zeekrewardsOne of the sticking points in discussions of the legality of the Zeek Rewards opportunity has always been whether or not the company actually generated actual users to give bid points away to, or if they just create dummy accounts.

The former would lend large amounts of credibility to the company and quash the commonly held suspicion that Zeek Rewards is merely an investment scheme. With actual customers being generated by the company to give the bids it receives from its members away to, it’d be hard to argue that the money being invested by Zeek Rewards members was what the daily profit share was based on.

As it stands though Zeek Rewards pay out a ROI without any certification that a member’s bids have actually been given away to real customers. Furthermore oftentimes member’s bids are put into a queue (as Zeek Rewards claim to not have enough customers to give the bids away to) but ROIs are still paid out regardless.

Zeek Rewards do not disclose what the current point balance is they’ve accumulated or whether or not they are giving points away faster than they are receiving them.

Because of this noted disconnect between VIP bids and points being given away by the company, rather than profits being generated by the spending of bid points, the profit share is a mere re-distribution of real money invested by Zeek Rewards members on a day-to-day basis.

As of late the daily profit share has started to decrease and with this decrease has come a series of delays in payouts. One user sent an email asking about the delays and here’s the reply received from Zeek Rewards support:

Hello,

The delay in paying commissions through STP or AlertPay this week was due to the company trying to prevent paying out hundreds of thousands in commissions to thieves.

These thieves have used hundreds of stolen credit card account numbers to create fake customers. They then those stolen cards to purchase retail bids to earn the 20% commission.

They request to be paid the commission by STP or AlertPay. By the time the owners of the stolen credit card number contact us or their bank, the commissions have already been paid to these thieves.

We have no recourse to recover the funds. We have to refund the charges on the stolen cards and we also lose the extra 20% above that is paid in commissions.

We understand that you want to be paid your earnings. After the email was sent out the majority were willing to wait for the extra fraud detection measures to be put in place, to prevent paying out to these thieves.

Some affiliates did not want to wait for the updating to be completed, which we understand. It is their earnings and they have aright to be paid promptly.

As a result admin processed all STP and AlertPay payments today. The chargebacks and commissions paid out to the thieves can be deducted from future profit sharing.

Thank you,

Support

Apart from the actual alleged fraud being committed, what’s most alarming about this email is Zeek Rewards admission that they have ‘no recourse to recover the funds’ paid out as commissions.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been generated as commissions via Zeek Rewards and ultimately all of this money has been paid out fraudulently.

And mind you, this is the fraud Zeek Rewards knows is taking place. The above email only mentions 20% referral commission but should the company look closer into their investment scheme (by far the most profitable side of the business), I’d be willing to bet they’d also find large amounts of fraud going on too.

That is of course if the company itself isn’t in on it.

With the only requirement to receive a daily ROI being to either give your bids away to the company or to customers, what’s to say these fraudulent accounts weren’t also used to give thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of bids away to so that their creators could earn the associated returns in the investment scheme?

Obviously the company itself (I hope) wouldn’t be stupid enough to steal people’s credit cards, but with access to the backend and no regulation on their part, what’s stopping them?

With the company choosing not to make public exactly where member’s bids go after they are given to the company, or exactly how and the number of customers are generated by the company, the overall lack of transparency and revelations that the company has been used to conduct fraud are not confidence inspiring at all.

Currently Zeek Rewards claim to be implementing “fraud detection” measures but the company has not specified what these measures are or how many accounts were affected.

Furthermore the company has only mentioned the 20% referral commission as being part of the scam, I suspect if there was higher level fraud involved (that of the investment scheme itself, which seems highly likely due to the inclusion of bid commissions), the company would not go public with the news as it would be devastating to the credibility of the Zeek Rewards program itself.

Worse than the admission that already $100,000s of dollars have been made fraudulently as a result of the company’s negligence in the operation of the business.

Personally I believe no matter what “fraud detection” systems the company puts in place, the problem still ultimately lies with the Zeek Rewards business model itself.

If I can invest money into Zeek Rewards for VIP bids, give the bids back to the company, receive VIP points and earn a ROI based on the points received, before the company has even given the points away – then that is and always will be a system wide open to abuse.