Will Smith used to promote Paymony?
In what is definitely one of the more bizarre attempts I’ve seen to legitimize an otherwise questionable opportunity, it would seem Paymony affiliates are trying to assert that Will Smith has joined the scheme.
Published on the “Unitel Association” website, the promo is titled “Will Smith in Paymony in mind and heart”, and features a photo of Will Smith with some unidentified men:
This is to encourage the miners call.
Will Smith is in Paymony.
Whereas you’d typically except a doctored photo in this type of promotion, the image, albeit out of focus, appears to be genuine. Whether or not the three amigos with Will Smith are actually in Paymony though is a mystery.
Also, quite obviously the snap has nothing to do with Paymony.
Still, you’ve got to question just who Paymony affiliates think they’re going to deceive with such obvious fraudulent advertising.
As for who or what Unitel Association are,
Unitel National Association of Promoters in Multilevel Marketing Companies, founded in April 2012.’s A nonprofit organization that arose from the need for unity of professionals MMN together to fight for common goals, collective rights, seeking professional regulation category.
VISION – To generate employment, income, dignity, sharing victories and success with every citizen who acts with direct sales and MLM in Brazil, no matter their social class!
Advertisements for fraudulent schemes such as TelexFree feature prominently on the association’s website:
Paymony itself is Ponzi scheme that revolves around affiliates investing up to $15,000 in digital currency “mining packages”. The “miners” referenced in the Will Smith advertising copy above being Paymony’s affiliates (the actual Paymony opportunity has nothing to do with digital currency mining).
I suppose in hindsight that a scheme with a fraudulent business model using fraudulent advertising shouldn’t be all that surprising, but still… Will Smith? Cmon guys.
Lol this is like Phil Ming Xu’s pic with Steve Wothniac and Algore, or when promoters said Andy Garcia would act as the main character in a movie about Organo Gold.
I am a Dumbass! I started with a telexfree AdCentral Package and was thinking all along that it was just way too easy. Now I have a mining package! The only good thing is that the person that got me involved in TF took my TF credits as payment for the $1500 mining package.
I still haven’t figured out how he’s going to pay me the $140/week for using my PC for mining. I will try to keep people informed. Wish me luck
The fat one seems to be Marcus França:
marcusfranca.com.br
One of the main promoters of Telexfree and now apparently top promoter of that Paymony scam.
Last April 1 Marcus França published in Madeira Isld. leading newspaper an expensive, “Hollywood style” advertisement for Paymony, featuring this website:
visionarios.net/ and reading something like “FROM THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT YOU THE TREMENDOUS SUCCESS OF TELEXFREE… NOW IN FUNCHAL: MARCUS FRANÇA PRESENTS….. PAYMONY!”.
It was so weird and ill timed (Fool’s Day) that we argued for a long time that it must have been a joke. But it wasn’t.
I still have the newspaper, so, for all its worth, here goes the Apr 1 featured Paymony advertisement:
http://i325.photobucket.com/albums/k376/PGJardim/DSC04928_zps3c3f5665.jpg
It’s a 1/4 page advertisement displayed in the regular news section, which in this case was a Cristiano Ronaldo article, therefore it mustn’t have been cheap.
It is obvious why they chose to spend that money advertising for this island of fools who fell for Telexfree hook, line, and sinker, but the scheme is so closely tied to the previous Ponzi scheme that I doubt it will have any success now, after Telexfree debacle.
Which one?
The photo itself looks to me like some (skinny) Brazilian Will Smith lookalike posed with them, and they are now parading it as if it was the real thing.
Sorry, all three are kind of fat… But I mean the fattest, the one with an orange polo right to “Will Smith”, looks like Marcus França.
A couple weeks ago on April 1st is when everyone was having problems taking money out of their TF back offices and transferring it to their EWallets. I certainly feel like a fool now.
@Restelo
LOL! Smith’s legs do look a bit too skinny.
Maybe there is a Will Smith lookalike in the company, that’d be interesting :).
Hey people, don’t forget about this post. .
You can see who are the main people in PayMoney. They post a file with the first accounts and the passwords. Look here to see it.
And the backups: HTML, XML
The guy with orange shirt is definitely Marcus França.
He posted this photo on his facebook page. And the one to:
https://scontent-a-mia.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/v/t1.0-9/1724402_486031621522392_8141328588860524559_n.jpg?oh=c2c0972ea3720781ade2b057caef35bb&oe=53D679BD
He says his objective now is to recruit people in Miami.
When he was on Telexfree, he claimed to have recruited 220.000 people.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/t1.0-9/946773_343062692485953_940243414_n.jpg
That’s Will Smith, but he’s just friendly with some fans when he’s out playing golf in Miami. Here’s him in the same outfit on April 15th:
http://www.justjared.com/2014/04/15/will-smith-definitely-wrote-gettin-jiggy-wit-it-nas-says/
This Marcus Franças has 2 Land Rovers, a Porsche, a Helicopter, a big mansion, a Mercedes, a Camaro SS (which in Brazil costs $100,000 due to high import taxes) and a few Rolex. He’s like the Steve Jobs of the MLM pyramids in Brazil.
What would you think of a “company” that sells “virtual currency mining plans” and then, all of the sudden, also starts selling pre-built houses?
In this video (youtube.com/watch?v=tLFDIwYo9gQ) Marcus França (former Telexfree top pimp) screams that “yeahhh… Marcus França group brings this to Paymony. Now you guys can use your virtual currency to buy those houses”.
Looking at the video logos, it seems to come from a real company named Fischer (sistemaconstrutivofischer.com.br and fischer.com.br).
After fleeing the US and installing his HQ in Spain (why not Brazil, if Paymony affiliates are 99% Brazilians, huh?), this cult-like business continues to amaze me. It is one of the most obvious scams ever, and people keep falling into it.
One of the most ridiculous thing is that they “mine” emony, Paymony’s proprietary currency, but everywhere, including their website, they only mention Bitcoin, as if Paymony affiliates would indeed mine bitcoins….
Anyway, everytime a newspaper contacts that França guy, he threatens to sue them.
@Diego
I think the facade they use is of little relevance. A Ponzi is a Ponzi is a Ponzi.
These schemes only change or try to add other products when the original ruse becomes beyond ridiculous to uphold.
In unconfirmed news, people are posting that Paymony’s ship has sunk. Coincidence or not, right now their website is down. The same is being said of Luvre.
Up next: “We’ve been hacked and it will take some time to restore all data”. LOL.
Oh pu-lea-se… That “system maintenance”, along with “banks are not processing our payments fast enough” BS has been used by ALL SCAMS that have been, are or will be sinking soon. At least in Brazil.
And that message is only displayed at the “back office” URL. All others are showing plain 404 (not found) HTTP error.
Plus, people have been complaining about not being able to withdraw any money for days now. Seems like the same is also happening to BBOM and Luvre.
Before starting to crack down, Luvre managers had the balls to say that one of the biggest Brazilian federal bank (which processes millions of transactions every single day) was “too slow” to pay their affiliates and had even sent them a (false) letter telling “they are sorry”. A few weeks later came in the news of Luvre’s empty wallets.
Ra-da-da-da-ra-ra-circus…
Yep, when it comes to online fraud, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
The sad thing is, there are thousands of victims to whom this is all brand new and many of them really do believe what they’re being told.
To them, “banks are not processing our payments fast enough” translates into: “Gee, aren’t we lucky to have been able to get in on the ground floor of a company so profitable the banks can’t handle the business”
I think you’ve got terminology mixed up again. This is much more an illegal pyramid than a Ponzi scheme, as described here: http://www.ehow.com/info_8050306_differences-between-ponzi-pyramid-scheme.html
It fits the active investor profile described in the article and the outside view of being an MLM structure, as described in the comment.
Looks like the “system maintenance” has escalated to “Oops… someone locked the house and left us outside in the rain”. This has just been posted on Paymony’s website:
LOL. One must love how scammers set and dismantle their “business”. Sooooo mature and professional.
Must we split hair?
Pyramid scheme differs from Ponzi scheme mainly on the culpability of the affiliate/member/participant. In Pyramid schemes they are REQUIRED to recruit and are compensated for the recruitment. If you don’t have to do any significant (posting spam ads, hahahaha) it’s more Ponzi than pyramid.
But both are financial fraud that involves taking your money to pay other people.
All programs reviewed here will have a potential pyramid scheme component, due to the TYPE of companies reviewed here. You will not find any “brick and mortar” Ponzi schemes here.
All Ponzi schemes will be Ponzi/pyramid hybrids or pyramid/Ponzi hybrids, depending on which component is the primary one. It will most likely be the Ponzi component that is the primary one.
Since ALL will have a decentralized recruitment system, trying to apply some of the logic from that article won’t make much sense. The “hybrid” definition will be more correct than what the article can offer.
For PRIMARY and SECONDARY parts of a business, we will most often use normal business logic, e.g. identify the CORE of the business (e.g. production, sale, etc.) = “which part of the business are the other components built up around?” and similar questions.
Another method is to analyse the flow of money IN and OUT of the business, based on products offered (money IN) and compensation plan (money OUT).
We will normally not use the “hybrid” description in normal dialogues, it will only be used if people are asking for specific definitions.
I don’t think it’s splitting hairs at all. Knowing the differences is a question of competency. If someone is actively involved and the outside view is an MLM, it’s an illegal pyramid. If someone is passive and the outside view is not MLM, it’s a Ponzi scheme.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, they are all fraudulent.
Ponzi / pyramid / hybrid / disguised MLM or a combination of all of them, who the hell cares ?
Actually, correction, there is one group which cares.
The fraudsters themselves care.
The more confusion there is, the greater their chances of snaring the unwary, uneducated and half knowledgeable.
The people who are joining them probably cares. Investigators probably cares (because of potential jurisdiction issues, different types of laws). News reporters probably cares (because of need for correctness).
That’s okay for me, as long as you don’t reverse the order of the argument and the conclusion.
* “Knowing the differences is a question of competency”.
* “Competency is a question of knowing the differences”. Reversed logic.
The reversed logic will be heavily flawed. It will violate the logical rules about groups, e.g. “a small group can fit into a bigger group, but a big group can’t fit into a smaller group”.
“Ignoring the differences is a question of competency” can be just as true as your own argument “knowing the differences …”. Since the group “competency” was vaguely defined, nearly all arguments can potentially fit into that group.
Except we’re not talking about different sized groups, we’re talking about knowledge. If you have it, and apply it logically, you are probably going to carry the argument, whether it is on this blog or in a courtroom.
If you don’t have knowledge, and/or don’t apply it logically, you will not only lose the argument, but appear to be incompetent, which can rightly or wrongly carry over into other areas, and therefore weaken your overall reputation.
Nonsense,
it’s all fraud.
“Competency” can be defined as a “group”, can’t it? It can hold many different arguments, and they can all fit into that group of arguments.
You have already identified 2 different arguments yourself that will fit into the same group = “knowing the differences” and “applying the knowledge logically”. They can clearly be separated into 2 different arguments.
That’s why I pointed out that the reverse logic would be rather meaningless. It would violate logical rules.
You DIDN’T (apply it logically). You simply “labeled” one argument as a “synonym” to a conclusion. That’s more about “belief systems” than about logical thinking. It’s about the labels people prefer to place on what they believe in, about “box thinking”. 🙂
I have pointed out that a contradicting argument, “Ignoring the differences is a question of competency”, also may fit into the box “competency”.
I can easily make it fit by applying a higher rule, e.g. “Competency should also be about identifying the relevance of an argument, about knowing when an argument will be relevant or not”. I can point out that “knowing the differences” only will be relevant if anyone have asked about it, if anyone is interested = that applying the logical definitions simply isn’t enough, people will need to apply social intelligence too. 🙂
That’s “box thinking” logic. 🙂
I gave 3 examples for WHOM it could be important:
* People joining the programs, e.g. it won’t make much sense for a passive investor to join a pyramid scheme, only recruiters can make a profit from those. It may make some sense joining some “forced matrix / spillover” programs, but those programs generally sucks.
* Investigators or regulators (they will need support in the correct laws).
* Reporters (they have rules about correctness)
No.
No one in the history of the universe has ever defined competency as a group…..except you.
“A group of different skills”. It will be a more correct definition than some vaguely undefined “competency”. The last one is more about “belief systems” than logical thinking. I gave some descriptions of that. 🙂
The initial question was about “Why have you identified Paymony as a Ponzi scheme? It’s much closer to be a pyramid scheme than a Ponzi? Look at this article: …”
Since I can’t answer anything like that on behalf of Oz, I gave him some general information about some of the methods used here to analyse stuff like that, and I pointed out that we normally will drop all the hybrid definitions in normal dialogues.
Tex responded with the “Knowing the difference is a question of competency” argument, so I gave him some “new ideas” about that. 🙂
WHY USE THE “GROUP” LOGIC?
One single argument will be too limited to fully identify “competency”. The next logical step should normally be to expand the definition from “single argument” type to “group of arguments” type. From there the next logical step will be “group of groups”.
You may of course have other ideas.
Note that I have already covered “belief systems”, “box thinking”, “labels people like to place on what they believe in” and some similar ideas. 🙂
NOW we’re splitting hairs. Competency isn’t a “group,” it is a word. Some synonyms for competent are adequate, capable, decent, efficient, proficient, qualified, and skilled. I can be competent in one subject and quite incompetent in another.
One could “group” subjects I am competent at into a “competent” group, or box, and another set of subjects I am not competent at in an “incompetent” group, or box. If I possess the two aspects of being competent, being knowledgeable and applying the knowledge in a logical manner, that subject would go into the competent box.
If either aspect of knowledge and/or application of knowledge in a logical manner is lacking, that subject is placed into the incompetent box.
I didn’t address the “reverse logic” point above, but within the context of the statement, there is very little difference between the two statements.
I wasn’t attempting to apply it, I was making a general statement.
Ignoring the differences would be not applying the knowledge in a logical manner, and therefore the person would be considered incompetent. Whether a person asks about or is interested merely uncovers how well the original statement was communicated in terms of knowledge level and applying the knowledge in a logical manner.
A TRUE “higher rule” is, for example, illustrating how a particular circumstance with an MLM has a similarity to another MLM, as it shows both a depth and breadth of understanding, knowledge, and logical application of the knowledge.
M_Norway, given your keen ability to make the simple complex, I think you could come up with a pay plan even more confusing than Lyoness’ pay plan. I, on the other hand, am more interested in boiling the complex down to the simple bottom line.
You have demonstrated your writing competency…er group I mean.
Wow… And here I was, thinking this discussion should focus on how Paymony is trying to play the “we have our differences so we shut everything down, sorry folks, no money to you, thanks for everything” card, and not semantics.
Next move on Paymony’s world, as published on its website a few moments ago:
Up next: “Oh no! We have the door key, but they took all the furniture away”. LOL. The same scheme was executed when Brazilian Multiclick’s owners wanted to disappear: “someone” had “hacked the system” and stolen all data, and even though they wanted so, so much to pay affiliates, they just could not.
Being Paymony one of the most ridiculous scams ever, one can only wait for an exit strategy of the same level.