THE FACTS: Dissecting the Zeek Ponzi apocalypse
Zeek Rewards was first reviewed here on BehindMLM way back in September 2011 and just two days after my initial review (in which I struggled to see the attraction of retail customers to the business), I wrote a followup exploring the passive investment nature of Zeek.
What has followed over the past eleven months can only be described as a communal firestorm of critical analysis and exploration of Zeek Rewards, its business model, money trail, compensation plan and commissions structure from every angle imaginable.
20 something articles later and thousands of comments exchanged between fellow analysers, blind cheerleaders, cautious profit seekers, harsh critics and a host of characters, today saw the conclusion of that analysis finally put to the test.
Often dismissed for “not having the facts”, today we look at just how accurate the discussion and analysis here at BehindMLM was in deconstructing and analysing the $600 million dollar Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme.
Filed as a complaint in a North Carolina District Court, the following facts and figures are taken directly from an undercover SEC investigation into Zeek Rewards, Zeekler, Rex Venture Group (the parent company) and Paul Burks (CEO and owner of all three).
An investigation which yesterday, culminated in the shutting down of Rex Venture Group’s entire operations.
Funds Raised
Exactly how much money has been raised by Zeek Rewards has been a source of fierce debate, mostly due to the fact that under the belief that mostly affiliate money was being used to pay affiliates, how much of this money was raised would indicate the viability of the business.
In total, the SEC claim
Since approximately January 2011 through the present, the
Defendants have raised more than $600 million from approximately 1 million investors nationwide and overseas by making unregistered offers and sales of securities through the ZeekRewards website in the form of Premium Subscriptions
and VIP Bids.
Presumably so low was the revenue generated by Shopping Daisy, Zeekler retail bids and the FSC Store, that the SEC didn’t even bother to include their figures in their complaint.
The irrelevance of Rex Venture Group’s other properties in terms of revenue generation has been consistent. With a complete lack of retail customers evident, it was obvious that all of Zeek Rewards’ revenue was solely being generated by affiliates’ purchasing VIP bids.
The daily ROI “proprietary secret” percentage of affiliate money being paid out to affiliates
One of the strongest criticisms of analysis into whether or not Zeek Rewards was a Ponzi scheme has been the constant claims of “critics” ‘not having all the facts‘.
Despite mountains of evidence from affiliates, observations of the mechanics of Zeek Rewards payouts and tracking of commissions paid out to thousands of affiliates, claims that Zeek Rewards were paying out a daily ROI that consisted of mostly new affiliate money, were often dismissed.
Zeek Rewards was queried multiple times on this very issue and every time the response was always the same:
That information is proprietary.
Infamously, Zeek Rewards’ Official Training Consultant Troy Dooly even went so far as to stop then COO Dawn Wright-Olivares answering questions on this very topic, claiming that Zeek would be “out of compliance if they did so”.
More recently, when left to her own devices, Wright-Olivares made the claim that unless Zeek Rewards affiliates deposited more money into their e-wallet accounts, the company would be unable to pay commissions (“what goes in can come back out“).
Following this announcement in late June, Wright-Olivares seemingly disappeared off the face of the planet and was publicly never heard from again. She was replaced by Greg Caldwell as COO in July.
So just how much affiliate money was making its way into the company’s daily ROI payment to affiliates?
Approximately 98% of ZeekRewards’ total revenues, and correspondingly the purported share of “net profits” paid to current investors, are comprised of funds received from new investors.
Zeek Rewards was paying existing members Ponzi returns made up of 98% investments from new affiliates.
Zeekler’s penny auctions were a “cash cow”
Often compared to non-MLM penny auctions like Quibids, affiliates and supporters of Zeek Rewards often claimed Zeekler’s penny auctions could easily and continue to easily cover the daily ROI paid out to affiliates, based on their success.
This, according to the SEC, was not the case:
In 2010, Burks created Zeekler.com, a penny auction website offering items ranging from personal electronics to cash.
The penny auctions were not particularly successful until Burks launched ZeekRewards in January 2011.
After Zeek Rewards launched of course affiliates started investing in VIP bids to the tune of $10,000 a pop and well… $600 million dollars later here we are.
But hang on Oz, $600 million in bids? Surely that’s evidence of Zeekler’s success right?
Wrong.
Almost none of the VIP Bids given away by Qualified investors are actually used on the Zeekler penny auction website.
Of approximately 10 billion VIP Bids purchased by or awarded to investors, less than one-quarter of one percent have been actually used in auctions on the Zeekler penny auction website.
Yet a quarter of one percent of VIP bids actually being used in the auctions was more than enough to observe the ridiculous prices Zeekler’s penny auctions were closing at (often hundreds of dollars above the retail value of the item being auctioned).
So what happened to the rest of the bids? Well, with Zeekler requiring no customer email verification both affiliates and “Zeekler customer vendors” simply created thousands upon thousands of dummy accounts for affiliates to simply dump bids onto.
With 98% of the daily ROI coming from new affiliate investments in bids, what happened to the bids was ultimately irrelevant to the commissions structure of Zeek Rewards.
Or as the SEC put it, ‘the VIP Bids do little or nothing to actually promote the retail business‘.
Zeek Rewards affiliates are paid to advertise the company
One would think 98% of the daily ROI paid out to affiliates would clearly show that affiliates were indeed not being paid to advertise the company, however in forcing members to spam the internet once a day to qualify for their daily ROI payout, thus Zeek Rewards claimed it was so.
Given that this was on all company marketing and training materials, over the eleven months Zeek Rewards analysis has featured on BehindMLM, that meant that during this time we’ve had a steady stream of affiliates trying to justify Zeek Rewards’ daily ROI payouts on the claim that they are indeed “paid to advertise”.
The reality?
The requirements to become a Qualified Affiliate constitute an investment in a common enterprise and require little or no investor effort.
Earning daily dividends also requires that affiliates place one free internet advertisement daily for the company, but that exercise requires little or no effort.
Affiliates may merely copy and paste free ads – created by Defendants without input from affiliates – from a company-sponsored program, which the ZeekRewards website boasts should take no more than five minutes per day.
Affiliates also may employ a third-party program to generate ads automatically for them; affiliates must simply verify that they’ve placed the ad by submitting an internet link to ZeekRewards.
Placing more or better ads does not enhance an individual’s share of profits.
The size of the each Qualified Affiliate’s daily award is dependent
solely on how many Profit Points that investor has accumulated, and is not based on rendering any significant service to ZeekRewards.
“Qualifying” for your daily ROI had nothing to do with publishing ads and instead was simply tied into how much you’d invested.
Over the months I’d easily lost count of how many times I’d refuted the ‘we get paid to advertise” claims with the fact that the entire process could be automated and publishing replicated ads on crappy little free classified websites nobody visited did not generate business for Zeekler.
A fact that was largely dismissed by affiliates and supporters of the scheme.
Due to point expiration, the Zeek Rewards daily ROI was sustainable
Suspending basic mathematics, it was often argued that due to points expiring after 90 days in Zeek ROI scheme, that this somehow rendered payouts sustainable.
At the heart of the Zeek Rewards business model however was of course the guarantee that affiliates would be paid out a large enough return over 90 days, such that they’d be able to re-invest it and wind up with more points than they started with, irrespective of how many points retired on any given day.
With point balances increasing indefinitely, this meant that so too would the amount of money from Zeek to meet this implied guarantee. Failure to do so would result mass cash outs and withdrawals from the scheme which, once initiated, would be impossible to recover from (such is the nature of a Ponzi scheme).
without new investor deposits (in the form of VIP Bid purchases and subscription fees), revenues would dwindle substantially as less than 10% of daily revenues come from actual retail sales, and the scheme would likely collapse immediately.
So, what was Zeek Rewards’ bid liability when the SEC shut them down?
As a result of the compounding effect, Qualified Affiliates now have nearly 3 billion Profit Points outstanding. Based on the ZeekRewards current outstanding Profit Point balance, the company would be obligated to pay out approximately $45 million per day if all Qualified Affiliates elected to receive their daily award in cash.
$45 million a day huh? So how much money did Zeek Rewards have then?
Defendants currently hold approximately $225 million in investor funds in approximately 15 foreign and domestic financial institutions, and those funds are at risk of imminent dissipation and depletion.
A 5 day reserve. When you consider that
the company’s actual daily revenues in July 2012 averaged approximately $5 million per day.
and that
the company would quickly become insolvent if more Qualified Affiliates elected to take daily awards in cash from the Retail Profit Pool rather than converting their awards into ever increasing accumulated Profit Points,
it’s evident just how close to the bone Zeek Rewards were running their Ponzi scheme and why the authorities stepped in when they finally did.
Evidently the much touted launch of the Zeebates affiliate shopping portal on August 22nd wasn’t just to boost non-affiliate revenue in the daily ROI payments, it was a last-ditch attempt to inject some much needed funds into a Ponzi scheme that was teetering on the brink of collapse.
ZeekRewards’ current investor payouts are approaching, and may soon exceed, total incoming revenue. In July 2012, total revenue for ZeekRewards was approximately $162 million, while total investor cash pay-outs were approximately $160 million.
$45 million a day and rising out and just $5 million in? Ponzi sustainability mathematics at their finest. Or simply “proprietary information” as Paul Burks so loved to go around telling anyone who dared to ask.
Zeek Rewards pays out 50% of the company’s net profits each day
After Zeek Rewards launched it’s Ponzi scheme (or “the compounder” as it was known then), it wasnt long before people started to notice that regardless of auction volume or other events (such as holidays and website downtime), the daily ROI paid out always seemed to average out at about 1.5% a day.
After a series of blunders in the daily ROI paid out, which were quickly fixed in the proceedings days with a manual intervention to the ROI percentage paid out to affiliates, suspicions ran high that Zeek Rewards were just “making up” the daily ROI percentage paid out to affiliates.
As with everything else suspicious about the company that was analysed, this was also true:
Burks is solely responsible for determining the amount of “net profits” to share in the Retail Profit Pool.
Defendants represent that daily awards are calculated by dividing “up to 50%” of daily net profits by the number of Profit Points outstanding among all Qualified Affiliates.
This calculation results in a daily dividend paid to each
Qualified Affiliate that consistently has averaged approximately 1.5% per day.
In fact, the dividend bears no relation to the company’s net profits.
Instead, Burks unilaterally and arbitrarily determines the daily dividend rate so that it averages approximately 1.5% per day, giving investors the false impression that the business is profitable.
Zeek Rewards CEO Paul Burks was simply cooking the books. Not at all surprising when you consider the impossible regularity that Zeek Rewards continued to peg it’s supposedly variable daily ROI at, yet that didn’t stop countless people from arguing the system was legit.
Zeek Rewards don’t use future money to pay out affiliates daily
Although the numbers didn’t add up when analysed, that didn’t stop an article written by then COO Dawn Wright-Olivares appearing in Keith Laggos’ The Network Marketing Business Journal (Vol. 27 Issue 4 dated April 2012), claiming that
all Commissions are paid out of current sales revenues!
Zeek Retail Point Pool consists of nothing but its current daily net, without absolutely nothing obligated from future revenues.
Once again, the reality of what was going on painted an entirely different mathematical picture:
Although to date ZeekRewards has paid out nearly $375 million to Qualified Affiliates through the Retail Profit Pool and the Matrix, the company has only approximately $225 million in deposits, which is insufficient to satisfy future awards based on outstanding Profit Points and Matrix commissions and bonuses.
At the time Troy Dooly heralded the paid journal article as ‘the legal and compliance foundation needed to prove once and for all Zeek Rewards is not being run as a pyramid or ponzi scheme‘.
Meanwhile Keith Laggos, a paid Zeek Rewards consultant and owner of the Network Marketing Business Journal publication, at no time disclosed in the magazine or to readers that he himself was a Zeek Rewards affiliate.
Conclusion
Given the scope of over a million affiliates involved, the fact that critical analysis has been made ready available to prospective investors in Zeek Rewards since September 2011 (here at BehindMLM at least), the rabid cheerleading by pillars of the MLM community reassuring members that the program was solid and now the ultimate fallout and truth behind the Zeek Rewards Ponzi apocalypse having been revealed – it is only now that perhaps the true toll on the MLM industry can begin to be measured.
It was only last week that Zeek Rewards COO Greg Caldwell reassured affiliates and prospective investors that all of Zeek’s critics were “unprofessional” with ‘no standing in the professional community‘, doing nothing more than publishing ‘completely false information’ about the company.
Troy Dooly himself seemed to quite enjoying the denouncement of critical analysis because “critics don’t have all the facts”. Many a time Dooly would insist he didn’t believe Zeek Rewards was a Ponzi scheme because he’d “spoken to people” and had “access to information the critics didn’t”.
In retrospect now that the SEC have laid bare all the facts surrounding Zeek Rewards’ business operations and they all only serve to confirm Zeek Rewards was a Ponzi scheme, I’m not sure what “facts” Dooly was referring to.
For those that have been following the coverage and analysis of Zeek Rewards here at Behind MLM you’re well aware of who has said what in this long and drawn out journey.
At the end of the day as I have always maintained it doesn’t matter what lawyers you hire, what you tell your members they can or can’t say and who you hire to cheerlead for your company. Ultimately all that matters is the business model you use, how it works and what’s possible within it.
This is the core principle I use when conducting analysis of any MLM company that features on BehindMLM.
Looking forward, as I write this questions are already being raised asking “who’s next?” and “where to from here?”
Regardless of what is written about BehindMLM or myself as a result of the fallout of Zeek Rewards, I maintain that the purpose of this blog is to share information and analysis of companies that operate within the MLM industry. In doing so I hope to encourage open and transparent discussion which ultimately leads to greater accountability and with any luck overall success and legitimacy within the industry itself.
As for what’s next, having been awake now for more than 29 hours ensuring that those who need it have access to and are able to discuss and share the information as it’s come to hand, I’m going to retire and take a short nap.
And in the long-term, for as long as I possibly can I’ll strive to offer up the most comprehensive and detailed information on the MLM industry any single person is capable of (with as much help as I can get from readers along the way).
I’m not infallible and I will make mistakes from time to time, and thankfully that’s where you the readers come in. There are far too many to thank who have contributed information in one or another to our ongoing coverage of Zeek Rewards here on BehindMLM.
Thankyou for reading and here’s to many more years of unprecedented and truly unbiased MLM industry coverage, news, reviews and commentary.
To the MLM industry and those of us who refused to set aside our morals, ethics, common-sense, succumb to raw greed and suspend belief in the most basic of mathematical principles, I say cheers.
Never let them shout you down.
Bravo, Oz. Bravo!
Also, I should add:
– Thanks for BehindMLM being online the past 48 hours when other sites including Troy’s MLMHelpDesk were down. Oz has a ‘real’ web server.
Oz, thank you for your persistence in helping to expose the truth about this ZeekRewards scam from the beginning. As with some others, I joined reluctantly and at a low level due to prodding by loved ones who had “friends in it”.
Fortunately, I did not put much money in it and never really fell for the bait. When my upline sent me the infamous spreadsheets showing you could be a millionaire in a short time I started to realize the ponzi nature of the company.
When I first attempted to do “due diligence” on Zeek, the web was filled with Zeek ads and people running websites asking if Zeek was a scam but basically pro-Zeek recruiting sites dominated everything.
After some more digging, I finally happened upon this site, and after reading I quickly decided to end my involvement with Zeek and got what little money I had in it out safely. Also, thankfully I did not recruit anyone else into it so I could sleep soundly at night knowing I was not helping to promote a scam.
Oz, thank you for the good work you are doing here! I continued to follow the events on this site daily for months hoping this day would finally arrive when the Zeek monster would be put down and people can get back to honest work and investments.
I am not much of a fan of MLM, but you can be assured that should I ever need to investigate an MLM company, I will be checking here first rather than anywhere else, because I know I will find the truth and an honest discussion rather than the spin and lies out there on other “review sites”.
Really appreciate your diligence in seeking out the truth.
Great job, and this should go in a Wikipedia article somewhere for future generations!
Been following zeek on BMLM since March, the day after someone tried to recruit me. I dont know if I would have said no without this site. Thanks Oz! You kick ass!
Now the real question is, what the hell am I gonna read about now?
Great point Jimmy, this was the only website on the 1st 10+ Google pages that spoke the truth about Zeek. I came across this site when a friend asked me about Zeek a few months ago. You guys saved him 10k!! You rock!
So does anyone know how to try to get our initial money back?
I lost my job and so did my wife we took our only money and put it in Zeek, we made a little and I took that and immediately put it in for my Mother who is 70 years old and still working cause she has no money.
I was going to surprise her with a check this CHRISTMAS to help her out…Now that’s not gona happen
This really sucks, I’m in tears right now Zeek saved my home and us from starving, and was going to help my mom to not have to work at her age, I mean she struggles at 70 to live, now I don’t know what to do
Is there a process we have to do to try to get money from them that u say they are going to pay out
I am very, very thankful I found this site and took the time to read the valuable information & analysis posted here. You guys really saved my bacon.
Thanks Oz & all contributors.
Thank you! always followed the news of this site. in Brazil, many are crying.
kkkkkk
Nice work Oz! I feel like we just won the super bowl! I’d like to buy you a fosters someday!
It will take a while for you to get money back under your mother’s account, since she presumably is not in profit. How much you’ll get back depends on who else is owed, who submits claims, etc. and that can take 1-2 years.
For your profits, it is possible it will be clawed back. Meaning you’ll get a letter in 1-2 years that says you need to pay back ill-gotten gains.
This is why Ponzi’s leave a trail of destruction. It isn’t easy money and the whole “Zeek is changing people’s lives” mantra is all BS, unless you consider the 1-2 year worry from now on whether you’ll get money back, or whether you’ll get money clawed back, is “changing people’s lives”.
All the critics tried to warn others, including Troy Dooly. There are hundreds of comments on MLMHelpDesk and all the critics were right after all.
You will have to wait. If past case, like ASD is to go by, the Feds will announce a program where all victims can prove they were members of Zeek, and after the registration period is over, they’ll disburse what they got.
Don’t expect any points. You’d be lucky if you get back half of what you put in (i.e. initial bid purchase)
Thanks, Oz, for all your hard work, not just the past 29 hours, but in the past several months for shining the light of truth upon Zeek.
I remember back during the “affiliates have to put money into NXPay before we can pay affiliates with NXPay because it’s like McDonald’s and Burger King” problems Zeek was having that I theorized that they obviously must not have had enough cash on hand to fund their NXPay account.
Now, reading the SEC affidavit, it appears I was closer to the truth than I knew. They were operating on a shoestring budget like all Ponzis do very close to the end.
Man I hate hearing stories like this because this just shows how destructive ponzi schemes can be. People putting their life savings into Zeek, even reports of people mortgaging property or getting loans to throw money into the scheme.
A lot of people are going to be hurting for a while until they can get something back.
I don’t want to say “I told you so” at all, but the first red flag which made me skeptical of the whole Zeek investment scheme was the idea that you give them money to “buy bids” which are given away, and you get “points” in return.
So basically you give them money, and they give you something which you can pretend is money.
Great job on all of this Oz and everyone that participated in the conversations around the numerous articles.
You should even give kudos to the defenders who participated as they help keep it interesting.
Thank you Oz for all you have done here. Thanks to KCchang, Jimmy, e, and some others for bringing this whole stupidity and callousness into the limelight.
I am sure this helped bring an earlier end to Zeek and saved countless more that would otherwise be sucked into this cesspool. We need more of such websites that do critical thinking and provide an unbiased analysis of the business model, not just the cheerleaders and Troy Dooly types.
A simple suggestion, you may want to include other pure HYIPs in your analyses since many of them pretend to operate as MLMs and a lot of people would not be aware of the very nature of HYIP and consider it as an MLM.
Having said that, every MLM needs to be taken more critically until it is proven to have a legitimate, saleable product that consumers (you and I for that matter) would not mind spending money on.
A job well done.
Yes, I wonder how many of them are laughing all the way to the bank now. Oh I know, it’s <0.
@Jimmy
Do you know if a “clawback” was done in ASD. I personally hope that happens with Zeek. People who got in early should suffer too being today their touting how they didn’t lose anything and made money.
They still can’t see how it was their downline’s money that they made. Pretty much making them guilty of “receiving stolen property” which is a crime. You don’t have to be the actual person who stole something to be guilty of this, you just have to have it your possession.
So Troy Dooly actually knew this was going down last night.
From the SEC affidavit:
Does anyone know the names of the banks and where they’re located? Just curious about this bit of information that Zeek deemed proprietary. I know the “foreign financial institutions” would probably be in part the e-wallet providers.
People were flashing checks, displaying spreadsheets, and showing Troy Dooly youtube clips to sell this ponzi.
Troy is also responsible for the trail of destruction.
Hey Troy – mind sharing what the NDA was that you had with Paul Burks? I mean, it’s not like you’re protecting anything now.
I can’t believe that Troy is still defending Zeek as not a ponzi scheme.
Who’s to say there won’t be? Perhaps Burks is cooperating fully because he knows it will probably go easier for him if he does?
If Burks isn’t guilty of running a ponzi, then why did he agree to give up control of all Zeek’s assets and pay $4 million? If he were innocent wouldn’t he just demand his day in court?
How can Troy still sit there and say Zeek wasn’t a ponzi or there wasn’t any intent to defraud anyone when everything in the SEC’s affidavit was the exact same thing we’d been saying here for months?
I have $96 in my NxPay account that I want to withdraw to my bank account. Lo and behold, I log in to my NxPay account, go to the page where you request a withdrawal, and the “Withdraw To” function is no longer clickable.
How much Zeek Ponzi scheme money is NxPay running away with as well?
NxPay is complicit is this Ponzi scheme.
I would say all Zeek related accounts at all eWallet sites are frozen as well. Don’t be too quick to blame NxPay.
My own hub’s traffic has gone through the roof. It was getting 1000 hits a day before, it got 6000+ and it’s still going up.
People are out there PANICKING, but only a handful are leaving comments.
Took my friend over a month to lure me into ZeekRewards i was skeptical but the allure of look how much i made got me. I put $100 in and sent $300 more to nxpay.
In my due diligence i happened upon this site. An was sure you guys were hater’s but none the less it was always in the back of my mind, as to who was telling more of the truth Troy Dooley or BehindMlm. i thought you guys were more Con and Troy was more Pro.
In retrospect you guys were right on point on behalf of many people that may had lost much more then they did if it were not for BehindMlm I thank you.
Now to try and figure out how to get the $300 that I sent to NxPay and never forwarded to Zeek. I logged into Nxpay and tried to look for the option to send $ back to my bank but its not there, Not sure if its because the Feds have frozen the funds.
Technically I just transferred the money from my bank to Nxpay but never told them to load the money to Zeek. So my thinking is i shouldn’t have any problems getting it back. Is my logic flawed? Any one else in the same boat? and what did you do or how have you solved that.
I talked to a neighbor today who had invested 5000 4 months ago, he said he had talked to his upline and this was just temporary and it would be back shortly.
They do not believe ZR is actually gone. I cannot fathom this kind of delusion!
I actually had a few affiliates think I personally caused the SEC to shut down Zeek. I really could not believe what I was hearing and it was a little shocking. I wish I had that kind of power over my dog.
Of course Oz and the people on this blog played a large role and the many complaints filed with the SEC and NC AG. Thank you all again for your diligence and analysis, I really appreciate it.
Troy Dooly is an absolute delusional loon in my view, he is just as bad as any of the other Kool-Aid drinking ZeekBots.
He is to proud or to stupid to admit he was so very wrong and led many people to their ruin. He doesn’t understand why no criminal charges have been brought?? Were you born yesterday Doodly?
Wait the criminal charges will be forthcoming in the coming weeks or months I am sure.
Remember this video from Troy:
@Troy – maybe now you’ll listen to “the critics”.
+ There IS a law that says fraud is illegal.
+ There IS a law that says a Ponzi is illegal.
+ There IS a law that says credit card factoring is illegal.
WE HAVE BEEN SAYING FOR MONTHS THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PENNY AUCTIONS … THE ISSUE IS THE PONZI, HELLO!!
Yes i could not believe it, i mean zeek will be really open the business as soon as possible.
why was it happened on today ? how can we get our money back if the situation go wrong? we were living at malaysia why have to choose today?
Is there not a solution for zeekrewards ?
if they find around USD 100-150 million to put them in a blocked account (for people who want to stop commission and take back their money instead of paying bids again). AND they change their compensation plan so that, the win money correspond a real income. It can be safe, and zeekrewards can continue.
The main thing is if the CEO wants to save Zeek… Perhaps i’m wrong ?
You dislike Oz that much ???
Spend a few minutes on the “usual suspect” HYIP forums and you’ll realize you’re condemning Oz to a lifetime of pushing excrement up hill.
Better he remains doing what he does best.
Everyone else seems to be talking about the fraud except for Troy. Troy has only reported on that there was a CID, that Zeek ‘voluntarily’ closed, that it is just a civil investigation by the NC AG and it is ‘exciting’ (because the NC AG would give Zeek a clean bill of health).
Everyone in the world including main stream press is covering Zeek’s Ponzi and fraud.
Troy promised to cover it. You’d think he’d be the first in line to tell the distributors what’s going on, since he does everything for the distributors.
Does anyone really believe Troy’s site isn’t working because of to much web traffic? I mean he’s had almost 48 hours to resolve the issue. Not buying it.
I can’t believe a huge MLM guru like Troy Dooley was not compensated BIG money from Zeek to cover up their Ponzi scam! I am no MLM expert, but everything about Zeek looked like a scam to me.
If he didnt see this from the get-go, then I must be the MLM genious and not him. Or possibly after his first concerns were cleared up by Zeek owner with $$$$$$, his tune sure changed quickly!
Hey Troy, you were once respected by many in the MLM industry. You mind as well close your doors just like Zeek because know one and I mean know one will ever listen to your meaningless BS again.
Shame on me for following your lead into this bottomless pit. I was so skeptical about this from the beginning and your were the one voice that put me all in for $10,000 .
We all trusted you and you turned on everyone in the industry. Your the one that has to wake up every morning and look in the mirror knowing that you were a huge part of this deception. It’s pretty sad buddy!!!
Troy has zero credibility when it comes to Zeek. I’d say that he was getting paid by Zeek to be a cheerleader, but now that Zeek is kaput I have no idea why he keeps defending it since it’s obvious he wouldn’t be getting paid now. It may just be personal pride, but I think it goes deeper than that.
I mean, for f–k’s sake, the entire world is reporting how the SEC shut down Zeek for being an illegal ponzi scheme, and Troy is still sitting there nitpicking every tiny detail trying to prove that it’s not a ponzi and putting every positive spin on this he possibly can.
I don’t see how Troy has any credibility left. He’s always been a Zeek cheerleader, and a year from now he’ll probably be among the people claiming that the government illegally shut it down like people are still doing with ASD today.
Troy has a mentorship/subscription service and private forum. It may be worth paying the $70 just to see what’s going on in the private forum.
Troy made money indirectly. How many Zeek affiliates out of the 1+ million plus any others that did research but didn’t join now follow Troy’s blog… or joined his mentorship program?
Even 1000 new members out of 1+ million candidates is good money. 10k new members and he’s doing great. The ‘compensation’ is often indirect for these cheer leading arrangements.
Endless Gratitude for your analysis, OZ, KSChang, and everyone else that kept on MAKING SENSE here.
I was as close as one could get to sending my $10K cashiers check in last Thurs. when I was signing up as a Diamond member w/ a recruiter and Zeek’s site kept responding w/ “ERROR”.
Later that nite I Googled Zeek to try again and just below Zeek … BehindMLM appeared, which also led to KSChang’s site. That was $10K I could not afford to lose … it would have been devastating in many ways.
I feel for those that did not do their due diligence and got stung by these deceptive criminals. I was very fortunate indeed to have stumbled onto these sites. Thank you … Thank you … Thank you, to everyone that had the intelligence and guts to reveal the truth about Zeek..
I thought Troy never had much credibility long ago when he said he didn’t think Zeek was a ponzi… when all the information was widely available here and on other sites.
When it was quite obvious that there was no way the revenue from the cheesy penny auction site could keep up with the points balances of affiliates. When it was quite obvious that Zeek followed ASD’s business model and many high-level Zeek players were old ASD members.
When Zeek’s business model was doomed to failure anyway because it relied on infinite growth.
Yeah seems odd Troy Dooley site is down along with zeeks at same time.
Well, He did seem like a spokesperson. He was so much about zeekler and zeek rewards I find it hard to believe he was not getting paid.
Nope, I’m not buying it at all here. How do you say hiding under his Help Desk.
He’s probably shooting some epic long 30 minute video and will continue his optimistic spinning.
He’ll probably avoid talking about the RPP which was central to the fraud and easily detected by us as an anomaly, but since it was a “proprietary secret” no one “had the facts,” therefore, it wasn’t anyone’s fault for not knowing it was a scam. Never mind all the other indicators.
Then he’ll talk about “acting like you’re in network marketing” and not realize that the vast, vast majority of people who joined Zeek never were in MLM before.
As several others, including myself (pat pat) have said, Zeek will do more damage to the MLM profession than anything we’ve seen in recent memory.
If Troy believes in his mission and that of the ANMP, he should sided WITH the critics, not against them. Remember that Troy and the ANMP were all prominent features at Zeek’s Vegas event as well as Troy at the Red Carpet Events.
Agreed Jimmy. I just want him to post an apology or make a statement to those who got screwed.
I bet there are people know Zeekrewards is a Ponzi Scheme, and still joined them because they know they are the first seeds. They started their recruiting, and hoping they can get as much as they can before the whole thing blow up.
My Question is, can we get them behind bars? If they were a members of other Ponzi Scheme like ASD. They are not the top branches, but somewhere close to it.
I mean, People shouldn’t be in a Ponzi scheme more than one! Especially MLM. After 2 record, it tells me something; that person need to get away from the society.
@David
Yeah.. I’m sure Dawn has 150 mil hidden under her cape somewhere. And change the compensation plan? Like anyone would have joined if they weren’t paying out 1.5% a day.
I have been following this blog for about six months. And i want to commend all who have contributed to bringing this life changing scam to an end.
To all the zeek affilliates who have made money at there downlines expense why not offer to give it back? Just a suggestion lol. Behindmlm job well done!
I readily admit Zeek was my virgin voyage into MLM Jimmy. I read what was posted here, listened to Troy, saw Troy turn totally Zeeked-out in June, but it wasn’t adding up.
I did some math, read some math here, and then realized Troy flunked math. Plus he’d ramble on about Alexa traffic (totally Zeeked), deflected you guys tough question on his site. Like was said, it was not that stupid penny auction but that RPP, those phony customers, etc.
I heard the bells ringing and got my cash back. But yet, Troy droned on & on about compliance, voluntary closure and total nonsense.
Once again Dooly is outright lying.
The SEC CANNOT prefer criminal charges, just as it CANNOT agree to an agreement preventing criminal charges.
The SEC action is a CIVIL action.
Any agreement Burks has IS WITH THE SEC and only includes what is contained within the civil agreement.
You’d think Dooly would have learned by now to keep his silly mouth shut.
The SEC action stopped Zeek in its’ tracks, just as it was intended, thus making sure none of the criminals can take of with the evidence or the money and no more victims are involved.
Please, do NOT, for one second believe the crap being spread by the likes of Dooly.
The SEC asked for “emergency relief” and they got it.
Now all the other agencies involved can take their time gathering evidence to make sure they nail the scamming bastards to the wall.
One thing I’m curious about. That pic of the SEC guy interviewing people in front of the 803 W. Center St. building… What kind of information could they possibly be looking for from them?
Dawn, here is how it works. A claw, like a crane machine, is going to find the accounts you have been stashing away money, and it’s going to “clawback” the money in your account, and drop it down into the government account slot.
I believe Dawn lied to attempt to cover up that “clawback” term usage in her blunder describing e-wallets. I remember when Dawn so quickly condemned the person who had used the word “investment” and threatened to yank her account if she had the name.
And her fake annoying laugh on the pow wow calls where she scolded affiliates like a school principal-the same people who were feeding the 98% into the payroll. I believe she contributed in the writing of the NMBJ article that she ordered thousands of copies of.
I did not like her the moment I watched the interview with Troy at the first Holiday Inn gathering, wrapped up in a snuggy, with rattling bangles and annoying body language, and the fake cackle. “Yea, yeah, burgers, yeah yeah” She looked more like gaudy new-money redneck than a corporate leader.
The first time I saw that photos on Troy’s website of the “red carpet” meeting of hayseeds sitting around with paper plates, an IT kid in shorts, scruff and tats like he was at the Applebee’s bar, and not one leader dressed in a tie or suit, Troy in a silly looking beret and yet another tacky swirly T-Shirt that looks like a UFC fighter, Santana and Ed Hardy all vomited on, nodding like a bobble head while tossing softball questions at Dawn in the baby blue blanket cape- I thought, “Oh Dear!”
If Burks withdrew 11 million, how much did she take? What actions were taken by her when the CID was issued on July 6? My gut tells me she is where the heart of deceit lies. Where is she right now? I’m guessing it’s not Arkansas.
Let’s be very clear here. You were never involved in MLM. You were involved in a fraud made to look like an MLM.
Forget all the nonsense you’re hearing about pyramids and ponzis, MLM and penny auctions. They’re all part of a deliberate campaign to confuse people. It was, is and always will be “FRAUD” pure and simple.
I would love to throw the term “investment” at Troy Dooly DoDo’s face like a rotten egg.
I found my way here after getting in zeek and not being satisfied with the answers I got from my up-line. I read seen and believed behindmlm until I talked more with my up-line and listened to troy, coupled with need to accomplish something in my life I never got out.
I did further research and found out that in network marketing or mlm according to the laws not all of the money has to come from the outside, in fact a small portion. With troy’s videos out there and the things he had said led me to believe that at least 40% was coming from outside.
I had asked my up line if zeek had enough cash to cash out all of our affiliate pt values and was told: If your asking if zeek can cash us out the answer is yes!
I wanted to believe in troy’s statements (like the other day on a video saying it was legit, and after I sent everyone I knew the link saying “zeek is legit by troy dooly and a cid by nc ag.) I wanted to accomplish something.
It felt like you guys didn’t realize all the income streams and Troy knew the inside numbers. It felt like zeek was a long overdue blessing and I was going to stay 100% invested until I reached an income of about 4k a week at the 80/20 rule.
I know mlm help desk had it at a high risk but I guess I finally got tired of reading the debate (nobody to actually debate it with) and finally got to where I could only see the good.
Thank you all so much for being here. It seemed like the only transparent company out there with all that has been written and at the same time being the most secretive by our company.
WTF, zeekhead cultists still posting crap on the NC AG Fbook page….heres a few within 2 hours…..
On and on and on….there is a huge post telling everyone they were shut down and other people posting they were shut down.
I swear Paul Burks and Dawn O should go to south america and mix up some kool aid…
lmfao
Thats hilarious
What makes you think he’s from the SEC ??
From Oz’ article above:
The Secret Service are involved.
I’d be confident betting the same President’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force which took down ASD is involved.
The FFETF includes representatives from the U.S. Attorney’s Office; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation; U.S. Postal Inspection Service; local law enforcement agencies and state attorneys’ general.
IOW, this ain’t no common or garden variety slap-on-the-hand-and-don’t-do-it-again operation.
Something strange about dooly’s site if you click on zeeks breaking news it doesnt open but when you click on breaking news from other companies they open. Humm Mr dooly come out come out where ever you are. Its ok we all know except you that is.
Noted Littleroundman.
SEC guy don’t wear badges on their belt. That’s a Secret Service special agent.
what im about to say is a little off topic but you all do know that there is hundreds of mlm companies that have no real product work on monthly fees and distribute earnings of these fees.
This is not to say that this company is in the right but whats next are they gonna take all of them down or just becouse those companies are small its ok whats your guys thoughts on that?
Unlike Zeekheads who paint with a broad stroke, we analyze each business individually.
Thus, your “fears” about “are they gonna take all of them down” is completely unfounded.
MLM is thus far, legal, if you do it correctly. Whether it has chance of success is something else. This leads plenty of critics (us among them) to point out potential risk in each variation… and in my experience, vast majority of MLMs are DANGEROUS to novice participants who are simply NOT aware of the risks and thus easily… con’ed.
Zeek is a pyramid and Ponzi scheme, that had some MLM aspects… to people who are looking for a MLM. Remember the cliche: to a hammer, everything looked like a nail? If you are looking for MLM, you’ll FIND a MLM in Zeek. Confirmation bias.
I personally just want to thank you OZ you saved me a lot of money too late for some family members and I can honestly say you have long term supporter here where the conversation is always of interest.
Also K Chang and Jimmy you guys have been instrumental in digging the dirt on these scum bags and want thank you also. Here’s to more interesting conversation in the future!
By the way did Dawn ever get that special MLM award ROFL!
you missunderstand me its not a fear is your gonna take one down take them all down is where im coming from but i truly dont think that will ever happen
You’re comparing apples with oranges.
Zeek NEVER WAS an MLM and it never was a penny auction penny auction.
IT WAS ALL FAKE.
We never got in contact with Gary Bessoni over at Z Customers, and a clarification on their relationship with Zeek.
Bessoni is kind of like the forgotten character in a long caper movie. “Oh yeah, what ever happened to that guy!”
OZ, Chang, and whomever else worked behind the scenes to shed light on Zeek, thank you very much.
One issue that all humans have it the ability to become quickly blinded by the possibility of achieving monetary success that far exceeds our daily potential, and that is acquired by minimal work or education. Been there, done that myself a time or two.
When you discuss issues like this, especially with individuals who have little funds and/or little prospects of “striking it rich” their, shall we say fantasy clouds their clear thinking.
The company, you pick one, that promises them immense profits, and the company that has pep rallies and other motivational stuff usually is able to trump common sense.
Considering politics in the US today, regardless of your affiliation. The speakers get fired up and try to tweak your emotions so that you get out your checkbook and otherwise promote candidate such and such. Oh, and we all know many retirement schemes are also, technically Ponzi schemes.
Anyway, I would like to give the Kudos to both of you for your objective, non emotional analysis of Zeek and other questionable MLM companies.
Thank you very much!
Thank you for all facts and truth about this failure company. I wish I could have found your website before getting into this business. I had too much believe in my best friend that’s how I, my family, friends got into it.
Since I reside in Asian country not in the States. I’d really appreciate any advice on the process of how and what to do to get our money back.
Where can we get the application form? to file a petition at the attorney office or else? to request for our initial investment back. Or we just have to wait until Sec or Feds can track our address from this stupid Zeek database and refund our money back.
Thank you very much for informative answer, from one group of victims from the far east.
I truly will always come to this site from now on when I am researching a business model. Thanks so much to Oz, KsChang, Jimmy, E!!! I will never believe Troy ever again.
I am so glad I started cashing out in May and got my investment back. I will forever be thankful. Now do you have an article on Vitel?
I was introduced to the whole Zeek thing not that long ago, and when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Listen folks – you cant make money like that from free air or real products being made and sold. Winners in these businesses come from the poor people further down the food chain…its no more than a transfer of wealth!
It didn’t take much effort to do a bit of due diligence and realise there were more than a few questions hanging over the whole Zeek operation. Full marks to Oz and others on this forum for his many valuable insights.
I was not interested in joining and wrote the following email as an ‘outsider’ to a relative who was involved…
COPY OF EMAIL (3 weeks ago):
Hello guys, thanks to all the free thinkers here who went against the herd and gave me the tools I needed to make an informed decision and request my $3,500.00 back a few months ago. Many of you may have seen my Ripoff Report, “Zeek took my $3,500.00” that I posted a few months ago.
Here is my story from 4 months ago or so, my neighbor here in Orlando FL came to me and told me about this really cool thing he was doing, but he wouldn’t give me any details at the time, a month later he brings it up again and decides to tell me about it, it was Zeek Rewards.
He told me how he was approached buy a guy who took him to another guys house, at the house he was shown checks and this guys account with Zeek. The guy was making 15K per week and was pulling out tens of thousands of dollars.
My neighbor who is very skeptical decided to put in $1000.00 which was up to nearly 1600 points by the time he told me about this story. I immediately sent in $3,500.00 and waited.
To make a long story short I was very unhappy with the customer service response and couldn’t get any answers as to why my money was taking so long to post to my account, it was a red flag to me that the service was so poor so I pulled all of the stops to get my money back.
I made the Ripoff Report and then contacted a local detective who took interest in my story and drove down to meet Paul Burks within 1 hour of me calling him for help. Paul then personally called me up to offer me a full refund plus $500.00 for my troubles.
I gotta admit I wanted to tell Paul to keep the money and just open my account but I didn’t. He was very convincing that I was going to watch my neighbor do very well in this program, I just told him a story about how about 10 years ago a friend of mine who I was in the USAF with had this investment deal with similar returns, that deal was called Learn Waterhouse and the owner Randy Treadwell was currently serving 30 years in federal prison.
When I told him this I did detect his demeanor changed, the vibe on the phone clearly changed. In the end I got my money back and I made $500.00 so I am happy.
My neighbor came over about 2 weeks ago and was clearly happy that his account was up to 7500 points, I told him I hope you get to cash out, and he just replied everyone he knew was getting checks with no problem, all of the banking issues were fixed and things are back on track.
I know he got some friends involved from up north so hopefully they didn’t get taken for too much. Whenever I spoke to my friend about Zeek it was a sore subject because I told him it was a Ponzi scheme from the beginning and he thought I was going to sit back, hope it failed so I can tell him “I told you so”, those were his exact words to me.
So I avoided the subject when I was around him. I think he is upset today as he didn’t answer my call or message sent to him on Facebook. Oh well. Thanks guys!!!!!!!!!!!
Well done Adam, happy for you!
I too (in Melbourne Australia) was approached by a friend like this; “OH Gabby you must come see me you will thank me all your life you will never work again” What is it I said, But he wouldnt tell me, he just said I must visit and come to a meeting with the promoter.
I never did visit and a few days later he told me what it is, ZEEK. He had put 10k in. Ok, so thats when I started doing research. First thoughts are it’s a pyramid then starting looking about ponzi’s, Then I saw PP’s blog, then here, then real scam etc etc.
I never put a dollar in but I did spread the word to many on a different forum about zeek being a ponzi. I Learnt alot from you all and really cracked the nut on this website with Oz, MNorway etc, we all concluded it was a ponzi structure.
I hve to thankyou guys for your discussions it has been fruitful and enjoyable and at some time frustrating. There will be big losses from this, many will lose their initial as those who cashed out already with extra and done well will have cashed out with other people’s initial investment, unless it is clawed back, in either way it is going to be painful for many.
Keep up the good work Ive added you to my favourites.
Interestingly, about 2 weeks ago I received an email welcoming me to Zeek rewards and giving me free points, followed shortly afterwards by another email congratulating me on my first customer.
I’ve never had anything at all to do with them.
A last desperate (fraudulaent) attempt to avoid the inevitable?
BTW…Troy Dooley…he’s a good salesman. So sure of himself and the business in front of the American flag.
Maybe more than a little vested interest there I assume. If Zeek collapses completely (which seems the most likely outcome), anyhing he says in future will have zero credibility.
Maybe the flag flies inside US prisons too?
I’m believing Troy may have been severely duped by Dawn. Troy made various statements that he was convinced of the sustainability with access to inside proprietary information. If Troy’s endorsement was genuine, then the data he saw had to be cooked.
I am still intrigued by the July 6 CID. (This is the same day Paul wrote the “all is good in ZeekLand letter”). Troy HAD to know about it. Is he going to say the non-disclosure prevented him from disclosing the CID was underway.
If the CID was “exciting” and a healthy procedure for Zeek as he spun, then why would he sympathize with Zeek withholding this information from the public? Panic prevention?
Troy supposedly did not know the RPP was on the fringe of collapse, so what was he thinking when the company did not disclose the CID? He could not have reasonably thought the new qualifiers and ZeeBates would beef up a 98% affiliate fed payroll.
And why did the AG office leak the information via FaceBook? Was this a mistake or by design because they knew at this point the SEC was coming? Once the public knew about the CID, Troy suggested he “predicted” this would happen.
The Aces show was the first time I began to question Dooly’s motives and what he may have known: When he interrupted to prevent Dawn answering the retail customer question, and when he was asked if he was compensated by Zeek, he dodged the question by proclaiming, “As an affiliate ?” which of course was not the question.
However, it is not logical that Troy knew how close the RPP was to collapsing, and he would continue to cheerlead. Troy was commenting that the worse case scenario of the CID was that the RPP would be dropped, but that he did not think it would be dropped.
Again, he had to be duped. And yet he defended Paul’s character after the SEC announcement. In the later stages of the game, I do not recall Troy making positive statements about Dawn.
She mostly dissappeared into the background afte the e-wallet blunder, and Douglas had “personal” issues in late July. I’m thinking…duped by the blanket cape family. And Paul was a tool.
Make no mistake.
It already has.
I’m surprised that some on here still think Troy is somewhat of an independent 3rd party. I remember Troys 1st video’s on Zeek and they were not at all in support of the Zeek business model, then something happened and he became a Zeek cheerleader.
I feel 99.9% sure he got paid to shut up and cheerlead. I would bet my house on it. I mean the guy was censoring a Q+A for the COO of Zeek. What company COO would allow a critic to sit right next to you in a interview and allow that critic to censor questions?
The guy was hired help, I’m sure he is going to be involved in the criminal charges coming forward against the Zeek clan.
This takes time, I think it took 2-3 years to lock up Randy Treadwell of Learn Waterhouse. They are all going to the federal prisons, and with the fed’s you do nearly all of your time, no early release there!
The Zeek Rewards ponzi was 6x BIGGER than the Ad Surf Daily scam. Watching some of Troy’s old videos and blog comments really makes you wonder.
Agree 100% Adam, he’ll end up doing time, the guys 100% full of horse %^it. Wouldn’t trust Troy Dooly with a barge pole. He was playing poker with double sided cards and got burnt big time by a royal flush on the river.
Games up Troy and you’re through, done, nothing! All the more reaaon for everyone to avoid his son’s MLM Vital like the plague. Con artists and very pathetic at that.
@Adam
I do not believe Troy changed his tone on Zeek simply because he was paid “to shut up.” To cheerlead, yes. But paid off to shut up is not logical to me.
His career has shown principle. Was he hypnotized, mislead, duped, naive-maybe. But a conspirator just is not logical when you lay out all the facts.
Troy turned when Zeek hired a compliance team and built a course.
I believe Dooly knew the RPP was very weak, and I believed he really thought it was going to be beefed up with the new qualifiers and ZeeBates. I believe he was naively sold on Paul and “the horse manure crisis of 1894” analogy they were going to transition into something more sustainable.
His statements are not logical if he knew anywhere how drastically absurd the RPP was. It all compounded so drastically fast towards the end. Even if it was instituted, it is obvious now that the ZeeBates would not have saved the RPP.
I still contend he was duped on some level.
may I just end your sentence with “up until he met with zeek and began promoting a fraud publically”.
Madoff had a distingquished career also before he started a fraud. Greed is more powerfull than past behaviour. I say rot in jail Dooly.
I wish I could say that I was one who read your analysis and believed you, but I can’t.
I read everything I could get my hands on, and while a bunch of things did not add up, I was seduced by the returns and by the fact that my father-in-law (and sponsor) had gone from $10k to $60k in about 3.5 months. Greed numbed my logic.
One point I’d like to make is that the SEC’s complaint points out that Zeek did not conduct due diligence on its investors, to ensure that they had the means and the experience to invest in such a speculative venture.
Of course not, since Zeek was ever so careful to insist that this was NOT an investment; they obviously struggled with what kind of thing it was, and insisted on the term “income opportunity”. But the very sad outomce is that there are obviously thousands of investors like the commenters above who were out of work, etc, and REALLY needed the money.
Very, very sad… there is alot of personal damage going around. This isn’t Bernie Madoff stuff, where investers had a few million to spare.
I don’t know MB. You don’t have to much more than 5th grade math to figure the model was unsustainable over time. He had to of known, I think he used his reputation to gain employment and compensation.
We’ll find out soon enough if he was on the take.
He was definitely compensated. He has admitted this a long time ago. We just do not know how much beyond paying for travel, and accommodations.
I would speculate he was paid well, but not paid off.
First I would like to thank Oz K chang Jimmy and every one that aided in this sites research. I found this site and decided not to join.
My question is what will happen to the top affiliates especially the ones that were at ADs that came to Zeek and are probally at the next questionable business model scheme.?
PAUL Dawn and Troy are the public images. What about the quiet ones that got rich and might of known more and has moved on?
The big question for me is- what has happened thus far is civil. Can other gov’t agencies still file criminal charges in the future against Paul, Dawn, etc for fueling the Ponzi and people like Troy for promoting it?
I am not an MLM comp plan expert at all but after over a decade in the industry, it was pretty easy for me to figure out that Zeek sure looked like a Ponzi pretending to be an MLM. There was no way this thing was going to be sustainable. Troy had to know that- he’s not that stupid.
And the IRS will be carefully scrutinizing tax returns!
I keep hearing about the ‘clawbacks’- how likely is that to happen? Frankly I hope it does. There are a lot of people I know who told me they knew Zeek was a big risk- that it would probably collapse within 2 years- but they were going to make as much money as they could.
They didn’t care about all the people who would get hurt when the Ponzi collapsed. SAD!!!
He “promoted a fraud” is based on the fact he knew it was a fraud. I have been a huge skeptic on this site since April. I have been a skeptic of Troy.
My skepticism was dismissed by people on his own site, even with ad hominem attacks. But logic presents a more complex path other than he was simply paid off to promote a fraud.
One thng that really bugged me was cleared up by your article above. I threw in $2k, and began watching the company very carefully, to determine whether I should go all in.
I was actually considered setting personal and Llc accounts for both my wife and myself, which would have meant a 40k investment. But as soon as I started listening to Dawn what-ever’s calls, it was clear that something was very wrong.
I mean, she was an idiot. She was clearly not even close to being qualified to serve as Ops Exec for a global company like this. I actually could not make it more than 5 or 10 minutes into her conferences; I’d just hang up.
As well, the massive number of iCustomer Service issues, the shoddy programming, etc etc all signalled that the company was run by goofballs. My observation was that chimpanzees could do a better job.
I capped off at $2k, I’m releived to say, as did my downline. But I couldn’t understand WHY someone like DW-O was in that exec position: your article led me to this hypothesis: I don’t think Burks-the-Scammer could afford to have anyone really smart in there. He could keep her on a leash.
Maybe she really was too dumb or dazzled to really get it.
You’re hinting he didn’t know it was a fraud? I disagree, he knew exactly what it was and because of his knowledge of MLM , profile, blah blah blah, he put himself at risk of negligent contact should the thing explode as it has.
Can’t have your cake without putting on a few kilos and Troy swallowed a big one when zeek had a quiet word with him, now he has to suffer the consequences of that.
Adam and MB: let’s just call it. Dooly was a schill. In some way, he was being paid to be so rah-rah about Zeek.
I just sent this to Oz, but it wouldn’t go through. This question goes to anyone else out there who I have read on here has made legitimate money on the internet.:
I’m not hinting. I believe he was shown cooked numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m offended and angry. He was a cheerleader when even skeptics with far less experience and knowledge were shouting on rooftops.
Compensation would be a logical reason, of course, to dismiss skeptics. I just do not rationally accept he was simply paid off and was a conspirator, that he knew everything, and knowingly encouraged victims to the cleaners.
I am sure there will be a massive class action law suit against Zeek. Troy Dooley has lost credibility as an impartial reviewer of MLM companies.
He is a clown who may have also committed fraud. He should also be included in a class law suit.
Concerning Mr. Dooley, I have personally never been but am almost positive the Kool-Aid does not taste nearly as good in prison. Anyone with a college education should have known this was a ponsi.
Furthermore, anyone that watched one of Troy’s videos knew he was and is completely full of shit. The best compliance attorneys in the world can not make up for the fact that Zeek’s business model was completely unsustainable.
When the well ran dry what was going to pay the more than one million affiliates? I can assure you that it was not going to be Mr. Dooley’s positive thoughts and fairy tale assertions.
People that benefited hugely from this Ponsi (and there and plenty) will continue, as they did last night on a conference call (will refer to you as Leith Kacey), to blame the downfall of Zeek on over zealous regulatory committees instead of a ridiculous business model, and for those I hope the claw of justice scraps every profitable penny from your bank account.
I usually do not find it necessary to say I told you so, but …
Anybody want to start a business with me? We’ll help people get their money back from Zeek. We’ll offer people differed levels of help in the form of subscription packages (i.e. silver, gold, diamond, etc) and the higher fee they pay the more help they will get.
Of course they’ll have to pay for our “Zeek Refund Compliance Course” as well. We’ll advertise our services by placing just 1 Internet add a day that will take less than five minutes. Regardless of how many people join our business, we’ll split all the profits 50/50 or 50/50/50/50/50/50. Any takers?
If I hear the phrase “my heart goes out to all those zeek members” I think I’ll puke.
My heart doesn’t go out to any of them. They were stupid enough to believe you can place one ad a day and get rich. Pure stupidity and greed.
Playing dumb won’t get them off the hook! Everyone is so sad that their friends lost their opportunity! What about the people who just invested in the last 90 days!?
Question? If you bought and paid for a ticket to the Red Carpet event being held on the 22nd have you tried to get a refund? I paid for 3 tickets via Paypal,went there yesterday and the email that was given to me was savagetraders@hotmail.com. That email is no good…Anyone know anything more about this..
So this is it? After writing to OZ back in September last year asking him to review zeek I’ve been besotted with this site, zeek and all the drama. What will I do now?
Anyway, here’s a story I was going to tell you sooner, only I thought they might shut me down before I’d finished and well…they kept paying me.
After I’d got all my initial money back from zeek in April, I decided to start testing what I could get away with. I began just posting the same ad link (actually I never placed a new ad after about February) every day, then making up Facebook pages and eventually sending random links, including to this site.
Yes, I put a link to some of the less favorable stories re zeek you’d written, OZ.
I also signed up a lot of fake customers using the email addresses and names of scammers i’d accumulated – such as those who write to you saying you’ve won the lottery etc. I wonder if any of them ever used the free bids?
I was one of the dummies that fell for this scheme. I hope that Paul Burke doesn’t walk away with a slap on the wrist fine and millions of dollars in hidden accounts.
Further Dawn should be prosecuted, she worked for Burke for twelve years and had to know this was a ponzi. Dooley should be investigated too, he was the deciding factor in my bad decision to invest more money.
Not a surprise Colsta.
Paul Burks did nothing but lie to people about how Zeek actually worked.
@john
In addition to this nice discription I must ad the self-discription from Troy on Facebook:
In Germany we have an old saying (trying to translate): !If someone have visions he should consult a doctor!!
That means he is even more responsible for not bringing the truth. If he was not allowed to talk, then why he is still defending, cheer leading and all?
Going by the communication he has been having even after the SEC seizure of Zeek, he still seems defending and pretending Zeek, Paul and co. He is still saying it doesn’t look like a ponzi to him as if wanting to recruit some more into it.
Paul Burks, Paul Burks whatcha gona
Whatcha gonna do when the SEC, NC AG & Secret Service Come for you tell me whatcha gonna do.
Dawn Olivares Dawn Olivares,
Watcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do
When they come for you
Zeekheads Zeekheads,
Watcha gonna do, watcha gonna do
When they come for you
When you were eight
And you had bad traits
You go to school and you learn the golden rule
So why are you acting like a bloody fool
If you get hot you must get cool
Zeekheads, Zeekheads
Watcha gonna do whatcha gonna do
When they come for you
You chuck it on this one
You chuck it on this one
You chuck it on mother and
You chuck it on you father
You chuck it on you brother and
You chuck it on you sister
You chuck it on that one and you chuck it on me
Nobody naw give you no break
Police naw give you no break
Soldier naw give you no break
Not even you idren naw give you no break
Troy Dooley, Troy Dooley
Watcha gonna do whatcha gonna do
When they come for you
Why did you have to act so mean don’t you know
You’re a human being born of a mother with
The love of a father reflections come and reflections go
I know sometimes you want to let go
I know sometimes you want to let go
All you greedy people deserve what you get…you are all losers..
People have only etheirselves to blame, and folks without scruples like Zeek Mgmt, and TROY FOOLEY … If many would have shed their cult mentality and taken an objective stance to read the work this website provided… Many wouldnt be so hurt….
Dont put your faith in money, and follow people blindly!!!
Troy, get off your high horse and stop acting like some wise sage feeding us your morality lessons on how we should treat people.
Who do you think you are to talk down to us? You still don’t even recognize who the real victims are. Your arrogance is overwhelming.
That isn’t about BELIEF, it’s about VIEWPOINT. It means I can believe something else, but I don’t have enough facts to support it. It can also mean I believe he’s innocent, but I don’t have facts to support that belief, either.
Choosing a rather neutral VIEWPOINT prevents me from chasing my own theories and beliefs, and wasting time on them when they really are not that important to me. I can instead focus on other parts of the case.
I’m a salesman by profession, and will usually have to handle different viewpoints on a daily basis: My boss’ viewpoints, my own viewpoints, the customer’s viewpoints, the viewpoints of any other involved.
As a salesman, I’ll have to balance between all those viewpoints to make a functional deal.
So this isn’t about my personal beliefs. It’s about using professional methods, and one of those methods is to change focus from on area to another. Whether Troy was paid or not is NOT that important to me. It’s a professional skill when I avoid spending too much time and efforts on that issue.
Well done, Oz. I am grateful to you and the SEC for exposing this ponzi. Having seen it from the inside, I was sickened that it could be allowed to continue.
And when I tried to expose the elements I could with direct evidence, I was attacked by their rabid fans wo had no interest in looking beyond their own bank accounts to realize the fraud and potential danger.
This business will not come back. The fraud was too pervasive and I would not be surprised if Paul and other execs eventually do receive criminal complaints. These people clearly knew what they were doing.
Dawn’s own mouth said they needed more affiliate depositor money or the thing would blow up. I am thankful the SEC has limited the downside for the million affiliates. At least nobody will have lost everything and I hope some of those at the top do get hit with CLAW laws so the little guys get back more of what they put in.
I’d like to present this award for best journalistic and investigative reporting to Oz and Behind MLM.com for their coverage of income, business, and MLM opportunities.
(Ozedit: Thanks! But I’m not sure whose bandwidth that is so I’ve removed the trophy image link.)
Honorable mention goes to the visitors of BMLM for their comments and contributions positive, negative and otherwise.
Here’s to you, Oz.
Cheers!
If it looks Like a PONZI SCHEME and it SMELLS Like a PONZI SCHEME, well……….. IT IS!
People, Find a Legitimate Networking Marketing company, Go to work and live your dreams!
Network Marketing is an amazing industry;it’s too bad that Deals like these give it a Bad Name!
This was not MLM/Networking Marketing; this was a GET RICH QUICK PONZI SCHEME.
There needs to be a facebook for ex ZEEK affiliates. Let them pour out their sob stories. They used Zeek money to pay off mortgages, college loans, medical expenses etc.
Now they are faced with clawback. They are in a bigger financial mess.
I, like others, don’t feel sorry for them. They had the same access to this site. Yet they ignore this site and followed the self proclaimed MLM expert Dooley. I (LUIZEEK) got banned from posting on ZEEK facebook for showing negativity.
The least the zeek sheep could do is admit their stupidiy, and let the world know how zeek changed their life.
Living the Epic Adventure.
Rock solid, healthy, growing business was said by the coo who knew the numbers.
I would appreciate comment or insight into “what happens next.?”
Will the SEC action lead to criminal charges? Generally, the DOJ will get the file after the SEC has combed through the records.
In the action, SEC alledges that Burks maniuplated the payouts. Did he and others know that the scheme was unsustainable and structured like a Ponzi? Was there intent and thus fraud? SEC uses the word fraud. What will the Dept of Justice see?
Secondly, will there be any consequences for the people (affiliates) who profited from the scheme? A la Madoff, the receivers report and the authorities can take action to recoup the money made by the people who profited.
They have the database and accounts. Again, like Madoff, this can take some time. But proceeds of illegal activity (crime) are on the table, I believe. The receiver collects this cash for distribution to the victims.
Months ago I told a number of friends to get their money out fast. Some did, most didn’t. Again, like Madoff.
Troy, come on man. Are you going just going to hide forever? jfc. Get your website back up and post that apology you know you need to post to all those that listened to your constant hype.
Admit you were wrong or duped. Then come over here for a while, we have questions.
That’s not to say people don’t make mistakes, but you were more than that. You were complicit. It was obvious. Maybe you were just enamored with Red Carpet treatment, liked to hang with the blanket caped spinstress, whatever.
Just because in May Zeek tried to delete the word invest from the vernacular, act like ROI had nothing to do with Zeek, hide the spreadsheets, and buying phony customers had to spoken buying or signing phony leads, nothing changed.
I’ll give you the ZeeBates didn’t get rolled out. But, tell me you know it would have done nothing but add another layer of smoke. Affiliates would still have been paying affiliates. Ponzi.
Tell me you knew what the game was. I’m not a Mensa member, but figured that one out.
Chatter is that Paul should just pay the $4 million fine, and get Zeek back up and running…uh okay, Paul get on it.
Hey i have a great question. EVERYONE PLEASE GIVE YOUR OPINION
You mentioned that the SEC confiscated $ 225 million or so and that Paul Burke was only going to have to pay a $4 million penatly
well, if he was taking the other 50% of PROFIT, and its now known that he RIPPED US ALL OFF…
….the why in the HELL dont they take HIS 50% and add it to the money the SEC confiscated and use ALL OF THAT TO PAY ZEEK AFFILIATES BACK?
why should he get to keep any money at all ?
if you scam someone and you get caught why would you be allowed to keep any of the money? it was made illegaly !
So if they dont take his money too, SHOOT IM going to set up the next BIGGEST SCAM and who cares , at least I get to keep MILLIONS and im set for life, so what i pay a 4 million dollars penalty….I GET TO KEEP a FEW HUNDRED MILLION….who wouldnt want that….hummm , wait for it…..
….wait for it…. OH YEAH PEOPLE WITH SOULS, GOOD PEOPLE who work hard and when the believe in something they get their family and friends involved….
i dont care about your LIFE PAUL BURKE and I DONT CARE ABOUT YOUR PROBLEMS like TROY was trying to defend you….
…..what about ALL THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE YOU SCREWED AND NOW THE SCREWED UP RELATIONSHIPS YOU …YES YOU…NOW CREATED FOR THEM AND THEIR FAMILYS AND FRIENDS.
TROY, YOU ARE WRONG ! Blame you …HA ! where does that get us, how does that fix relationships between people who got thier mother to join who didnt have any money and put her last dollar into Zeek in hopes to have a future.
And how does it take away anger and betrayal feelings from friends who you showed and introduced to Zeek that were reluctant at first but you got to join through the proper compliant methods , that now just put 10k in 5 days ago and now its GONE!!
Paul Burke you deserve NOTHING , YOU deserve my Boot up your Ass! and a LOT OF TIME in jail. A year for every persons life you RUINED and FLIpped upside down.
im sorry people but this was no ACCIDENT..oh ooops !, i accidentaly didnt tell anyone that Zeek had investiagtion problems back on JULY 5th. Oooops, i took another $162 MILLION after i knew the crap hit the FAN.
why ? cuz your a scumbag and wanted to rip everyone off.
people dont be fooled , someone should be held accountable, how about the MAN, who is walking away with Hundreds of millions of OUR…thats right…..OUR MONEY..NOT HIS, since he never had real customers and LIED about us being paid back by money from the auction sales, and that OUR new members we signed up were actually paying the OLD ones….HOW IN THE HELL, is that anything but OUR MONEY.
SO, thank you PAUL and Dawn and the rest who blatently lied to us and stole our money. Thanks for destroying the MLM WORLD , i actually think you officially are going to shut the industry down.
When the authorities discover that Troy Dooley was on the Zeek payroll or otherwise compensated financially outside of the normal affiliate payouts, and are able to prove that he was complicit in the extensive fraud involved, he is going straight to jail.
I think you’ve misunderstood, daniel.
There was no “other 50%”
EVERYTHING was faked.
Burks and Zeek “said” they were 50% profit sharing with members, but they weren’t.
That’s the whole reason they were shut down.
IT WAS ALL LIES.
Daniel, Paul and cronies may have spent a good deal of it living the high life. This is just the beginning of the investigation.
He’s not going to get off with lot of money to go on and live his life in luxury, perhaps he will go to jail, and most likely the authorities will be looking for the money he raked off, or things he has bought with the money.
They might auction off physical property to get the cash to help pay off the victims.
Lexington, sounds familiar? The legend Mr. Ponzi lived in Lexington (Mass). So, next time – I am sure will be next time for some of you – avoid places with this name.
GREAT JOB OZ!
ViTel is hitting it hard, as are many others, like vultures over the kill.
Other penny auctions are scrambling and sending out emails to assure that they are NOT like Zeek. LOL
Troy Dooly will never admit he’s wrong. He’s also never going to admit getting kickbacks from these companies. Whether he is or not I don’t know but for some reason he has a track record of seriously backing and supporting very bad companies.
Yes, he’s nice to good companies too. He mentions them here and there. But he does serious positive reviews of very sketchy deals. He was very supportive of that Randy Jeffers guy (former Destiny Telecom founder which was shut down by the feds) with the Liberty International or Wow Mobile.
He gave him all kinds of positive endorsement. Then that company split without paying anyone. He’s backed all kinds of companies that are now gone.
It doesn’t surprise me that his character is being questioned. How can you not?
Just to settle SEC charges.
It is NOT KNOWN if other agencies will pile on ADDITIONAL charges such as mail fraud, wire fraud, and so on and so forth.
The 50% profit was FICTION ALL ALONG. There is NO PROFIT. In July their “profit” was like 1.5%. They took in 162 mil and paid out 160 mil according to the indictment.
You’ll just have to wait. Receiver/trustee will be appointed soon. He’ll get back all the money from the eWallet places, nail down any asset and liquidate them, initiate any clawbacks (if he deems it necessary), then announce a restitution / payback program where you all register as victims and get your bonafides verified.
THEN you’ll get paid. This will take 2-3 years.
Some of those ViTel people are the worst of all. It’s disgusting to see them doing what they’re doing.
Same sort of denial-ism sprouted by SpeakAsians in India.
Burks already signed over all of RVG’s assets to the Feds. It’s OVER.
SavageTraders is one of the companies ran by Dawn and Alex aside from their Zeek jobs. It’s probably gone too. There has been NO reports of where they are.
Paul will be banned from this industry. They won’t let him come back and do anything, and he still might go to jail.
For those who need a summary of what went down here goes:
http://kschang.hubpages.com/hub/ZeekRewards-shut-down-by-SEC-as-600-Million-Ponzi-Scheme-What-happens-now-and-what-should-you-do
I’ll probably add a Q&A section soon.
Good report K. Chang
Perfect Kasey, good article.
I filed a report against Zeek to the SEC back in January of this year. I wonder how many other reports they got?
It is safe to “invest” in Zeekrewards now?
@jaden…yes, send me your money.
@Erin
I’ll guess we can consider “the tax issue” to have been “solved”, in that the IRS probably will automatically be involved in the case. So I don’t think there’s any need for the individual taxpayer to do something.
The “Cash available” was clearly NOT supported by money, so it shouldn’t be taxable nor deductible when it was reinvested.
Troy Dooly (#1 scammer-my opinion) is a great great saleman. He stand/sit in front of the American flag and preach about the bible.
@e. lol
Nice work Kasey.
@Kasey
If possible, it’d be great if you could address the money side of things and investigation from here on out.
I analyse MLM business models and comp plans, the legal fall outs of Ponzi schemes is something I’m not familiar with and have no idea on (it falls way outside of the scope of BehindMLM).
Troy recently sent me an email seeking clarification on some points regarding the SEC complaint. While I can accurately compare what they wrote to what we’ve thus analysed, despite attempting to answer his questions I concluded I probably wasn’t the right person to be asking about it as it’s not my field.
A lot of people are wondering what happens money wise now and it’d be great if as a collective some answers could be put up (in Kasey’s Q&A for example).
Well, I just posted my thoughts to Troy on his RVG Closes Doors post that he posted yesterday. Waiting for approval and his reply.
I really need to stop giving a damn about people.
@Ben
I *think* my email server issues are resolved for now. Will test it again later.
I think I can state with confidence that this never happened.
BehindMLM doesn’t exist to help you make money. I analyse business models and compensation plans and publish news, reviews and commentary on MLM. Readers are free to engage these articles and discuss (relatively) freely within the scope of what’s published.
What you do with the information here, pertaining to your own financial situation or otherwise, is entirely up to you.
I’m no advocate and I’m not here to hold your hand. Please don’t try to redefine what I do here to fit your own personal needs.
Just a question ….
How long has Troy Dooly been a “trusted advocate” by 1000’s? about anything
If ASD’s anything to go by (and the similarities are uncanny) this is what will happen:
* the receiver/trustee will get all the money back into the US (supposedly Burks already surrendered all RVG assets), and maybe issue some clawbacks (execs? top affiliates?)
* receiver/trustee will start a restitution program where victims can register their names and ID to be verified through Zeek records, with amounts and all that. Victims will probably need to provide some proof of losses suffered… in this case it’ll be money they put in, not any sort of “gains”.
* when the restitution registration is over, the receiver/trustee will distribute the funds available to all who registered in the proper proportions.
The process takes 2-3 years. ASD was shut down in 2008, though final restitution didn’t happen until 2011. Longer if the receiver decided to do some clawbacks.
I joined in December of 2011 with 2k, I seen checks from others and thought WOW, I will put in 3K more. I never tried to sell anyone to join ZeekRewards, and the past few months I thought this was not looking right.
I was near 30,000 points, but I was not going to draw any money out for another year, to give time for all the possible truth’s to poke it’s head.
The person who got me in was drawing 40K per month, and I told him what was happening when this began it’s crash a few days ago. It probably does not matter to him, because he has pulled out a big stash of cash. There has to be a lot of affiliates who have made big bucks on this, but in reality, that was our money paying them.
I am not going to do anything, I consider it a high risk the day I joined, and have written it off as a “stupid mistake.” Hopefully this will pass for others, I am very saddened for those who have lost monies.
@Ben This is what is most sad about Zeek… there are people out there looking for a legitimate way to make money, to have their own business, and one where they can help people… not hurt them.
I’m sure some of those people got suckered into Zeek thinking they were doing that, however, if they had looked at Zeek critically, and listened to Oz, K.Chang, and others here, they would have made a better decision. Now, they have wasted a lot of time and damaged their relationships.
The NEXT “business” they get in, they are going to have an even harder time succeeding in as they will be full fledged members of the “NFL club” (no friends left) and people they already know will be unwilling to take their advice or follow their lead.
I run a business networking organization, and have been self employed for years in areas related to taxes, finance and sales. I had SO many of my members who approached me about Zeek.
Some I told straight out I thought it was a Ponzi scheme, some, because I didn’t want to hurt their feelings or insult them, I told that I had promised a friend I would sign up under them instead, and for a couple, I just kept dragging my feet, figuring that this day would come.
Because ALL of these people I knew to have good hearts, I didn’t want to make them feel bad, and it was too late to stop them getting involved.
For those that were not involved yet, I did caution them and even mentioned that, if Zeek was a Ponzi, that any profits might ultimately have to be paid back. Some of these people were people I approached about a legitimate, sales related, business opportunity, however it was not a “get rich quick” scheme and, therefore, not as attractive as the “free money for placing one ad” proposition with Zeek.
Sadly, many people COULD have been working a legitimate part time job, or legitimate business opportunity all this time. Heck, buying a $200 lawn mower and mowing the neighbors yards for them would have produced better results than what many people will now see with Zeek (if they have to pay their profits back).
With a legitimate job or biz opp.. they would have been earning money. They would not have to worry about the possibility of having to pay it back (clawback) and, they would have been establishing beneficial business relationships that would serve them well into the future.
We should all remember the old story about the tortoise and the hare. “Slow but steady” can ultimately win the race and there really are no shortcuts to true success. This is part of what “BehindMLM” is really trying to tell people.
@Ken L
Those who profited, especially if they live in the US, may be in for a rude awakening in the future when the claw backs begin. I know some who have bought houses, cars, went on expensive trips, etc.
Some churches and non-profits put money in Zeek through various means, and some of that money which has been used will get clawed back.
The “trail of devastation” that Randy Schroeder was talking about is exactly this.
I remain convinced that the $11M is only part of what Burks took.
Many of those people lined up around the building in Lexington waiting to invest brought CASH. Do ya think all that cash made it to the (foreign) bank?
Forbes pointed out an fact that has been largely overlooked:
This is the largest Ponzi scheme EVER in terms of “number of victims”, at over 1 million.
Dollar amount it’s peanuts compared to Madoff or Stanford Ponzis, but number of victims? This is the worst EVER.
A lot of those are free affiliates that did not put in much.
How many victims were there in Speak Asia?
“Zeekrewards is a legit company”. From all videos by Zeekrewards affiliates. lol
Jimmy,
I cannot even fathom how many people joined Zeek, and how much money is lost. The people that I know who joined were hoping in big payouts.
The reality for some came to pass temporarily, I am sure it is going to be ugly for many, especially those who were signed up by close friends or family members.
1.6-1.8 million according to the company. The EOW pegged it at 1.2 million or so from memory.
The All India SpeakAsia Panelist Association recently held their 1 year anniversary event. Around 50 Speak Asia members turned up.
“Shortly”? lol.
Okay, largest Ponzi in the US ever. 😉
It’s official: Ken Bell has been appointed Court Receiver for RVG assets.
http://www.ponzitracker.com/storage/order.pdf
I can’t believe I joined the largest Ponzi scheme in the US EVER!!!
I posted on Troy’s blog, on his video from yesterday. I was replying to another comment, but the post speaks for itself:
Anybody know what the first step is to try and get money back? Who should we contact to find out where to start?
You might want to leave that off your resume. 😉
Chris B,
My wife doesn’t even know yet, I might not even get to the resume point.
Well, he had deactivated his new comment system and I had made a comment on a different post.
But he apparently turned the new comment system back on and my comment is gone. I think I’ll wait to see if it reappears.
BTW, very well written Jimmy.
@Chris,
Troy’s old comment system is back, meaning you don’t have to register you can just reply like most blogs.
LOL, not where I’m at.
The old system was there earlier and now I see the new system.
Worse yet the credibility that you DID have with some of your leaders who now are questioning if you even really know the facts.”
Troy also set out a serious of challenges. He was so hard on Randy, Oz, KS Chang, and many more but is he accepting his HUGE role in promoting Zeek along the way as a $600 million ponzi scam?
It is not like critics did not try to warn him but to no avail even as the Titanic was sinking and most of the ship was under water. Troy really needs to man up on this soon.
None yet. Receiver “Ken Bell” has been appointed. You wait until he starts the restitution registration, then you get verified, and wait. This will take YEARS. Remember, there’s like a MILLION of you.
I invested in Zeek, I tried to look on the web to find out more and only found positive sites. I still wasn’t sure so I called the Attorney Generals office and ask them and they although I don;t remember the exact works but they did not have a problem.
A local television station did an article on them and they too called the AG and said it was legit. I do not know anything about MLMs but if you do the math on penny auctions it sounds feasible so I put in a small amount.
I also dont know much about the advertising on the internet so it did not sound like a Ponzis. The only reason I foundthis site was a friend who has been in MLMs for a long time sent me the link.
Most of the people I know who invested were just like me and those who were doing well were really working hard at it, it was not free money they were putting in long hours. I am glad most of you here were aware of the down side but we were not and if the AG said it was ok………
All I can say now is that I’m glad I finally don’t have to listen to any more secondhand check flashing in the form of “________ is making $4000 a week.”
I let a comment on Troy’s post from Friday afternoon where he was still in great denial.
All those guys who were receiving $20000 a week checks for there 15 minutes of work a week and paid off there houses may want to start looking into remortgaging! What goes up must come down!
Dawn should take the money she stole and be trying to book herself a seat on the next trip to the red planet.
hello – just another person saying thank you to your site. I was approached about 2 weeks ago by a friend asking me to join Zeek. HIs sister (his upline) was cashing out $1000/wk according to him.
I immediately asked “is it a ponzi scheme” and he answered no. So, I got online to start my research. Watched his recruitment videos, then googled. Thankfully your site came up and I read and read and read.
I probably wouldn’t have been suckered into this anyway, since I hate selling anything, but I am glad that your site made it so clear that Zeek was what it was. Thanks for all your hard work and SEO stuff!
Thank you K Chang for giving us Ken Bell as the receiver for this loss.
Just curious…..with something this huge, how/why did it take so long to be uncovered?
Some of my friends have pretty cavalier attitude about this…comments like “it was fun while it lasted!” or “I put it all in savings…on to the next thing!”
I think the government should go after those banks accounts of the distributors.
Time for some new friends.
Yep, I hope they are tracked down as well.
Has anyone heard from Troy Toy? Im really looking forward to his next video!
Dollies son is involved in this telecom opportunity high up the ladder in that apparently. FREE sign ups for ZEEK Affiliates what a load of BS another lets bleed the affiliates dry, give nothing back BS.
Im begining to think the bigger the con man and crook you are better you get on in life, have nice holidays, drive great cars whilst the hard working idiot puts in money they can not efford to lose gets ripped off time and time again.
Zeek Rewards tele converences so bloody annoying aload of lying bastards, talking shit, cackling like drunk fools talking about burgers and french fries. To be honest what I thought was going on with Zeek was they were taking our money and putting it JBP.
The rewards % was a joke, if this so called auction was running how was it week in week out tues, wed, thurs, fri you’d about 1.8% sat, sun, mon it would be 0.8%. I could gtee what % you would get, this so called business growing so quickly how come the daily profits never increased.
I am past caring now ive lost a heap of $ with this BS company, wont happen again thats for sure once bitten twice shy.
All I can say, is how terribly sorry I am to those that invested into this and lost money. I was thankfully not one of them, but I lost just the same.
When I quit, they withheld a large sum of money due to me and made statements to other clients that determined they did not want to work with me because false statements made against me by Dawn and her posse.
I lost my car, got behind on my house, etc. But, you know what, everything eventually got better and it will get better for the good people who have lost in this event too.
Being a GOOD person and doing the RIGHT thing is HARD and it is often thankless. But at some point, someone will want to work with an honest web designer/marketer. And at some point the GOOD people who got taken advantage of here, will have learned an important lesson and get something back through the SEC.
And those that took advantage knowingly or out of ignorance (and I have to chalk it up to that – because there was enough info out there to learn the truth!) will get punished either through their own guilt or a clawback.
Dawn/Alex/Dan/Darryle need to be pursued with the same vigor as Paul. I also think Troy/OH/Keith Laggos/Kevin Grimes need to be investigated. There is no way these people did not know what was going on when a lowly tech consultant like myself did.
I live in NC, not too far from Lexington, NC. They showed Paul Burkes home on the locsl news. It is a 2 story home, a step above a starter home. I was expecting a palacial estate with all the money ZeekRewards was touting.
My husband had some money in it, thank goodness not very much. He decided he would not put more in than he could afford. Feel bad for the people who had put so much much into it.
ASDupdates.com has all available court documents online already.
https://sites.google.com/site/asdupdatesfiles/documents/other-asd-cases
Find “Zeek Rewards” (there’s a space) on the page to jump to it. There’s a LOT of legal stuff related to Ad Surf Daily, and now, ZeekRewards.
you know who should also should be looked into? The CFO, accounting firm and other back office employees as well as Paul’s extended family.
There is no way the CFO, accountant, bookkeeper etc did not know funds were co-mingling or that “profit” payouts were being paid form new subscriber monies not profits.
Although I do know Dan knew this as he often did those manually. Also, its inconceivable to me that Paul’s daughter did not know being as how entrenched in the daily activities of the company she was and how greatly she profited form the whole affair.
I’m totally sickened that Troy tries to tug on people’s heart strings that Paul has a tough life. How tough could it be – he siphoned off millions of dollars from unsuspecting investors in his ponzi scheme?
Nobody should feel sorry for him – either he is a crook or an idiot and truthfully, either way he doesn’t deserve the money he took or is living off of.
Forbes Magazine has actually been covering it pretty closely, and all the docs. are there as well.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanmaglich/2012/08/18/feds-halt-alleged-600-million-zeekrewards-ponzi-scheme-how-it-happened-and-whats-next/
I’d bet that crossed her mind. Or, somewhere very, very far away.
Wow, have you guys looked at the North Carolina AG’s Facebook page lately? The believers are still claiming it was all honest, legal, “compliant”, etc. and that the AG and SEC should have “looked at the business” and “understood the business” before they acted.
If these people have read the SEC court filing and still think the SEC didn’t understand the “business”, these people are brain dead. That Paul and Dawn sure spun some serious brainwashing on this one.
K Chang! Thank you – that is some good reading – Paul agreed to pay his $4million dollar fine within 10 days. You know what that says? This guy walked away with a whole heck of a lot more than 4 mil.
That is so despicable. Where’s Dawn’s fine? Where are the penalties for the rest of those complicit. I don’t think that goes far enough.
@Pat
Facts aren’t positive or negative. BehindMLM has been on the first page of a “zeek rewards” search for months now.
What you meant to say is you ignored any information that wasn’t what you wanted to hear about Zeek Rewards.
They’re exact “works” were that “they couldn’t advise you whether or not to invest in Zeek Rewards” and to do your own due diligence. They never said anything about not having a problem with Zeek Rewards.
This was false and retracted within hours.
Getting a 1.5% daily ROI for doing nothing (lol posting ads to sites nobody visits (except to post ads nobody reads themselves because ZR told them to)) didn’t sound like a Ponzi to you? Riiiiiiiiiight.
Investing money and finding new suckers to invest money is not “working hard”.
Considering that never happened and all of the other BS you posted, you get no sympathy from me.
@H
It didn’t, I called it in September 2011.
As for the SEC, they’ve also clearly been investigating for a while now. In stating that the Ponzi was on the verge of collapsing, I wonder if they had to cut short their investigation prematurely.
Analysing a business model and following the money is one thing and what I do here. Launching an investigation to collect evidence to present in court on a Ponzi scheme with one million plus members is something else entirely and takes a lot more time.
This of course was pointed out repeatedly to affiliates but was often simply met with ‘LOL GUYS, NO GOVT AGENCY HAS STEPPED IN SO 100% GUARANTEED ZR IS LEGIT11!!1′
Thank god all I invested was $500. But i feel sorry for the people who invested money and know they couldnt stand to lose it
@GZ
They’re the same people that will also tell you the SEC need to take the Zeek Rewards compliance course again and “learn and understand the business correctly” too. So do the Secret Service, myself and anyone else who doesn’t just shutup and “get it”.
Complete looney tunes.
How can we get the money back from the receiver that court appointed?
While Troy hasn’t posted an updated video yet, this exchange on his most recent video on his blog over the last hour is probably a good indicator of how Troy will respond:
Troy replies – note the jab at Keith Laggos:
Local news report from Lexington:
Three federal agencies? The SEC, SS and…?
OZ-KCHANG-JIMMY-E-GENBENZ-MNORWAY. I always skipped or read your post the most. Why. You are true men of character thats why.
Zeek-sheep dismissed this site as full of misinformation. Now they come here to seek information on how to get back their money.
@lee
COMPLETELY AGREE – Oz has had these affiliates backs since the day he started reporting. He was a thorn in Zeekler’s side and I knew when I had info to share it was through him!
I’m sending everyone contacting me (the same people who called me names and threatened me before) here to get the information.
These people either really think Zeek will be back, the SEC got it wrong or they will be able to get all their money back quickly.
It is a sad state of affairs and I sincerely hope that it gets resolved and the monies distributed equitably among those affected.
I even have compassion for those that worked hard for a year to recruit others into this and may be hit by clawbacks.
I think many people owe Oz an apology and others gratitude. I know I was grateful to have someone that had a voice get what I knew out there. So, a BIG THANK YOU TO OZ.
-SOURCE (real name: Mary McKnight) I was only afraid of Zeek and their affiliates, no need to be anonymous anymore.
Bravo, Mary McKnight! Bravo!
-Al (real name: George Hummel) I was only afraid of Zeek and their affiliates, no need to be anonymous anymore.
Yup, same here. Thanks Oz and everybody else!
When some friends of mine at work pitched Zeek Rewards to me I did some research on the internet and thanfully I landed on this site. It confirmed everything I was leary about to begin with.
My friends told me of some people who invested the max of $10,000 in this scam. I really feel bad for the people who lost a substantial amount of money and I wish they could have seen the info that this site was providing months ago.
Great job BehindMLM.com! Keep fighting the good fight!
What is all this bravo and cheers pomp and bull****. I’ve been a whistleblower for months too but you sound like a bunch of heartwarming pansies.
I sincerely appreciate Oz and all contributors but the emotional pageantry is silly. I threw 20k at this scheme, and misjudged, I’ll make enough 20 somewhere else.
It’s been intriguing, Informative, even amusing, but good grief!
@ MB, only 20k? lol . Bravo, Mary, Bravo!
Whant to know Dawn???
http://www.hippiedivamemoirs.com/
No I also put in money for a few friends lol
Probably more like 22k
pansies
@MB, are you a thief? lol
Troy Dooly, I know you come to behindmlm very often, so I’m going to ask you for the last time.
Is Zeekrewards a legit business? Is Zeekrewards a “ponzi”? Is zeekrewards an “investment” deal? Take your time Mr. “I am an advocate”.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the fools who invested in Zeek, including myself. There were plenty of red flags and skeptics with analysis before I joined. Unfortunately, many of the victims seem to be not very educated or non-business owners.
My experience knew better and I understood the risks. I was an active contributer in warning others. But the sec was on this like flies on ****. I’m not joining in the sentimental “bravo” bull****.
@mb: I don’t have any sympathy for those who responded to my anti-zeek posting on zeek facebook. I (LUIZEEK) got labeled as a trouble maker and showing negativity. One person in particular (CJ) was always ready to jump on any antizeek post. So how’s the growing pains working out?
Where did all the zeek-sheep go with their mea maxima culpa? Are they lined up at Troy’s doorstep waiting for the next Epic Adventure?
I started taking money out of my zeek rewards account on the 6th of this month and the first payment was going to be sent tomorrow.
Does this mean i won’t get that money because they shut down?
@Norway Probably no 1099’s coming out for this year, but it will be interesting to see how this get handled tax and IRS wise. I can keep you guys posted on what happens to people who did make a good amount of money in this.
I wanna thanks behindmlm for their analysis and for all the efforts they’ve made. It has saved me and also many others from investing in this ponzi scheme. Thank you Brother.
No ros no money is coming your way
Yes, this means any payouts you previously scheduled via your back office will not happen. Any money you put into Zeek is GONE. You might get a refund after a few years depending on how much the receiver can retrieve.
Many were not getting paid for the last 2-4 weeks. So even if you requested a payment earlier in Jul or Aug, it likely would not have been paid anyways.
Many of the Zeek cheerleaders on the ZeekSupport forum who were telling those complaining about missing payments started to complain in the last 30 days. It was quite ironic to see these top affiliates who were getting paid and being so condescending to others having problems all of a sudden not getting paid their $80k, $100k, $200k payments and complaining about it on the ZeekSupport forum.
The justice system will make sure justice is done for the top execs in Zeek. The receivership will go after the pay affiliates for sure with the claw-back provision… we’ll have to wait to see how far down the profitability list the receivership reaches.
Who I am interested in hearing from are the employees who were also affiliates, but were only making modest income and not the 5 figures monthly income that Laggos and others were making (or the 6/7 figure monthly incomes that Dawn and Mr. Douglas were making). Do they feel lied to? Were they in on the scam the whole time? They must have tremendous anger and guilt shouting down the skeptics and deleting posts in the name of “doing their job” when the skeptics were 100% right the whole time.
Will one of them be brave enough to come on here and tell their story?
I just heard that Paul and Dawn are trying to sell Zeekler.com and Zeekrewards.com on Flippa for 150 Mil. LOL
A day after I was told about zeek in March, I found BMLM. I told him that he joined a ponzi and would lose his money and I didnt want to join.
He kept trying to get me to join and I would just change the subject. Over and over he would say how much he was getting each week and how I should just try small and go from there. Again I changed the subject….
Then Thursday happened…
I waited until it progressed because I knew it was more than the NC AG. Friday came and I told myself I would wait for him to bring it up but I couldn’t wait and called him that night.
He acted like it was no big deal and he was gonna get his money back. He had no idea on the details like the 3 billion outstanding VIP points and that it was all over the news totaling $600 million.
Then he said “But jut think if I had joined earlier….” Made me grind my teeth think this guy has no integrity at all.
So for all you ex-affiliates saying:
“Where can we go to get out money back?”
“I just wanted a little extra income…”
“I was working hard at my home business…”
You are all full of shit, lazy, brain dead fools that have zero integrity and I hope if you did make more than you invested that it’s all taken back.
All these sob stories are BS, plain and simple. Get a job, hell get two jobs. I worked 8-5 on my saturday but I dont have a penny in debt except my home. /rant….
@lee
Yes. Many will join another scheme. I have been attacked too. Who gives a ****. It is great news that the fraud was halted. Oz and Chang personally has hours and hours of work. Jimmy and Norway were very informative. Information here helped detract individuals from falling prey. That is and acknowledged and congratulated. However, I mock the rah rah bravo cheers because it connotes that “they” were taken down by “us.”
What happen to all the employees on the zeeksupport and chat staff?
Their reputation is shot. Not even the Butterball Turkey hotline will hire them.
They had support staff and chat staff?
@darrell
good point! Think of all the wasted time holding on for hours on phone and chat support and then be feed a bunch of bull_hit answers.
I have watched this site for over a month now. Heres my 2 cents.
As Dooley states Judges , Attorneys Investment groups etc. were all fooled. Frankly I was too and I have an accounting degree. It is pretty obvious as stated on the site ad nauseum that to pay out even 1% revenue share on net income generated from advertising is a pipe dream.
What business can even pay an ivestor (lol- I can say that now) 30% per month? Zero is the answer. If you find a public one that is required to show documented proof you’d have something.
Now on to the hypnotic like state many Zeeksters like me fell into. I’ve seen multipe 30k-100k eve 200K in profits from realestate closings/I’ve seen some crazy other ways people earn big money. Look at the facebook story the ebay story , the yahoo story. People are just looking for their way to make it in the world.
To make there mark. And yes if its too good to be true it probably is. But some of the posters on here who want to call zeeksters stupid or greedy or unethical etc. need to chill the f out. Taking joy in other peoples pain and celebrating a debacle that will hurt hundres of thousands people is gross.
Not as gross as Paul Burks and that rightous Dawn Olivares lying cheating and stealing but still gross. And Troy while I like your personality and style I have to say you had alot of people warn you about your endorsement. I think its gonna be really hard to stay disconnected from this as an outsider when you really became the face of the company sorry. I hope you can recover.
My recommendation is to come out admit you were wroing. Admit you were conned and allow the NWM community some time to admit you back in as an expert. Currently you are not sorry… I will say this forum has been therapeutic for many and want to thank Oz and whoever else manages “the site that never went down”.
I urge you all to pray for the many thousands of people whose lives will be devastated by this illegal ponzi. I wish everyone well.
You were right. Got most of my people out in the possitive but have to reimburse a couple of friends to come out clean. Guess I was lucky. Thanks again
OZ, I saw your comments about what I said and I have a full time job and 4 children I am caring for. I did spend several hours on looking at the internet before I invested.
Yes my friends were trying to find other to buy into this but this was no different than the last MLM venture they were in and that one was and still is legal. I put $1000+ in that one and I have not gotten anymore back from that than I will from Zeek.
This is my last attempt. I invested only a small amt and I would only sign up silver ($10) so I could watch for a while. I am glad I did. You may think all of us out here were just trying to get rich we were not some of us were just trying to make ends meet.
I am not dumb and I have an advanced degree but you couldnt keep up with me in my world and I don’t know this one.
I don’t want you to feel sorry for me (it is obivious you don’t). I am just wanted to say all of us who invested had no way of knowing the penny aution was not working and the AG office can not advise anyone but they had to be investigating when I called and could have at least thrown out a hint. For someone like me we depend on offices like that to help.
You know the funny thing is the DOJ site makes the statement that we should call them when cosidering a business venture, a lot of good that did me.
Holy shit….where did you get your degree? I have a high-school education and I’m a network marketing millionaire.
1-2% a day…you’re an accountant. You should switch professions.
I spoke to customer service chat, email, phone numerous times because of the many issues zeekrewards was having. I actually that the employees did not like their jobs very much.
There was times I was number 125 on the calling list to be hung up on when my time came. I made purchases on the Auction, and the items I purchased were all delivered by Amazon, that was surprising.
I cannot tell how many times I watched the live auctions to see how items sold, and there was for sure something wrong with the operation. I was a Diamond Affiliate since Dec 2011, and I seen many things along the way that said, hmmm, and I just waited and watched.
I spoke to my upline about what was happening, but he was getting 40K a month or more, he never said how much he made, but I know he was making a nice amount of cash. And the person that signed him up was probably making a whopper sized amount of cash.
This is surely an eye opener to me, my first MLM venture, and probably my last. I lost 5K, along with the 99.00 monthly fees, and all the time I spent getting people to go to Zeek. I had over 15,000 visitors to my site from my invitations, and only had 1 person sign up as a silver, then went to FREE.
I never tried to sale it to people, I just posted mega links across the web, spending some nice cash along the way.
I guess posting it on websites was actually trying to sell it, another mistake I made during the past year. I hope others can get some money back, I am not sure really what to expect, I guess not much.
Well done mate, you must feel pretty good about yourself? Calling people who joined zeek rewards “lazy, brain dead fools”.
I know someone who joined zeek rewards who had a “highly classed” job and worked 7 days a week, does that mean he’s lazy and brain dead? NO! so maybe get off your high horse and have some respect for all the people who didn’t realize that zeek was a scam and lost money due to the dishonesty of others.
Some people are going to lose friends and have a lot of finance trouble due to this website and here you are rubbing it in people’s faces!
Look at the unemployment rate in America. Do you really think that it is so easy to just get a job? maybe that’s why some people joined zeek, to get some income to pay for their child’s schooling fees or even just to put food on the table so i highly doubt the “plan is simple”.
Surely you must have something better to do that to sit on your computer putting others down? who are most likely having a really bad time at the moment…
I have a great idea for you to “make ends meet”:
1. Put all 4 of our children to work
2. Have all of them give you their paychecks
3. Have them log into the home PC and each dollar they give you, give them a “family fun point”
4. When any kid wants to buy something, give them money over 90 days
5. When you have to pay the mortgage/utilities/clothes/hookers/blow you drop the “family fun point multiplier” and their points fall off a cliff
6. have them invest more money….
Nobody is taking joy in the average former investor’s pain, but there was a LOT of hostility from quite a lot of supporters directed toward anyone who questioned the multitude of red flags.
I personally, do not feel sorry for them.
Hey there, friend of the site all the way from Pakistan. Appreciate all the hard work you guys (Oz, Chang and the rest) put in. I’m glad Zeek has bit the dust.
I never bought into Zeek BS despite many of my close friends trying to convince me, the biggest red flag to me was their eerily consistent 1.5% daily ROI, what company gives out a daily 1.5% ROI?
Anyways, now that it’s all over, my friends have pretty much wised up and since none of them put in any significant amount, they can just chalk it up as a lesson learned and move on.
What’s awesome (read: infuriating) to me is that the most of the upliners who’re responsible for bringing Zeek here in Pakistan are STILL insisting that this is a momentary setback and that the company would be back in a day or two and at the same time have already moved on to the next get-rich-quick scheme, called (Ozedit: this is not the place to bring up other opportunities).
Now I’m no expert but this seems to be the most blatant pyramid scheme I’ve ever seen. I guess greed just blinds people. Anyways, keep up the good work.
Love ya.
I am so glad I found all you guys who were so right. I have never met people who were perfect before, and never made a mistake.
Geez good luck on that search. Come back and let us know if you ever find them.
No, Zeek SAID “Judges , Attorneys Investment groups etc. were all fooled”
Big difference. Read the SEC complaint. It was ALL a fraud.
As an accountant, you know “due diligence” does NOT mean accepting someone elses’ word an event has occured, ESPECIALLY when the “someone else” stands to gain from you believing what’s said.
Zeek was smart.vIt didn’t have to con millions of people. All it had to do was con Troy Dooley and he did the job for them.
Hopefull after this, there will be hundreds of thousands of people who will never again believe something is “true” because someone they’ve probably never heard of before “said” it was true.
Think about it. 6 or 12 months ago there were thousands of people who had never hear the word “ponzi” and didn’t know Troy Dooly existed. Yet, today they’re out there a whole lot poorer and saying “but Troy Dooly said”
It would be a pretty clever fraudster who could pull off a multi million dollar online fraud WITHOUT lying and without providing false testimonials, wouldn’t it ??
Which “judge”
Which “attorney” ??
Which “investment group” ??
Really Al. Seems like e is a pretty righteous jerk to me.
I got my accounting degree from North Eastern University. I own a couple large companies and again I admit I was fooled.
How? Because like I stated if you read the rest of my post instead of posting your “you cant get 1%. You cant get 1% rant” and then insulting me… was this I have seen some ridiculous money made easliy in for example real estate transasction where you bank 50K for 1 month of work and a flip. Or a business that takes off from scratch and does 100k by month 2.
So it does happen and 1% a day is nothing in those scenarios Mr “genius”. So my point is that people were conned that PENNY AUCTIONS were very profitable and since it was a relatively new concept it was concievable that the profits were substantial.
So again people trying to find the big win or people trying to make a few extra bucks ignored the red flags, ignored the experts (although we thought Dooley was one) and in many cases got into denial like the Laggos firing. But your attitude is so hateful.
People will suffer and people will suffer big from this mess. Just because a person was conned doesn’t make them stupid and you a genius. Frankly with your attitude I’d be surprised if you pull in 6 figures. Anyway. Get over yourself.
Neither do I feel sorry for 99% of them. They were so hostile, pigheaded, cultish and vindictive to anyone who questioned anything about Zeek.
I personally was subjected to arrogant, snide and venomous retorts to simple questions I asked on Zeek community forum. I was banned everytime for asking anything about where the money was coming from, what about what Laggos had said and so on.
I had to resign up under another sponser just to get back in the cult forum to try and open your blind closed eyes and mind.
Not a single person on that forum was receptive to any type of critical questioning. You just ganged up on any naysayer and got them banned. You only wanted to stay high on your saviors kool-aid and wanted no part of anything that wasn’t part of the zeek fantasy.
In my books you deserve NO compassion, no help (remember you wanted no constructive criticism 3 days ago) and no help in getting your money back. Go to Fooly’s kool-aid stand if you want help.
Everyone of you zeekers (remember how you all liked to call yourselves that cultish name) would still be hating on this site and anyone critical of Zeek if Zeek and Lord Burks were still operating.
You deserve no compassion, and if someone here who is nicer than I gives you some, be very thankful and realize you do not deserve it.
The most ardent Zeekheads are recruited as “employee” but no salary (I guess) for acting as forum mods.
Please tell me this is the same “Chris” from MLMHD? If so, go puff on Troy some more ya babydoll.
GTFOH. No one cares about you and your degrees, businesses, or how much zeek rammed it in you, cry baby cry.
Yes. I rest my case. Education has nothing to do with intelligence. You’re a moron, blinded by greed. Thanks for validating.
OK Al what due dilligence did you do.
I know Kevin Grimes and spoke to him. (more to follow on that)
I vetted Dooley by calling several players in the industry who gave himm rave reviews.
I call the Attorney General who at the time had only 1 complaint.
I vetted the ownership of Rex and found their statements to be true.
I investigated Penny auctions by talking to a friend who was trying to launch a Penny Auction and couldn’t due to under capitalization. He thought Zeek was brilliant and informed me that Penny auctions were a gold mine.
I googled every corner of the net and found a scarce amount of negative.
I spoke with over a dozen 6 figures earners in the industry and 9 of them were in Zeek already.
I put in a measly 1,000 and to put in more time for that seemed a little silly. So again all you geniuses who didnt get in and want to pat yourself on the back.
Let me know your due dilligence other than you cant make 1% duh crap. Guess what ya can. You can make 100 percent in a month on the right real estate deal. You can make 50% or more on the right equity position in a start up.
So now let me here the due dilligence (other than reading OZ and K Chang that you did to dismiss this ponzi. enlighten me…
And frankly, it doesn’t matter. The problem is most of them did not follow the #1 rule of investing:
If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
They simply SELF-DECEIVED themselves into thinking that they found the “exception” to that rule. As the posted of Fox Muldar said, “I WANT TO BELIEVE”. They WANTED to believe, because they trusted someone ELSE when they should not have. They did not analyze the facts, but analyzed OTHER FACTORS (like friendship, family relations, etc.) that turned out to be IRRELEVANT.
And just which judge, which attorney, and which investment group was Dooly talking about? If he meant Nehra, Nehra’s judgement on suspected Ponzis can’t be trusted after ASD, nor can Laggos.
This is nothing but attempting to spread blame, i.e. “I was fooled just like everybody else.” Well, many of us were NOT fooled.
What did we do different? We did not get as close as he did.
@Chris
With all due respect, reading Oz and Chang was plenty. How many more places do you need more than one? Quine same questions were posed over and over. The same questions were avoided over and over. ( I personally lost over 20k when the red flags were glaring, wah)
@Chris
Sounds like you did everything except look at the Zeek Rewards compensation plan and follow the money.
That should have been the first thing you did when conducting your due diligence on any MLM company.
To give you an idea of just how important analysis of a MLM company’s compensation plan is, I don’t even bother reviewing a MLM company if they don’t offer up their compensation plan to the general public.
That in itself is just too much of a red flag to ignore.
99.9% there’s only one reason a company hides their comp plan – they don’t want you to know or attempt to work out how money flows through the business. Zeek Rewards were kind enough to provide this information openly on their website – and still people ignored it when conducting their due diligence.
Words to participate in the MLM industry by: 99.9% times a compensation plan is all you need to evaluate and conduct your due diligence on a MLM company.
It’s a damn shame so many people have now only realised this too late. I’ve been banging this drum for years and despite all the claims of “negativity”, “bias” and working for competitors and associated nonsense, is the heart of each and every review on BehindMLM.
This approach to due diligence on a MLM company hasn’t let me down yet.
Whilst I appreciate the thanks people have expressed, let me stress that what I do here on BehindMLM can be reduced to one man’s “open-book” due diligence on every company reviewed here. There are no secrets, I don’t know anything more than anyone else and I don’t have any super powers (I think).
I’m just a guy with a keyboard and if I can do it, anyone can.
I was never on a community forum and futhermore I never knew there was one. The only reason I am taking time here is because I have been dumbfounded about all this.
For all the claims of telling everyone about the problems with zeekler I never heard anything negative. The only thing I ever heard was “is it legal” and as I have said before all I could say is “according to the AG it is” .
So I never spoke to you and never heard your “constructive criticisum”. Your compassion of lack of is not going to help some of the little old ladies some have signed up (I didnt sign up any old ladies but I know of some who did)
Ah.. e so now because you avoided this Ponzi your more intelligent tham me… lol.
No I never posted on MLM help desk and here is what I think should go down. Burkes shoud be brought up on some other criminal charge (like it said in the filing he can be either criminally or civilly).
The attorneys should be sued because I believe they knew (some level of complicity).
Dooley should have some liability because he became the Face. And Dawn Alex and the other Execs should do jail time.
So I have no allies that back Zeek. But I do know people who were conned and many of them again bought into the possibility that Zeek really was profiting Big on Penny Auctions.
If ya think all the million people who got in are stupid than thats your opinion but remembers opinions are like (ya know) everyone has one. Congrats on your genius in following Oz’s lead and restating his accuracy in the facts. Reading and reposting must put you at a 160 IQ lol
How can anyone be fooled? With over 1,000,000 affiliates pulling down 2% per day, not even the most profitable company in the world (Apple) would last very long.
I mean come on guys.. I watched my neighbor turn 1K into 8K in 4 months.. if that.. so in another 4 months he would be at 64K, 4 months later.. 500K or so, 4 more months.. 4 million, 4 more months 32 million…
Are you guys stupid? This is just one person with a $1,000 investment, what about the other 999,000 people? This was clear as day to me, it was a Ponzi.
Yes their will be a major hit to many. I feel for those who had their rp set at 0% !
I would imagine some folk who will be clawed back will have paid for their rent, food, bills with the money from zeek. It WILL send people BUST, no doubt about it.
Anyway I hope people get as much back $ as possible from this scum and for that to happen all those high flyers will need to be clawed back, every last cent, interest and all. Gonna have to sell lambo guys OW NO!
I had reported them to the SEC in late June and many others did before me too. I also hope Troy FOOLY gets locked up with a 7ft (Ozedit: ok let’s not go too overboard there!).
@Pat
The NC AG have never stated whether or not they believe Zeek Rewards to be legal or not.
Why were you running around spreading this false information?
It was only in operation for about a year & a half. Two years is stretching most ponzis. The poorly run obvious scam ponzis might run a month or two, while Bernie Madoff’s ponzi ran for some 12 years or longer.
I don’t think this ponzi would have lasted very much longer if the SEC hadn’t stepped in. From reading their affidavit, Zeek was almost broke.
Hence why I said 99%, the 1% I would have compassion for is for the little old ladies who were signed up by one of the cult affiliates.
I don’t know how you could not have seen a negative review or comment, did you never google Zeek Rewards, there were a number of critical websites which show up on the top of the search results, this one included.
Why did you think 350-700% interest a year was probably legal? Did that not raise any flags in your mind? If it didn’t then you should immediately turn over control of your money to an accountant or someone else who has some critical business reasoning skills.
You know what they say, “A fool and his money are soon parted” I researched Zeek when I was thinking of joining and had no problem finding critical reviews of it.
My due diligence: The first time someone presented Zeek to me, I told him immediately that I recognized it as a Ponzi and I wanted no part of it.
In other words I didn’t let greed and blind disregard for my fellow man supersede my God-given common sense, discernment and sense of how to treat others.
Oh also, we don’t know how long the SEC was aware of Zeek and investigating.
Oz of course I did that. And honestly I did question the internal consuption question.
You left out from my post that 9 of the 12 6 figure earners were in Zeek. That weighted heavily. I believe in a multitude of counsel and when I brought up the question of percentage of Affilliate purchases going to the profit 9 out 12 were convinced that it was nominal.
In retrospect I did question it but like I admitted I was fooled. And I cant share the conversation with Grimes but I will say point blank it was not negative.
Heres my main point. Many businessmen and even some leaders were fooled. Sure for some maybe even many they were greedy , no doubt, but the theme of some of your posters is that anyone who participated was an ittiate and unethical and my stance is that while that maybe true for some, that the majority of the participants are victims.
This experience will be a hard lesson. I have reccommended this blog to many zeeksters, in fact to anyone I know who was participating in Zeek. Some pulled their money, some never joined, and some ignored your post.
I took out my money and will reimburse the only 2 i referred who lost. Thats the best I can do. I don’t have one ounce of sympathy for Burkes the staff Grimes, Laggos, Dooley or anyone else who played expert and in most cases flat out lied to induce particpation.
For the large group that bought in and put faith in friends and family and lost big I do.. But thats me… This “here” is your show so you do as yo please…
I would say yes to that question or because he was not blinded by greed, one or the other, I lean to the first one.
Yes, I actually do have an IQ in the genius range, so bight me. I’m more intelligent that you.
Lol, Due diligence: I did the math, I watched red flag after red flag present itself. I got out.
As for your resume, who gives a rats azz?
@Darrell…thanks.
@Chris
You own 2 business and it STILL wasn’t enough for you? Gee. Sometimes greed gets in the way of rational thinking, integrity, and intelligence.
Oh add to that I suggest authories lock up entire seek company including Dooly, then force TD to sign out of his mlmhd for good with “promoted an epic ponzi” or even “going to do time in an epic shithole”
Just for the record I never got paid a cent, on not one. I didnt loose much but for Gods sake I know of one senior citizen who put in so much more than she could afford to possibly help her fixed income. She could be dead before this is all settled.
I can assure you she did not insult Darell. She cant turn on a computer much less post on a forum. I had no idea so many were putting money in or yes it would have been easy to see it was going to fail. All this is not cut and dry there are as many stories as there are people who have been duped.
So if you are not aware of how many are coming in and you think the penny auctions are doing well then yes it could have been possible to make a lot of money fast.
And Oz I will consult your blog about comp plans in the future.. for real
Did you not pay attention Pat to what I said??? I said I have no compassion for 99% of the zeekheads. I saved 1% for the little old ladies who were duped!
1% of 1 million affiliates is 10,000 affiliates who maybe deserve compassion. I figured 1% or 10,000 would cover all the innocent little old ladies.
@Pat
So who preyed on her then? You cannot sign up, deposit money with e-wallets, set daily reinvestment amounts, give bids away to fake customers and spam the internet if you have no idea how to use a computer.
Someone (along with Zeek Rewards) gamed her and should be thoroughly and utterly ashamed of themselves.
Chris, BTW, “Northeastern” University is one word, not two (“North Eastern”). You should probably take the time to learn how to spell your fake alma-mater.
I suspect Kevin Grimes was NOWHERE AS CLOSE to Zeek as Zeekheads thought he was (and Zeek portrayed him as).
I’ve always predicted that Kevin Grimes only supplied his generic MLM compliance course, at mlmcompliancevt.com to Zeek. ANYBODY can buy that course. And if Zeek promised to buy like 10000 of them, he’ll probably appear on camera or at particular RCE, esp. when Zeek pay for the plane ticket and hotel.
I don’t know what exactly you and Grimes talked about, but I seriously doubt he would have told you “Zeek’s fine” or “Zeek’s scam”. Zeek paid him, he performed what Zeek paid for. He confirmed he performed something for Zeek. END OF STORY.
Zeekheads then spun that into “Kevin Grimes would never associate with a scam, therefore Zeek’s legit.” That’s “association with authority” fallacy.
http://amlmskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/07/bad-argument-association-with-authority.html
ANYONE can be fooled. Even him. WHY did he say he thinks this business is legit? Don’t rely on experts. Experts CAN be and often ARE wrong.
http://amlmskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/05/when-experts-fail-appeal-to-improper.html
Lack of complaint doesn’t mean lack of problem. That’s appeal to ignorance fallacy.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/ignorant.html
You investigated the wrong part. you investigated the leg of the elephant, not the whole elephant (using the 3 blind men feeling an elephant analogy). Or to use a Batman example, you investigated the light side of Harvey Kent aka Two-Face, and didn’t bother investigate the dark side.
And those inside are not exactly going to say anything NEGATIVE about it, will they? Sunken cost fallacy and all that? You should have asked the 3 that did not join WHY they didn’t, and those who did, if they have any doubts, like “it’s too easy”.
Not enough skepticism
Not enough critical thinking to look PAST biases
Not enough knowledge about fallacies to look past deceptions and cover stories (deliberate or not)
You had conditioned yourself into ignoring the rule: if it’s too good…
You deceived yourself. You did just enough research to satisfy yourself that it “seems” legit. I posted the link to TED video before, but here it goes again:
http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shermer_the_pattern_behind_self_deception.html
Nothing personal, honest.
I found most of your comments to be accurate and informative. This whole thing with Zeek Rewards frauding people is disgusting. However, remember that hindsight is 20/20.
I researched Zeek for a week before joining and I never really put that much money into it. It’s good people were out here warning others about it but who would know what behindmlm stood for unless it was explained to them.
I searched all the negative comments I could find about it but only found one or two and it was nothing as revealing as I have read here. Just one or two people questioning the Zeek system and giving opinions. So don’t tell someone who really had no clear idea of what they were getting into with Zeek how stupid they were and they deserved it.
At the same time I’m glad to see that some people found this site and others like it or from their own experience avoided this load of Zeek BS…. Many people reguardless of what others might believe got involved with Zeek not knowing it was a scam.
So to those of you who like to gloat and rub salt in people’s wounds… remember how it feels the next time you make a mistake and somebody tells you that you deserved that… There hasn’t been a person on the Earth who hasn’t been made a fool of or made a mistake at some point!!!
Hey Al , If you can master reading I posted where I got my degree cuz e questioned it in an earlier post not to resume up.
But your I did the math hmmm. And what math would that be. Lets hear how a genius calculates an undisclosed figure to come to this conclusion. And oh ya got out. Ah so you were in Zeek and got out. So ya did the math When?
I got out too Al. So what. Again you insult without a basis. I posted the due dilligence I did cuz I was questioned. So How are we different Al. We both got in as you admit and we both got out when we saw the red flags. If you did the math then why did you get in?
Heres the difference. I don’t hold myself up as a genius cuz I got out. I admit I was conned and defend the majority who also were conned, drank the koolaid, joined the cult whatever… To assume they are all a bunch of unethical hucksters in not intelligent.
It’s a condescending gloating that isn’t any better then then when the cult followers bashed you. I don’t support them either. Just not a people basher. But I guess condesension and rightousness is my hot button.
This just in from Troy Dooly (he’s gone back to IntenseDebate so I can’t link the comment):
Every Ponzi has an elite club, a group of people that sit at the top and assist management every step of the way. The ‘founders club’ of Zeek Rewards was theirs.
In exchange they receive special perks and commissions the rest of the affiliate base do not and in most cases, are not even privvy too. That list,(along with executive management affiliate account details, is the key to fund recovery as it reveals to who most of the money paid out through Zeek Rewards went to.
Let’s hope the authorities are on top of things.
My guess is her grandaughter did not “game her” she like me thought is was a good thing and she was trying to help her. We were duped.
Yes you were right but if I dont know you or anyone like you, and if I dont have time or resources then all I can do is listen to others like our AG and those making money.
If they are not forth coming or not telling the whole story then I get fooled. Sorry we all are not all bad nor dumb just fooled and more broke.
@Chris
If you did and analyzed the information, then you simply made the wrong call. I made the wrong call. I don’t think I was stupid. I have made many good business calls, and other bad calls.
At the time I joined I thought the website was hokey, the RPP was mostly all affiliate internal consumption, and even the penny auction industry in and of itself was suspect for regulation or deemed illegal gambling.
My risks were measured based on the possibility the company would transition the model into something viable. In addition my father had presented it to me and I did not mind doing something with him. I invested 20,000, two accounts, knowing full well of the red flags.
However, although nobody wants to lose any money, this investment (I love saying it) was not a big financial risks for me. As a matter of fact I sort of approached like this. I bought a baseball card thinking the card convention might be coming to town. I.e. I actually considered it an INVESTMENT and considered the compliance lingo bull****.
To enforce people not to use a specific common word was a major red flag right here.Turned out the baseball card was fake. Lol
The turning point for me was when I bought $400 worth of leads (200) from Z-customers as an experiment that produced zero retail customers. It was obvious hokey ads did not create sales on a penny auction website. Endgame.
There were plenty other red flags that were clearly pointed out on Behind MLM. Even if you thought BehindMLM was some rogue hub of bad information or slander, you had the opportunity like me to weigh the facts out. But I don’t believe everyone who decided to join was stupid.
Speaking of, OZ, our good buddy Gary Bessoni. How many leads of the approximate 10,000,000,000 (10 Billion, May as well say kazillion) were bought at Z-Customers, and how do we now consider their relationship to Zeek.
For the people who said they did not or could not find anything negative about Zeek before they invested, I will tell you what my first red flag was. It wasn’t searching for a negative or critical review either. It was sitting down at my desk, turning on my calculator and grabbing a pen and paper.
I then proceeded to figure out what 10,000 dollars would turn into in 8 years basing it on an average ROI of 1.4%. I figured this would tell me if this company is self sustaining and long term.
Just like all the others on here who did this, I found out I would have over several trillion dollars between my 8th and 9th year. And yes that was taking into consideration the 90 point expiration.
I then knew this was a short term ponzi based on that alone and was doomed to certain failure, 100% guaranteed. That is when I took to the web and searched for other critical reviews and to see if my math was wrong. So all it took to steer me clear of this ponzi scheme was 5th grade math.
You weren’t doing a real estate deal and you weren’t buying an equity position in a start up.
Being an affiliate of a company isn’t even a remotely close comparison.
Truthfully, nobody needs to read anything more than a 1%, 2%, or whatever per day ROI claim to wrap up their due diligence on these things.
Sure, there are opportunities to make those kinds of returns for a short period of time with some investments, but you know that type of ROI can’t be sustained.
These scams are promoting the ability to do this indefinitely and for everyone involved.
The amount of “effort” required to qualify for the RPP was also a tell tale sign that this was a ponzi.
Oh well, lesson learned for you I hope.
K. Chang … now thats an intelligent response thanks.
Can’t get into details here but it was NOT negative and I was direct with him. I pay him ya see. Thats all I can say.
Think you are right about the closeness issue but he did allow the company and the dupes to use his name and the compliance course was a confirmation. I think he is going to have some liablity. But your point is well taken…
I think your pretty spot on and I am going to review your links. Thanks for teaching and not bashing. I will be more prepared to review in this arena next time I am approached..
I did actually listen to the 3 naysayers and quite frankly they were also pitching me on their deals so I wasn’t confident in the objectivism.
(You deceived yourself. You did just enough research to satisfy yourself that it “seems” legit) This one I need to ponder. Maybe I did. Maybe I got caught up in it. Fortunately I went small but Ya got me thinking.
I am going to review your links Mr Chang. And thanks to all who responded. I Love learning through debate..
The signs are there.
They tried to inject more revenue streams (Zeebates, mandatory video, mandatory training, etc.)
They have various payment problems, with the eWallet folks holding their cash as collateral (a bank wouldn’t do that, but no bank in the US would deal with them)
Laggos’ solution of going to foreign card processors may have got them out of FTC’s radar, but brought them under bank’s radar, credit card company’s radar, AND in turn, SEC’s radar. Not to mention all those “foreign” transactions, huge amounts, just SCREAMS “ASD clone”. All those blocked transactions raised alert levels at all banks.
And the company started to go after critics… such as me. They can’t hit patrick or Oz here, as they got their own domains, but they can hit me because I use Hubpages. But they can’t use their lawyer (who’d have told them everything I wrote was legal), so they got this Craddock guy who wrote something that resembles what a lawyer would write but made tons of mistakes.
HP, in their caution, turned off my hub while this is resolved. Craddock thought they can intimidate me, but I didn’t budge.
The mood of Zeekheads are getting ugly too. One actually claimed that someone may visit me, while the other basically hope to see me as victim of a beatdown reported on TV news. I don’t know if they are real Zeekheads or shills (Zeek employees using shill accounts). Those who read the comments on my hub will see the comments preserved.
It was ugly, and it’s beginning of the end for Zeek.
@Pat
It’s ok, you don’t need to use compliant terminology now, that nonsense is over.
What you meant to say was her granddaughter signed her up and raped her retirement fund, for the sole purpose of earning referral points to increase her own share in the daily ROI being paid out.
That’s exactly what happened.
No OZ I am not saying that at all if you knew these people you would be so sad for them. This grandaughter is devistated it is so sad.
Dont you egg heads get it people who did not know or understand were fooled and hurt, I am only glad it has ended before it happened to others.
I forgot who mentioned the term first, but they are the “judas goats” of Zeek.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_goat
If you think these people on this forum who saw this ponzi train wreck far in advance are “egg heads”, then WTF are you, one who wasn’t even as smart as these egg heads who did see it?
It’s not sad in the slightest, you joined thinking up magical fairy tales of 1.5% daily compounded interest. Use that “advanced degree” next time, egg head.
@Cast
Well good thing the Ponzi nature of Zeek Rewards was called eleven months ago then.
25+ articles and thousands of comments. Yeah, no worries champ.
The SEC complaint put hard numbers to analysis and review of a compensation plan was evaluated and called out for functioning as a Ponzi scheme (passive investment) 11 months ago.
The hell have you been?
Stocks go up and down… Some make, some lose… just wondering if there is a plan to assist consumers who were involved in this to recover any of their losses. Who do you contact?
I hear there are frozen assets which should help. This is a “First Post” for me folks…
Granddaughter perpetrated fraud by diverting the retirement money into non-retirement purposes, did she not?
She mentally justified it as “it’s just sitting there, I can grow some money then put it back…”
And now she’s lost control of it for years, and may get back only a tiny portion of it.
Of course she’s devastated… but NOT *that* devastated as it’s NOT HER MONEY.
Yes, I’m being a little snarky here.
I hear ya Chris. So ya feel if its never been done it won’t be. And that there are no affillate programs that can earn you 1 to 2 percent a day. Again I respectfully disagree. Having made a few bucks with Clickbank I will tell you that I have had a couple winnners that would top that.
I agree with you on the effort issue. It certainly took more than 5 minutes a day and a deposit to earn returns from the Click Bank affilliate programs. Again thanks. Like K Chang said with his Batman analogy I shold have looked at the dark side.
Again with only a little of skin in the game perhaps I did due dilligence light. Seems like more than many here though like you Chris.
You spotted it, killed it quick, good job. If I am faced with a too good to be true, I will debate it first. and once fully educated be able to influence my contacts to pass when appropriate…
Thanks
Yes you can – ONCE.
You CANNOT do it day after day, week after week and you CANNOT do it so hundreds of thousands of people make 1% a day.
You forget, even IF had Zeek made massive profits on THEIR investment, it was paying out ROI based on the amount of the MEMBERS contribution.
If what Zeek said was true, and it was sharing 50% of ITS’ profit per day, and members were receiving 1% or 2% PER DAY, Zeek must have been making AT LEAST 2% or 4% PER DAY on those days.
pick a subject.
Any subject about which you know little or nothing about, other than its’ name.
You know, quantum physics or nuclear medicine or the role of bacteria in the digestive process, whatever is relevant to you.
How much “due diligence” would you be prepared to do if:
1) it was going to cost you money
2) it wasn’t
How much “due diligence” would you advise:
1) an elderly relative
2) a struggling family
to do ??
If you controlled a family trust upon which all the members depended to survive and were liable for any losses, how much “due diligence” would you do ??
As with all things, the level of “due diligence” is strictly your own choice.
HOWEVER having made those decisions ( including finding out exactly what “due diligence” involves) you then forfeit the ability to then shoot the messenger and/or post smartass comments deriding said messenger.
There are genuine victims of this Zeek fraud, for sure.
IM(very)HO, you ain’t one of them.
You didnt read very well, I dont want you to feel sorry for me, Ill be ok but there are othes who wont. Those are the ones I feel sorry for.
I didnt do full vetting I called the AG and searched the internet for a couple of hrs. I made a mistake in thinking our AG would let me know if it was a problem company (I live in NC). Some of the people I know who signed up just did not know.
It ain’t hindsight. Oz first reviewed it back in November 2011, and I published my own review in April 2012. (I could have swore I had it earlier than that, the Hubpages listed it as April 12, 2012)
Chang she is not like that, she really thought she was doing a good thing.
Then she needs to work her a** off and pay grandma back, with interest
@Pat
Yeah, big mistake, do you think the AG knows every business and what they sell? If I start a business tomorrow called Weeds & Seeds and you call the the AG of my state, do you think they will have any info on me automatically?
So the AG says we don’t have anything to say about Weeds & Seeds, nothing in our files, so you go ahead and order 10 bales of pot from me and then are shocked when you get arrested and your happy weed confiscated.
Surely you are brighter than that.
So she thought ‘the ends justify the means’? Like it’s okay to steal, as long as I put the money back?
I know it’s tough language, and I’m being emotionally insensitive, but that’s why I’m a skeptic. I keep emotionally detached from the things I analyze.
Emotion is one way scammers gain hold over their victims. There’s a whole slew of fallacies related to “appeal to emotion”.
Even after reading SEC memos, SS investigation, NC AGs involvement, and everything else associated with this ponzi, people like Troy Dooly are still defending it. Hope he gets his due share of legal scrutiny.
As for “regular” zeeksters who are here reading all the comments, I can’t believe they are still accusing Oz, KChang, M_Norway, e, Jimmy and many other true critics – who have shouting from the rooftops all along – of not having heart, compassion, understanding and in between.
Those really hurt are the ones who did/do not know that behindmlm exists, and if they did, they are not accusing these critics for anything.
A majority of these “regular” zeekseters who are here now and accusing the site and the critics are more interested in making quick bucks and moving on to the next big ponzi/pyramid the moment they see it.
Exactly, and at a rate of 1.4% per day compounded interest (because remember that is not out of the ordinary) until it is repaid in full.
Sure, you can make that type of ROI for a little while with some things, but it’s mathematically impossible to sustain 1-2% growth per day, every day, for everyone.
That’s what these scams are selling.
A few years back when I was marketing wireless products via PPC ads, I was generating a 150% ROI each month. My goal was 125%.
But there would be no way in the world that I could perpetually increase my profits to infinity.
That is the bill of goods that these ponzis are selling you.
Like some have mentioned here, all you have to do is crunch the numbers on the insane amount of money that it would equate to just a few years down the road.
You couple those unrealistic numbers with the 30 seconds of work you need to do to “earn” that income and you have your answer on the legitimacy and sustainability.
LOL Darrell. Absolutely
So you dont love anyone because you are a skeptic, not your grandmother or mother, yes I might agree if the emotional ties wern’t already there.
She invested her own money too and lost big. To some of you 10,000 isnt much but in my world it is so much money. She was not at all emotionally detached she was wholly engaged and she was scammed and unfortunally so was so many others.
I am glad you are analyzing things and in my profession I have to become detached sometimes too but there are human stories here and a lot of pain, I hope that dosent make you happy because if it dose then you might need to analyze that.
Taken from troy’s site
What a complete dink, boob, shill, thief, cheerleader! The down right sliminess of this man is unbelievable.
Zeek is great, zeek is great, get in quick, trust me I’m a expert. While promoting zeek, he’s getting payed! Complete looser! Take down the flag Troy its disgraceful.
@Pat
It is a huge amount in my world also, which is why I made sure it was legit before I threw money down a shithole.
I did a little number crunching and a few minutes researching and sure enough Zeek Rewards turned out to be a shithole ponzi. I kept my money.
@ Chris: Didn’t you say you have a degree in accountancy from North Western? If so, you must know how to put formulas on a spreadsheet like Excel.
Do yourself a favor and spend 15 minutes doing it. Put 1K on day 1 and compound that for 1 year, 2 yrs, 4 yrs, and 8 yrs. Make sure to retire points earned on Day 1 on Day 91, Day 2 on Day 92, and so on and so forth. I am sure this will give you an answer about how much you would be make after a given period.
Note how much you would be making and think about thousands, hundreds of thousands or million of others just like you putting that 1K and growing it to infinity. I am sure you know the symbol.
As for me I simply trusted a friend and put some money without realizing or trying to understand enough about Zeekler side of their earning potential (or lack there of).
This zeekler has, of course, hoodwinked many a good folks. If you are one of them, like me, just accept the fact and realize your mistake instead of rationalizing your action.
They had bad teachers. I had classified MLMers into 6 types, and even some subtypes.
They were taught by the “recruiter-type” MLM Stars, and aspire to be recruiter-type themselves because that’s how they believe MLM should run. They are wrong, and most of them will just wander from one scheme to another, always looking for “the big one”.
http://kschang.hubpages.com/hub/Six-Types-of-Network-Marketers-which-type-are-you
I don’t consider emotion when I analyze something that demands LOGIC and EVIDENCE.
And spending up to 10K, which is not “easy money” for any one except maybe the “one-percenters”, definitely needs to have an emotion-less due diligence performed.
This grandaughter may have the good intentions, but was deluded by “wishful thinking”. As the cliche goes… the road to hell…
@Chris,
K.Chang covered the logical fallacies. To take a more practical approach, I prefer to use the ‘common sense knowledge’ method of analysis.
1. Using math, one would conclude the 1.5% daily compound rate is unsustainable. Math below at bottom for just one account, let alone a few 100k or a million accounts all compounding at 1.5% per day.
2. Using business knowledge, one would conclude that it makes no sense to pay an affiliate so much for placing a daily ad, when it could be outsourced to an ad firm, full time employees, or outsourced contractors for a fraction of the cost.
3. Using internet marketing knowledge, one would conclude that the spammy classified ads are useless, produce virtually no click throughs, and suffer from over-saturation anyways (what could 10k spammy ads on one site achieve that 1k spammy ads could not?)
4. Using finance knowledge, one would conclude that if Zeekler were that profitable, why use affiliate investments in the first place? Why not get VC’s or just a straight bank loan?
5. Using internet research on Zeek’s, one would conclude that Zeek operated as a straight up investment & Ponzi until Aug 2011, and had a nearly identical business model and compensation plan and commission structures as Ad Surf Daily and a dozen other Ponzi’s.
6. Using knowledge of IT or website design, one would conclude that a poorly designed site running on outdated ASP technology, and having Adsense blocks on the main information portal means the business must be running on thin margins.
7. Using due diligence and a spreadsheet, one would have concluded that it was impossible for the penny auctions to have generated more than a few small % of revenue based on the ending price and number of auctions per day. When it was shared in May that the top 12 affiliates were making over $1M/month, it should have been 100% obvious then that the auctions could not support Zeek Rewards pay out. Up until that data point, all we could do was estimate based on the 2011 IDS and some data shared on the leadership calls.
8. Using knowledge of history, never has any business opportunity or investment ever offered > 1% daily compounded ROI and not been a Ponzi (thanks RealScam.com for this insight).
None of the above is “hindsight” as all of it was analyzed in real-tie here at BehindMLM.
This was the “math” in #1:
I wish NE4aPonzi would drop by to weigh in..
I’m still wondering if the Facebook reply that Al made Oz aware of was intentionally or accidently leaked by the AG because Zeek chose to continue to not disclose the ongoing investigation.
Why would they announce the investigation before the feds moved in. Oz wrote the article, then the AG office confirmed the CID, and the SEC swiftly moved in and brokered the deal.
41 days went by between the day the CID was issued, and when the office was shuttered.
DR K it was North Eastern. But if you read my posts you would realize I’ve done what you ask. I’ve accepted my mistake and admit I was fooled. I did many a spreadsheet. And yes the numbers got crazy. However the unknown variable of profits; awas “proprietary” threw me.
I have seen companys grow fast in my life. One of my associates built an empire (not NWM) in 3 years that paid 20 30 50k/ mo to thousands of people so….zit happens.
Heres my bottom line. I started posting to just to put my 2 cents in on having a little compassion for the victims. ONe of you posted that I was not a victim. you are correct I got out in time.
I am not defending my due dilligence light… I was wrong… I was conned etc. K Chang and Oz not surprisingly have schooled me here today. But again you can debate without the rightousness and insults i love the engagement.
Personal attacks and that gos for the zeeksters show weakness. Like when politicians resort the the mud slinging. So again love the intelligent debate but I am for laying off the victims a crucifying the criminals.
Per the SEC document Burks knew exactly what he was doing. He set the return rate manually himelf. Point the anger at him. Please.
@ Chris
No, they weren’t fooled. They were greedy.
@Chris – it is refreshing that you are open and honest, and quite intelligent obviously from the conversation. Self-reflection is always important and you are not in denial. It seems like you are just ‘talking it through’ with others here and that’s healthy.
I think there are still some heightened emotions by some, especially the Zeek critics who felt many months of hostility. The discourse should improve as the facts come out.
I think many are waiting for a cathartic release from Troy when he posts his next video Mon or Tue. I personally don’t think they will get it, and we’ll see another 500 comments hit when that happens. But, hey, better to talk than not!
@Jimmy Good stuff. Heres the rub. I did fantasize that they had profits from other areas as they stated (due dilligence light), I also believed that since the 1.5% was not guaranteed that the company would reduce it to .5% or .25% or whatever was necessary to sustain it.
So theres my somewhat impotent answer to your math. Points 1,5,7,8 and your table. And again the Alexa rankings and other somewhat effective window dressing did influence me.
Point 2 and 3 you’re spot on and I really dont debate except for the teeny perception that perhaps they were directing advertising money to help the little guy and save the industury blah blah blah (lol I know naive).
As for point 6 I am uneducated in websites. I do know that their are many great websites that look like a million bucks where the companys are bs so I guess I applied the opposite a little. that the company couldnt keep up with the growth and wasn’t trying to fake a look to impress.
Again good stuff Jimmy and like I stated earlier. I will no doubt be consulting this website before ever participating in a network again…. Thanks
Blanket statement. Thousands involved. Many greedy, many fools, many smart, many stupid.
There were so many fools here and on Hub Pages, when someone once gave Chang a formidable debate on HubPages, it was so refreshing, it was a reminder there were a few rational folks out there.
Exactly, wishful thinking. You convinced yourself.
Many people who had private reservations about Madoff’s scheme kept it private. Many thought he was “pre-loading” the trade orders to shave off like quarter of a point in trading and profiting off that.
They convinced themselves Madoff would have to be crazy to do a Ponzi scheme.
Thanks Jimmy You are right. And I guess some of the early insults to my post are a results from the cult like behavior of some Zeekers. It seems to have dissapated a little and yeah I guess ya wanna bash back a little when people are so stubborn and wont listen to the facts laid out.
Emotion plays a huge role in these games and I believe we havnt seen the tip of the ice berg on the devastation we are going to see from this. I have seen small networks crumble and have it destroy lifes. I hate put word on negative but I believe people will lose their homes, jobs, family and perhaps even suffer serious health problems.
As for Troy – Troy I have to belive you are following this Post. Contrition, full disclosure and an absolute and complete awakening is your only chance to salvage your reputation. All the Name dropping of Grimes, Burke, Your other good friends who know these people only sends you deeper into the association.
If you really want to be a NWM advocate the go after the criminals not the naysayers (who were right by the way) Focus on how you were conneded and go after them. If you are who you seem to be you were tricked into trusting flat out con men and woman. They knew it. Read the findings.
It was not a golly gee I did’t know I was running a ponzi. The only way you can stay in support of them now is if you support a flat out ponzi. No accountant or accounting program in the world can unwind 162 million in from new reps / 160 million out. NO ONE.
So pick a side. Black and white. You seem Troy like a real guy who picked the wrong horse. I hope its true and you completly aplogize and admit you missed it because if you dont worse things can be assumed. Like you were complicit.
With or without money this company however they did it got you to be the face. Like said in earlier posts. Man UP. I am praying for ya.
This is classic irony.
Zeek’s Facebook page which was taken down is still in Google cache. The last Zeek motivational parable posted on 8/16 was this:
I wonder if Paul, Dawn, Alex, Darryl, Keith, and the 200 founders who will get clawed back are using this wisdom as we speak?
I did not not Yogi Berra was in Zeek
@KChang Agreed (with a little help from the con). No guaranteed return, 190 on Alexa, 15 year old company, next Google, fastest growing direct sales company (several websites) #1 Penny Auction blah blah blah.
But yes ultimately we all sell our selves. Just call me sucker.
@MB Agreed
@Jaden. First Impression Yes. I had someone call me and a corporate team from Bidify is doing a webinar claiming they are not like Zeek and they can document the profits justifying that they pay from real profits.
My reply was yeah but what if he’s lying – lol . I am sure we will get analysis soon if not already done. Refer me to the analysis if done. Thanks
The area I live in has a very high unemployment rate, and jobs in this rea are scarce. I was approached by well meaning friends about this “opportunity” with zeke.
When I was told about the amount of return, I commented, “Really?”. The response was, “It’s not a Ponzi or a pyramid”. First red flag. A couple of days later I was told how I needed to get on this because one friend had just made $250 online by only doing two hours work. Second red flag.
However, I knew these friends were honest hardworking people. One had been laid off and hadn’t been working for a year. They had pooled their money to become “affiliates”. They kept asking so I decided to attend a meeting.
Three hours before the meeting I went online to conduct a little “due diligence”. Most of the websites I saw were all positive about Zeek and the great amount of money to be made. A little too positive. Then I ran across a scam warning website. I had never read so much hate directed toward someone who had posted a negative review of Zeek and Zeekrewards.
Then I read a post from K. Chang and Oz on this website. Big ol honkin’ red flag. Another post led me to the Attorney General’s site. I finally decided to check where I should have started, The Better Business Bureau for northeastern north carolina. Over 30 complaints in less than a year for Zeek and Zeek rewards.
From that website I found the name of Rex Venture Group, Paul Burks and his wife. I also found the many other pyramid websites Mr. Burks has. He may have a home in North Carolna, but his principal residence is in Las Vegas Nevada. He has lived elsewhere and appears when things go south, he closes shop renames the company and starts again
I did not tell my friends, though I wanted to. I knew they would not believe me. Instead I told them I’d attend the meeting but might have to leave early.
Well, it was a packed house. The leader played a “webinar” explaining about Zeek and Zeek rewards, the “Matrix” the “Daisy”, and the kitchen sink. This time I was trampled by the bull charging at the big red flag. I excused myself after the webinar.
That was Tueday, got invited back for Thursday…well we know what happened then.
Long winded way to say…true due diligence pays off. I do feel sorry for my friends. They meant no harm, just trying to make ends meet. They lost at least $2000. Making easy money fast and making money for doing nothing is true only of people like Burks,Burks wife and family, Dooley (yes he is in on it, I have no doubt), and the top “affiliates”.
When you’re WITH a cult, it’s self-reinforcing. You seek out those like you, and you in turn become more like them.
There’s also the “mob mentality”, when a mob will do things no individual would dare do, because you can’t “punish” a mob, which has no ‘face’. Add that to a bit of anonymity on the Internet, and you can be “lead” into very very stupid things.
Go look up “Steven Hassan”, cult expert, and his BITE model. See how many of these techniques were used against you, accidental or deliberate.
I do a similar thing with HYIPers and ponzi players:
1) “Insiders” Most of whom we never hear of or even suspect exist.
2) “Playas” who aren’t fully “inside” but know exactly what they’re doing and do most of the “grunt work” including much of the cheerleading, most of the disseminating of false information.
They are usually indirectly rewarded with some inside info, including advanced warning of negative events and higher referral commissions.
3) “Players” who also not on the inside, know what they’re doing and whose main purpose is to maximize their own return from the ponzi “game” and self describe themselves as “gamblers”
4) Greedy bastards who know EXACTLY what they’re doing, that what theyre doing is both immoral and illegal as well as the risks, but just don’t care as long as “they get theirs”
5) Genuine “victims” who are the prime targets for the fraudsters themselves
Something I learned a long time ago is, it doesn’t matter one iota what “I” think or what stupid/naive/deserving/idiotic/uneducated labels others apply to them, there ARE victims, there ARE large numbers of them and NO ONE has the right to profit from them.
It’s FRAUD and NO ONE has the right to carry it out.
Too bad most of those “rational” Zeekheads are full of logical fallacies, or are guilty of examining only one part of the story. One was trying to convince me “profit-sharing” is legal (except he can’t prove there are profits), while another was basically using all the pseudo-science tactics like no true Scotsman (moving goalpost), disclaimers, and so on and so forth.
This is a followup to Gen3benz comments on MLMHelpdesk earlier, which despite my best efforts have not been able to get to the bottom of (short of contacting Troy, because I believe this is something he has to go public with himself):
In the now infamous June “the answer to that would put Zeek out of compliance” Aces Live Radio show, the following exchange took place between hosts Troy Dooly and Jim Gillhouse
Today, the following exchange between Gen3benz and Dooly on MLMHelpdesk:
The July RC day was held towards the end of the month and the Aces Radio Live show was broadcast before the June RC event. What am I missing here and did Troy just admit he’s been financially compensated by Zeek Rewards?
Did not having “skin in the game” just get redefined???
The immediate deflection to Laggos is somewhat reflective of the gravity of such a revelation, given gen3benz never asked a 3rd question or brought Laggos up himself.
For the sake of the MLM blog niche and out of appreciation of Dooly as a fellow blogger, I sincerely hope this isn’t something that we will have to wait to see in a future regulatory complaint to get the urgent and explicit clarification on it needs.
@Polar @Gen3benz1 – Wow – Ok Troy you were paid. Guess you need to disclose that now cuz the feds are in it. Hmmm. Gonna be a long road back. A long and dark road.
The good news is people like to see contrition. I think even Swaggart got back on some level. Bad news the money thing is big. I think you may never recapture the trust.
Then again alot of your rise came from Zeek so maybe you can settle down pretty close the the pre-Zeek level. Again come out humble brother cuz if ya don’t I fear your gonna get a pretty big stompin.
@Chang
At least one, you remember, maybe the only one, with the two part post. He ended up wrong of course, but at least intelligent, engaging and formidable.
Got an editorial from kevin thompson that’s worth a read, and I really like the quote he used:
http://www.businessforhome.org/2012/08/zeekrewards-closing-down-the-mlm-attorney-speaks-out/
Now this is good stuff to say the least. Below is a portion of an entry written by Dawn Blanket Cape W.O. Back in 2010 on her site HippieDiva memoirs regarding the BP oil gulf spill. Just fill in the words “BP” with “Zeek”
I think Troy made more off his mentorship/coaching program than whatever Zeek paid him. Think about how many hundreds of thousands of people who learned who Troy Dooly was but never knew of him before? Remember Zeek did a plug for Troy and vice-versa, and lots of cross-selling with ANMP.
Someone should pay the $75 to see the members only portion of mlmhelpdesk. What are the members who are in Zeek saying behind closed doors?
Regarding the ANMP, between Laggos and Dooly, and Troy’s previous “coming clean on Zeek” video, you have to wonder what the ANMP is thinking now?? If it was bad enough to fear lawsuits when Troy made the “coming clean on Zeek” video, think about what that fear is NOW?
@Oz
Troy admitted he had been compensated and signed a NDA back in his comments when he released that lengthy video explaining he was not for sale and that he would not compromise his values ( my wording)
@Mitch
Sidestepping from Dooly’s payment arrangement with Zeek for a second,
Forget Dooly and Laggos, the Association of Network Marketing Professionals was neck deep in Zeek Rewards money. From ‘Zeek Rewards Exposed: OFAC, DDOS and compliance‘:
The Executive Vice-President of the ANMP was on Zeek’s payroll… Dooly is just a committee member.
Too little, too late? If anyone would recognize the Ponzi nature of the business model, Kevin Thompson should have.
Kevin is not shy confronting MLM’s publicly and has filed class action lawsuits on distributors behalf against MLM’s.
So why didn’t he warn others before? Why are people holding him up like some brilliant analyst after the fact when so many of you here called this thing from a mile away.
I nuked Kasey’s comment because the article at BusinessForHome was just a rerun of Thompson’s own blog post, which had already been linked to previously.
That said,
Guess who Bidify’s lawyer is…
Thompson’s recent seemingly strong stance against ZR is quite honestly a bit of a mystery. Bidify also offer members a daily ROI with a point system. Members are also able to re-invest their daily ROI in more bids to effectively increase their share of the daily ROI paid out.
More from HippieDiva:
@Oz
Speaking of Peter Minglis, this entry is on Hippie Diva memoirs back in May of 2010:
On Troy’s website he still has an ad saying, “Join Zeek Here.” Too funny.
Kasey’s link did have something Kevin Thompson’s original blog entry did not… open comment system including Facebook plugin. Just saying… it was a repeat, but had some value for me to read the comments.
Troy five hours ago on his blog:
Something is just wrong here don’t you think?
I just thought his quote was funny. 😀
But honest, I’ll even venture a guess to why… It’s not his job.
Lawyers only do things for billable hours, unless it’s pro bono. Reviewing a business doesn’t do that, unless it’s more of a self-advertisement, which that blogpost / repost on Ted Nuyten’s website, is.
You’ll notice he kinda mentioned his own role in the whole thing (lawyer for Bidify) but kinda glossed over it.
It’s not a lawyer’s job to review other businesses. He may be employed by that business later, or run into the principals later. He may know the law, but unless you’re PAYING him for advice, he’s not going to volunteer any. IMHO, of course.
He’s, uh… what’s the American version… Tail end Charlie. yeah, i think that’s it. 🙂
This is where it all started. From HippieDiva memoirs:
(Playing amateur psychoanalysis…)
He’s still in denial, and defensive due to all the people calling on him to confess his sins or something.
You guys need to offer him some carrots, to get him move past those 5 stages of grief (anger and denial), and get him toward depression and bargain, and toward acceptance.
IMHO, and since I’m not a shrink, my opinion’s worth nothing. 😉
Wow softballs on mlmhelpdesk. Cmon. I mean Im forgiving but Troy saying he Didn’t sell it and said he wouldnt join.
The First exposure I had to Zeek was him all excited about the NMBJ article. They played it at a meeting. He was clearly selling and excited. To quote ” and look at this guys” 25 to one customers to reps” blah blah blah.
Is he censoring posts? Cuz I got a bit to say to him but don’t wanna waste time. If he really believes he will escape culpability he is in a denial greater than the facebook posters. Is he censoring?
@Chang
A better approach would be the 5 love languages
Quality time: Gen3benz, keep visiting the helpdesk with questions
Words of affirmation: Sympathizing affiliates, keep posting how great Troy still is
Gifts: ANMP Give Troy some compensation to make up for the red carpet cancellations
Acts of service : Oz, buy a security guard for Troy’s house
Physical touch: Chang, uh…never mind
@Jimmy
Fair enough then, re-instated.
Not to the best of of my knowledge and your comment should eventually go up. I dunno if they’re split-testing or what but sometimes I get IntenseDebate comments and others the regular platform.
IntenseDebate is intensely annoying and I’m not a fan of the threaded comments system for larger comment numbers so I haven’t commented there in a while.
I know that he does hold every comment in a moderation queue though so don’t be surprised if your first comment takes a while to show up.
Troy rarely censors as long as the comments are civil. One thing about Troy throughout his entire Zeek coverage is that he does allow the critics a voice on his blog, even if he always disagrees and doesn’t accept the critic’s logical reasoning.
Since the NMBJ article was brought up again…
Troy, of course was on better terms with Laggos then. But how to you possibly wave that paper with giddiness, and not disclose that it was an info ad written by Dawn, produced by and profited by Laggos, who was being paid as an affiliate, and consultant. Even if he did not know about the entitled 200, it was misleading . Even if he had not signed a NDA yet it was ethically questionable. Even an affiliate in my upline who at the time was taking $20kto $30k a weekly was sending out that article by this distinguished journal. When I brought up the Laggos connection, the defense was that “moms have always done that.”
Moms supposed to be mlms
Correspond a real income? Don’t you get that there was no real income? 98% of the profits shared were from new investors. Who wants to split the 2% that is real income with a million affiliates?
In other words, THERE WAS NO REAL INCOME. Just reference the articles here on behindMLM about how the penny auction site was really more of a liability than an asset.
Why in the same line of thinking, why didn’t the feds let Maydolf come up with a half a billion dollars or so in case someone wanted to pull out and change his compensation plan? Is this line of reasoning simple enough?
From SEC complaint
DisregardIng compliance and the RPP %, If he was simply making up a number, why would he not reduce the % some, add the qualifiers, before it got so close to the brink? The most logical reason is fear.
If he made too drastic of a move would create panic and 0% bid repurchase. All top earners should have been capped as this is where the compounder put them on the brink by July.
Why were they not capped? Logic points to pressure and greed by the minions at the very top.The implosion happened at the 200 club, and their immediate downline.
Because all of the top earners were insiders and members of the “founders club”. They had to have known it was a ponzi but just played along.
If he cut them off, they’d throw him to the wolves.
But… no one is paying Kevin Thompson to comment on Zeek post-shutdown. The conditions that “prevented” him from editorializing about Zeek BEFORE the collapse are the same AFTER the collapse:
– no one is paying him
– it is not pro-bono
– is not a self-advertisement (or if you think it is, it would have been one before the collapse as well)
If I could have been Gillhouse, when Troy said ” as a rep,” I would have responded,” as a rep, a monkey, a circus clown or ANY reason. Does Zeek pay you representing yourself. If not a rep, what do they give you money for to do?
And if Gillhouse were not such a wussbag, when Troy interrupted Dawn, Gillhouse should have said let Dawn speak for herself, and please use an answer without the word “burger”
AdSmartz just billed my credit card $9.95 which is slimy.. They are trying to sneak in one last payment on a Sunday at 5:30 AM Z-Customers simply shut down people’s account.
Background – Never posted in a forum like this but need to vent, Hope I posted this right.
I’m a former Zeek affiliate who should have known better…but I’m over it. Stupid…I’m over 60 years old, should have known better…but oh, well.
I’m writing because I cannot beleive the cult like behavior that exists in MLM’s. I’ve gotten emails from folks in my upline asking us to pray for Paul Burks and this morning, “Do you think Paul Burks should go to jail as well as face civil charges?” Well, here I go…
Oh, yes, Paul Burks is really a stand-up guy, isn’t he? Should he go to jail? Are you kidding? Read the SEC Complaint, specifically Paragraphs 40-45. He knew from the get-go what he was going to do here….he’s the mastermind behind it, manipulating daily profits, etc.
Ad Surf Daily is written all over this thing when you examine the principals, including top earners. I only hope the authorities intervened soon enough to find others to hold accountable for this crime.
Not only should Burks do time, but I can only hope that swift justice will come to the leaders of this company who were responsible for perpetrating this crime! Hey, maybe Dawn should start shopping for a shawl that has nice shades or orange to match her orange jumpsuit in the next year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It still irks me to think of that conference call I was on where she was scolding everyone for making so many phone calls…distracting them from running the company. Yeah, you mean your REAL business of finding banks to hide the money offshore!
Call my husband and me naïve but it is what it is. We are certainly old enough to have known better. But given we have a failing business on our hands due to the economy, we thought, “What the heck!” We will be fine, though, particularly in light of the fact that we may be getting some money back. If not, oh, well.
I just want to wash myself from the sleaze that I’ve been witnessing and move on. MLM folks are way different than we are used to in everyday life. We are farmers and deal with good, honest folk every day. May not be rich financially, but spiritually and morally, truly great people.
I guess there will always be folks drinking the Kool-Aid of the next company that’s out to bilk investors and sacrifice integrity in their cults. (Yes, Zeek, I’m calling it what is, an investment, despite your pathetic attempts at compliance to teach us otherwise.)
Instead of Kool-Aid, I will be satisfied with a tall drink of water in the fellowship of good, honest, hard-working folk with dirt under their nails. We have our priorities straight.
Hats Off to Behind MLM! All of your “Zeek Guru” critics are now Eating Crow.
For anyone looking into an MLM company – or into any type of “investment” program where you can put money in and “get paid without sponsoring anyone”, I highly recommend first consulting this excellent resource – where the facts are separated from the hype and laid on the table for all to see and evaluate for themselves.
What happened to Zeek’s Tax Expert Howard Kaplan? He couldn’t see Zeek was a Ponzi?
I wouldn’t hire him to keep the books on my kid’s lemonaid stand.
Oh come on dude, dont you know Dawn is rated the best MLM expert in the world?
Says it all about the industry as a whole IMHO.
Simply laughable, dear oh dear!
I see others are having trouble posting on Troy’s site. I tried to do a version of my post above because I know it’s visited a lot by Zeek affiliates…and THEY NEED TO WAKE UP AND SMELL THE ROSES! But I wasn’t able to post…keep getting all kids of error messages.
The site is down a lot. Is it usually hard to post there? I guess he’s just getting a lot of traffic. ????
There are some amazing people on here and we all owe you a huge round of applause for sticking to your guns and giving everyone a heads up.
I have a friend that is always chasing the next get rich quick sceme and he got into Zeek about a month ago. He’s been pitching it to me and others he knows as usual.
I’m not an experienced MLMer and don’t have the experience you guys have here but when I look at anything as a biz venture (especially MLM) I look for reasons “not” to do it. If it passes that test, I will “consider” it. Basic common sense approach and never with dollar signs in my eyes.
He said he went to the home office and that convinced him to join up after “fighting” it for a year. He went to the people that had the biggest reason to lie to get convinced. I went to a scam site. Go figure!!!
He pitched me for an hour and I listened so I could have a basic understanding to investigate the plan. It didn’t take long. I list what I saw.
1. The bidding. I looked at Zeekler and saw how the biding worked similar to other sites. My first thought was who in their right mind would at retail pitch in a dollar at a time at this? It’s like wadding up dollar bills and pitching them into the Grand Canyon.
I’m in sales and think like a customer. I would never waste a dollar at a time like this seeing how the bids jumped all the time. Totally fake concept for sure. Big red flag.
2. Bidding again. There were items selling at 3 to 5 times their retail. That did it for me. It had to be an auto-bidding process to spend the Ponzi “new dollars” in from new suckers. How could anybody not see this?
3. The Draw it out scheme. You are encouraged (or maybe have to) leave your money in for a while and even when you start drawing it out you ar told to keep most of it in to maximize your earnings potential.
This is a perfect setup to prolong a Ponzi for obvious reasons. Tell people how much is in the bank and if they leave it there it will in time maximize their earnings. Brilliant in plan, obvious in scheme.
4. This site. I put in “Zeek Scam” in Google and found this and other sites. End of story.
I have a close friend that is a high level accountant that was the first to pitch this to me. I am shocked he bit the bait because anyone with business savvy and common sense and a numbers mind would see this is a scam.
Just my thoughts. Thanks again to the great minds on this site.
I’ll prefer to watch that process from a distance, rather than close by. I can imagine that process going on for months, where someone gets involuntarily involved in the process. 🙂
Einstein’s philosophy:
“To solve a problem, you’ll need to involve other parts of the brain than the parts that created the problem in the first place.”
I’m not really sure it derives from Einstein. For me it derives from some selfdev book I read more than 20 years ago.
I will clearly prefer a faster method than the anger and denial –> depression –> bargain –> acceptance. I can seriously imagine the feeling of being involved in that process when I’m trying to post a “normal comment” there.
I have seen comments on here saying Zeek was not allowed to cash bank cks after July 6th, does anying know whether that is fact or fiction????
Mr. Dooley should seek good legal counsel at this point. I’m pretty sure they would advise him to keep his big mouth shut. Some of the things he has posted since Thursday may come back to bite him.
I want to say first of all you were right and I was wrong. I read the reviews here and listened to Troy Dooly and allowed his analysis “out weigh” the statements and reviews here.
I am not one of those poor affiliates who put everything they have in the company and will worry about paying my mortgage, putting food on my table, paying bills, etc. My heart goes out to them. They were the worst of the victims. I can recover even though the money lost is going to sting quite a bit.
I have learned that you should always listen to that inner voice when it comes to your money and investing your hard earned money for the promise of financial freedom. There were several times that “voice” tried to scream at me.
The first time was when Dawn posted on Zeek news that you had to put money into Nxpay so that it would have money to pay out.
I posted a comment to that stating I was confused, that we were not being paid by other affiliates money but through the profits of Zeek Rewards and Zeek Rewards was suppose to be sending the requested cash out to Nxpay and the affiliates that put money into Nxpay should be going to Zeek Rewards to purchase bids so why would we have to “load up” Nxpay with our money?
My comments were NEVER published nor any subsequent comments, they always were “awaiting moderation”. I think I was banned from any comments from there on out good or bad.
The second time was when someone, just a few weeks ago, got on the support site to report a problem and their title was something like fraud on zeekler. The complaint was there were several “people” on the penny auction site that were using several different usernames and bidding on numerous items but they were the same person and someone needed to check on that.
The post was up long enough for me to see it but was taken down within minutes because I thought I would go back into it and print it out, it was gone.
Like many others I think I wanted to believe too much that I could make money with this “opportunity” of a lifetime. If we had concerns we would ask our upline and was reassured everything was fine and he truly believed that as well.
I was one that also thought behindmlm was a hater and Troy knew more than they did, why did I believe this? I have no idea now. It was really stupid of me now that I look back on it.
I am thankful this company has not taken everything from me, I did keep my job which I love and am thankful to have and have a way to pay my bills, many do not have that option this morning and are very desperate and I have read many many comments from depressed affiliates.
I truly hurt for them and they do not need to hear you were stupid, I told you so, you should have known better. How does that help anything? It doesn’t, it only adds to their shame, disbelief, and depression. NOT ONE PERSON ON EARTH WANTS TO HEAR I TOLD YOU SO.
It takes a compassionate person to say, I am sorry this has happened to you, this is the fault of the company that deceived you and you can recover with some hard work.
Heartless people have gotten on websites, that are solely for the affiliates to support each other and discuss the events, and have posted cruel, mean comments, and poked fun at and have called the affiliates disgusting names. Why would such people get entertainment from that?
I even had one to tell me to get off Welfare and get a job. However, there have been compassionate people that have expressed sorrow for our situation and offered prayers. This type of event I suppose brings out all types, those that are gloating and those that are truly sympathetic.
Thank you for keeping us up to date, the only “news” we can get is from each other and there are still those affiliates who are holding on to anything they can hoping Zeek will come back and blaming the SEC for the mess. I hope they can finally see that the fault lies with Paul, Dawn, Alex, and all the other employees who worked at the head quarters and knew what was happening.
Regardless if this thing was sustainable for several more years, it was illegal! It could not have lasted forever and there were going to be more victims once Zeek went under and there would have been NO money for anyone to recover.
And the affiliates would never have known what happened as there was NO communication coming from the corporate office. We are LUCKY the SEC stepped in.
Anyway I humbly concede, you were right, I was wrong and I hate it, not because of pride but because financially I wish my head had not been in the sand.
Troy is still saying we dont really know what % of earnings came from affiliates…is this guy actually even trying to keep up with the facts?
Does he not know where to find or how to read SEC Civil Action?
@Jimmy WOW – I never did the math to that level nor would I have as the math I did do said this this was a scam. But wow – you really crystallized for everyone right there. TRILLIONAIRE (that is enlightening).
As for those of you that say nobody every warned you or you did due diligence but never found anything grossly negative. TAKE SOME RESPONSIBILITY!
The information was out there and the AG never advocated for this. You only read and heard what you wanted to hear.
As for Troy/OH/Keith Laggos – it is clear these people were not industry watchdogs or expert – they are noting more than paid spokespeople.
I know they are paid because I was there when they were handed checks or discussed their compensation.
If Britney Spears drinking Pepsi doesn’t make you want to drink Pepsi, then Troy Dooley drinking the Zeekler cool-aid should not have caused you to invest in it.
Now, since Troy holds himself out to be unbiased – you have to look at his motivations – he and his family are affiliates in many MLMs – he does not go after the ones he makes money from.
The trust the industry placed in him, Keith or OH needs to be dialed back and you all need to see them for what they are, celebrity spokespeople.
The SEC did the right thing – they investigated the company and once it was clear it was nothing more than a ponzi, they took emergency action to shut it down so that losses can be contained.
And yes, most people in this will be losers. They will get back some of their money and those that made money will probably be subject to clawbacks to make the distribution of receivership funds equitable.
@Rich
Rich, that is what I was told by someone in my upline – not sure how true it is but…………. worth a shot and the only way to find out is to call them or stop in and check it out.
Hopefully it is true – will help a few people anyway including me!!
I was told the banks know about this and are being helpful – BOA is one who is not quite as helpful and you have to say it was lost or stolen. Again, this is NOT GOSPEL – just what I have been told and thought it was worth passing on to anyone who joined after July 6!
Rich, that time frame I believe is correct…I was new then and wasn’t getting paid yet so it kind of went over my head, although it did seem odd.
It was odd, not because they were switching to third party payers but odd from the practical level. I mean if I wss going to close out a bank account, I wouldn’t do so until all of the checks I had written had cleared, give it another 30 to 60 days, and then do so. But I bought into the explanation that there would be less fraud if third payers were involved, ie STP, Payza, NxPay.
Made sense to me till I tried to get set up with them. Nightmarish! In fact, on my list of things to do is go in cancel all credit cards, NxPay, Solid Trust, Payza accounts and change the bank accounting that was associated with them.
Don’t trust these scum bags not to sell my identity for $5.
Also, I think I do need to clarify something…for those of you who are so quick to call those of us in Zeek stupid, etc., I own it. But I’m sure there are other people who are not as thick-skinned as me and in our defense, I will say that all of the people I know who are in it are not MLM’s.
Only one person in my upline that I know personally has been and he is a very reputable man, the reason we came into Zeek. I normally am cynical, believe it or not, but because I saw the money he was making I bought in.
You have to keep in mind all of the people I know, with few exceptions, are struggling business people who have no free time on our hands. I was working 40 to 50 hours a week, still am, at my biz…my husband works 70 hours a week.
The Zeek stuff is what I did at night, weekends….so I barely had time to keep balls in the air, sometimes posting my ads at the last minute. (Got my son and daughter into it, too, and was doing all of ours some nights).
So, none of the people I know are stupid…in fact, I’d like to see sone of the folks who sit around and do nothing but blog all day, accomplish what we do in a day.
We are all just plain old hard working, hoping that we were on the ground floor of like Amway. So, try not to judge. “Judge not lest ye be judged.”
Well said ZeekNoMore.
A lot of us work and just wanted a little bit more money to survive……. not greedy – just to be a bit comfortable in this lousy economy of ours!!
@Zeeknomore
With all due respect in any given week I put in 70-100 hours a week on my blogs. These things do not research, write, publish and moderate themselves.
I know a lot of people think running a blog is like having a Facebook account, but that’s simply not the case.
I might hold Dooly’s feet to the fire as part of my ongoing analysis and commentary on the Zeek issue, but when it comes to blogging I cut him slack with the blog over the last few days because I know the immense pressure anyone who blogs about Zeek over the past few days has been through.
BehindMLM alone has served over 250,000 visitors in the past 72 hours alone and even now my email server is still buggered (I think my server has temporary blocked emails originating from the blog due to too many coming in at once).
The gf has had it up to here these last few days with the time I’ve pumped into the blog but appreciated that this was simply something that had to be covered “for the records” in the years to come. As it stands I’ve had roughly 8 hours sleep in 3 days.
Mind you, I do what I do because it’s what I love doing and I have a passion for it, so I don’t expect any sympathy or what not and I’m certainly not complaining – but please don’t attempt to trivialise the running of a blog by portraying it as something so diminishingly easy.
On the plus side I’m going to sleep like a baby tonight now that things have died down! Next week is a new week and there’s always plenty of stuff happening in MLM to blog about!
Revisiting Troy’s Response:
This answer bothers me. He’s not saying he believes Zeek is a ponzi…he’s saying he believes the SEC believes zeek is a ponzi.
Very subtle, but I see right through it. He’s still trying to protect his image. Here’s a couple more deflections he made to me in an email:
Troy, you are still living in denial. We do know the math and we know the truth. You’re not going repair your credibility by going down this road.
Man up and say you f***ed up! Those 2 arguments above are rediculous!
Does anyone know what month in 2011 Zeekrewards started having affiliates? My upline tried selling me in August/September and I am trying to find out how close he is to the top. Thanks
Thank you “ALL” for taking some of your precious time to be concern for society. Gives me faith that there are still so many awesome people in this world.
Oz, Chang, Jimmy, e, Chris, and so many others deserve and award. My award to them is paying it forward. Love to meet you oneday. May god continue to give you strength, courage, and kindness.
Maybe you ought to get some sleep since you seemed to over react a bit to my comment. It wasn’t directed at anyone in particular and if you haven’t called anyone stupid, then the shoe doesn’t fit. I applaud and thank you for your hard work.
I in no way minimize your contribution…only wish I had found you before. But I didn’t know enough to know I didn’t know. My apologies if I offended anyone who truly contributes here.
It was my frustration and own defense mechanism at work to not stand by and make my point about the fact that we are not stupid…again, apologies…
I’m still waiting for another video from Troy Dooly about Zeek… Looks like the last one came out before it was called a ponzi and shut down… I see him answering comments… that’s about all.
Not Official but there may have been a sighting of Dawm in Ecuador hiding in a palm tree behind some coconuts counting her profits.
On another note I just cashed in all my zeek points on flippa to purchase both zeek sites. If I win the bid I may offer up to 3% daily profit.Wish me luck.
Here’s another Troy reply to one of his victims:
I’m not sure how you can stand by all the reporting you had done on Zeek? All of those victims stood by your reporting too.
I read in a report on Forbes I believe, zeek was making 5 mil a day…..off of what!? Definitely not affiliates?
I know they were shitty at taking those monthly fees too, I put in $10 in April and there has never been another payment taken out, also never sent them any bid money, after seeing that calculator I knew there was no way they could keep up…
23 mil in 2 years? Yeah right…lol!
Let me start by saying that this “Behind MLM” web site is a good as it gets. I’ve been coming to this site regularly for the past six months. This site is heads and shoulders above the MLM Watchdog web site and all other MLM news sites for industry advocacy and news reporting and investigating.
My hat is off to Oz and the work he does. Good job, Oz!
I’m reading all of these postings, and found it interesting to read that a few ANMP big wigs (like Troy Dooly) were being paid by Zeek. But it’s not surprising. Not surprising at all.
ANMP (Association of Network Marketing Professionals) is total B.S. Any network marketer who gives ANMP and it’s leaders any credibility is an idiot. Joining ANMP is a total waste of money. ANMP all smoke and mirrors, it’s all “buddy buddy” crap.
The ANMP is like a bunch of dogs all pissing on the same fire hydrant, then all saying how wonderful it smells.
For example, after the 2011 ANMP “convention” was held, some of the top ANMP people wrote that “if you didn’t attend [the convention] you were wrong”. Those same ANMP leaders wrote on their blogs and websites that “the top MLM leaders who attended the ANMP convention represented over 3 million distributors from around the world”.
So from reading the hype, one would think that the convention was a huge success.
It’s all a lie. The group photo of the event shows that only 62 people attended. And all of the other photos presented just validate the FACT that only 4-5 dozen people attended.
I even made a call to the company that filmed the event and they said it was less than 70 people attending. The guy who did most of the videoing said, “IT WAS BORING” and that he almost fell asleep many times.
Those same photos show that VERY FEW of the MLM industry’s true top earners did NOT attend the ANMP convention in 2011. In fact, by my count, at least 25 of the arrogant assholes who did attend the ANMP convention aren’t with any company at all.
The photos of the 2011 ANMP convention are very telling. Looks like a bunch of lounge lizards all getting together with their plastic and styrofoam sippy cups to slobber on each other and tell each other how great and wonderful they are.
Check out the photos and try not to laugh.
https://plus.google.com/photos/101833046541118763521/albums/5581363993827124529?banner=pwa
Any one want to bet that soon after I post this, that those photos of the 2011 ANMP convention are taken down????? Ha ha ha!!! I’m surprised that the photos were even put up, as the photos tell the truth about ANMP and it’s rinky-dink pathetic convention.
FURTHERMORE if the ANMP convention really was attended by those “top leaders” who represent “over 3 million distributors”, then logic dictates that those top leaders would have told their downlines to “check out the photos” of the convention. But the counters on the photos show that only 30-70 people have viewed those photos.
There should have been THOUSANDS of people viewing the photos if indeed the distributors attending represented over 3 million distributors.
So the point is that the 2011 ANMP convention was sparsely attended, and then afterwards some industry leaders flat out LIED about how big it was.
So to promote the 2012 ANMP convention, the same hype was used before and then after the convention. It was all lies and bull shit.
I would LOVE to see some photos of the 2012 ANMP convention, but haven’t found any. I’d bet a million dollars that those photos would show that only few people attended, just as in 2011.
I can’t wait for the false hype that will be used to try to get people to attend the 2013 ANMP convention. What a waste of time and money!!!
It all boils down to the fact that ANMP is just a bunch of cronies. Troy Dooley is one of them. And starting today and forever, don’t believe one damn word that comes out of Troy’s mouth. And don’t believe one thing that comes out of ANMP. All those assholes are in bed together, and that’s a fact.
Check out Dooly’s video to invite people to the 2012 ANMP gathering. It’s a joke, as is Dooly.
http://www.theanmp.org/anmp/index.html
Network marketers . . . you are on your own. Use your own good judgement and common sense. Just because a guy like Dooly puts up a web site and calls himself a “leader” and “advocate” and puts an American Flag behind him doesn’t mean he’s honest, wise, etc.
Avoid ANMP like the plague. It can’t do one damn thing for you to help you with your business.
There’s some honest and trustworthy leaders in the industry, and Dooly and his buddies at ANMP aren’t among them.
ANMP should fold right now. Just shut down. And Dooly should disappear and find some other industry to schmuck for a buck. That ANMP would have Dooly on its board tells you just how pathetic ANMP really is.
Think about it . . .
Out of curiosity, their seems to be a lot of victims outside of the U.S. Do U.S citizens or residents get priority over them in recovering losses?
I just found out about this Zeekler after it was shut down and reading everything, I am shocked that people could be fooled, but I know desperation and greed can blind people.
Oz and K Chang tag teamed on Zeek Rewards like in a world wrestling match …
ZW and Dooly swing for the fences. The crowd cheers. Oz and K Chang duck under Zeek and Dooly’s arms and double kick Zeek, while Dooly runs under the ropes and out of the ring to taunt ZW’s opponents.
Oz and K Chang beat the crap out of Zeek while Zeek extends a hand out to tag Dooly in. Dooly tags Zeek’s hand, jumps in the ring, and gets double leg kicked out of the ring again by Oz and K Chang.
The crowd roars.
Then out of Nowhere comes the SEC and Secret service from the dressing room to the loud screams of the fans.
K Chang runs behind and squats behind Zeek, Oz bounces off the ropes, runs across the ring and cracks Zeek with a flying double leg kick, the SEC and Secret Service each grab Zeeks legs and apply a painful figure-4 leg lock, as Dooly extends a hand for the tag back in.
It’s too late.
The ref counts Zeek out at 10 as Zeek bangs the canvas and screams for mercy.
It’s Over! And the crowd goes wild!
Beer, chairs, soda pop, cell phones, nuts and hot dogs fly into ring as a fight breaks out amongst the crowd.
Zeek must be escorted out of the ring for its own safety.
Briefly, Dooly is nowhere to be seen.
@Doug K
I belive victims outside the U.S. has the same rights as victims inside the U.S., but they will have to send in claims and documentation.
The reason why people could be fooled?
“Zeek didn’t FEEL like a scam. It felt real, like real money being paid to the backoffice each day, and where you could see your money grow from day to day”.
So it wasn’t easy to detect when you were right in the middle of it. It was easier to detect from the outside.
There’s STILL some people believing it was a real business, and that it will come back with some “minor changes” in the compensation plan. 🙂
Admittedly when I first posted a few hours ago (never usually do this but finding it good catharsis), I didn’t read Oz’s analysis or in fact didn’t even know who was running this forum. I just wanted to have my say and couldn’t get on Troy’s site so found this one.
Since I was corrected by Oz in an earlier comment that I kind of blew off blogging, I realized I needed to read/explore further. First of all, thank you, Oz, for what you are doing to try to make the world a better place!!!!
I’m blown away by your analysis of all the facts about Zeek in the last months. While I was in lala land posting ads to earn nonexistent RPP points, you were doing the story behind the story.
Thanks to the rest of you as well who have stuck to your guns, despite intense criticism. I have gone through a similar fight…different set of circumstances but I get it. I know the courage and conviction it takes.
So, you can count ZeekNoMore as an ally when you are speaking the truth.
I was reading some sites, and they seem to claim that people where never promised the VIP had any value, that their was no 1.5% return promised, and that they knew it could go to 0, and the points would earn nothing and be worth nothing.
Technically that’s true. I’m friends with the person who signed me in and he was honest about the fact that there were no guarantees. But we all knew it was an investment…that part was kind of implied “nod and wink” stuff.
Like who really reads the fine print of legal disclaimers? They’re everywhere. I mean, none of us would buy anything if we read all the fine print.
It was a risk..I was willing to take it. Thank GOD the only people who signed in under me were people I was totally honest with and knew it was what it was, no guarantees. We were on the ground floor of something big is what we thought.
Best and most Honest assessment!!!!!!!!!!!
There are some people still boasting about the Zeek in their emails and postings. Hope they will be compelled to spit the money out. Here is an example from an upline named …. to a down line named …. This is copied from that upline’s email as part of downline’s blog post. Here are the snippets:
Source: ibosocial.com/unclejohn/blog.aspx?blogid=127354
“Wordsmithing”. Someone probably believes people joined Zeek for the pure JOY of buying sample bids and give them away, and the income opportunity wasn’t important at all. 🙂
Zeek didn’t sell BIDS. They sold the dream of making money with little or no effort, with a plausible story connected to it, something people could believe in as a “money generator”.
It was a scam, with fake money paid to the backoffice each day, and very little real money to support it. And the real money they had came 98% from the affiliates themselves.
We’re not trying to make the world become a better place, getting rid of poverty around the world, solve national debt crisis nor discover intelligent life in the Universe. 🙂
We’re trying to deliver information, where parts of it derives from the users themselves, and deliver a platform for “sharing information”. (Or something like that, I’m not running this blog).
So usually it should be relatively boring to read, unless you’re looking for exactly that kind of information.
Since they knew the return could go to zero, and since their are no profits, then the returns are zero. So they lost nothing then. They got what they paid for worthless points.
So when do the SEC begin paying money to the innocents? What happens to the tax stuff now? No records, no nothing. No documentation. No 1099. Zeek is gone.
In the end, no one really got hurt from Zeek because SEC gonna pay everything back to the innocent anyways.
Too many people had blind faith in their upline…in Troy Dooly, in the Dollar…and were unwilling to be objective…
My faith is in Proverbs 24:19 – 21 Do not fret because of evil men or be envious of the wicked,for the evil man has no future hope, and the lamp of the wicked will be snuffed out.My son, fear thou the LORD and the king: and meddle not with them that are given to change.
What is their to pay back, apparently these people knowing bought worthless points. They don’t deserve anything back, they got what they deserved.
The executive staff of Zeek, those top earners who turned a blind eye, Keith Laggos, Troy Dooly and Peter Mingels are, in my opinion, a disgrace to those of us who build legitimate MLM businesses.
What is really sickening is that the latter 3, all well-respected in the MLM world (although maybe not anymore), led many sheep-les into Zeek because of their endorsement of this Ponzi pretending to be a legitimate MLM.
These guys are not that stupid and we (at least some of us!) are not stupid enough to believe that they didn’t know fully well what they were doing. GREED!
Oz, I am grateful I found your site shortly after being introduced to Zeek about 9 months ago. My red flags were up when I looked the first time and after finding BehindMLM, I told everyone who approached me about Zeek (and there were at least 20) about this site and that I believed Zeek was a Ponzi.
Frankly no one wanted to hear what I had to say. Some said they didn’t care- they were going to make a bunch of money while they could. Others said I didn’t understand this new business model.
Having had over a decade full time with legitimate MLM companies and pretty astute at identifying good companies, that didn’t even factor in to their decisions to move forward with Zeek. GREED!
One guy I know made over $40,000 with Zeek (I saw his back office) and he moved over to another up and coming penny auction where he told me you could make even more money (he got started there at $25,000 or so he said).
I asked him if he was concerned about this other company being a Ponzi- he said no- the company was not based in the US and by the time the Feds figured it out, he would have made a boatload and be long gone. GREED!
I am not normally a vindictive kind of person but I sincerely hope that all of these people will have their ill-gotten gains taken away by clawbacks from the gov’t and that criminal charges will be filed if deserved!
The gov is going to need the money- there’s going to be a lot of man-hours and big bucks invested in sorting out the potential claims from over one million affiliates. We the US taxpayers got screwed on this deal!
But now he can criticize something that’s over and done with. Tail-end charlie, cleaner-up after the fact and all that. 😉
There’s only 225 mil in RVG’s accounts with 1 million members. You do the math.
And Feds have all of Zeek’s computers. So they know exactly how much money you really put in. Not the fake points.
That’s great Smart, but I thought we kept religion out of these discussions, if you need to quote verses from your specific holy book then do that at your church as not everyone shares your specific beliefs.
Zeek Rewards forum was FULL of people spouting off about their christian religion and intertwining it with Zeek , look how that turned out. I saw many people thanking Jesus for Zeek, and how the christian god was guiding Zeek, what happened and why didn’t Jesus warn you that you were in a ponzi?
Posted on Troys newest article….
1. Why did you not see anything out of the norm, when so many critics did?
2.RVG failed the howey test badly, has your mind changed on this yet?
3. RVG is not a legit business, have you changed your mind on this yet?
4. The SEC would disagree, do you still feel this way?
5.RVG was operating well outside the norm, do you believe that now that the SEC shut them down?
6. Have you said ” I am sorry” to everyone for cheerleading RVG for so long now that is has been proven a ponzi/pyramid?
Correct. Once you started, you can’t stop. You can only keep going. There’s the analogy of riding a wild bronco. You either hold on for dear life and see how far it takes you, or get tossed off.
The amount of money they spent on “compliance” dressing, on bringing that “new staff” and all those window dressing cost money. All those IT issues and stuff cost money. If they reduce the RPP people will go 0% repurchase (i.e. cause a “run”) and it’ll be over even faster.
He’s hoping his pivot and more cult-indoctrination talk will bring in enough revenue so he can gradually reduce the RPP to a more… sustainable level. Unfortunately for him, the Feds knows about his books probably better than he does.
Darrell, you have absolutely the right to YOUR beliefs..as they did to theirs…but my point is they put blind faith not in religion but cult like group whose focus was money.
And the reason for my quote is thats what I believe in…so when people come with promises of riches from Zeek Rewards, I just say ‘Oh well, and good luck.”
Envy is what drives most MLM…folks try to get you envious of them to join their group…Envy is never a good sign religious or not…
You forgot the time I got tossed out of the ring (my hub knocked off the net for a week with a sneak attack from one of their “consultants”). 😀
First, of all, thanks to oz and k.chang, I did not got into what my friends were trying me into. Now, few points….
1. I think it is much bigger than 600 million, the reason, they have 275 million and have paid out 375 million, that comes alone to 600 million. They are running this operation since January 2011, where all costs including, bribing to marketers, advt, legal fees, payroll, 3rd party comp etc gone. One of my friend said it is over a billion.
2. Sec has only charge the co and paul for civil liability, what about the criminal charges surely this was a fraud looking to the law suit filed.
3. How come Troy and others are still not taken on by sec.
4. Why Sec waited this long? To me,,,These departments are headed by people who are not smart enough. When I first read through this website a month back, it took me about an hour to read everything and found at least 100 proofs or evidences to start the investigation.
If million people could be approached and fooled and sec and other authorities were unaware? I am also bleming AG of NC, who should be sacked and investigated for not doing his job.
5. I believe, everyone who got paid wil be liable for civil case, as they got money from some one else. For example, if you got 20,000 for your investment of 5000, you should be defendent for $20,000 and will be plaintif for $5000, where you will be in que for getting the % payout of the outcome.
OZ…..K.Chang….please give your input on these points.
I thank this site for saving me.
Pretty much why I asked him straight up, but I didnt get a straight answer.
If any money is refunded, my hope is the SEC will give $ back only to those who had not requested cash and not to those who had already earned a boatload.
I guess Paul Burk’s “stellar reputation” was less important to him than fleecing his customers.
As far as I know, restitution has no “priority”, but all business must be conducted in English. We’ll know more when the restitution program comes online.
I am confused if the RRP is set to 0, then no money can be taken out right? Since a 0 RRP means their are no earnings from the points, and therefore nothing to cash out.
Is there a list of the 200 insiders? I want to steer clear of anything they promote in the future and make sure they are not welcome in the company I represent.
I am definitely steering clear of anything the people named associated with Zeek represent or promote.
On another note, what happens to the money that was deposited by Zeek into NxPay (one of Zeek’s on again off again eWallet) but NxPay not honoring that money by allowing the members to withdraw?
Will the SEC be clawing that money back from NxPay? Can NxPay run away with it?
The “caveat emptor” fallacy.
http://amlmskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/07/bad-argument-caveat-emptor-disclaimer.html
Then you can expect LAWSUITS. 😉
I asked him a straight question, expecting a straight answer. He will not say zeek was a ponzi
Doubt they can keep it. It legally belongs to Zeek/RVG. eWallet folks are keeping the money as hedges against chargebacks.
Now that there’s no more chargebacks (nobody’s paying Zeek now!) The receiver will be withdrawing the money to a US bank soon. It may take a week or two.
He wasn’t hired to advise members on legality of Zeek. He was hired as a tax celebrity to offer some carefully worded vague advice on how to prep taxes.
If you pay enough you can hire anybody.
In the pre-Internet days, Bob Eubanks was hired to do an ad for a 1-900 singles hotline. He thought he’s doing a regular TV infomercial, and he pocketed like $15000 for a couple hours.
He never realized the people who hired him used that video to pitch the idea to investors to put in money, something he never agreed to. The stuff failed.
http://amlmskeptic.blogspot.com/2012/07/bad-argument-association-with-authority.html
@K Chang and @DrK – I believe having read the SEC documents that that should be an asset of Rex Ventures and subject to the receivership.
Therefore, the receiver will put that money into the rest of the funds he accumulates and once all the money is accounted for distribute it fairly among the victims.
On another note, I just left a comment for Troy. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t know Zeek was a ponzi as he may not have been privy to the financials or overheard any mentions from Dawn or Paul that monies for payouts came from new subscriber monies.
I said I’d be available to speak with him if he wanted the truth from someone who was there, heard it and saw Dan make payouts that seemed suspicious.
I hope he takes me up on the offer. I hate to think he truly knew this.
@smart
I would consider blind faith in anything to be a bad thing.
So I am not sure what “blind” faith is but it is not something I would think would be a good thing. Anytime you are making a life changing decision about finances, religion etc. I would think you would want it to be supported by proof and evidence.
NC AG fbook site, STILL being posted on by zeekhead cultists….
Living in denial….pathetic minds at work…
Troy Dooly is a silly and not-so-bright fellow who has been shlepping in the MLM industry, passing himself off as some “expert”, while making a few bucks here and there. If he didn’t know Zeek is a ponzi, then he’s a fool and an idiot. Of course he knew, but with Zeek putting money in his pocket, he sure wasn’t going to say anything.
Watching Dooly speak is comical. He’s not good at what he does, and it’s always amazed me how much credibility people have given him.
Since MLM is all about “word of mouth marketing”, then every one should mouth these words: “Troy Dooly is not to be trusted. Ever.”
It would be great for the industry if Dooly left and went elsewhere to try and make a buck. I suggest he get into the fish bait industry, as it’s a slimey and stinky business where he’d fit in well.
Another good thing for the industry would be for the Association of Network Marketing Professionals to shut down. It’s a do-nothing group of ego-driven ass-wipes who all think their shit don’t stink.
So many of these MLM experts are nothing of the sort. They are NOT experts. And they do NOT know everything. And so many of them, while claiming to be “honest” and “religious” folks, are as crooked as they come.
Again to Oz . . . keep up the great work. As you’ve continually exhibited throughout this site, you are to be trusted.
Comment on Troy’s responses.
I personally don’t think it’s evasion, but attempt in his mind to work out the conflict between what he believed (Zeek is fine), vs. the reality (Zeek is scam). He’s at the “bargain” stage of 5 stages of grief/loss. However, you can bounce between phases before hitting “acceptance”.
Playing amateur psychoanalyst again… I think his somewhat evasive response to “Do you believe Zeek is a Ponzi”, the “According SEC complaint”, is an indication that he no longer knows what to believe. It’s a phenomenon called “cognitive dissonance”.
http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/f/dissonance.htm
If he’s still in denial, he’d have replied “SEC is wrong.” I think he moved past it already. He’s probably more angry at himself and he’s trying to bargain with himself.
He probably *thought* he came clean before, and he thought he’s free of bias, but he’s still biased, he just didn’t see it. AND he was hoodwinked, if he didn’t know about “founder’s club”.
In other words, he was a “judas goat” too, and a REALLY brightly-painted one.
YES… I would love to see a list of the Top 200 posted somewhere. People need to keep in mind that those involved in Zeek only fall into a few categories… Crooks, greedy opportunists who didn’t care who they hurt and innocent, but NAIVE people who had no “business sense.”
I’m sure no one would consider any of them a credible “visionary,” “thought leader” or whatever the buzzword of the day is. People should know who they are so as to know who they should NOT be blindly following.
Don’t get me wrong… many, I’m sure, are kind hearted people who had good intentions…. but you know which road is paved with THOSE.
I don’t think such a list is available anywhere, but I’m pretty sure the ex-ASD folks, like Disner and Gilmond and Napier and so on would be on the list.
Perfectly said Pat. 100% agreed!
The latest interaction on Troy’s blog…
gen3enz1 asked Troy:
Troy replied:
Troy seems to ignore the part about the 1.5% daily compound profit rate being simply made up. Ignore the 800-lb gorilla in the room. “No, that is not an elephant.”
Unbelievable. Well, not really based on Troy’s denials to date.
I personally see four types, from worst to least:
1) Head scammers: Burks and company (Darryl Douglas and probably Dawn Wright-Olivares, who helped him come up with this compounding plan)
We knew this is wrong, but we’ll take it as long as it can run, and make MILLIONS in the process
2) Shills: first-tier, founder’s club, top affiliates
We knew this is a fake, we didn’t start it, but we’re willing to go along for the ride and make a bundle
3) Judas Goats: second tier
We don’t know this is fake, but we believe our upline (shills) and we’re making money
4) Sheep: bottom rung
We don’t know this is fake, we believe our upline and put in our own money, but we’ve yet to make any
@gen3benz…I hope that all those petitioning the SEC and NC AG saying that “they don’t believe Zeek was a scam and please let them operate”…I hope those people that signed that petition don’t get one red cent paid back to them!
Them taking that money would make them hypocrites.
If Troy did not know about Founders Club, then he did not know. He apparently was not privy to substantial inside council or numbers to make him qualified to defend Zeek as he did. Unless he of course was shown cooked numbers.
If he did not know about the club then in actuality he was at the minimum mislead by Paul regarding that issue along.
No need for that. He appears to have already accepted taking money from Zeek. Moreover, he had even stopped Dawn the then COO from answering a simple question, in the name of compliance, which would have revealed it’s ponziness to all, even the biggest of the zeeksters.
Furthermore, he has claimed to have the access to the money flow, customer:affiliate ratio (wasn’t it he who floated the infamous 25:1 ratio), and all the other internal workings.
There is also an amazing story to tell about the behind-the-scenes SEO efforts. One of my brethren in the SEO wars against Zeek had posted about it yesterday but I think it was spam blocked due to the anonymous proxy he was using.
I will see if I can re-post the story…
TROY…”Why Does the Network Marketing Community Shoot Our Wounded?”
Answer: Because they’re not “our wounded”. They are the “wounded” from the ponzi world and not a network marketing company as we’ve been telling you for almost a year.
I’m not shooting credible networkers, I’m shooting naive, greedy, ponzi participants that are all guilty of ripping people off.
The 200 Founders have to fall into the first two categories … probably the first.
I think it’s possible as my brother in law and I sent checks shortly after that date. After being with zeek only a month we both called our banks to see if we could stop payment on our checks.
They were able to stop the payment because the checks were never cashed by zeek. So my advice to those out there looking to get money back specifically for those that joined recently. Call your bank an see if they can put a stop payment on the check. It’s a cashiers check so u have to call the bank.
We bank with Navy federal and they stop the check immediately, the funds were back in our accounts instantly.
How can you still see a legit business with 2% supposed auction sales. The auctions were apparently not even functional. I’m questioning even how the 2% was derived.
If the Return Rate was set to ZERO, could people actually pull any money out, or cash the points in?
I pulled mine out, the payments were usually late though.
From Troy Dooly:
I have no prior experience in this other than the info I have found here (thanks btw), but don’t the actual numbers disclosed by the SEC PROVE it is a Ponzi (the percentage of $ being from affiliates, the amount in/out, the outstanding points balance exceeding by light years what could actually be paid out).
Court ruling is irrelevant, correct? Those numbers mean it IS a ponzi — the same as if there were a high resolution video of someone, face and all, walking to a store, breaking the window and walking out with stolen goods.
The court may find whatever they find because of technicalities, or however all this works, but do these numbers not make it a FACT that it is a ponzi, regardless of any legal happenings/rulings?
If that is the case, you can say noone has convicted them of being a ponzi but there is undeniable proof that they were in fact running one.
Is this the deal?
More garbage! The few affiliates who spent bids on auctions spent very few because the auctions had terrible product and basically did not work.
They struggled to get paid or even to pay, do you think many really paid $45 for a $25 Subway gift card!
Troy is the Queen of Egypt:
You know what, Troy? No court of law has “proven” OJ committed murder either. Troy Dooly = Johnnie Cochran.
Also curious that if Troy found it was right to apologize to Randy Schroeder who warned his team that Zeek was a Ponzi… why hasn’t he apologized to “the critics” who were warning the WORLD that Zeek was a Ponzi?
Yes, but there is one other big factor, the daily profit share that was completely invented!
In other words:
1. If the bids were being used it would be personal volume.
2. And then profit had to be paid on actual revenue from the bids.
Troy is focusing on #1 for his “personal volume” and “bonus pool” tests while conveniently ignoring #2 which is that it was all a scam from the get go.
Yes!
Can someone explain how cashing out the points work with the 90 days expiration?
If you purchase 10,000 points, after 45 days can you cash out those 10,000 points for $10,000? After 91 days I assume you can’t and you lose all of those 10,000 points?
Well, maybe Troy will be called into court as an “expert” witness to testify as to how Zeek isn’t a ponzi.
Wow – I commented on Troys blog and he immediately said I should watch what I say because I would be criminally liable for being a part of the ponzi.
Hmmm…I never wrote code for Zeekler’s applications only did their graphics and helped with marketing efforts until I saw suspicious behaviors. Then I quit, then I reported what I knew to both the NC AG and to OZ.
Oh right, and I never was an affiliate, invested money or made money from Zeek. I’m hard pressed to how I would liable for anything other than actually trying to let people know what I saw and suspected.
The only money I ever received from Zeekler was under $10K for design and marketing services rendered between 2010 and May 2012.
I am more than happy to be forthright with anyone about what I saw and what I know and I do not consider it insider information as I was not insider – I was literally just a tech consultant.
The server guys from Miami were also there for that meeting. Are they insiders too? As soon as I suspected something fishy I went to people I thought were unbiased and they all proved to be very biased – they said I had no proof, all I had were suspicions and it could be sour grapes.
It’s like you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Note: “not my experience”.
Sure he can. Unless he also becomes a defendant.
Do Not trust anything Troy Dooley says, he’s already led enough people off a cliff. Take notes of everything you have done and know, and leave it at that. Y
ou could NOT be held criminally liable unless you were actively involved in deceiving…designers and coders are simply contractors.
They could manage to pay for 5-7 days.
The math:
3 billion VIP points * 1.5% = 45 million per day
$225 million in banks / 45 million = 6 days
@SOURCE – Troy doesn’t know what he’s talking about here. Trust me, I have a legal background. You aren’t liable for anything.
Furthermore, if the Feds contact you at all, it will be to testify for the prosecution. Usually, contractors and support staff simply sign affidavits and the prosecution uses that as part of the “weight of the evidence” and rarely are support staff asked to testify unless they were the only eye witness to a critical piece of informtaion.
And if anything, you saved more people from joining this fraud by the nature of asking questions and Zeek management blackballing you.
Think about it, if Zeek had actually taken your advice, and they made the back office, UI, and web design changes, just think how many more victims they would have sucked in with the slickness of the site? The fact that they ignored you and left it ugly looking means fewer victims. A bit of a twisted view. 🙂
But if they set it to 0% Then 3 Billion VIP Points = $0 per day, and after 90 days the 3 Billion Points go to 0 Points, and they are still around.
The way the system works, you CANNOT cash out points at all. You bought bids, and those “points” act as shares to profits. 1.5% would give you, say, $150 for 10000 points. You then choose how much of that $150 you give back to Zeek by “repurchase of bids”. Say, you repurchase 80%, or $120, then you now have $30 in your “cash” account at Zeek, and 10120 points. If you repurchase 100 percent, then you have 10150 points. If you do 100% cashout, then you keep 10000 points, but you get $150 in Zeek’s cash account you can request withdrawal later.
If you repurchase 100%, then your point balance would build up quickly, but no money would leave the system. Points have 90 day expiration, so on day 91, 10000 points just go “poof”.
Yes, the critics know exactly how the system works.
Well you can never draw out the original amount. The original amount is good for 90 days to draw your daily interst on. So if you invested 10,000, then on day 2 you would have 150.00 based on 1.5% for that day that you could sweep to your e-wallet if you didnt want to reinvest it.
Day 3 you wold have another 150.00 if the daily rpp was 1.5% and so on.
Most people kept reinvesting the daily profits and compounding them. Yes the original 10,000 would drop off on day 91 but if you had reinvested you would still have approx. 20,000 left on day 91.
Probably didn’t explain it very well but I am not high enough on kool-aid to explain it properly.
In that case, I’d suggest contacting the SEC investigators immediately and offer to testify for the prosecution. 🙂
@Jimmy
Once I read the damning word “arbitrary” in the complaint, all other arguments have no merit. Endgame. Illegal
He does know it’s illegal unless he actually believes the SEC is incorrect about an arbitrary reurn. No way he will answer this with his controversial relationship in the middle of an investigation.
Troy is probably speaking for himself, not you. In other words, that is why he is not admitting anything, because he could be held liable in lawsuits for leading people into this thing, so he is making sure not to admit anything publicly.
Will someone please clue Troy in to the fact that this was never about penny auctions and that Zeek’s penny auctions were merely a cover story for the massive ponzi investment scheme?
Nobody ever questioned whether penny auctions were legal or not (though it appeared there were lots of shady practices in the Zeekler auctions with bid inflation and possible bots bidding). This always had to do with the pyramid/ponzi scheme behind Zeek Rewards.
@K Chang – I contacted the NC AG, the SEC never contacted me. I don’t have nay information they do not already have.
I was nothing more than a consultant. I never was an affiliate, nor did I make money as an affiliate. i was clearly paid for services rendered on a contract basis.
The AG was aware of me as they were of the many other people who complained. I am sure if I had info they needed, the SEC would have contacted me. And they are still able to.
I would be more than happy to testify for the prosecution if they ever called me but the fact Troy acts as though I could in some way be responsible for the ponzi is outrageous and laughable.
As if someone (a contractor) noticing something suspicious and reporting it is proof in and of itself that they were involved is exactly the reason why most whistleblowers do not come forward.
It really just shows exactly what type of people you are dealing with here. These are people not interested in truth but rather only interested in perpetuating the “truth” they helped create and the “truth” that protects their own interests. Very sad.
There was no UPSIDE for me in telling what I knew yet I did it anyway. I did it because it was what I thought was right. And I am completely open to anyone from here or the SEC or the AG to contact. I’m not hiding. If they need me they will call me.
So if they lowered the return to 0.5% a day which they could, then after another 91 days your account would only have around 11000 points left, and after another 91 days it would only have 6500 left.
So what I am understanding from all this is that there was never any global bidding happening on actual retail goods generating a significant portion of money to Zeek’s accounts?
Chang is right…and I have the same question as Troy, you knew about this crap and said nothing to the authorities?!
Straight from Troy Dooly….
It is kinda of funny. Oz reported the FBI locked the office. The reality is it was Greg Caldwell wearing his Florida Association of Private Investigators (FAPI)shirt with the badge on it.
Did anyone ever question how complex their math was? That should have been at least one of the tip offs this was fishy.
I mean, I have a Harvard degree and I was always baffled by the math. I can’t tell you how many times I questioned if I must be stupid that I couldn’t follow their math or I was stupid for not investing.
I guess in the end, it came down to common sense. None of the sense in this enterprise was common at all.
@Iktomni Luta – please read my comments, I did, as soon as I suspected contact the NC AG. They have my info. Of course when I had suspicions went to 2 top leaders in Zeek, then to NC AG then to Oz.
So, if the SEC needs me, I am available and they know where to contact me. I did all that I thought was necessary.
Back in May, it never occurred to me this was an SEC issue so I only contacted the NC AG, but if the SEC contacts me I can certainly provide them with what I suspected, why I suspected and whom I suspected.
Source, I have just now read your thread of posts. You are very brave indeed. Thank you for doing the right thing. I’m unclear as to whether you have officially contacted the SEC, FBI or whoever else is involved in the investigation but if you are willing to do that, no doubt it would helpful to make a case.
It would seem to me that you should be careful about making details public as far as names and specific examples of wrongdoing for several reasons. First, the prosecutors don’t want the Defendants to know all about their case until discovery has to be made.
Second, if these people are as diabolical as they appear to be, you may want to consider some of them may try to retaliate in some way. I’m not trying to scare you but this is big stuff. Just watch your back.
If indeed this proves to be the biggest Ponzi to date as published in some news articles, then you can be sure publicity is only beginning. It won’t be swept under the rug like some of the smaller ones. It’s thanks to whistle blowers like you that many people are spared further hurt. Thank you!
When you waved the NMBJ article without disclosing who Laggos was, and that Dawn wrote that article, You WERE NOT BALANCED. You compromised your values, Sir.
If you have convinced yourself that this was fair to unaware viewers, you again prove why the mlm culture is about as credible as a “grimy” Grit magazine tossed by the suckered newsboys.
When I was a kid I rode a bus from East Tennessee to St. Louis for an AL Williams convention. They were throwing T shirts and singing the Flintstones like a much of goons. I may as well been riding a bus to watch a televangelist in a white suit, or headed to Waco, or Tom Cruise’s house.
I was only in 6th grade and I saw through the siiliness. Most of those giddy and mostly redneck people went back to their mundane lives within a few days and never made money in insurance. MLM was vastly tabloid then; it is now.
By the way, Troy. Wear a damn tie to court.
@zeekNoMore Thank you. I did contact the NC AG, but will reach out to the contacts listed for the SEC on Monday to make sure they have my statement as well.
I’m not sure how much more I can offer them in that Paul already took a deal but I can provide them with whatever they think would be useful.
I also want to state that I have had the chance to converse w Troy on his blog and I actually have come to believe he was taken in by Dawn and Paul but not a knowing participant in the fraud.
He may just be a loyal kind of guy that believed in these people like the rest of the members did.
So, regardless of if he was compensated or not, he probably did not know they were using new subscriber/subscribers monies to pay old subscribers/investors.
When I was there – there was so much I saw that was suspicious that it was hard to separate the ponzi from other illegalities.
I knew they were lying to affiliates about where money from payouts came from but I can’t say I connected that with it being a ponzi.
And they were lying to the affiliates about so many other things too that it was really hard to pinpoint what kind of fraud they were committing – I just knew there was fraud.
@doug
I am not sure your understanding the comp plan. Basically at 1.4% compounded daily ROI you will double your money every 90 days EVEN with the 90 day point expiration.
Even at 0.5% per day which is 182% a year, and then figure in compounding on top of that, that also would have been completely unsustainable.
Biggest ponzi in what way? Geographically, demographically, mlm?
Madoff scheme was around 64 billion. Zeek 600 million.
Madoff estimated actual losses $18 billion. Estimated losses in Zeek?
0.5% per day would collapse the program because when you add in 90 day points expiration, everyone’s points would move towards zero and no new investors would invest.
The sad truth is even with 3 billion outstanding VIP points, at 0.50% and 100% cash out, Zeek would be on the hook for $237M in payouts after 30 days, and eventually $748M in total cash outs if left to expire.
So all of those Zeek supporters who think you can just lower the RPP rate and everything would be just fine, Zeek couldn’t even support a drop to 0.5%.
If Paul Burks was “honestly” calculating the daily RPP, it would have dropped below 1.1% long ago and the Ponzi scheme would have collapsed long ago. He had no choice but to maintain an artificially high 1.5% rate to keep new investors pouring money in.
All of Troy Dooly’s analysis on the RPP is irrelevant when he refuses to recognize what the critics have called out from DAY ONE – that there is no possible way the RPP daily rate of 1.5% can be ANYTHING BUT A FRAUD.
Zeek takes the crown as largest number of victims at 1 million.
Estimated losses in Zeek is about 375 mil, I think.
i did, it was a timing issue
My primary computer crashed so I don’t have my special spreadsheet, but 0.5% is not enough to offset the expiration of points, so either they get rid of 90 day expiration, or peole would optimize the plan so they get money out before 90 day expiration is up.
It ain’t sustainable either.
Is there any tie that would not clash with his t-shirts?
And the American flag is not to be used as clothing.
My math was wrong above. I based it on buying in with $3 billion, need to account for point expiration on day 2 since these are existing points for the most part are not in their first 90 day window. Will recalculate.
@Chang
Zeek gets the sucker crown. Zeek may end up being a reference for logic and reason debate for many years, as much as it will be for business and schemes discussion.
And the Leaves that are Green Turn to Brown…MLM penny auctions
(An Open Letter to BehindMLM.com from Jeff Babener)
© Jeff Babener
Oz, MlmLegal.com, congratulations to BehindMLM.com on your investigatory skills and continuing analysis on MLM penny auction programs.
For a non U.S attorney, you have demonstrated keen insight into issues of Ponzi, Pyramid and Securities. We have represented leading direct sellng companies for more than 25 years, and we recognize “your journey”.
Apart from some potential lottery issues, can a MLM penny auction service be properly marketed through MLM/Network Marketing? Yes.
However, the revenue stream for payment of commissions should derive from bid sales to real retail customers, who in turn use the bids.
On the other hand, a program fueled by reps, who pay $10,000 for so called sample or giveaway bids, and recruit other reps to do the same, from which the commission pool is paid, is really not the marketing of a service… Rather it is payment into a pyramid scheme.
Ponzi and Pyramid schemes are, by case law recognition, viewed as unregistered passive investment securities offerings that carry deserved civil and criminal penalties for active promoters, whether they are company organizers or merely conflicted cheerleader media publishers with financial interests.
Such schemes really have nothing to do with Network Marketing, Mlm or Direct Selling. Hiding behind terms of legitimacy is a great disservice to a global direct selling industry that markets in excess of $150 billion in real products and services through 90 million plus direct sellers.
Such programs taint the recruiting environment and siphon finance and talent from “real” direct selling companies.
In an era when NY Stock Exhange companies, such as Herbalife and NuSkin, face short seller challenges in explaining the legitimate Network Marketing model, scams and schemes that parade as Nework Marketing merely confuse global markets as to the legality of legitimate Network Marketing companies.
Hiding such schemes behind terms like “freedom”, “entrepreneurial spirit”, “the American dream” or “free market capitalism” is an unfortunate high jacking of a truly major indigenous American business marketing model.
Unfortunately, too many MLM penny auction models may fit the illegitimacy tests:
1. Pyramid: Large upfront cash investments by distributors, who realistically pay for the right to recruit others to do the same….with a hope and prayer to make money off the subsequent recruits.
2. Ponzi: Payment of promised investment rewards to old investors with money from new investors.
3. Securities: Inducing passive investments with the expectation of return arising from the managerial efforts of the promoter or third parties. In addition, pyramids and Ponzi schemes, by definition, are also securities.
You have a story to tell to corporate owners of existing and startup companies. On behalf of MLMLegal.com, we invite you, at our expense, to speak at our next national conference in Las Vegas, October 25, 26, 2012, “Starting and Running the Successful MLM Company”.
It is the 61st such national conference sponsored by our law firm, Babener & Associates. Please let us know. Over the years we have started many global companies, including U.S. operations for Nikken, Usana, Melaleuca, Amazon Herbs, and advised major companies such as Avon, NuSkin, etc. Many such companies have started at this conference.
We will follow up with a more detailed analysis of MLM penny auctions at mlmlegal.com
Jeff Babener,
Babener & Associates
I wonder how much Dr. Keith Laggos knew what was going on? He certainly said alot on his call several weeks back.
I wonder why people haven’t given him hell as well. I think people who were is Zeek should be furious with the man.
Source, we study MLM, so it was very easy to spot Zeek as a ponzi. My first clue was their product (penny auction), I was ask to study it and it was clear that it was a joke.
It meant money was not produce by their auction. It meant the company was supported by its affiliates. So Troy as a MLM expert had no excuse for not seen it.
Source, I do appreciate your comments, except do not excuse Troy, because he is guilty. Troy for defending Zeek, put down the MLM industry. He was not taken by Dawn and Paul, the koolaid was not so strong, unless they put some tequila on it-).
He was question by us on this website. My opinion, he should step down from the MLM industry.
?!?!
What choo talkin bout Willis?
He’s talking about his assumptions again.
He’s assuming that the ‘database of customers’ is worth something. I seriously doubt it’s worth anything as it’s far more likely that everybody just dumped bids on fake “customers”.
Wonder if ZCustomers is gonna get a subpoena? 😉 After all, they have a lot of $$$ arrangements with Zeek.
Madoff was in the investment industry. Zeek claimed to be in the MLM industry. This is about Zeek taking advantage of the little people. You can’t compare both of them. One hurts the investment industry and Zeek hurts the MLM industry.
This is about the leaders in the MLM that blindly sponsored people into Zeek. I blame any leader that got involve in Zeek, because of them, Zeek took advantage. The MLM is about people caring for other people, and that start with the LEADER.
I took a look at Zeek. My conclusion was that I would not invite my family or friends, then it was not worth my time or reputation.
According to Troy, if Dawn “let’s say” gets charged Monday, she will likely make the SEC prove its case in trial.
Any kind of restitution would be delayed even further. It is difficult to conceive how several will avoid criminal charges by one or more entities.
@Abelyn I can appreciate that. I do not know the MLM industry at all. Never been in one. I was just trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
I can say the math always looked fishy to me but it wasn’t until I was at Dawn’s house I actually suspected something fraudulent.
Personally, I run my own non MLM business on the side of ethical caution. As a non MLM person I saw something very suspect so as an MLM expert, I would expect anyone holding themselves out as such would have been concerned.
I am sincerely hopeful that some of the people involved really did not know. Clearly, Paul and Dawn knew. Dan kicked off the payouts so he must have known and Alex lives in that house with dawn so he had to have known.
The math alone should have told anyone on the outside it was impossible. I have no skin in this game – I was never a cheerleader or an affiliate and I am no longer a contractor so I have no place in excusing anyone but I do sincerely hope that some of these people did not knowingly invite new affiliates in knowing it was a scam.
Either way, they have all had their reputations, expertise and overall ethics impugned. And while that may not bring comfort to those that lost money, I hope it prompts them to do the right thing from now on.
@Abelyn
You can compare them. Both had suckers. Both had fake investments.
This is more about individual responsibity than MLM.
@Source
Do yourself a favor and do not use the term ” skin in this game.” This legitimizes the fact you Unfortunately had to work around those crooks, and that you must be credible source! 🙂
Just got an email with this headline from Troy Dooly: “Breaking MLM Penny Auction News: Zeek Rewards aka Rex Venture Inc Opening In Europe”
@MB got it – I only meant that I had no money invested in the MLM because I know nothing about MLMs. I never invested (and believe me they tried to get me to) because it never made sense to me.
I didn’t mean in the way it could have been interpreted. Sorry. I only meant I had nothing to gain or lose from exposing any of it. I hope that clarified my choice of words.
And I honestly had no idea there was anything amiss from the time I started as a contractor in October until I was in her home in May 2012.
I mean, as a tech/marketing contractor how often d you question your client’s business practices or models?
I’ve never worked with any other company that I even looked sideways at their practices.
@Source
Just teasing you
Oh Oz, if you are trying to catch up on your sleep, wake up and bring some vomit clean up dust, because I just hurled on my computer
I wonder if the “Zeek opening in Europe” thing is more “Zeek is coming back stronger than ever” wishful thinking from the true believers.
I thought Paul Burks relinquished all ownership of Zeek to the SEC, assuming that the SEC seized all assets. I would think that it’s way too early for anyone involved in Zeek to contemplate restarting the ponzi.
I also don’t know what the laws against ponzi schemes are in different European countries, but I would assume that authorities there would be smart enough to know about a ponzi scheme shut down in the U.S. and would be keeping a very close eye on the same business if it tried to relocate there.
Troy, this is absolute bullshit. You know everything I have typed was referring to the ponzi comp plan, just keep spinning.
You’re right there is no intelligent conversation with you. No need to post on his dumpy site anymore. Troy if you read this you’re a punk and I hope you’re happy with drawing people into a ponzi.
Hmmm… thinking about this more- where did Troy Dooly get that Breaking News info from? Anonymous phone call, note on his door, email, Fed Ex delivery…? Couldn’t have been Fed Ex or the PO- they don’t deliver on Sundays! LOL
Is he trying to be the hero here and save the Sheep-les this time around, so he looks like a good guy? Hmmm….
I am going to speculate ahead of time that some knucklehead, nobody substantial or credible, posted, even planted this goofy information somewhere, and it gave Troy a chance to posture that he’s with the government and for the people by golly!
This is so ridiculous. It’s not even worth discussion, but it is entertaining. He really must be feeling the heat.
I agree with MB. I think someone is just yanking the chain of the Zeekers, either just playing with them by giving them false hope, or possibly to run an actual scam by getting Zeek victims to give them money.
At any rate, I’m sure it’s totally bogus because it says “We have paid the Fines and Penalties and We are shutting down Business for a few days and shifting our Main Office to Europe.”
I’m sure we can all see that the SEC isn’t just going to let Paul Burks pay a $4 million fine and let anyone with Zeek just go back to business as usual, albeit in another country.
Yes, Troy, this may indeed just be a rumor. If I were Troy right now, I would simply apologize that I called it wrong, and announce I’m taking a break for a few weeks, and just shut up.
Frankly, I can’t find any reference to Zeek reopening in Europe anywhere but Troy’s site, and another site which just references Troy’s site as the source. So I don’t know where he got this information, but again it’s hardly credible and probably really not worth commenting on.
I’m surprised Troy even bothered to put that bull**** on his blog without additional verification.
Given that the amount of BS he had been fed in the past year, he’s… I dunno. He’s digging a hole for himself to China.
So what will the clawbacks mean for those members who made a profit. Will they be obligated to pay every penny back? Do they go after the heavy hitters first?
I read a previous post..sorry if wrong but I believe it was K. Chang….. I know that is in the receivers hands just wondering the receiver determines who pays what.
BTW I was a member duped in zeek. I had made a profit….albeit a tiny won….and I am embarrassed of that fact. I humbly confess the errors of my ways.
I look forward to heeding all of your advice on this site in the future. Wish I listened sooner…
@notgreedy
From what I understand the SEC don’t handle the criminal side of things. The Secret Service and NC AG and supposedly one other federal agency are still investigating Zeek, so we’ll have to follow what happens there to see if any criminal charges are filed.
It’s one thing to analyse a business model and conclusively determine it’s a Ponzi scheme. Agencies are firstly reactive in nature and then once they start investigating have to start collecting evidence to back what they find.
It’s not like the SEC can just file a complaint in court alleging anything and everything, if they wan’t to convince a judge they need to be able to back it with facts grounded in evidence. This takes time to collect.
Thanks for the encouragement but please never blindly trust what’s written here. I always publish why I come to various conclusions in analysis and that’s so people can absorb and think on it themselves.
Often this leads to an expansion of understanding and analysis and we truly get to the bottom of things, othertimes it leads to corrections as something might have been misunderstood (and I don’t mean in the “but Zeek is not an investment because compliance said so” type way), which then needs to be corrected.
Never put your trust in anyone, always evaluate what they’re saying for yourself (everything published here is usually verifiable unless I’m using a protected source, but that usually won’t be analytical information in itself). Trust without verification is what got a lot of people into this mess in the first place, all they had to do was dig a little deeper.
I knocked that one back, not because I don’t sincerely appreciate the effort but because I’m not entirely sure I understood the methods details that were used (I’m not privvy to the specifics of what was being done, which is probably a good thing).
Google are pretty strict on a lot of their stuff and I wouldn’t want to risk being seen as endorsing anything as a site that I shouldn’t be. They’re a bit grey on what exactly they consider “manipulating search engine results” but they’re very clear that they don’t tolerate it.
Again, I’m not suggesting that any manipulation was done (SEO doesn’t mean blanket manipulation) but given I myself wasn’t familiar with alot of the terms described and that SEO is out of my field of interest, I thought it best not to take any chances.
Pretty much. Zeekler’s wild success was all bullshit. 2% of the daily ROI paid out to affiliates was non-affiliate money (FSC, shopping daisy (lol) and retail bids purchased with non-affiliate money…).
Troy Dooly is at least FUNNY. 🙂
1. Look at the picture:
http://www.the-dispatch.com/article/20120817/NEWS/308179988&tc=email_newsletter?p=1&tc=pg&tc=ar
2. Compare to Troy’s statements:
He forgot to mention the gun, but other than that it can of course be Gregory Caldwell signing up some new affiliates outside Zeek’s HQ, as a last attempt to get some money in before next payday. That story is highly believable. 🙂
If zeek tried to relocate it would be in Russia.
Has anyone listened to the Tom Chenault Show today? You should hear Troy. I can’t believe he is still in denial. He said he thinks the SEC’s numbers are wrong…GEEZ!
I really believe he is trying to protect himself since he lied so much. I think Troy new exactly what was going on.
http://www.gcnlive.com/mediaPlayers/odPlayer.php?program=tomChenault
If Troy was on Zeek’s payroll, is it possible that he could be brought on any type of charges?
Is there anyone with IT, web-design, database skills that could come up with a website that lists the principals of ponzis, ponzis acting Like MLMs, HYIPs acting like MLMS, and the founding circle, such as the founding 200 of Zeek…
Companies like ZeekRewards, Ad Surf Daily, PlexPay, Megaplex, Bidify, Bids that Give, Juugo and names like Paul Burk, Dawn, Are Vinje, Thomas ‘Andy’ Bowdoin, Keith Loggos, and psuedonyms such as Strosdeqoz, Manolo, Dirson Eduardo Jimenez Santana… preferably ones already convicted or proven…. unlike where I just mentioned ones likely to be proven?
Troy, if you were not a flat out conspirator, and were duped, then apologize you called it wrong by waving the NMBJ, and for all the defense you made while under a NDA and supposedly with access to inside data.
Then go hug your wife, forgive yourself, and go on a break for a few weeks. We are all only human, but don’t dig your hole deeper,Sir.
You really believe that? Come on.
I feel Troy Dooley has lost credibility in the MLM world and rightfuly so.I think he was not honest with the public. Did he get paid by Zeek to lie.?
First off, I was a member of Zeek and a Zeek supporter.
Not anymore. I was wrong.
I never was in big and didn’t get anyone else in big, but tried to help everyone I could.
The main problem, in my opinion, is not being discussed enough:
The SEC alleges that Paul Burkes arbitrarily determined the RPP award percentage everyday. It wasn’t based on 50% of incoming revenue as stated, or anything else for that matter. It was simply MADE UP.
Had it been run correctly, each and every VIP Point in the system (be it from bids purchased with external funds or those repurchased) should have been backed up by a real dollar.
However, the SEC states that with over 3 Billion VIP Points in the system, the company only had $225 million remaining. Even if you assume the company took no profit, Paul was knowingly paying out 13X what the revenue supported each and every day.
I believe the compensation plan itself was fine. Sure, we could argue that more outside revenue should have been generated (the SEC stated just 10% came from Zeekler), and that’s a valid discussion. However, that doesn’t change the fact that it was doomed from the start simply because Paul faked the RPP numbers.
Not running the business as your compensation plan states, and which your legal team and compliance officers have signed off on, and purposely putting the business into an inescapable deficit should be considered criminal. It is primarily his fault, not the compensation plan’s, that so many people are now out of money.
Also, by paying out 13X what the revenue would have allowed, it is nearly impossible that they’ll have enough money to cover everyone’s refunds.
Sad for what could have, and should have, been a great program.
John : I agree with you Mr Dooley knew better and should have known better.He is no longer a credible person.
Oz and others here thank you. I found this on Reddit from a Zeek Rewards affiliate, this absolutely shocked me:
Read it and tell me what you guys think:
reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/yhagt/iama_dishonest_person_part_of_a_600_million/
I think paul burks should go in jail, for someone who is 65 years, he should enjoy his senior life instead of scamming people, now he can relax his life in jail.
I hope he looses everything. According to the court file, he needs to make sworn statement on all his business assets and personal assests, also lists all of his former/present employees, accountant, attorney, consultant in 10 days.
The court also requires him to make sworn statement on his accounting book and his income tax returns from 2010 to 2012. For sure, he will go to the jail.
Since zeekler’s daily average actual revenue is 5 million, the government should continue let zeekler run till all of harmed investors get their initial investment back.
@John
Dooly signed a Non Disclosure Agreement with Paul Burks. Yes, Dooly has admitted to being compensated, but we do not know how much he was paid, nor exactly what he was paid for.
Troy makes no sense. Seriously, Troy Dooly has gone over the deep end even AFTER the SEC laid out all of its findings for the emergency civil action.
– Troy is still banging his head against the gray area of “unique bid auctions with compensation plans.” Troy can’t separate the issue of internal consumption from FAKED PONZI INVESTMENT RETURNS.
A penny auction that pays commissions based on actual sales (whether the bids are used or not) would not fall under an unregistered security nor a Ponzi. It could have some pyramid ramifications based on % of external revenue. Troy can’t separate these two fundamental issues.
– Troy has never adequately addressed the issue of insider knowledge and its conflict of interest. He’s given some lip service to it saying that insiders should wait until all data is disclosed to the affiliates before acting, but left it at that.
This should have been an issue he called out form day 1. Dawn, Alex, Dan, Darryl all know what the revenue and payouts are, and can maximize their return at the expense of others.
– Troy won’t acknowledge that the RPP was 100% faked. That one issue alone, regardless of any other revenue streams or ratios or compliance training, is all the government needs to convict multiple Zeek execs of fraud. The only question is if the other execs other than Paul Burks have any plausible deniability or not.
The RPP and Ponzi rate of investment was what we called out here from day 1. That’s the only issue you need to focus on. Everything else is just secondary.
Interesting! When I first posted the link about Troy’s Breaking News and Zeek’s European expansion (HAH), there were 8 comments in response to Troy on MLMHelpDesk.com – 5 were negative towards Troy.
Those negative comments are now all gone.
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