Will Achieve Community address regulatory investigation?
Despite the rosy image of thanks and gratitude carefully crafted on the Achieve Community forums, there is evidently a growing undercurrent of discontent.
Despite claiming Achieve Community would never accept deposits without a mechanism in place to pay out commissions, Achieve Community went ahead and did just that when they signed with iPayDNA.
For reasons that have never been clarified, Achieve Community was unable to pay commissions with iPayDNA despite accepting investment funds through them.
Part of the reason might have been the complex money laundering network Achieve Community attached itself through the payment processor.
It wasn’t long after iPayDNA was announced that Achieve investors began reporting bogus companies appearing on credit statement, strongly suggesting credit card factoring.
This naturally prompted a flood of refund requests, which now has apparently seen iPayDNA reach its refund limits.
For more information, we turn to Achieve Community investor Mike Whittaker:
Let me tell you about the kind of merchant Achieve is using.
Jan 4 I requested a refund from Achieve which was approved by Kristi.
Jan 5 I sent an e-mail to ipaydna as recommended by Kristi.
Jan 20 ipaydna still had not responded so I sent a follow-up e-mail. ipaydna sent an e-mail to Kristi to adjust the books. They info’d me.
Feb 6 I sent another follow-up. ipaydna informed me they had exceeded some kind of refund limit and had the gall to ask me to take $1,200 voucher good in 70,000 restaurants.
With Achieve Community allegedly not having paid out investors since Payoneer terminated their processor account in early November 2014, why iPayDNA are unable to refund money deposited through them is unclear.
Where did the money go?
One possible answer lies in information provided to BehindMLM from sources close to Barnes.
They claim that since Payoneer terminated Achieve’s account, that Barnes has been “withdrawing money” daily. Barnes claims he could only withdraw so much a day.”
Additional alleged spending of invested Achieve Community affiliate money includes:
- $20,000 forwarded by wire towards the purchase of a Hummer (truck), with the car never delivered (the seller ran with the money)
- the purchasing of “brand new furniture” for Barnes’ home
- the purchasing of two go-karts and a St. Bernard dog for his son
- $25,000 recently paid as a retainer for a lawyer
The last claim is of particular significance, as it’s also been claimed that both Troy Barnes and Kristi Johnson have been contacted by regulators in Michigan.
This is in addition to the confirmed regulatory investigation taking place in Colorado.
I myself have reached out to the Michigan Attorney General’s Office for confirmation, but have yet to receive a reply.
In addition to arming himself with legal representation, Barnes also appears to be readying up to leave the US.
Troy is working on getting passports so he can set up a bank and processor overseas. (He said) he might be gone for awhile.
Barnes’ fiance/girlfriend is also supposed to arrive from overseas sometime next month:
Caroline Donahue is supposed to arrived in the USA in March. Caroline is his girlfriend and/or fiancé.
Caroline Donahue also visited Michigan some time late last year. Troy took her all around Michigan.
How long Donahue plans to stay in the US and/or whether Barnes’ intends to leave the US with her after her visit is unclear.
Troy Barnes’ partner, Kristi Johnson, has been suspiciously absent from social media since January 31st. Whether or not she has been spending invested Achieve Community funds is also unclear.
What we do know though is that the current state of Achieve Community doesn’t really add up.
If the owners are lawyering up and preparing to flee the US in anticipation of regulatory action taken against them, why is none of this being communicated to their investors?
Instead, Troy Barnes is busy feeding updates about never-ending delays in signing up a new withdrawal processor.
Barnes claimed a video was supposed to be released Monday night (US time), which instructed Achieve investors on how to sign up with a new payment processor.
An update published on Monday night instead informed investors that there would be more delays.
Stay tuned…
troy/kristi are fully cooked and done. stick a fork in them.
clap.clap.clap.and hurray!
Kristi will hightail it back home to England which is where she spent everyone’s Achieve donations while visiting family there in October 2014.
I mark the date of Achieve’s death as about six days ago, when Troy turned off comments in his Forum. And he did move the Forum to Korea a few days ago.
Evidently he has the computer chops to take a backup of his old Forum and fire it back up in the new, overseas location.
There are only a couple of places on Facebook one can post anymore. There is the Achieve official page itself, the Achieve Unofficial Commenters page (also known as the Sheepdog), and Troy’s personal page.
The messages there are so supportive, but even there tendrils of doubt are manifesting. The Sheepdog site, of course, is uncensored.
On January 16th, iPayDNA approved my $1000 refund. It is February 10th, and I am still waiting to see any of my money.
The best part? iPayDNA rep, ‘Calvin Lee’, told me I could have to wait ‘a few weeks or up to 2-3 months’ too see my $1000 in my account.
Other members of Achieve told me they were paid within days, or around two weeks at the most. I am still waiting a few days short of a month at this point, and iPayDNA has been giving me the run around thru emails.
Kristi Johnson & Troy Barnes have really dug themselves into a deep hole, as I’ve also been in contact with the Colorado Attorney General.
I am sick and tired of dealing with them.. or rather, dealing with iPayDNA, since Troy & Kristi blocked both of my Facebook accounts, and terminated my Achieve account after I initially politely asked for my refund of $1000.
The people who are still sticking with Achieve need some divine help, at this point they still can’t see whats going on with their beloved Achieve.
I have kissed the money I invested goodbye. No response from them either.
I’m glad you spoke with the CO Attorney General. You can also speak with the CO investigator handling this too.
What possessed you to put $1000 into this scheme in the first place?
Lots of people did. During the glory days, the thing was giving every $50 a chance to turn into $400. Let’s say you have a friend or two who was getting those returns? You trust them. It’s a pretty attractive proposition.
The whole power of a Ponzi is those glorious early returns. It’s an emotional rush. Now, in my case, I do math. So I look at that and immediately say “Oh. A Ponzi.” But lots of folks get swept up by the undeniable successes their friends are enjoying.
And once you start to invest, even if you have a twinge of doubt, you might keep investing to minimize the cognitive dissonance. “Hey. I’m really not worried. I know: I’ll invest a little more.”
The REALLY irritating thing is that there are apparently serial Ponzi investors who dart in and out of these, banking actual profits before the new Ponzi stalls.
They add to the hype because that gives the Ponzi some additional life. This is especially useful if they misjudged and find some of their money temporarily trapped.
Time to “Go Praise Troy” or “Worship Kristi for all she does for us!” and thereby keep a few new suckers marching in to certain loss.
I couldn’t agree with you more. There are even Ponzi/MLM monitoring websites that let you know when a new one is starting, how it’s going, when it starts to slow down. Groups of people that have lists of followers willing to jump in on the new scheme.
According to their own posts Achieve signed up 2500 new people AFTER they lost their payment processor. People still talking about buying new “positions”.
I hope DORA shuts this down fast but Achieve is only one small dot on the map.
Go out into the street and ask the first 100 people you know:
1) what is a ponzi
2) how do they work
You’ll be lucky if you get more than five or six who can answer both.
Then ask them all if they would like to turn $50 into $800 and point them to a professional looking website and a forum full of “ordinary” people all bragging about how much money they’ve made.
There’s your answer
Sheesh. I’m sure you’re right. Do you have a link to one of these monitoring sites?
This more and more behaves about like the anti-vaccine way of thinking.
what’s funny is they aren’t even pretending to have a product or anything. lol
Won’t let me post the link. Moneymakergroup is one.
Another major one is Money-News-Online and then you have all the HYIP Monitors who also not only give reviews, but are active participants in them as well.
If it was this easy, I would have hundreds of millions of dollars by now. Most people just instead will rather work a just over broke forever and claim how they are financially free by working their just over broke.
I can’t even get a single person to go into a legitimate opportunity because all these scammers scam people giving the industry bad vibes and results.
John: With all due respect, not buying people would be clamoring to join your “business opportunity” if it weren’t for all the Ponzi’s/Scams in the MLM world.
But before I dissect your comments, I must ask you:
1. Do you believe that everyone should run/have their own business?
2. Do you tell people about your business opportunity by name when you invite them to a meeting or lunch/dinner to discuss it, or do you keep the name of your business opportunity and the reason for the meeting a secret until the meeting?
3. Do you realize that you don’t own your own business, or even have your own business but are in a job, you know just over broke?
Look forward to your answers.
Word is that people can now signup with the new payment processor, but no name was given for the payment processor.
I only saw this at MMG, but thought there would have been an Email announcing this news and would be posted all over the net to prove us naysayers wrong.
I think someone is blowing smoke or smoking it.
You’re missing the point entirely.
We’re talking about ponzis here
* First, people who believe turning $50 into $800 or that an ROI of 1% per day is possible have self qualified themselves as potential targets.
* People believe what they think they are seeing.
Having self qualified themselves, they send off their thousand bucks and the fraudster sends them their 1% per day, regular as clockwork into their (non refundable) payment processor account..
Every day $10 in their account. Never misses.
Very few of the victims ever realize that, even at 1% per day, it will take 100 days for their initial deposit to be covered.
They see the $10 a day going into their account and sleep like a baby, confident they are on their way to riches.
Who wouldn’t send more money ??
Another grand and it’s $20 cash money in their account every day.
So, the fraudster has 100 days before the victim is even going to begin to think something could go wrong, and that’s WITHOUT anyone joining after him or her to keep the ponzi rolling along.
Comparing “real” businesses or “real” multi level marketing opportunities with ponzis is pointless.
Unless I’m an update behind…
^^ Confirmed, I’m an update behind.
This is from Barnes’ Facebook:
Let the money laundering begin!
Nothing suss.
yes troy barnes please make a little video, michigan and colorado authorities, are standing by, it will help them in court.
also, i’m not believing they signed up with aerapay, till some thorough proof can be seen. kristi has gone quiet and troy is dodgy, why believe them?
Oh I agree. That’s why I haven’t put anything to paper yet. Not until I see something concrete this time. Too many lies.
You both got and missed the point.
Remember, a scam sounds much more lucrative, i.e. earn money by doing nothing.
But yes, when NM is conflated with scams, NM is getting a bad rep (but sometimes, deservedly so).
Someone was kind enough to send me the page source for the Achieve ewallet signup page, the URL of interest is:
ap.binarywallet.com
The IP address for BinaryWallet corresponds to the web2008.websitewelcome link posted above. Binary Wallet is an,…interesting company.
They claim to have been in business for over a decade but the Fla business license was first filed for in July of 2013. I’m pretty darn sure that prior to then they were doind business as Upside Client Solutions:
NoLink:upsideclientsolutionsscam.blogspot.com/2013/06/jim-lovern-scammer-upside-client.html
Their BBB page is of interest as well:
NoLink:bbb.org/west-florida/business-reviews/debt-relief-services/upside-client-solutions-in-seminole-fl-90105410#
James T. Lovern, the principle behind Upside and who’s linkedin page lists as an EVP in Binary Wallet has multiple convictions for telemarketing frauds of several varieties and in multiple jurisdictions.
My best guess is that Aerapay actually has the ability to process transactions and Binary Wallet is just taking a sizable cut for the vig. And it looks like Troy and Kristi have yet again found some other than reputable people to share Achieve’s members banking data with.
Well. Guess what? Troy’s gone and gotten a processor. With an outfit called binarywallet.com They label their screens Aerapay Wallet.
The Sheepdog did not expect this. Screenshots at Sheepdog land.
facebook.com/NonOfficialAchieveCommunity/posts/780469245371819
Professional mob this lot. T&Cs, Privacy Policy and “contact us” links on the BinaryWallet homepage return 404.
Nothing suss…
Uh hang on a sec… every clickable link is returning 404.
Did they just set up this website exclusively to perpetuate Achieve fraud?
Seriously, how do Barnes and Johnson even come across these bowel-dwelling processors nobody’s ever heard of?
edit: Support works, but only because it’s hosted by a third-party.
Well, note that the binarywallet-com links in the Sheepdog screenshot above has an Aerapay logo on its login page. Yet neither there nor anywhere internally do we see Aerapay links. Every link inside the binarywallet site Troy has given us is xxx.binarywallet-com/xxx
So there is nothing more than a screen graphic to support the idea that Aerapay has any role in this.
I checked Binarywallet.com phone number and it is the same as on this website
exotictraveldeal.com/index.php?route=information/contact
correct. whois for binarywallet.com and exotictraveldeal.com both throw up the registrant, as a sagar kotak of palmetto bay, florida.
sagar kotak created binarywallet.com in 2011.
sagar kotak created exotictraveldeal.com in 2014.
exotictraveldeal.com is a budget travel agency kindof business.
this should give some idea of the ‘level’ of binary wallet operations, that its owners had to start a budget travel business, to pay for groceries.
well, the address of binarywallet could be the same as the address of exotictraveldeal which is :
there have been two updates by troy/kristi in the past 7 hours, so things seem to be barrooom busy in achieve dumpster land.
aerapay ‘does’ seem to be in the picture, because achievers are making mentions on troys FB page:
yeah right, when your ewallet provider is a part-time travel agent, don’t expect a smoothie.
The same Sagar Kotak that is connected with Jim T Lovern
through Biznetonweb LLC
corporationwiki.com/Florida/Clearwater/sagar-kotak/108622717.aspx
bizapedia.com/fl/BIZNETONWEB-LLC.html
If new processor new is true than as Glimdropper said, all money would go through middle men (Sagar Kotak ,John B Cook, Michelle D Rigby and Jim T Lovern). One of whom we already know has less than reputable reputation.
wysk.com/index/florida/clearwater/3whhrk8/biznetonweb-llc/officers
Anybody knows about criminal past of others?
patrickpretty.com has published a detailed study into the binarywallet/achieve murky saga:
patrickpretty.com/2015/02/11/achieve-community-stranger-and-stranger-murkier-and-murkier/
he has provided articles of incorporation for the ‘universal church of charitable life’ which was established by the common players in binarywallet and biznetonweb.
sagar kotak has provided an indian address in the incorporation document.
on checking with local indian listings, the address turns out to be real:
Phone/Mobile:
0253 – 2469737, 9890372427, 9860032000
Address:
#8, Ganga Jamuna Apartment, Nashik Road, Nashik -422101Land Mark: Near Bytco Hospital
Website:
biznetonweb.com
Categories:
Website Services
the indian address of sagar kotak hosts another company at the same address sk trading:
Contact Informaiton of sk trading:
uh, onion trader, sets up church in florida, and owns ewallet company, and has tied up with mastercard and visa, but website contact links show 404 errors?
as patrickpretty said, murky!!
Here is the latest update from Troy!
(Ozedit: See here – https://behindmlm.com/companies/achieve-community/achieve-community-shutdown-criminal-charges-pending)