwed up”, why don’t you provide proof in numbers as I have done. Oh, that’s right. You can’t. Not allowed to talk Zeek.
Anyways, I do agree with KS Chang, whether the bids are given away or not, they are purchased by the affiliates. Without the new investment money from it’s own affiliates, the lifeblood of the company would cease to pump=ponzi.
The longer this goes, the more convoluted it becomes. Despite all the posturing by Zeek, it sill does not stop the problem they have. Their rating by the BBB is an F.
Other financial institutions when asked about Zeek refer to the BBB ranking and tell the inquirer to do their due diligence. Not exactly a ringing endorsement of Zeek Rewards being this muti-million dollar debt-free company is it.
When a financial institution has “irregular” activity on an account, they are required to report it to the feds; and they cannot tell the customer they have done so. So we really don’t know and won’t know what has or has not been reported to the feds by the credit union or any bank for that matter. That is unless the feds move, then we will know.
There is still far more to this story than has been told so far. I just find it incredulous that the new COO would blame the members instead of thanking the member(s) for bringing it to their attention; as KSChang has said. Just that act alone tells me there is far more damage here than they are telling.
I guess on the bright side for Zeek it keeps the focus off their terminating Keith Laggos, which is a harder explanation for them to handle.
The wheels are coming off the bus, and it is only going to get worse instead of better.
One intersting point to come of all this was that Zeek support pounced on this within a few days of the story going live.
Yet, if the constant barrage of complaints on Facebook and the Zeek Rewards support forum are anything to go by, many affiliates have open support tickets that have gone unanswered for months…
One of the defenses here is “BEING SPECIFIC”. We have pointed out ONE single problem as the major concern, and LIMITED IT to ONE specific part of the business, and to “we’re analysing business models, not laws”.
There’s several other defense systems here too, and a lawyer looking into something will usually find them. If a client find lots of offending material, the lawyer will find that he has a much weaker case than what his client believes (if the lawyer is experienced enough).
We have had lawyers looking into some topics here on behalf of their clients. I know about one occasion (because I asked him), but there’s probably more. Real lawyers will usually not be any problem.
KS Chang’s hub is gone again??
It sure does appear that way, unless he took it down to update some information. Hopefully we will have clarification soon if it is or not.
Not a problem because I’ll just post the info on our website if needed.
@ “Lynn” The BBB is not a credited source to look at when you’re looking for a rating on any company. Unless the company or business pays for it they won’t get an A rating.
The BBB “sells” A ratings. See for yourself.
Probably should change your title because it is a bit misleading. Should read more like:
Unsubstantiated internal memo claims “Zeek Rewards is fraudulent”
After all the aim of Behind MLM is “To fill that void and prove to be a useful resource to people curious about the MLM industry and the companies that exist within it.”
Not to “hump the leg” of meaningless news that has no factual bases and is a deliberate attempt at justifying months of previous bashing of a company you obviously despise.
BTW, the majority of the fraud that you hear about is a result of mass hacking of innocent peoples credit card information. Hackers then manipulated Zeeks own system against itself by registering new affiliates and customers and reaping the rewards. Albeit this is still Zeeks responsibility, it has nothing to do with Zeek being a fraudulent company, there was fraudulent activity among the affiliates.
I will be the first to admit that Zeekler has certainly not had a good start with: (wish I could bullet point here)
Unforeseen exploding growth, customer support and technology not poised to support it.
The slick move by the FTC to urge financial institutions to no longer process for NEW penny auctions thus forcing Zeek off shore in a knee jerk reaction by Laggos which in turn caused massive customer service issues and BBB complaints.
Coupled with foreign hackers having a heyday with Zeek’s then crappy infrastructure by hacking accounts causing thousands of fraud claims against Zeek that are being taken out of context and making people believe the opportunity itself tainted.
I do thank you for your hard work in bringing these issues to our attention, however put simply, you are never going to persuade the thousands of us Zeeker’s who legitimately recruit customers for Zeekler.com and promote this great opportunity to family and friends legally and who are making fantastic money through “HARD WORK” to quit this business. You are just going to convince the people that are on the fence not to try.
@Anthony,
The point is that Zeek shouts from the rooftops the slimmest of “good news” and with their own spin. For example:
1. The Alexa ratings
==> although traffic != customers.
2. The 25:1 customer ratio in the NMBJ
==> without mentioning they paid Laggos/NMBJ $100k, and the fact that most customers are not real customers are just names off some mailing list.
3. The fact that Laggos himself is their consultant
==> but his contract was terminated and he was caught on tape saying FTC is moving in and Zeek has 6 months max, likely 3 months.
4. The misconception that NC AG office saying Zeek was “legal”
==> that local TV news story was corrected, as the NC AG office said no such thing.
And if the BBC rating was an A, Zeek would shout that from the rooftops as well. But the fact that it is an “F”, that says something.
Further, if BBB ratings is just a matter of playing their game and spending some $, don’t you think Zeek, with their vast amounts of profit they so generously share with affiliates for virtually no work, wouldn’t Zeek just spend the money if they could so easily qualify for an “A”? Just think of the publicity that would give them!
Perhaps it’s not just about “throwing money at the BBB” but Zeek cannot overcome the high volume of complaints and the high risk business model itself. Simple deductive reasoning.
@Greg
This “internal memo” (a term not used by NCSECU, only Zeek Rewards), was used as a basis to call up NCSECU members and warn them “Zeek Rewards is fraudulent”. It was also used by NCSECU employees in their response to enquiries by readers, warning them that “Zeek Rewards is indeed fraudulent”.
NCSECU themselves (to the best of my knowledge) never referred to the communication as an internal memo, rather it was an “email they’d received”. Who the email originated from was never made public by NCSECU.
That Zeek Rewards is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme is factual in the basis that the bulk of the daily ROI being paid out is affiliate money.
If this wasn’t the case, ZR wouldn’t be scrambling to release an affiliate shopping portal they’re hoping will add some external money into the scheme.
Quite obviously, after just over a year and a half of operation and over a million affiliates marketing Zeek Rewards, the company has failed to generate enough retail customer business, instead relying on daily new investments and continued re-investment by company affiliates.
When asked to clarify if this is the case and confirm whether or not affiliate money is used to pay out the bulk of the daily ROI paid to affiliates, Zeek Rewards claim this is “proprietary information”.
Contrary to Zeek COO Caldwell’s claims that all criticism of Zeek Rewards is based on ‘false information‘, the assertion that Zeek Rewards is a Ponzi scheme is grounded in the complete lack of a retail side of the business, meaning that the overwhelming majority of funds paid out daily as a ROI to affiliates is just affiliate money.
Any Zeek Rewards affiliate is welcome to ask Greg Caldwell how much external money (as an average percentage) is paid out daily to affiliates through the RPP and dispute the observations and analysis made here.
Couldn’t care less. That’s not the purpose of this website, nor has it ever been. Whatever happens, I’ll still be here covering it as an outsider to the industry.
@OZ
Last time I checked facts are not based on opinion, you simply saying something is factual doesn’t make it so. You are assuming that the money is largely supplied by the purchasing of bids by affiliates, there is nothing factual about that. You have no evidence of this or if you do I have not seen it.
My opinion is that Zeekler has had some bad advice from Laggos and is trying to avoid the FTC’s enevidable regulation on penny auctions by making sure there is a backup revenue source (which in my opinion is the reasoning for their alternative retail side)
I do understand what you say about the Ponzi Scheme claims, however being as you have no idea because you are not privy to Zeeks data how can you call it fact? I feel there are quite a bit more reasons to believe they are legit over a Ponzi Scheme and here is why.
1. Why would the FTC knowing let millions of Americans get involved in a Ponzi Scheme, after all they were implemented to protect the US consumer… And a simple check of their numbers by the FTC could prove one way or the other because they do have that authority.
2. Zeekler would not spend millions on a legal team to stamp their approval on a known blatant Ponzi Scheme.
3. Laggos, in his candid recorded call, never mentions the fear of Zeekler being classified as a Ponzi scheme, only his “fear” that the FTC will regulate penny auctions and Zeekler would have to find another revenue stream. If he knew it was a Ponzi Scheme, penny auction regulations would not have an effect on it because there is little need for a revenue stream outside the participants in a Ponzi Scheme.
Just to clarify regarding the BBB… I believe the rating should be irrelevant. For example Rex Venture Group has 35 closed complaints with an F rating and Team National (another MLM company) as an A rating with 26 closed complaints.
Team National pays the BBB and Rex Venture Group doesn’t.
No. We’ve been covering Zeek Rewards for some time now and time and time again had affiliates admit they have no retail customers. Additionally the penny auctions have been observed and there is no way known they are generating enough revenue to offset affiliate investments.
Over time we’ve also had multiple Zeek Rewards affiliates join the discussion, stating they’ve never even seen a genuine retail customer in their downlines (some numbering in the thousands).
Standard question I’ll put forth to you: As a Zeek Rewards affiliate, how many genuine retail customers do you have that regularly purchase retail bids with non-affiliate money and who are not members of your family and/or dummy accounts created to generate referral and matching point commissions?
Including the information above, an additional indicator is that Zeek Rewards refuse to specify whether the bulk of the daily ROI paid out is affiliate money, stating this is “proprietary information”.
When pushed on the matter, Troy Dooly prevented Dawn Wright-Olivares from answering this question stating that doing so “would put Zeek out of compliance”.
If the bulk of the daily ROI paid out was not affiliate money, Zeek would be shouting this from the rooftops (it proves ZR is not a Ponzi) and Dooly wouldn’t have objected to Wright-Olivares answering the straightforward question with a ‘Yes or No’.
Consider this: If 1 million Zeek Rewards members re-invested just $1 a day in bids (which generate commissions and go into the daily ROI pool), that would mean retail customers would have to be purchasing way over $1 million dollars (at least 1 million just to be split 50/50!) in retail bids each day for Zeek not to be a Ponzi.
Zeek Rewards has reportedly well over a million affiliates and they’re re-investing a crapload more than $1 each in bids each day.
You do the math.
This is the ‘well the authorities haven’t stepped in, so nothing’s suss’ argument. Investigations take time and authorities are reactive rather than proactive.
None of this has any bearing on the Zeek Rewards business model, nor does it prevent analysis of it. Analysis that thus far has strongly indicated that most of the money coming in from affiliates and thus most of the money being paid out is from affiliates. Whack on a “compounding” re-investment scheme, and you’ve got yourself a Ponzi.
1. You don’t know how much money ZR spends on lawyers.
2. Bernie Madoff had a legal team, what’s your point?
Without the penny auction cover, members have nothing to invest in. If Zeekler ceases to exist, so does Zeek Rewards. An affiliate shopping portal can’t function in the same manner a penny auction bidding cover does, in that there’s nothing to invest in with a shopping portal (you have to sell stuff and can’t just invest in bids and earn a daily ROI).
Furthermore Laggos’ statements do not dissolve prior analysis and discussion of Zeek Rewards, nor the fact that the bulk of the daily ROI is paid out using affiliate money.
How many ponzis have you seen, Greg ??
How many ponzi investigations have you followed from start to finish ???
In your experience, how long does it take, (approximately) between when an investigative agency commences an investigation until it moves in to shut down a ponzi fraud via civil action ??
Given the U.S.A. currently has a population of 310+ MILLION people, and the “usual suspect” HYIP forums alone currently feature 2 or 3000 HYIP ponzi scams………
Get the idea ????
Believe me, “apparent” lack of action means nothing.
That’s like asking how did Madoff got away with his Ponzi scheme for so long. He did. Deal with it.
If it’s so easy, why haven’t they?
No idea as to why they have not paid the BBB, bugs me too. I also don’t know why they will not openly give there numbers if they there is nothing to hide.
serious question – Is it legal to add in all the monthly affiliate subscription fees too the rpp as well as the compliance course money paid in addition to the wholesale website sales. Has anyone taken that in consideration… Not arguing here, just a legit question… Could that explain the numbers better?
@Greg A– not really. Even at a million affiliates, that doesn’t add up to enough revenue per month to be paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars a day.
As for compliance training, it’s a one-time thing, isn’t it?
Everybody talks about RPP, NOBODY talks about website sales through FSCStores.
So, no, not really.
@Greg A
The answer to that is obvious. Obvious enough if you’re not in Zeek Rewards and trying to make excuses for the company.
Dunno about the legalities of it, but business model mechanics wise it’s affiliate money.
Also you didn’t answer the question:
We’re not trying to CONVINCE “true believers”, nor anyone else. We make some of the information and logics available for people, and if they want to be convinced about something they’ll have to convince themselves. So it will entirely be your own choice what you prefer to convince yourself about.
If you’re looking at the big picture here, several experienced affiliates have had their own concerns, similar to ours. It has been reflected through dialogues on other websites, e.g. when they were discussing the 1099’s on MMG in January and February. So we’re partly reflecting the affiliates’ own concerns.
We have not focused on “fraudulent/honest”, but on a specific part of the business model — defining it to be a Ponzi scheme — using a relatively wide definition for what an investment is.
MAIN AUDIENCE
Our main target audience is supposed to be people doing research on the internet, looking into an income opportunity, whether they want to join something or avoid it, whether they already are in it or only are evaluating it from the outside, whether they’re doing research on behalf of themselves or others, or for whatever motives the may have.
The readers will usually “balance” the stuff in one direction or another, so if you want to balance it more in one direction just post a meaningful comment or engage in a discussion.
“Meaningful” means something other than “I got paid, so it’s not a scam!”, and preferrably something that hasn’t already been discussed over and over again for several months. And use normal social skills, like checking that the stuff is interesting for others and not only for yourself.
The definition for the audience here is “normal people, without any specific profession (e.g. lawyers, accountants, etc.)”. And “normal people” are supposed to know alot of stuff and to have some minimum basic skills.
“Normal” is used in the meaning of the wide range that exists between different viewpoints, where “normal” will cover both directions from a center point.
Other than that, this website has a clearly factual and logical style, so it won’t cover all possible styles, e.g. people who want a religious experience won’t find it here, and people who are completely in their own world should probably stay there until they’re ready to leave it. 🙂
So it isn’t more complicated than that. No one will try to convince you unless you ask for it. No one will be convinced about anything unless they were willing to believe in it in the first place.
You’re talking about DEDUCTIONS or what you can use the RPP to pay for, aren’t you?
If you can pay for sample bids with them, it’s nothing wrong in paying for other internal expenses — if RVG allows it. But technically, the RPP isn’t money. And they haven’t got any identifiable stream of money connected to them, either. They seems to be “made out of thin air” in most parts.
This is the major flaw in Zeek’s business model, where they mix virtual points and real money in the same “payout”, where they allow “points” to be used as payment. And they won’t make it much better if they allow other expences to be paid in RPP points, but it will surely make the RPP look more like real money.
The reward points and the compounding system is the core of Zeek’s business model, the most signifiant part where most of the money comes in (RPP not included), and where the main motives for joining Zeek and put money in can be found — unless you believe people are joining Zeek for some other reasons, like the pure joy of buying sample bids and give them away? 🙂
So did the cheerleaders for the Narc That Car pyramid scheme, which used ads produced by USHBB Inc., the same company that produces ads and cheerleading promos for Zeek.
Like Zeek, Narc played the “proprietary” card. It “worked” long enough for some of its top scammers to cash out their pyramid profits.
Reporters started taking hidden cameras to Narc meetings. They recorded some of the cheerleading sessions and interviewed a few of the Narc Stepfordians. Narc got a lot of bad press.
Narc was based in Dallas. Somehow, though, it ended up doing part of its banking at North Carolina-based NewBridge Bank, one of Zeek’s banks.
So, Narc and Zeek had USHBB in common, “F” ratings from the BBB in common, cheerleaders who sought to validate Zeek by invalidating the BBB in common — and NewBridge in common.
Oh, the Ponzi boards, too . . .
PPBlog
I am obviously out numbered and under educated in this debate. It would appear foolish to continue to defend that in which I have no facts (Ponzi Scheme) and there is an overwhelming one sided conversation here.
I do agree that a Ponzi Scheme defined is EXACTLY the definition of Zeeks model , though largely hinged on the unknown “where does the money come from” which will most likely not be determined unless the FTC steps in to force the issue.
@Oz – I only have one qualified customer, I am just starting out. A majority of my points were given away by the company to new potential customers that apparently stumbled onto the site and not being claimed under any Zeek affiliate.
@M_Norway – The company does allow for purchase of your subscription fee based on the rewards earned in the RPP. But what I am saying is why does the money that are paid by the affiliates monthly, like the $100/$50/$10 monthly subscription.
A million people on average paying $50.00 a month is substantial, so is that $50,000,000.00+ a month not include in the profits pool of the company, thus explaining a bit more on where the money comes from?
@Greg –
Greg, it’s ok, I find your posts quote useful.
@ Greg A
All I’m saying is..rather it’s Zeek or any other mlm, or brick and mortar company, you can’t rely on the BBB for truth about that certain company.
I guarantee you if Paul paid the 400 plus fee to the BBB they would get an A grade, doesn’t matter if people believe that they are a ponzi or not.
-peace out =)
So the question is why haven’t they done it, as they had 15 years to do it… if we accept your premise.
Clearly, they have the money, so either they don’t give a f___, or you’re wrong. Which is more likely?
Hasn’t nothing to do with outnumbered. There’s a million Zeek affiliates and only handful of critics. However, truth and analysis does not depend on numbers.
Education is easily remedied by opening your mind to other interpretations, other facts, and analyze each interpretation instead of dismissing them outright
Actually, that would be the SEC. FTC goes after pyramid schemes. (Yes, Laggos was more worried about pyramid scheme, but Zeek has vulnerabilities in both areas.)
Not enough. MAJORITY of Zeek affiliates are free using 2011 stats. “Median income” for Zeek affiliates in 2011 is ZERO based on their own income disclosure statement. Based on their own numbers, they only had about 70K members as of December 2011, and only 15K are considered “active”, stated by Dawn herself few months back.
This 1.2 million number sounds impressive, but is rather worthless as it doesn’t really jibe with previous numbers unless it can be verified somehow. I seriously doubt they have 1.2 million PAID affiliates.
A suggestion Anthony, I guarantee you that if you post this on the ZR Facebook page that Zeek will act immediately and pay that $400 to defend their reputation as they did with the credit union. Read ‘Fanning The Flames’ on zeek rewards news for reference. Go ahead, force the issue.
Don’t want to jeopardize your affiliate account? Have a friend post it.
Seems as though the guy at businessforhome.org is backing zeek.
Interviewed Dawn at least once, let her tell a life story, talks about son and fiancee, and there’s NOTHING negative in the report at all.
I happen to know the guy (he tracked down TVI Express scam and was hit with a DDOS attack) and when I sent him a link to my hub he never got back to me… EVER.
That is clearly a stream of money coming IN, but much lower than the stream of points going out. 12 affiliates had more than 1 million each in monthly “payouts” in June 2012, included both points and money.
I believe we should use a much lower number than 1 million affiliates. The numbers they want people to believe in are usually quite different than the real numbers.
If 1 million / 500,000 / 200,000 affiliates pay $50 each in average monthly fee, it will support an average payout of less than $50 (the same amount OUT as what comes IN, minus expenses).
Use it as “valuable training”, rather than as competition? It’s better to get the training here than out in the field, where it will cost you money if you’re unprepared.
The only problem is that we don’t do that kind of training for very long.
I believe a few affiliates have used exactly that method, reading a few hundred comments to get familiarized with the arguments they can meet, and possibly also trying to find ways around them.
So when you try to recruit someone to your downline, and you meet the response “I have read on BehindMLM that Zeek probably is a Ponzi scheme”, you’ll feel much more relaxed — and can meet it with “I have read it too. I even participated in the discussion, but I was heavily outnumbered”. And then you can continue with your own arguments, whatever they might be. 🙂
But then again, we don’t do that kind of training. If we start doing it, most MLM coaches will be partly out of work, and we will be overloaded with it.
Or to put M_Norway’s stuff in different words:
I’ve been “trained” to spot fallacious arguments by affiliates (not just Zeek, but other suspect schemes) over the past three years, that I started a blog just about “bad arguments”. 🙂
Especially with only 100k affiliates having taken the mandatory compliance course, you can do some math around how many total affiliates that are premium subscription members (silver or higher).
The compliance course was required for US, so the math needs to estimate all paid affiliates from some ratio of US to rest of world.
ZeekRewards had another Zeek moment today:
Reading affiliate forums, it seems the profits for August 6th have already been distributed today (August 5th). This “profit share” thing seems more and more legit by the minute.
(the affiliate on the forum of course view it as evidence for how great Zeek is: they might be late on money transfers, but they give you points from the revenues of tomorrow!)
ha ha ha
although, it is more like
sad, sad, sad
I haven’t seen the profits for either Aug 5 or 6. So, either the report is wrong or they did something to fix it.
There is also another problem that seems to be lost on corporate, and affiliates on ZeekSupport have yet to raise it:
Commissions from your level 1 and level 2 affiliates are 2-3 days behind! This means affiliate lose out on 2-3 days of compounding of their commissions.
For example, today (8/5) you receive daily profit share for yesterday (8/4) based on VIP points as of 8/4. However, your 8/4 VIP points are LESS than what it should be, because commissions for your level 1 (10%) and level 2 (5%) are 2-3 days behind. In other words, you haven’t been paid for commissions for on 8/2, 8/3, or 8/4 yet.
When you factor in the cascading effect of everyone in the downline also being behind, and then factor in the compounding effect of not just what your actual profit share should be today, but that it was off on 8/4, and 8/3, and 8/2, etc, it’s a real mess.
I don’t think Zeek even has the capability to fix the problem with the way their back office systems are designed.
You combine this, with the fact that Zeek “fixed” the incorrect RPP on 8/2 by simplying adding 1% on 8/3, all of this collectively adds to the idea that the daily profit share is one large fuzz bucket where they don’t care about the precision of payouts.
Any company, bank, stock, bond, or any other profit sharing/dividend/interest paying entity couldn’t get away with such lack of precision.
What if you had invested $10k and you had 10k points expiring on 8/2, 8/3, or 8/4? Too bad so sad.
What’s the company’s response to this? Pick one:
– “Growing Pains”
– Blame the affiliate
– IT problems
(Ozedit:
-OFAC sanctions
-NCSECU internal memos)
The average IQ of zeek true believers can’t be higher than 70.
@Al – Now come on, we are all adults here.
Zeek bids you purchase and give away have a lifespan of 90 days then they go away. If you purchased 1000 bids, on day two you can cut a check for from $15.00 – $20.00 and each day after that for a total of 90 days, leaving you to have made around $350.00.
Furthermore, if you do not request a check at the end of the 90 days you will have around 3260 VIP points in your balance which is not money, just points.. it would take you another 90 days to convert the points to cash which would equate to around $4600.00 after it is all said and done.
Point being, the opportunity itself is not in question, it’s the legality of it and since I see no evidence one way or the other, I will take a check till I believe otherwise 🙂
I am a believer in Zeek because I have seen it work first hand, to not continue to make money because I speculate it is not legit would be quite silly.
@Greg
And that’s the problem. You have a bunch of fake email address customers and one actual customer (who I presume fits the criteria specified, in that they are regularly buying bids with external non-affiliate money and aren’t your family and friends).
You might feel like you’re out numbered here or the conversation is one-sided, but take a moment to appreciate you’re not the first new ZR affiliate we’e had jump on here and go on about how legitimate ZR is.
Glad to see you’re at least able to appreciate the evidence against ZR. There’s a reason they won’t confirm the RPP is legit, and that’s because it’s not.
Not true.
If you have 3260 VIP points on day 91, and at that point switch to 100% cashout (0% repurchase), your total points-to-cash conversion on day 181 is LESS than your VIP points, due to daily point expiration.
Many affiliates do not realize that the value of their points is LESS than “1 point = $1” if they were to switch to 100% cashout.
The only time your cashout is greater than your points is if you start the cashout early enough before day 90 when you have the points expiration cliff of your initial purchase. (All this assumes RPP rates stay relatively constant).
Further, your math seems incorrect, as based on VIP points, starting at 1000 and running at 100% repurchase for 90 days:
– 1.4% average, day 91 = 2495 points
– 1.45% average, day 91 = 2653 points
– 1.5% average, day 91 = 2819 points
Did you account for the 1000 point expiration on day 90?
@Greg
Actually it’s the complete opposite. BehindMLM isn’t a court of law, we go over business models, we don’t hold legal trials.
A commonly used argument for Ponzi defenders is “but the authorities haven’t stepped in, therefore it’s legit”. You don’t need a court of law to go over a business model (“the opportunity”), all you need is the comp plan and desire to follow the money.
All Ponzi schemes work, as long as new investors continue to pump money into the scheme and existing investors re-invest.
The latter being the problem that eventually causes all Ponzi schemes to collapse. You or anyone else getting a check is irrelevant when analysing the business model.
@Jimmy – I am accounting for the the drop off of the initial 1000.00 but I am also including the bonus points that are accruing as well, which expire in 60 days.
This is from the 100 point bonus initialy and the 200 bonus points you would have by the end of 90 days… bonus points drop off too, but what the bonus points made would move over to the VIP pool. Bonus points allow a person to not have to purchase bid points initially and still get rewards.
Also, totally unaware of the 100% cash out losing of the 1 to 1 ratio, do you know where that is published at because that does make a very big difference in the long run.
Actually, they pay eWallet every 2 weeks. You’re “credited” daily. They stopped issuing checks month or two ago.
Nobody said that a Ponzi scheme won’t pay. The question is do you really want to get involved in one, and if you recognize it in the first place.
Even if you suspect it may be illegal, and if the Feds move in tomorrow it’ll take you YEARS to get your money back?
Sounds like you’re just “conveniently” “turning the blind eye”.
Okay, jumped the gun on this one. They were talking about payment requests.
@Oz
Understand, but my point was not to evaluate the model, it was to defend why I continue to partake in the model.
That may be, but it is not my position. Mine is simply there is no evidence that it is a Ponzi Scheme. Only convincing arguments and speculation.
I am just saying the model does exactly what is says, therefore they are not being dishonest in that regard, the “legal” question here is whether or not the model is a Ponzi Scheme.
@K. Chang
With all due respect, I own a successful brick and mortar marketing company and pride myself in my ethics, I surely would not participate in something I thought would hurt others. Just because I don’t see it your way does not mean I am turning a blind eye.
@Greg A
Ask anyone from Zeek management if the daily ROI paid out consists mostly of affiliate money. Also ask your upline (and their upline) how many genuine retail customers they have who regularly spend money on Zeekler bids (non-affiliate money) who also aren’t their family or friends, vs. recruited affiliates.
That’s all the proof you need and failure to do so is burying your head in the sand, regardless of the pride you have for your ethics.
Any news on the hub going down again?
If you are already operating a successful business and choose to participate in something you admit might be a ponzi, you are severely lacking in ethics and are letting your greed for easy money stomp whatever ethics you have into the ground.
Greg A Out! Thanks for the fun 🙂
So just to recap, you agree that a
and that you
however you
by claiming
That is to say,
And despite this, you’re also claiming to
Rightio then.
To clear it up myself, my final thoughts without being taken out of context is:
IN MY OPINION: After hours of research from studying FTC and SEC, research of the opposition and advocates, I have come to the conclusion that ZeekRewards is not a Ponzi Scheme there is no evidence of it, thus I will continue to participate in it.
If you go through life as a skeptic, you will miss out on big opportunity, on the flip, if you jump into everything you see blindly, you will get burned. Do your research, weigh the risks and be your own judge.
I have come to that conclusion with the help here and I truly appreciate that.
Ahh, “out of context”. There it is.
Dismissing analysis that does not result in Zeek Rewards cheerleading as mere skepticism is silly, and only further shows how much you’re willing to bury your head in the sand.
Hi All:
I’ve been researching ZR because my daughters are involved and want me to become involved as well. However, being older than dirt, I have seen a lot of get-rich-quick schemes go by and am naturally a bit cynical. I couldn’t see what value my entering an ad daily would provide to a company that would allow them to give me 1.5% of “earnings” per day.
They said that ZR’s business model is penny auctions and that each item could have many bids and, therefore, the money they took in of each item was many times more than the worth of the item. However, that would be predicated on all the bidders forfeiting their bids as well as the winner having to pay.
Since that model would be an unusual bidding process, (usually the losing bidders don’t have to pay), I’m guessing that they have this wrong. If ZR is relying on fees from new and current “associates” to pay out moneys, that would fairly quickly get top-heavy and topple.
From the discussions I’ve read here, that seems to be the case. Then my advice to my daughters would be to try to get out (with their original investment at least) before the apple-cart topples, or the FTC closes it down.
Am I correct about the bidding process costing only the winner of the auction? That’s key, I think. Thanks!
@ Robert – Well, the bids themselves are supposed to cost between $0.65 and $1.00, so the losing bidders end up losing the cost of how ever many bids they used.
IM(very)HO, FTC and/or SEC involvement is unlikely.
It was the inter agency Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force which included members of the US Secret Service, FBI and IRS which took down AdSurf Daily,
The current approach by regulators toward online ponzi schemes concentrates on the areas of fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy and money laundering, rather than securities violations.
Already been banned from posting there…and don’t know why.
But who cares, really. It’s going to get very exciting to say the least when Aug 22 comes around. and not in a happy, joyful way for affiliates with 10k points and above.
Just curious, whats special about Aug 22? I must have missed that update.
Qualifiers will be set in. IF you have over 10k points, you will need buying customers, meaning people shopping through your zeebates portal.
Nothing is set in stone, but if you have 10k or more and you do not meet the qualifiers, then you don’t qualify for daily rewards.
@Anthony
Where is the official word/video/publication on this? What is your source.
Zeek will not introduce qualifiers that tank the business. Their purpose is to increase the % of external customers, not the % of external revenue (nearly impossible with an affiliate shopping portal).
If you have over 10k in points, you can afford to buy through your own affiliate shopping portal with friends/family/fake accounts. It will just be more of the same shell game like they had with the 5cc, now the third party customer sites, and the useless ad postings.
Nothing affiliates do result in any signifcant revenue to Zeek other than bringing in other affiliate investments.
Thanks, Al. So, if many people are bidding on an item, then it’s entirely possible that ZR could be making a bundle that is not tied to associate’s fees?
Not to say that they actually are, but that could be a source of income to sustain the company, correct? Just learning here…
Sustain a company, perhaps.
Offer 1 or 2% or even .5% a DAY ???
Never.
@Robert
Without the compensation plan, sure – and this is precisely how Quibids and what not make their money.
With the Zeek Rewards compensation plan however, every bid sold attracts a >100% liability on the price paid for the bid ($1 for a VIP bid, 65 cents for a retail bid), when you factor in the 90 day ROI paid out to Zeek Rewards affiliates.
Further to that, the majority of bids spent in auctions are just bids dumped on customer accounts or retail bids bought through dummy customer account for the referral commission and matching VIP points given to the affiliate who referred the customer (or created the account in their backoffice).
These customer accounts are nothing more than email addresses and don’t inject any external money into Zeek Rewards as they never buy any retail bids. There is no email verification in the signing up of these customers, you just punch in an email address and you’ve then got a customer account you can purchase bids through and/or dump VIP bids onto to increase your daily ROI as an affiliate.
If you want further proof of the lack of retail customers injecting non-affiliate money into Zeekler, ask your daughters how many genuine retail customers they have who are regularly purchasing bids with non-affilitae money (beyond an initial test spend). These accounts should not be family and friends’ accounts they’ve set up themselves to purchase bids through.
If they do have a few genuine retail customers (unlikely given the consistent track record of affiliate answers we’ve received here for months), compare this to the number of affiliates they’ve recruited and convinced to invest.
You can also analyse how they approached you with the business. Did they rave about how great the penny auctions are or just hard-sell you with the investment opportunity urging you to invest (so they can increase their own daily ROI quicker).
NOW THIS IS WHAT YOU CALL SCAM. LOL
Maybe it’s just my incredulity, but I think the product itself is dubious. I cannot imagine myself participating in penny auctions (and I’ve had my share of eBay sales).
And with sales lasting as much as 4-5 hours due to the 20 seconds reset combined with bid inflation courtesy of ZR, there’s not even much strategy to it, more like attrition warfare – not exactly Vegas exhilarating. I don’t buy the “they do it for fun” premise.
BETTET BUSINESS BUREU IS A TRUE SCAM NOT ZEEKREWARDS DON’T YOU WATCH 20/20??
An interesting statistic (that will never get published) would be the amount of Zeekler bids “sold” that are actually used, vs. the amount that are left to expire (after they’re dumped/purchased through dummy customer accounts to generate points).
Another one would be auctions won that resulted in a cash payout vs. items shipped.
I’ve lost count of how many affiliates have mentioned they themselves have no interest participating in the penny auction side of things. Not necessarily on BehindMLM but throughout the months I’ve been tracking Zeek Rewards information here and there.
Usually it’s just a comment in passing but apart from claiming the penny auctions are sustaining the daily ROI payouts, I don’t think I’ve seen an affiliate sing the praises of the auctions themselves.
As I see it, affiliate participation in the auction occurs solely on the chance they’ll win an auction and be able to cash out the winning, which mitigates some of the money they invested in the bids used to win the auction.
Of course they’ll get the money back anyway over 90 days as a ROI, but an auction win is an instant payout, which can then be re-invested to grow an affiliate’s point balance even faster.
Having participated in Quibids, I can tell you the thrill of penny auctions is very ephemeral – maybe lasting 2-3 weeks max before you figure out it is mostly a scam or a big waste of time.
Thus, most penny auctions churn customers rather quickly. And this is Quibids which has reliable cheap shipping, normal credit card processing and without the rampant bid inflation of Zeekler.
There is virtually zero possibility of someone becoming a regular, large repeat retail buyer of Zeeker bids without it being connected to an affiliate account somehow. The notion of hordes of repeat retail customers just chomping at the bit to blow hundreds of dollars on Zeekler retail bids is a very unrealistic fantasy.
Mostly it is affiliates buying bids through other accounts to get 20% commission and then dumping the bids willy-nilly in auctions in an attempt to get something of value which results in the massive overbidding and nonsensical closing prices.
I detect a shifting goalpost, since this is what you wrote before:
What you wrote was “I agree Zeek looks exactly like a Ponzi, except for this unknowable data that would cinch it for me.”
So you agree that it’s MOSTLY a Ponzi, you lack final proof. Yet your final conclusion claims that “It is not a Ponzi”.
Perhaps what you mean is “it’s not ENOUGH of a Ponzi for you to call it Ponzi”.
It’s not “documented” anywhere but here on BehindMLM using math – most of “the skeptics” are pretty good at logic & math… 🙂
Because your points expire daily beginning on day 90, if you switch to 100% cash out (0% repurchase) you will ALWAYS get less cash than your points total at an average daily rate of 1.4% to 1.5%.
You would need an average daily rate > 1.76% with 90-day points expiration in order for 1 VIP point to equal $1.
Investing in a Ponzi scheme has usually nothing to do with ethics. Most people believe the ROI is real and sustainable, and derives from legitimate and profitable business activities.
If you run a business then you can consider it to be a business decision rather than som ethical issue, a professional decision. “Professional” in the meaning of “related to a profession”, not in the meaning of “as an expert”.
I have recommended a couple of people to join Zeek, and I don’t consider that to be unethical. They simply asked for a solution to something, and joining Zeek seemed to be an acceptable solution for them. I don’t think they will feel hurt or misled. So ethics might work better when it’s flexible rather than too “onesided”.
“I surely wouldn’t participate in something I thought would hurt others” is not a professional viewpoint. You have indicators pointing in both directions, so there’s a 50/50 chance here that you actually might do it anyway, “participate in something that may hurt others”.
Don’t put in your personal or business ethics into the pot along with your money. A business decision is far more “neutral” than some ethical values, in that most business men will have to accept both good and bad decisions, and should be trained in accepting bad decisions. The bad decisions will later turn into “valuable experience” in most cases, a necessary part of running a business.
So if you really want to throw something additional into the pot (along with your money), throw in something more neutral than “my business ethics” or “my personal integrity”.
If it is yellow and it quacks it is a duck. Zeek is a 100% pure ponzi scam. Where are the customers. Everyone I know that contacts me with this garbage can not answer it. All the money going out is off the backs of new money.
When this thing crashes (Soon) watch the huge BOO< go of and all the others crash. This is nothing new. If you put lipstick on a pig it is still a pig. I think the conversation about the auction (Lipstick) is mute.
Bottom line to all you Zeeklers. How many paying customers do you have buying bids and not in the business. Not free bids given as that is your money in the game. I mean real humans that actually buy bids and use them. I guarantee company wide it's less that 1%.
That being said where the heck is the money coming from? When this hits the fan everyone that has been in less than 90 day's, not cashed out, or selling the ponzi will be burned.
Lastly I hope you realize that after Madoff new law's were put in place. When it crashes watch the victims law suits. And when they get slapped for restitution to the losers (Like ASD) now they can go after all the assets of the earners.
Look at the people Madoff made millions and in one case billions. They are all broke and have had everything seized. This is going to be crazy and those making that money better beware.
You don’t need “evidence”, you need common sense and a spreadsheet.
With an average daily profit of 1.5% and 100% reinvestment, your VIP balance (and “payouts”) will grow to 2.8 times its initial size in 91 days (after the initial retirement), and then it will double each 100 day. After 600 days an initial investment of $10,000 will have grown to around 1 million VIP points.
After 1500 days it will have grown to around 500 million VIP points, and your daily “payouts” will be around $7.5 million. And the best part is that you don’t have to bring in any real customers to support the payouts, the penny auctions will generate points anyway.
Something you need to know as a business man here is “the tax issue”. Zeek sent out 1099-MISC tax forms to all the U.S. affiliates in 2011, posting ALL the RPP earned as taxable income, but with matching deductions in all the sample bids purchased.
I’m pretty sure the tax method used was incorrect, but the taxes can become a problem. The general advice is to keep your own track for work, payouts in points and money, expenses in points and money, and be sure you understand the business model so you can communicate it to an accountant.
Greg,
Real simple….Contact everyone you know in zeek and if you in it where are the customers. Show me how many people they have buying bid’s that are not in Zeek in any way shape or form. Just people paying money to buy bids to play in the auction. If there are none it is a scam.
All the bids people are using are free bids given to them from a member aor a member that they got from buying in the scheme. So all the money generated is people buying in the ponzi as no real revenue is made form the auction.
Madoff did the same thing. Promised crazy returns on peoples money and showed cooked books (Auction) to look good. The investors saw great numbers on the books and told a few friends that told afew friend and so on.
When the BIG boy’s started wanting to cash out and there was not enough new money coming in all of a sudden he couldn’t take it anymore (Couldn’t Pay) and BOOOM!!! Do you ever watch the show Greed on CNBC? Just a matter of time.
Let me say it in a simple way. Don’t justify it or counter respond. A simple yes or no. If the penny auction was shut down today, Could Zeek pay all the members (Investors) their money that they have earned up to this point. Just the money they put in the deal and their daily returns to this day? If your answer is NO then its a scheme.
A real MLM lets say an Organo Gold. If they had a cease order (Like sea silve in the past) and had to stop selling there coffee today they have the money to pay all there fast starts, levels,and earned on product already sold.
They may loose there building, the owners may be at ground zero but they don’t owe any more money to its reps when they close. They just stop getting paid from today.
If the auction get whacked they owe everyone that invested and all the returns to that point for the past 90 day’s and the money people have not cashed out. Now tell me can they pay and how as the money they are paying is of the money already in?
Yes or no?
Got a question. 3 people have tried to recruit me into this recently. A simple answer to a question would be very telling.
Zeek gets money from new investors buying the bids. For example, I put in $100. Now I have to buy a monthly package such as the $99 per month as suggested, also buying customers to give the 100 one dollar penny bids away for them to use and finally an ad must be bought.
I was told they have over 3 million actual bidders across the globe. I find it hard to believe that others actually will spend $1.00 for each bid after we give them one to start. Who in their right mind would be willing to spend a dollar for a bid? So here is the question to Zeek.
What percentage of the total revenues to Zeek come from people actually buying bid for a dollar and what percentage comes from people investing and buying services?
This is the old pyramid question about whether or not revenues come from actual users (as opposed to monthy fees and up front bought bids as the investment)but the way around this is saying that investors (us) are moving product.
I would highly doubt they would ever share this information because if they did, everyone would feel better if it was good and would run for the hills if it was bad.
Comments please?
That’s a question I’ve wanted to ask every Zeekhead everywhere. If every single ZR affiliate decided to cash out 100% today, would Zeek be able to pay everyone? Or, to put it another way, is Zeek’s bank account balance larger than the number of points it has to pay out to each & every affiliate? I really would love to see these numbers but know that nobody ever will.
But it’s very easy to see that with as many ZR affiliates making as much as they claim, and 12 top earners getting something just over $1 million a month, there’s no way the piddly penny auction revenue will cover all that liability.
Of course, these are just points we’re talking about and not actual owed dollars. It’s up to Zeek to continue to honor the idea that 1 point = 1 dollar.
Following up from a post Josh made, I also called the NC DOJ and there is a recording specifically for Zeek Rewards.
I’m guessing that all the calls the AG is getting is probably due to Zeek’s many IT problems and total lack of customer support.
When Joe Affiliate has problems with not getting paid/credit card payment flagged as fraudulent/missing points/account closed for no reason, etc, and tries every single avenue to get the problem resolved with no resolution, no explanation, being put on hold for hours, not even an acknowledgement that their email was received and Zeek is looking into the matter, of course they’re going to get upset and some of them are going to call the NC AG’s office.
The worst thing you can ever do in a business is ignore customers who have a problem. THAT is what prompts complaints to the appropriate officials. So I’m betting this is why they had to set up a recording for the numerous Zeek Rewards calls and the comment that they’ve “received complaints.”
I’m just curious as to how many complaints about Zeek they’ve received.
It’s real simple, once people start pulling their money you will see the daily rate drop.
Chances are zeek calculates the daily net income based off of how much money they are making from people buying these sample bids, that is where all of the profit is coming from, not the auction.. its the selling of the sample bids.
Once the outflow exceeds the income you will see the daily profit drop drastically then everyones points expire after 90 days worthless.
It could be, but what was interesting is the recording talked about not answering questions about how the company worked and they do not endorse what companies to invest in.
At the end they said the NC DOJ has received several complaints regarding Zeek. The recording did not mention IT problems or customer service, but of course I do not know for sure why a recording for Zeek was created.
@Jomama
Yeah I think 1 point =65 cent or something like that. but your right. Anyone that goes to site and looks and sees the site would know there revenue would never exceed money put in by affiliates.
Some are Naive to this which is fine but anyone who checks it out before they put there money in would see this, you would think??
looks like this thread should be rejiggered under a heading that is actually accurate? (Ozedit: it is accurate).
if everyone went to 0% repurchase then everyone would get paid whatever they earned that day just as they get paid on 80/20 or whatever. if everyone stayed on 0 repurchase long enough then everyone would eventually see there vip balance go to zero.
but this is of no more relevance than asking what would happen if 100,000 new affliates signed up today and all purchased and gave away 10,000 sample bids each OR, if no new affiliates ever signed up and all existing ones stayed on 100% repurchase forever.
if the auctions stopped then the daily rpp would eventually shrink by X% where X is equal to the amount of revenue lost from having no auctions unless otherwise offset by an increase in some other portion of the revenues used to calculate the daily rpp of which as we all know there are no guarantees.
A very good question to ask is this, perhaps something Oz can comment on in a future article.
In what other business, partnership or LLC that has profit sharing, or any investment, puts each person with a unit of profit share in competition with one another? Only a Ponzi has this model.
In every other endeavor with profit share or equity, the profit share has intrinsic market value, can be assigned, sold on secondary market, etc.
“Whatever they earned that day” would be close to zero, and not the 1.5% average that affiliates have seen to date.
Zeek’s business model by definition has a higher point balance that it does cash available to pay.
Zeek calculates the “repurchase” as revenue, implementing a complex Ponzi feedback loop for revenue. Cash out at 100% and you remove the feedback loop, and daily profit share tanks.
Here is the number that everyone is referring to the ZeekRewards complaints.
919-716-6046
Otis, I am skeptical because I am doing my research before I decide whether or not to get involved. It seems to me that most of the money comes from members investing and not people actually buying dollar bids and bidding. That means the money that is being paid out at the daily return rate is mostly coming from the inside.
If I invest $100 and buy 100 penny bids and they are given away to 100 people to use as a trial bid then my money goes into the system. For me to get my money back and a profit and for this not to be a Ponzi scheme there would have to be enough people on their own buying bids on their own and not members looking for a return on investment.
If you invest $100 and other people get the proceeds you have to have another revenue source to get paid back with profit. I just don’t see that many people buying bids just to bid.
The company, if it had nothing to hide, should publish how this actually breaks out and if they did they would have amazing credibility. Silence usually means deception. Yup, it’s a duck.
Ah, in that case, it probably stems from the incident a while back where the TV station doing a piece on penny auctions made the insinuation that the NC AG’s office said that Zeek is legal, which they denied and the station did a retraction.
The station insinuated that the penny auctions are legal while Zeekheads took it to mean that the NC AG said that Zeek Rewards was legal.
What about the several complaints?
“If everybody stopped ______” is a standard test for Ponzi and pyramid schemes.
http://www.sec.gov/answers/ponzi.htm
Guess that shows how much YOU know about Ponzi schemes.
FWIW, just got word that the AGs office has requested that Zeek Rewards provide them with documents so they can examine Zeek Rewards’ business practices.
Where did you get this info?
Via a Facebook message in response to a friend’s inquiry.
What was their source?
The AG’s Facebook page admin.
Guys, thank you! I often come here to get my daily dose of laughter. I enjoy the humor here and sometimes find myself laughing out loud!
I am not a Zeeker have been asked to join but said no thanks. I am in a mlm business, but a real one, one with products that sell and get delivered.
Can you please send me the link? I am having trouble finding it.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/NC-Attorney-Generals-Office/157759274279900
(The message isn’t posted on his page though)
Thank you for the link. I am sorry for being slow. Your friend received a facebook e-mail when they inquired the NC AG about Zeek? Is there a way to see what the NC AG response was word for word?
Yes Brad, I think it might be possible … I forwarded a screencap of the message to Oz because my friend wasn’t sure where he/she could post it and still remain anonymous.
Thank you.
Any chance we can get a recording of this NC AG message for analysis?
(Ozedit: Nevermind, did it myself – didn’t realise it was an automatic recorded message. I’ve also received the Facebook post from the NC AG).
That’s a load of crap. Allegedly Rex Ventures previous venture, Free Store Club had 3 million customers, which is where the number comes from.
FSC no longer exists (it’s dwindling revenue prompted the launch of ZR) and was merged into Zeek Rewards, powering the retail storfronts affiliates have but never use.
Zeek Rewards claim this is “proprietary information” when asked and refuse to even answer whether or not the majority of revenue is affiliate or non-affiliate money.
When Dawn Wright-Olivares was asked this, it was suggested should she answer that the answer itself would put Zeek Rewards “out of compliance”.
Considering that they allegedly have 1.2 million affiliates, having only 3 million bidders would mean ZeekRewards is a complete failure.
This is such BS. ZeekRewards News came out with an article recently where they caught the bank employee responsible for this bad news and bad gauge.
This employee did not understand how the opportunity works although they were averse to the MLM industry.
Before spreading bad info, be sure to back it up with proper support goobers!
Another growing pains issue from IT. Affiliates are entering userid and password and are getting invalid password message. They need to enter CAPTCHA password also.
If the CAPTCHA is required for all log in, it’s going to kill my automated ad posting bot.
@Blake
Says who, Zeek Rewards? NCSECU indicated they’d received an email regarding the fraudulent nature of ZR.
Agreed. And seeing as this story broke over at NCSECU and they haven’t confirmed any of Zeek’s spin on the issue, a PR release from the Zeek Rewards COO isn’t what I’d call “proper support”.
If he had similar concerns as us about Ponzi scheme, does he really need MLM-understanding too? I can’t really see the logic there? Plain and simple business understanding should be more than enough?
The most serious concerns have NOT been about the MLM-part of Zeek nor the penny auctions, but about “the Compounder” — the system where affiliates put money in buying sample bids, earning ROI for 90 days.
The system where affiliates buy sample bids is the core of the business, where most of the money comes in, and where the main motive for joining Zeek as an affiliate can be found. So if people ignores the MLM-part or the penny auctions, there shouldn’t really be any problem in that, should it?
The MLM-part is mostly used to distribute commissions, the 10% and 5% commission to two levels of upline (for Diamond affiliates, lower for Gold and Silver).
The MLM-part is of course a part of the problem, in that it encourages people to recruit a downline rather than attracting real customers to the auctions. But it isn’t the MAIN problem. So focusing on the main problem should be more than enough.
Who said it? ZeekRewards.
Can the information be VERIFIED in any way? No.
Is there a “retraction” from the credit union? No.
Is there ANY sort of corroboration? No.
Can you *trust* Zeek to tell you “good info”?
Posted on ZeekRewardsNews.com:
An appropriate marketing tool for sh**ty products-The ol’ K-Mart Blue Light Special!
Here’s one for all you affiliates: For every Sasquatch you can catch, instead of a million points reward, you will earn a double bounty of TWO MILLION POINTS!!! Holy sh*t that’s TWO sasquatches for one!!!
Dawn is now better focused on marketing with her new CMO title. How bout a blue light special on blanket capes? Buy one Martha Stewart blanket cape get one free.
(people with insider info only wear the K-Mart Martha Stewart blanket cape)
Uh, Blake. Maybe you should listen to one of the larger affiliates who has a downline of 5,000 who is owed large sums of money and he can’t get paid. For that matter, neither can anyone in his 5,000 downline.
I am not talking a day or two here, but weeks. In fact he said he knew some people who were owed close to $80,000 and haven’t been paid.
Sounds like a great professional debt-free company to be working for, right?
Saw that too Lynndel, somebody needs to tell him to “quit being so negative!!” … “Build your business and change people’s lives!!!”
By the way, the ZR site is currently offline for scheduled maintenance, apparently until 8am EDT, according to one of the support personal.
10~12 hours offline is long even for zeek. Can’t help but speculate that they could be destroying evidence.
I’m late in this game and have to plead some ignorance. Is there any connection between this Andy Bowdoin of ASD and Zeek aside from the comments made about Zeek using the ASD business model as their format?
I had an answer to a question yesterday explaining to me that I was told that Zeek had over 3 million bidders. Oz replied to my post that the Zeek owners Rex Ventures had a failed “Free Store Club” merged into Zeek and that was how the 3 million came up.
If they really had 3 million bidders, you’d think they’d have more than 100-200 auctions per day.
I think the “3 million bidders” claim comes from the same place as “Zeek Rewards has been in business for 15 years.”
The answer is 100% YES . if the company don’t generate much money back from bids repurchase from affiliates then the RPP rate will be lower the next day. Very simple kid!
Here is the Key Here, The bank has not retracted its statement and If I were Zeek why not have a letter from NCSECU stating that it was an internal mistake….
Also How can the company pay out the exact same percentage every week, Why does not change drastically from week to week. More money in, less money in, more bids and wins, less bids and wins…….
There are four valuables that would drive the percentage and it never changes. Even doing shut down weeks and weeks the Zeekler penny auction site was down with issues…
People are blinded by profits and money and are turning a blind eye…
I tell people accept it for what it is and if you join get your money out as soon as possible and play with house money and tell everyone else the same thing… So it is like gambling. So different when you bid on the items there is probably a 90% chance your going to loose.
This is not a company that is transparent and is slowly trying to move offshore to avoid the authorities in the future.
By the way the government is now going after those that made profits to return those dollars if they are found out to be illegal, ponzi scheme, SEC investment fraud or anything illegal, This is a way to curtail individuals from claiming not knowing it was illegal and to get those funds back and if they cannot pay it they serve time!
So if you are winning as Charlie Sheen said it winning will come to and end and you may have to pay back dearly or face jail time. So put it in a savings account until they are deemed legit which there is about a 5% chance it last through next year and 15% It last till the end of the year
This doesn’t jibe with the fact that Zeek pays out >100% in points for every bid purchase. If Joe Affiliate buys $1000 in bids to “give away” to customers, he gets 1000 points added to his balance. If he has an actual retail customer who buys $1000 in points, he gets the 1000 points plus 20% commission.
Even with the points retirement system, everyone’s point balance just keeps going up and up. Eventually the total number of points for all affiliates is going to go through the roof while the number of actual retail customers buying bids is going to remain the same.
There will only be a certain number of people who will ever want to bid in penny auctions, and a fraction of that number will be Zeekler customers. The only way Zeek Rewards would have enough money to pay everyone $1 per point is if infinite growth occurs, which is impossible.
q. does zeek make any claims that daily rpp pay is directly tied to zeekler revenue for that day?
a. no, therefore no one knows how much of the profits are set aside for future use
q. does your point balance keep going up and up?
a. no. you loose points each day that your cash out plus your retirement points is greater than the rpp for that day unless offset by commissions earned in addition to daily rpp awards.
q. if the majority takes out just enough cash daily to enable their point balance to grow despite their retirement points (e.g. approx 80/20) does that imply that point balances will collectively grow to an unstainable number?
a. no because zeek is free to implement a lifetime cap on points at any time.
Who cares? The issue is whether or not if the money being paid out is mostly affiliate money or not.
The whole concept of the points system is that affiliates are able to buy more points then they started with from their daily ROI payout over any rolling 90 day period.
This equates to infinite growth.
Who is joining ZR if they can’t grow their point balance and effective ROI over 90 days?
If you look at the IDS from last year and the amount of points needed to generate that cash, then consider we’re in August 2012 and where that top earner would be and now how many affiliates there are. It’s clear, given he number they’d have to cap at (assuming they didn’t just wipe out a large chunk of the top player’s point balances), that a points cap would do little at this point.
LOL this is such an inane comment from Zeek supporters.
Let’s say there is a 100k point cap, what does that mean? 100k affiliates at 100k points, say at 30% cash out (70% reinvestment to maintain steady balance at 100k) = $450 x 100k = $45 million DAILY with ever more people reaching that 100k threshold.
And that’s assuming 100k is the cap when there are likely several hundred over 100k points today, and a few dozen over 1 million points.
What if you had 200k people reach the cap over a year? 400k people over 2 years? Etc. DO THE MATH.
Points cap is a red herring.
q. are there 100,000 affiliates with 100,000 points?
a. i guess no where close to that but the answer is no one here knows
q. how many affiliates have cashed out completely or the average period of time it takes them to do so on average across all affiliates and how many sample bids they each purchased initially along the way?
a. no one here knows
q: Instead of burying your head in the sand and pretending that “no one knows” the answer, so therefore it must not be a problem, why take any one of many reasonable mathematical models and see what they all say?
a: You’re right. This is a completely unsustainable Ponzi even if you use conservative mathematical models for affiliate point growth. If you use a more aggressive model based in information from Zeek’s 2011 IDS and what has been shared on affiliate leadership calls and at Red Carpet Events, the end is around the corner.
What makes me even madder is that the Zeek insiders will know when to switch to 100% cash out and get their money while the rest of us play this guessing game gambling vs. one another. Surely, Zeek Rewards cannot maintain this exponential point growth and continue to pay all affiliates without the scheme collapsing.
Thanks, Oz, kschang, PPBlog, littleroundman, Lynn, Jimmy, M_Norway, MB, et al. You guys are briliant.
q. why is “no one knows” so important
a. because there are at least as many reasonable models that show zeek is not a ponzi as there are to the contrary.
@Otis
Actually Zeek Rewards only have one business model, with the cause for concern being whether or not the daily ROI paid out to affiliates is mostly made up of affiliate money.
Do we know if it is? No.
Why? Zeek Rewards claim this is “proprietary information” and suggest that answering the question would put them out of compliance.
Not good enough.
I appreciate all the wisdom here. The skeptics are not being jerks but are seriously breaking down the opportunity. My take is just like Oz just said, the big question is how much of the daily ROI paid out is from affiliates money and how much from people buying bids from the outside (something that the recruiters say amounts to 3 million people).
If the company shared this information and the members saw a lot of people actually paid for bids the credibility and the growth would be off the charts. Unfortunately, they are hiding the truth and the faithful back them, call us complainers and whiners and continue to simply “want” this to be true no matter what.
It’s a flat out clever scheme and it will fall. MLM is always a get rich quick scheme and this certainly fills the bill.
Bruce Sprinsteen said it once in a concert. Blind faith can get you killed when referring to government and wars. Blind faith in business is careless especially when you recruit others to spend their money. But the desperate will always justify what they do to the end. And the end will come, it will come fairly soon and it will crash hard.
Call me a jerk but wait and see.
actually clark, that is not the problem. you see clark, there is no such thing as daily ROI! again, NO ONE HERE KNOWS, how much total cash actually gets paid out daily nor how much of that cash comes from daily profit share vs commissions.
How much is paid out is irrelevant.
How much is paid out as a ROI (I’m not interested in your psuedo compliance wordgames, a spade is a spade) and and “commissions” is also irrelevant.
At the end of the day affiliates receive a lump sum commission. Is it mostly from affiliate money invested in the system or external retail sales?
Zeek Rewards claim the answer to that is “proprietary” and supposedly answering the question will put them out of legal compliance.
Answering “retail sales” to the above question wouldn’t put them out of legal compliance. You work it out sport.
oz, actual cash flow is never irrelevant and i believe that quote about being “out of compliance” by even answering the question about the revenue makeup was taken way out of context.
Not true Otis, Dawn was asked a simple, direct question and that’s exactly how Troy answered it.
@otis
Agreed, however how much is paid in commissions is irrelevant in analysis of the business model. Cash flow is following the money, how much of it there is is irrelevant.
Context schmontext, don’t give me that crap. Dawn was asked point blank about new affiliate money being pumped into the daily RPP and Dooly interrupted stating the answer would put ZR out of compliance.
Squirm more please.
Not really, because all the “reasonable” models you speak of requires more convoluted thinking, and the plain “ponzi” model doesn’t.
Feel free to show one of your “reasonable” models…
Actually, RPP is “manually entered”, according to official info (how else can they do “manual transposition” of decimal points?) Thus, they can “fake” the RPP for a couple days… if they have to.
Says so on ZeekRewards website, “how it works” page.
Don’t make up your own explanation please.
If you repurchase at least 75% your points cannot go down. Do your own math. I did.
Now you’re just making things up by going into fantasy scenarios.
dooly answered not dawn and it is out of context no matter how you slice it.
and maybe the manual entry chang mentioned is exactly that. so what? what if that entry is made based on an algorithm that accounts for future probabilities?
Dawn was asked the question, Dooly interrupted. Please don’t try to rewrite recorded history.
And what exactly is out of context about it? A simple question was answered and Dooly stated the answer would put Zeek Rewards out of compliance. That’s it.
Then the explanation of how the RPP daily ROI is calculated is inaccurate and grossly misrepresented by the company.
Future probabilities indicates that they weren’t using “daily” money, as claimed. Troy Dooly has also stated that ZR do not use projections or “future money” to pay people out.
The company has created a Retail Profit Pool (RPP) and shares up to 50% of the daily net profits with its Qualified Affiliates
chang, it doesnt say that days profits are shared that same day
and scenarios are scenarios.
The use of “the” in “the daily net profits” indicates singular, which is referring to that particular day’s profits.
Really, now you’re just arguing semantics. ZR is advertised as sharing each day’s revenues with it’s affiliates. “Revenues” of course counting all money injected into the scheme (auctions, membership fees, bid investment by affiliates etc.)
using projections does not mean using future money.
dooly does not work for zeek. dawn was asked a question and dawn did not answer the question
get real! just because they make money daily and pay daily dies not imply the pay for any given day is based solely on that days profits.
that is what algorithms are for and its the algorithm that is proprietary.
Dooly is officially credited as a “Zeek Rewards Training Consultant” at Red Carpet events. Regardless, Wright-Olivares took his advice after he interrupted and did not answer the question despite having the opportunity to do so.
She could have answered the question at any time.
So why then when asked if the majority of daily payout is made up of mostly affiliate money (a yes/no question which does not reveal anything to do with an algorithm or it’s formula), why did Paul Burks state the answer was “proprietary information”?
Can anyone confirm that the person that issued the statement from the credit union has been fired? That is the rumor that is being spread by zeek affiliates around here.
Even if the employee has been fired, I’m not exactly sure what that proves though…..
I think the whole credit union thing is moot now that the NC AG has opened an investigation.
I had an interesting meeting last night that may come into play with why NCSECU is so hell bent on saying ZEEK is a scheme. My information comes straight from a person involved! Apparently NCSECU is creating some sort of Penny Auction Adventure!
They are starting out with 3000 on the ground floor and the ONLY people allowed in at this point are NCSECU Memebers. If you are not a memeber you cannot get in on the ground floor.
Heavy hitters that are affiliates with Zeek and members of NCSECU are getting ready to pull their money out of Zeek and invest it all in this “new business” that your are NOT allowed to be a part of unless you are a NCSECU member.
I have a friend who was invited in and when they found out she was a member they turned her away. “We cannot let you in at this time. Once it is launched we will notify you and you can pull from Zeek and join us. Our attorneys have advised us not to give out any information as one wrong word could screw up the whole thing!”
What better way to try and get people to join your business than to try and ruin the credibility of your strongest competitor! All I can say is this….3000 people is a drop in the bucket (millions of affiliates and millions in the auctions) and I refuse to be apart of a business such as the one that the NCSECU is getting ready to launch simply because of its undermindedness and lies.
I went today and pulled out of NCSECU and will do my business elsewhere! If they are going to do shady stuff like this I do not want them handling my money! Sit back and watch…many others are doing the same!
@Carribean
A credit union running a MLM penny auction scheme… right. I’ll believe it when I see it.
…or ZR could just be a Ponzi scheme.
That’s gotta be the best post yet. Oz, you need to give awards out for post’s like that, a credit union penny auction. That was better than the crap Dooley spins out.
It made things become much clearer. I should have thought of it myself, “NCSECU unique bid auctions”.
The Zeekheads need to come up with better conspiracy theories.
Ponzi or not Ponzi…is that really matter? I think a little hope and happiness are much more important which I believe Zeek is bringing to everybody’s already suffering lives.
Peace.
Yeah, it does.
Next question.
Yep,
a whole pile of hope will put how much food on the family table and stave off how many creditors ??
Don’t you find it even the teensiest bit condescending to say or imply it’s OK for people to defraud others ?
What if it’s false hope? What if it’s like the Joker offering you “a hand” (in Batman vs. Joker movie with Keaton and Nicholson)?
Are you *sure* you prefer false hope, and ignore all people telling you it *may* be false hope?
I don’t know Faith, if you lost a few thousand dollars, would it matter to you? Would it matter to you if your friends lost a few thousand? Will you feel hopeful and happy when that happens?
What about the already suffering people who probably needed that money, but instead are stuck with penny auction bids?
Is this a f***ing joke?
Suffering lives? How bout this….get a job.
Zeekheads that invest at the end will be the ones suffering.
All I wanted to say is that if everyone believe Zeek is changing their lives, a best thing that ever happen…and willing take the risk to achieve it ,.then we should be happy for them and trying to do everything we can to keep this thing last. ( Troy, he is a great example).
Oh, and “gen3benz” ..I am a business owner so I really don’t need to….get a job yet!! 🙂
@ Faith
Ponzis hurt far more people than they ever help and they are illegal.
That’s why they(ponzis) need to be shut down ASAP.
Zeek is good for me and God will return favour back to them. Zeek is covered with the blood of Jesus.
hi i am mohsin from pakistan plzz sir do not close zeekrewards plz.
ity my request to you i am so warrid abt it.. i am very needly person.
You jobless dummies looking ffor an easy buck deserve to lose every last dollar you lost.
It was easy to spot from the start thhat this was a scam. Hard work and education are the ingredients to financial freedom not placing one free ad a day. Get a job!!
Comn people. 1.5 % a day??? Did u ? That?? Ugh…retarted
Considering what we know now, isn’t it possible that NCSECU had been in contact with the Secret Service or SEC? Perhaps fed Feds needed to verify some financial transactions?
The nebulous responses from the NCSECU after this became a story with Oz and other bloggers contacting them, as well as Troy Dooly contacting them, may be because they were stuck in a tough spot – not being able to reveal the source of their concerns yet having been caught in the public spotlight.
If the above were true, it would make Troy’s excuses yet again on the wrong side of the issue.