Zeek Rewards net-winner clawbacks to be sold to debt collectors
Despite launching some six years ago, net-winners who illegally profited in the Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme are still being pursued for the money they stole.
With determinations of who owes what finalized and a court ruling certifying the amounts legally binding, on December 20th the Receiver shared how the Receivership intends to enforce recovery.
According to the Receiver,
absent further settlements with the net winners with whom we have not yet settled, we will soon seek to sell the judgments against them to debt collection firms or engage such firms on a contingency basis.
Through debt collection agencies, the headache of five years of litigation for Zeek’s top scammers looks set to continue.
On a positive note for Zeek’s victims, the Receiver also advises that the goal is to ‘bring the Receivership to an end in 2018‘.
Noting that nothing is guaranteed, the Receiver plans to make a final claim distribution payment before wrapping the Receivership up.
It is expected this final payment will bring the amount recovered for most Zeek Rewards victims to approximately 80% of losses.
So basically they will get a judgment and the funds will never be recovered from members such as T LeMont Silver who fled the country?
Erik, as much as we do not like it there are going to be many who made a lot of money in Zeek who are going to walk away with their gains.
To me the message that this whole process sends is if you profit from a scam like Zeek, ignore everything legal that comes your way. You ignore long enough and it will go away.
Fleeing the country is also a good idea but that really is nothing new under the sun as crooks have been fleeing the country for a long time.
To me the best thing in all of this is that the receiver was able to return back a lot of money from those of us stupid enough to get into Zeek. That was a huge surprise to me as I do not think that happens a lot in these scams.
I have been wondering why some of the people who I knew who made a lot of money in Zeek have played dumb with me when I asked what was going on. Their approach has been ignore everything.
And now they will have debt collectors after them and they will ignore them too. However there will be some scared by the debt collectors who pay all or partial of what they owe.
Actually the net winners who did not settle with the Receiver will regret it. A debt collector is paid on how much money they can recover. They are notorious for not giving up on collecting.
Some have to learn the hard way, and I hope the debt collector makes them pay through the nose.
Remember these people and all their claims at how much they cared for you when they were taking your money. They didn’t care about you when they were told they had to give it back so you could be taken care of. They are liars, every one of them.
Never fall for their lies again, or follow them into anything. Ponzi’s are all they know, and if you follow them the same thing will happen to you that it did in Zeek.
Lynndel, it is true that debt collectors can be persistent. Of course this will depend on the amount.
Very large amounts might invle solicitor letters. But in UK at least, a person can ignore a debt collector and the debt is just bought by another debt collecting agency. They can huff and puff then refer people to a country court.
Even then, if bailiffs are sent, they cannnot forcibly gain entry unless the person allows them. In the end these are civil and not criminal debts.
John, Debt collectors don’t pay for something they can’t collect. They would go out of business otherwise. The amount they paid for these debts was the minimum they know they can collect. Otherwise they would go out of business if they were never able to collect. It just covers their expenses, not profit. It’s the extra they collect that gives them their profit margin.
And yes it is different in every country, but a debt collector would not take on that debt if they didn’t believe they could recover the cost they paid to do the collection.
I haven’t taken a look to see which debts the Receiver turned over to the debt collectors, but I do know the debt collectors would not have taken them if they didn’t believe they could collect at least what they paid to acquire the debt to collect.
There are probably some winners debts that were not turned over or a debt collector was unwilling to take. I don’t think there were that many.
If I am not mistaken, once a debt collector has assumed a legal debt owed by a party, the debt collector has the authority to file a lien against assets to assist them in collecting the debt owed.
Lynndel, thanks for your comment.
My comments were based on UK and how things work here.
I do know of one 250k winner who paid up after getting a solicitor letter.
However much smaller civil debts would be uncollectable from anyone stubborn enough not to pay. Debt collectors have very little authority here to do anything other than send threatening letters.
The exceptions in debt is with various things such as tax or local council tax where enforcement can be heightened. But these are treated differently and can lead to prison.
John, Thanks for your explanation of how things work in the UK.
By the Receiver selling these debts to a collection agency, he now has the money to return to the victims that he didn’t have to spend a lengthy court battle to obtain.
The fact that the victims will be getting close to 85% of their loss back is amazing.
Not quite. When a debt collector pays 10p in the pound for a debt of £10,000 it doesn’t mean they know they can collect at least £1,000. It means they think there’s a 10% chance of recovering the lot, and that if they buy ten such debts, on average they’ll break even. (Of course, in reality they need to include a margin to make a profit, I’m just keeping it simple.)
Nine debtors ignore it or flee to Dubai or declare bankruptcy, one pays up because they’re scared or they have a sudden attack of conscience, that means the debt collector gets paid. In the majority of cases, John’s description is accurate.
But this is of course irrelevant to those who are being compensated with the money gained from selling the debts – it’s the debt collector’s problem.
Tracy Davison who made over a million dollars with Zeek is hiding in the Philippines but we know he is there.
We have proof on that and some major evidence to show anyone interested, we do not know who to contact so they can follow up? Anyone know who we can contact?
He is on his 4th scam now called “The billion dollar coin” thousands are loosing on this coin that is completely useless and in the minds of the members.
It is worth over 1.3 million per coin, but there is no money, no mining, just a calculator on a website and some mind-bending info on their blog about the coin saving the poor from the Cabal. He is using all kinds of tactics to steal from the poor.
Is there any clear evidence it is Tracy Davison behind The Billion Coin? There are rumors but no one has yet had any proof it is him as far as I know.
Another shoe could drop against the major winners that did not settle. If my memory serves me correctly there were two class action civil lawsuits that were filed in the Zeek case, but the judge delayed them until after the Receiver had finished his job.
So it will be interesting to see if the filings proceed or they are dropped.
Uk, as for Tracy Davidson, I’m afraid it is too late for any action to be taken against him. Hopefully the authorities will get him on his next Ponzi de Jour and we all know he will be in another one, and from the sounds of it he already is.
The entity most likely to be interested is the debt collector who bought Davison’s debts.
If you’ve worked out where he is I’d say it’s very probable the debt collector already knows. They are after all professionals at this stuff.
Anyway, the fact that Davison is in the Philippines was posted on BehindMLM in 2014.
I was a net winner, that had NO idea of what a Ponzi scheme was. I was a simple person that got sucked into investing in this program and merely did what was asked of me.
I invested 7,000 dollars, then to test the system, I took out 7,000 dollars. My account was at 484,000. But was believing the best about it and hoping it was real.
Then the shoe dropped, I lost what I thought was a future, and then in the end, they came after me and took 20K out of my small savings account 12 years after the fact, while I am dying from heart disease.
So for those thinking that the “winners: were evil, how wrong you are. Most of us small winners are just as much a victim as you claim to be.
Cawley and Bergmann robbed my account with NO notice, and I pray that they get what they deserve in the end. They said papers said I owed 20K, but there is NO physical evidence to prove or show that. They took the money anyway.
…you knew Zeek Rewards was a Ponzi scheme but “hoped” otherwise because money.
Sorry about your heart disease but you “got what you deserved in the end”.