62 BitConnect facts from Craig Grant’s Glenn Arcaro data dump
Following on from our coverage two days ago of Craig Grant’s phonecall from the SEC, he’s since made some of evidence he provided to the SEC public.
In two separate videos Craig Grant has revealed detailed chat logs between himself, Glenn Arcaro and Trevon James.
The chat logs are from Facebook messenger and span early 2017 to December. It is not known whether these are the only chat logs Grant provided the SEC.
Having sat through the over two hours of footage Grant uploaded, I’ve categorized the more interesting tidbits into numbered bullets below.
How much money they stole from BitConnect investors
Total specific dollar amounts aren’t mentioned in Grant’s chat logs, however they do gloss over bitcoin wallet balances, BCC token balances and money spent on advertising.
Oh and there’s the BitConnect developer fund, which was awarded to top investors as a percentage of total funds invested under them.
This was something BitConnect promoters were not to discuss or reveal to the public under any circumstances.
1. Glenn Arcaro worked directly with Satish Kumbhani.
Kumbhani is currently wanted by Indian authorities. Together with Divyesh Darji, the pair are believed to be the masterminds behind the BitConnect Ponzi scheme.
Darji was apprehended by Indian authorities a few months ago. Kumbhani remains at large.
2. In October 2017 BitConnect slashed the development fund by 33%.
3. In October 2017 BitConnect investment dipped “a lot lower”, causing concern among Arcaro, Grant and James.
The RegalCoin Ponzi scheme, bitcoin’s value and a fork were blamed for the dip in BitConnect investment volume.
Arcaro instructed James and Craig to not talk about RegalCoin in any capacity on their respective YouTube channels.
Grant also speculated the investment dip might have been attributable to BitConnect moving “affiliates out of our down line to someone else”.
4. The dip in new BitConnect investment prompted Arcaro to instruct Grant and James to promote BitConnect with “hyip keywords in YouTube”.
“HYIP” stands for “high yield investment program” and is MLM underbelly code for “Ponzi scheme”.
The names of BitConnect’s rival Ponzi schemes used in this effort include EthTrade Club , CoinXL and RegalCoin.
5. As of September 2017, Craig Grant was spending $500 to $1000 a day out of his development fund to advertise BitConnect on Facebook and YouTube (Adsense).
6. On October 23rd 2017, Trevon James was spending approximately $8000 a fortnight to market BitConnect.
By that stage Craig Grant had upped his BitConnect advertising spend to $12,000 a week.
7. On at least one occasion, Trevon James used development funds to enrich himself by investing in more BCC tokens.
8. As of September 2017, Vietnam was the second largest source of funds invested in BitConnect behind the US.
9. While promoting BitConnect, Glenn Arcaro believed his time was valued at $5000 an hour.
10. During hurricane Irma (August-September 2017), Glenn Arcaro was on the island of Bali in Indonesia. Craig Grant was staying in an “all inclusive resort” in Jamaica.
When he wasn’t travelling around, Arcaro appears to have been hiding out in Thailand and neighboring south-east Asian countries.
He also spent time in the Ukraine, US and Dubai.
11. A snapshot of Trevon James’ BitConnect backoffice as of October 23rd, 2017, revealed $113,541 in ROI earnings, $625,199 in referral commission earnings and a development fund balance of $154,672.
12. Craig Grant was excited about building a BitConnect downline in the Philippines because “Asian culture know how to follow instructions”.
13. The downline of BitConnect promoters “Robert and Helen” from Vietnam used stolen invested funds to buy houses and cars.
Robert and Helen themselves would later receive a paid Lamborghini from BitConnect corporate.
14. Glenn Arcaro organized the November California yacht event in the hopes of “making so much money” from attendees going “all in … both emotionally and financially” on BitConnect.
People just want to be part of something bigger than themselves.
They’re bored and they’re [sic] lives generally suck. If they feel like they belong somewhere, all the guards come down, that’s when they start investing for real.
No(t) this little 10k, 20k shit but real dough which is usually accessed in 401ks iras etc…
15. To attend Arcaro’s California yacht event, BitConnect promoters had to have invested at least $1000.
16. As of November 2017, one of Craig Grant’s BitConnect accounts at Bank of America held $343,801.
17. In the week of October 6th, 2017, Craig Grant generated $1,422,880 of BitConnect downline investment under him. Trevon James generated $1,955,270.
18. Glenn Arcaro revealed that total investment volume that same week US-wide was around $7 million.
During the same period Trevon James claimed Vietnam as a country was generating $18 million a week in new investment volume.
19. As of October 9th 2017, Trevon James was generating on average $400,000 of new BitConnect investment under him daily.
Glenn Arcaro responded by confirming total new investment volume across the US at the time was around a million dollars a day.
20. In October 2017 Glenn Arcaro hoped to have 1000 bitcoin stashed away by the next BitConnect event in Thailand.
At the time 1000 bitcoin was worth around $47 million USD.
21. Trevon James refused to attend BitConnect’s 2018 Thailand event unless it meant him making “3x what I’m making now”.
Craig Grant refused to go because he doesn’t “like long flights”.
22. In the week of October 19th 2017, Trevon James was making almost $20,000 a week in referral commissions. This was from a downline of 4814 BitConnect investors.
23. Serial scammer Michael Weber was Trevon James second highest BitConnect referral.
Weber (right) first appeared on BehindMLM in 2015 as admin of the X100K pyramid scheme.
After collapsing a number of times X100K was abandoned in early 2016. Weber (right) returned later in the year with PIF2Cash, a Ponzi cycler.
On or around May 2017 Weber launched Coin Nuggets, a matrix-based Ponzi cycler.
Coin Nuggets is believed to have been Weber’s last scam before signing up under James in BitConnect.
How much Weber personally stole from BitConnect investors is unclear.
24. Trevon James’ BitConnect marketing efforts saw him claim he made 73 bitcoin through BitConnect in five months.
At the time (late Oct 2017), this equated to somewhere between $400,000 to $450,000 USD.
25. Craig Grant used his partner Yuliana to promote BitConnect. Trevon James had hoped to rope his partner Paulina into also promoting BitConnect in Polish.
26. Craig Grant’s “last income tax filing was in 2002”. He doesn’t appear to have declared any of his BitConnect income with the IRS.
27. As of October 30th 2017, Trevon James was making around $12,000 a day in BitConnect referral commissions.
That same week Glenn Arcaro claims BitConnect investment volume in the US was over $10 million, a new record.
28. Craig Grant “like(s) being under the crypto radar, (while) earn(ing) tons of money from regular folk”. A sentiment Glenn Arcaro agreed with.
29. As of November 2017 Trevon James had over seven thousand directly recruited BitConnect investors under him.
30. As of November 12th 2017, Craig Grant had made enough through BitConnect to reinvest $500,000 over the period of a week.
Trevon James responded by claiming he would also be at $500,000 in invested funds “in a few weeks”.
31. As of November 12th 2017, Trevon James was holding 128 BTC in BitConnect funds in one of his Exodus exchange wallets.
At the time this equated to around $836,000.
James went on to claim he was able to invest $10,000 daily into BitConnect and “cash out the rest”.
32. After telling his granddad how much he was earning in BitConnect, James’ granddad commented he was ‘earning more than the (NFL) players‘.
33. That same week Craig Grant claimed to have lost 50 BTC he attempted to transfer out of Exodus.
James responded by stating
I talked to a guy who gave me a lot of advise early and he said get my shit off exodus cause people could pay exodus to fuck my shit up.
34. At one point Glenn Arcaro was going around telling people Craig Grant and Trevon James had “a couple million (invested) in (BitConnect) loans”.
35. The BitConnect promoter Lenka CryptoGirl (right) was a puppet of her “biz mind boyfriend”.
Glenn Arcaro claims they’d made $40,000 in referral commissions as of August 24th, 2017.
Craig Grant thought Lena CryptoGirl was an “anoying [sic] bitch (who) talk(ed) about herself too much”.
36. Craig Grant claims “bitcoin can’t be taxed”. To which James replied;
Right!! No one can prove how many bitcoin I have or don’t have. Not even the FBI.
Whether Trevon James reported any of his BitConnect earnings to the IRS is unclear.
Keeping secrets
Keeping knowledge of what was going on behind the scenes from investors was an important part of keeping BitConnect running for as long as it did.
Here are the discussions Grant, James and Arcaro had to that extent.
37. Satish Kumbhani “flipped” when he discovered Glenn Arcaro had made a video with details of BitConnect’s development fund.
38. Glenn Arcaro worked with Satish to keep it quiet about how much top promoters were receiving to market BitConnect through the development fund.
Arcaro warning James and Grant to not ever speak about their development fund balances is a recurring theme throughout the cat logs.
39. In late September 2017, Craig Grant published a video in which he discussed BitConnect potentially canning their MLM compensation plan.
The information was not public at that stage and on behalf of BitConnect management, Glenn Arcaro demanded Grant take the video down.
40. Arcaro and Grant worked together to stop other investors (Trevon James) talking about plans can BitConnect’s MLM compensation plan
41. BitConnect management got upset when Craig Grant talked “about other companies” in his YouTube videos.
BitConnect as a securities offering
Although it should be blatantly obvious by now, Grant’s chat logs provide ample evidence he, Arcaro and Brown were promoting BitConnect as a security.
42. In November 2017, Arcaro described BitConnect to Grant and Brown as follows:
The goal is to create something that you press a button and money comes in. True push button income.
Nobody will be able to compete. The people that leave will be sorry they did.
43. In his marketing pitch for his Future Money funnel, Glenn Arcaro claimed BitConnect was an opportunity that “could have you earning up to 8 to 10% returns on your investments… PER MONTH!”
44. In addition to personally promoting unregistered securities, Craig Grant trained “students” directly under him to promote BitConnect and “build nice downlines”.
45. Glenn Arcaro charged $297 for access to his Future Money BitConnect marketing funnel.
Arcaro is believed to have kept any funds paid in as Future Money fees by BitConnect investors.
Persons of interest
Several individuals of interest are mentioned in Grant’s chat logs.
In no particular order…
46. Kevin Black, CEO of U Can Fly and former Senior Vice President of Urban Music at Interscope Records, was eager to invest in BitConnect.
47. Glenn Arcaro hired Kameron Pollock as a “full time video guy” to travel with him and “run video and photo content for his social media”.
48. Trevon James claims he marketed BitConnect by “copying” the style of Gary Vaynerchuck.
49. Jeff Lombardo, a “music, travel and lifestyle photographer” with 51,000 Instagram followers, was keen to speak to Glenn Arcaro about his BitConnect investment.
50. YouTuber jsnip4 was initially reluctant to cover BitConnect, specifically Craig Grant claiming to have lost $150,000 in BTC to hackers.
Jsnip4 would go on to become one of BitConnect’s most vocal critics on YouTube.
51. I’m not really sure where to put this… so uh, here goes:
If I’m not mistaken, that’s BitConnect investor Crypto Clover with some… uh… women of… um, yeah.
Crypto Clover (aka Calen Powell) was intercepted by the FBI when he attempted to re-enter the US a few months ago.
52. On a somewhat related note, here’s an exchange between Craig Grant and Trevon James from late November 2017 (at the California yacht event);
James: Pauline and tav are here also. They not going to the events tho.
Grant: Glad I left my fam behind. They be cramping my style.
James: Yea I know the feeling. Trust issues. She doesn’t trust me alone with y’all lol.
Grant: She gonna have to, or you will miss out on future events for regionals only.
Nigga you too young to stay faithful forever, don’t kid yourself.
James: Yea. A little more time. She’s growing out it.
Lucky for her AND me it’s not many women in crypto.
Grant: Sihiiiiiit, wait till you reach high price escort level.
The owner of BitClub Network is a pedophile
This one speaks for itself…
53. Glenn Arcaro claims the owner of BitClub Network is a “registered pedophile” who lives in Los Angeles.
Random facts that don’t fit anywhere else
54. The professional voice-overs used in BitConnect marketing campaigns caused Glenn Arcaro to get a “#marketingboner” and “almost lost it in (his) pants”.
55. On October 4th 2017, the OKCoin exchange reached out to Craig Grant about a “chance to cooperate in the future”.
56. Craig Grant is “terrified to be around people” because he thinks he “gonna get shanked”.
57. On October 13th Glen Arcaro suggested Grant and Craig move their BitConnect chat to “encrypted channels of communication”.
58. Craig Grant has dual citizenship with Jamaica.
59. In November 2017 Glenn Arcaro was worried Joshua Jeppensen might be trying to steal Trevon James from his downline.
60. On November 21st 2017 Craig Grant claimed “all crypto except for bitconnect is a scam”.
61. The second chat between Grant, James and Arcaro abruptly ends on December 2nd, 2017.
62. Arcaro’s last attempt to reach out to Grant on Facebook was on March 3rd, 2018. Grant didn’t respond.
I’d typically embed Grant’s two YouTube videos but owing to them being text focused, you’re better off viewing them on YouTube itself.
Update 5th October 2018 – Some time in the last twenty-four hours Craig Grant has deleted both his Glenn Arcaro chat log videos.
Great work putting this all together, Oz. It’s obvious all of these guys were in it for themselves.
Unchecked and unregulated they’d continue to fleece thousands of tens of thousands of dollars each.
Pretty much anyone involved in Bitcoin MLM’s are out to make fast money that they know is wrong.
How come you never mention arbitraging?
someone said its a scam and its ran by the bitconnect people.
After telling people this for more than 15 years this is how it works for the leaders, and of course their not believing me, it is good to see it straight from the horse’s mouth.
Now for the fist time they can see this is indeed how the inner workings are of these Ponzi’s and the leaders get sweetheart deals the rank and file members don’t.
Hopefully this will wake a lot of people up and realize they can never make the big bucks no matter what the major leaders claim. Hopefully it will make them start doing real due diligence before they jump into every latest greatest thing going.
It also show how the “leaders” really don’t know what they are talking about, but only are regurgitating what they have been told to sucker people into the program. The only thing they are good at as a leader is they are best BS artists.
Thanks Craig, you have done more than you know to educate the public as to how these Ponzi’s truly work on the inside. Thanks Oz for posting it for all to see and read.
Because it’s not an MLM company.
Some dark humors are darker than others. Craig Grant helped defraud tens of thousands of people out of millions of dollars and deserves to pay the price for that.
Like my childhood comic book heros I have a “Truth, Justice and the American way” attitude even as I somberly admit to how twisted those notions have become.
Craig is in desperate need of competent legal representation and by his own choice he seems intent on incriminating himself without any potential advantage to himself.
Can he really be so blind as to not see that he’s swimming in a shark tank with bloody tuna flavored bathing trunks?
Since he never believes anything we post I feel safe in sharing this particular video:
youtu.be/d-7o9xYp7eE
Why do they speak in the worst way? Their text conversations show how idiotic they are.
How do they manage to put together such professional looking scams when they text each other like street thugs?
Unfortunately the MLM crypto niche tends to attract people with not much intelligence.
You only need to look at some of the arguments investors bring up in defense of their Ponzi schemes in various reviews.
I believe Craig Grant’s particular defense is “I didn’t commit securities fraud, I was just going with the flow”.
Revealing image in fact 51 and is that another woman I spy on the right playing with her nose? 😉
Guess it wasn’t just hiring prostitutes 😛
I bet the investors in Bitconnect can rest easy knowing their ‘investments’ were being well spent.
These people have no concept of real business. They are so low as to even say what they are making isn’t enough and in order to rake in the big bucks they need to start getting investors to raid their 401k’s.
They deserve no compassion, no benefit of the doubt as the only defence I could see them using is the “I didn’t know it was a scam” and “It wasn’t investment of unregistered securities because its crypto” line and after seeing those 62 facts I highly doubt anyone is going to believe that.
When will people learn the only winners in a scam are those at the top and is a year or two of the lifestyle worth 10-12 in prison?
Speaking of hopeless cases how is Scoville doing these days? Not heard from him for a long time. 😉
Aaaaaand the chat log videos are gone too.
Well done. USI Tech promoters next in line?
check this out: steemit.com/actifit/@craignow/actifit-craignow-20181116t233307553z
Thanks for the heads up! He looks awfully happy to be there.
Craig’s on twitter now:
twitter.com/craigonesun