Colorado Securities Div investigating Achieve Community?
Yesterday saw an unexpected comment appear on BehindMLM, supposedly authored by an investigator with the Colorado Securities Division:
I am investigator with the Colorado Division of Securities seeking anyone from CO who has put money in with The Achieve Community.
The comment, left by “Inv. M.C. Williams”, appeared on one of BehindMLM’s Achieve Community articles and suggests that US regulators have launched an investigation into the company.
Accompanying William’s comment was an email address which, in the interests of verifying authenticity, I’ve temporarily removed. I myself sent an email to the supplied address but as of yet am still waiting on a reply.
Whether or not I’ll get one remains to be seen, as US regulators are notoriously tight-lipped about discussing open investigations. That and I’m neither an Achieve community investor or based out of Colorado.
In any event, the IP address used to publish the comment does appear to belong to the state of Colorado:
And that’s left me confident enough to put this story out there while we await further clarification.
As for M.C. Williams, he certainly seems to exist and indeed works for the Colorado Securities Division.
Without verification from William’s himself, I’m hesitant to republish his email address. I would however encourage anyone in Colorado who invested in Achieve Community get in touch with the Colorado Securities Division. They should be able to put you through to Williams.
Meanwhile in other Achieve Community news, owner Kristi Johnson has put out a new update claiming to have found a permanent payment processor.
January 21 2015
Hello Achieve Community!The PERMANENT processor is going to be ready for us in the same time frame we had for the temporary one!
This means we can start paying people and continue doing so without any more interruptions. We will not use a temporary processor after all, we will start payouts with the permanent one.
Here’s what I can tell you now:
This processor will work for everyone in our community everyplace.
We have lots of payment options with it, and more will be added as they grow with us.
Sign up will be in your back office.
You will be able to do repurchases from your earnings in your accounts.
There is information that I will not be sharing this time around, so please don’t ask.
I will not tell you who our processor is, that information will be available only when you sign up with them.
I will not have an exact date for this until all the work is done, and then it will be announced in these updates. Until you see it here, the information is simply not available.
I’m working on us being ready next week, and it’s impossible to tell exactly, to the day, how long it will take until we do the work.
You will be informed as we go, so again, if it’s not here in the updates, it’s not available, and the information will be here when it is available.
I’m very excited about this – it’s just so much better seeing us in a long term solution and knowing that our community can keep growing and making the difference we all want to make.
I’m sincerely grateful to all of you for the patience and support you’ve shown for Achieve. I know that all the right people are with us here now.
To your success,
Kristi
If Williams or any other securities investigators wind up reading this, y’all probably will want to move in sooner rather than later.
At the time of publication, there’s been no indication that Johnson or anyone in Achieve are aware they are potentially being investigated for securities fraud.
Stay tuned as this breaking story develops…
Update 23rd January 2014 – The Colorado Securities Division has since confirmed they are indeed investigating the Achieve Community.
There’s nothing more you can do with that, other than to wait for some type of confirmation. He didn’t leave enough information for anyone to make other decisions.
Post #49 in that thread had a general link to stopfraudcolorado.gov (to the securities fraud report form). It can have been a response to that, “send some information directly to me rather than via that form” (e.g. forms can ask the wrong types of questions, email may allow him to ask other questions).
Or it can be about anything else.
The “wrong types of questions” was a guess, but it was based on my own experience when I have looked at some of those online complaint forms. They’re typically designed for very specific types of frauds, and some questions may look rather meaningless if the fraud you’re trying to report doesn’t exactly match that type.
Actually I do hope they re-launch next week with their new payment processor. All that much easier to conduct an investigation if indeed one is ongoing.
Also going to be interesting to see who they are and where they are located.
Makes me very pleased that Mr. Inv. M.C. Williams is on this Ponzi scheme called ready to achieve that is ripping of thousands of people including 86 year old ladies of their life savings and putting many thousands into debt from borrowing on their credit cards to invest in this illegal scam.
I will be sending him all my information and reports to assist in his attempt to shut down this scam and to jail Troy and Kristi on running a illegal investment scheme within the USA.
It is nice to say we do have protections from such scammers.
If you do care about your financial losses then I highly suggest you contact this man and report your story along with reporting it to your credit card. FRAUD and IDENTY theft are very serious crimes.
Patrick Pretty confirms Achieve is under investigation by the Colorado Division of Securities:
patrickpretty.com/2015/01/22/urgent-bulletin-moving-colorado-division-of-securities-confirms-achieve-community-investigation/
Secwatchin you have no clue what you are talking about. Colorado Division of Securities can’t touch the Achieve community.
I am laughing while reading all this. First of all, it is not an investment. Ripping off 1000’s of people including an 86 year old lady of her life savings, come on now.
The Achieve community has not ripped off one person. How can you say that? Do you have any proof of that? No. you don’t!!
I have made a lot of money with the Achieve community and I plan on making a lot more in the next few months.
The owners, Kristi and Troy, are two of the nicest people that you could meet.
All this is nonsense, if you don’t want to join the Achieve community that is fine, that is your choice. The Achieve Facebook community has over 23,000 members. Do you think if it was a scam or a fraud we would have this many people in this group?
Good luck with their investigation, you don’t have anything and Achieve will be around for a long time.
Trust me no ponzi like acheive is beyond the laws. And since you made a lot of money EXPECT the regulators to come after you to repay all that I’ll gotten gains.
They will find you. Just like they will find Loser Troy and Scammer Kristi.
wake up acheive for life you may become jailed acheive for life if you refuse to cooperate with the USA regulators.
Go look up zeek and telexfree and you will see what I am talking about. Apparently you do not know the securities laws of the USA.
Achieve For Life is just another clueless cult member.
23,000 members in the Achieve community just means there’s a large group of ignorant people all in one place.
Once Troy and Kristi go to jail for securities fraud, we’ll see who’s still singing their praises.
I just want to point out that I have been in a investigation for Surrogacy fraud and this stinks to high hell.
This is it the proper procedure if Achieve was under investigation. I am a free thinker and I just have to sit back and shake my head at this.
Just get your facts straight I was contacted directly by the police force with a investigation like this. And instead of lolly gagging just call the states attorney and get the facts.
I turned this over to one of the owners and I plan to call the attorney generals office directly. No fear hear or hiding. Go about your day I am not shaking in my boots.
Cuz y’know, surrogacy fraud and securities fraud are the same thing.
You seem to have a problem participating in various forms of fraud… might just be co-incidence but I doubt it.
Meanwhile Achieve Community is under securities fraud investigation. Being a Ponzi scheme, nevermind you but it at the very least should be shaking in its boots.
Hope you haven’t spent it all.
This is interesting reading.
criminal-law.freeadvice.com/criminal-law/criminal-law/rico-cases.htm
How are you at picking up soap?
awww but you cant call the attorney’s office and rather sit back and bullshit around pls go sit your ass down somewhere Karma is a bitch.
I will be calling and I will get back to you so never mind that and go about your miserable day. 🙂
^^ Must be braindead having missed the part where an investigator from the Colorado Securities Division responded to an email enquiry.
Is being a braindead dropshit a prerequisite to investing in Achieve?
Quite a few sheeple said law can’t touch them, either they did nothing illegal or they are not covered by that law.
Zeek came right to mind. Even AFTER SEC closed Zeek people claimed, to a newspaper reporter, SEC “had to be mistaken, I know what a security is and Zeek never sold any”.
So, again, you’re pretty typical in maintaining your delusion in not seeing the reality. You’re really “invested” (that’s a pun) in your alternate reality.
Good luck. You’ll need it. (And maybe a lawyer)
Who said anything about attorney general? Bark up the right tree at least, man.
I’d had lots of people calling me names, claimed I’m bull****ing, and karma’s going to get me when I exposed frauds like WCM, TVI Express, Zeek, TelexFree, and so on.
If you search through my blog’s comments you’ll see quite a few. I left them there for the LOLs. I’m sure there are plenty here too.
You’re merely in the “denial stage” of “5 stages of grief”. You’ll get out of it… soon. Sooner or later, you’ll accept reality. Everybody else… (the exceptions are, shall we say, “loco”)
Not braindead, Oz. Merely… in denial. Since you didn’t publish the address, it suits their world view that you made it up to make them look bad.
Soon, the mind withdraws into a circle to protect itself against encroaching reality.
Would be great if you could get back to us after your conversation with the AG’s office.
Or better yet, let us know what Kristi was told when she talked to them, which I assume she’ll do after receiving the info you “turned over”.
She’ll no doubt want to share the details of her discussion with the entire Achieve community, so you can just visit back here and copy and paste whatever “update” she posts.
Is the new “permanent processor” up and running and paying everyone yet?
Umm, yes, yes I do.
Zeek Rewards had over a million members – and we all know how that ended for them.
Ditto TelexFree.
In fact, I would go so far as to say, with ONLY 23,000 members, Achieve is only your common garden variety ponzi fraud, destined to disappear like squillions of other small time ponzi frauds into the ether with hardly a trace, sooner, rather than later.
It’s all they have to withdraw because they certainly can’t withdraw any money.
Just to clarify… Colorado Division of Securities is a division within Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, which is ruled by the Colorado Securities Commissioner… NOT the attorney general (of Colorado). So asking the AG is NOT the same as asking DivSecCo.
As I said before, bark up the right tree.
Or to translate for people… DivSec is a civilian agency… they file CIVIL charges against offenders (like the SEC). AG operate on the CRIMINAL side. If AG’s involved you’re looking at CRIMINAL, not civil charges.
^^ It is not unusual for the Colorado Division of Securities to work with local prosecutors to bring criminal charges of securities fraud, sale of unregistered securities and theft.
Colorado also has a racketeering statute known as the Organized Crime Control Act that has been used alongside the securities-fraud statute. One famous example of this was the Sean Mueller Ponzi case.
On a side note, Michigan also has a racketeering statute that has been used in Ponzi cases.
PPBlog
regarding achieve…what if you have not made any money at all. will you be contacted as part of the problem and investigation?
@TB
We’re still waiting on word from regulators on what exactly is going down.
At some point though yes, I imagine victims of the fraud will be contacted.
^^this was a Big One! denver district court,2010 :
the racketeering statute added 20 years !!! this is a big meanie!
do we know anybody who lives in denver, colorado? i’m feeling sympathetic already!