Surf Cycler: Passive Earner Ponzi extension scheme
Passive Earner was initially launched in late 2014 by admin Brian Basser.
A Ponzi pyramid hybrid, Passive Earner’s business model saw investors promised ROIs through shares, with recruitment commissions paid to keep the scheme alive.
In response to concerns raised about Passive Earner being a Ponzi scheme, Basser answered (comment #14 in the link above):
My legal and tax advisers have explained to me that is perfectly legal to sell shares in my company in exchange for an equity position. No filing with the SEC is required.
Alexa traffic estimates reveal that Passive Earner went into decline shortly after launch:
A lack of ongoing new affiliate investment would see Passive Earner collapse so, in an effort to put that off a little while longer yet, Basser has launched “Surf Cycler”.
SurfCycler is an exclusive advertising and cash machine for use by Passive-Earner.com members!
By earning and collecting tokens at Passive-Earner, members are able to transform them into real cash and traffic!
Read on for a full review of the Surf Cycler MLM business opportunity.
The Surf Cycler Product Line
Surf Cycler has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market affiliate membership with the company itself (Passive Earner).
Once signed up, Surf Cycler affiliates can then purchase “tokens” and participate in the income opportunity.
Bundled with each token purchased are a series of advertising credits, which can be used to display advertising on the Surf Cycler website itself.
The Surf Cycler Compensation Plan
The Surf Cycler compensation plan revolves around the acquisition of “tokens”:
Tokens are an internal currency that is exchanged for cycling positions, with one token being equal to one cycling position.
There are two ways of obtaining tokens – collect them by watching advertisements at Passive-Earner, or by simply spending money.
Tokens bought through Surf Cycler cost 10 cents each, with tokens earned through Passive Earner tied to the watching ads.
On the compensation side of things, Surf Cycler uses a straight-line cycler queue to pay out commissions.
This queue requires two new token positions to be generated before a commission is paid out on the position at the top of the queue.
This is referred to as a “cycle” wherein the affiliate who owns the position at the top of the queue is paid 10 cents and given a new position at the bottom of the queue.
Note that in order to maintain their accounts, Surf Cycler affiliates are required to view company-supplied advertisements daily.
Joining Surf Cycler
Surf Cycler affiliate membership is tied to Passive Earner affiliate membership, which costs between $5 and $20 (for full details see BehindMLM’s Passive Earner review.
Note that a free Passive Earner affiliate option exists, however this is non-MLM and is therefore irrelevant.
Conclusion
I have no idea what Brian Basser’s “legal and tax advisers” might have told him, but with the launch of Surf Cycler things have gone from Ponzi bad to Ponzi worse.
In a nutshell what we’re looking at here is a 10 cents a pop micro-Ponzi, tied to Passive Earner by way of 10 cent token rewards on viewing of ads.
This is to artificially increase the view-count for Passive Earner pseudo-compliance (“but people are viewing the ads!”), despite investors being the sole advertisers on the site.
Queue based Ponzi schemes are just as volatile as their alternative-model cousins, with a lack of new investor funds causing the queue to stall.
When this happens, Surf Cycler deploy a “restart”, which sees “the system”
reset by paying all active positions an equal share from the reset funds and clearing the enitre (sic) cycler queue and starting over.
Surf Cycler claim these reset funds are sourced from
a special “vault” that keeps a percentage from every advertising sale both at Passive-Earner and at SurfCycler.
The reality is you can’t pay out more than you take in, so these funds are in actual fact a combination of funds trapped in uncycled positions.
This is not going to be a 10 cent refund per position (phantom tokens awarded upon cycle don’t inject any new funds into the scheme), unless additional funds are sourced from Passive Earner (which would create additional problems in itself).
Are those who didn’t cycle and are “refunded” less funds than they put in likely to queue up again? Probably not.
What this will leave is an ever-shrinking sucker base each cycler restart, as less and less investors cycle positions each time around. Not to mention the fact that in order to turn a profit, a position must cycle twice (first time is a 10 cent refund, assuming the token position wasn’t gleaned from Passive Earner).
As I mentioned at the start of this review, Surf Cycler might temporarily prolong the full-blown collapse of Passive Earner, but not for long.
Expect Surf Cycler restarts to increase with frequency over the next month or so, before either something new is launched or the scheme comes undone completely.
@Oz
Your comments on Alexa’s chart… LMFAO
Cheers. I try to have a bit of fun in the reviews when I can. Otherwise dealing with fraud day in and day out can get a bit depressing.
Hey, take a look at that alexa ranking today!
So… Passive-Earner is in no way dependent on SurfCycler. The SurfCycler script was developed as a framework for re-sale. This script will serve as the foundation for a web store we plan to open.
SurfCycler is an adjunct, bonus program for Passive-Earner members. The token used on the sight are earned by participating in the Passive-Earner program. We use a “reset fund” so we can pay all positions in the cycler queue and reset it, so no one goes away a loser.
And thanks for all the referrals. I have met many quality individuals through the promotion of Passive-Earner on your site. 🙂
Peace & Prosperity,
Brian
You cannot pay out more than is invested, so people are going to lose no matter how you spin in.
A token is worth the equivalent of $.10. To get one you must exchange PEken, which has a par value of $.001.
PEken are purchased to promote your portfolio listing on Passive-Earner.com, and then paid to the members who view your promoted listings.
You buy 600 PEken for $1. That’s the equivalent of $.60, meaning you actually pay more than $.001 per PEken. The excess goes to referral commission and to the cycler reset fund.
All the money in the cycler queue exists. 2 tokens must go in to get 1 token + $.10 out. No money is being created out of air. But the queue grows.
When it stalls, as they all do, we will use a percentage of the reset fund to pay all active positions in the queue, then flush it and start over.
The whole system is debt-free and completely sustainable.
that’s great!
on the other hand, think of all the Business you Lost because of behindmlm’s coverage of your little recruitment game.
thats the whole point.
all your money comes from recruitment. when recruitment stops so will your payout. even einstein, with full help and support of your cats, cannot generate ‘money’ from air.
feel free to use as much math as you like, but real businesses do not ‘flush’ and start over, unless you’re like shit or something.
Which will see those who invested in those position lose money.
Ponzi schemes aren’t sustainable. Mathematically you cannot pay out more than is invested.
I suppose you can say that you lose money in the same way that you lose money when you spend it on something. Like when you buy a coffee for $3.00, you just lost that $3.00. If you made coffee at home you could have saved money, which implies the money you spent is lost.
You see, SurfCycler is just a bonus program that provides a way to get cash back on your PEken purchases which are used to promote your portfolio listings to Passive-Earner.com members, much in the same way you might pay to promote your facebook page.
The PEken is paid to members who view your portfolio listing. They can then use the PEken to promote their own listings or convert them to SurfCycler tokens. On SurfCycler, you trade in your tokens for ad credits (even more hits to your sites) and cycler positions.
The neat thing about the cycler is, if you get in early enough, you can multiply your cash back several times over.
We’re currently in round 11 which has been running 4 weeks without a reset!
Losing money in Ponzi fraud is losing money in Ponzi fraud. Whether it’s “like” anything else is irrelevant.
A restart is initiated when new investment slows down (no new money to pay off existing investors).
Paying everyone out of a reserve and hoping for the best (a magical influx of new investors) does not change the fact you do not have funds to pay off existing investors.
Ponzi schemes like Surf Cycler are unsustainable scams. Period.
Our Portfolio Advertising Concept is unique in the industry and is proving to be more effective than anything tried before.
Recruiting is easy because what we have works. We continually add new features and value to our product offerings. Our members are very happy with our service and support.
I will grant you that 99% of the programs you see listed in our members’ portfolios could be considered Ponzi schemes, but Passive-Earner.com is not one of them.
SurfCycler is a typical ad pack cycler familiar to many of our members, but as I say, simply a bonus program and there are no losers because of our reset fund. Everyone gets paid something.
Call it what you want. Your “ad pack” positions offer a ROI and are thus unregistered securities offerings.
Using newly invested funds to pay off existing investors = Ponzi fraud.
Of course they are. That you’re attracting serial Ponzi scammers with thumbs in multiple pies shouldn’t be a surprise.
Here is our disclaimer from our terms of service.
(Ozedit: Snip. Disclaimers do not overide or justify a business model that uses newly invested funds to pay off existing investors.
Should they investigate, the SEC will not care about your disclaimer. Neither do I.)
Please note that no cash is used on SurfCycler.com. The only way to participate in the cycler is with tokens earned by viewing ads on Passive-Earner.
Tokens = unregistered securities. Your affiliates convert real cash into tokens on the promise of an advertised ROI.
You cannot pseudo-compliance your way out of Ponzi fraud.
I don’t know who are the “investors” you speak of. No one is investing in anything. We do not offer a fixed return.
We pay only referral commissions on purchases. I think you have this program confused with others like it.
Like I said, you can’t pseudo-compliance your way out of Ponzi fraud.
Your straight line queue shuffles newly invested funds to existing investors at the top of the queue.
But best of luck playing the “lol wut Ponzi?” dumbass. You’re not fooling anyone son.
You didn’t even bother reading definition of “investment”, did you?
Merely “expectation” of profit is enough to make you an investment. You are in serious denial of reality, or you are acting like it. Only you know which is which.
Shut it down before it’s too late (i.e. authorities knocking on your door) and run, or the authorities won’t be the only ones after you, but all the people you recruited too.