On February 22nd Baltazar Avalos filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against BitConnect.

In the lawsuit Avalos sought to hold defendants BitConnect, Joshua Jeppesen, Glenn Arcaro, Trevon Brown (aka Trevon James), Ryan Hildreth, Craig Grant, Nicholas Trovato (aka CryptoNick) and Ryan Maasen liable for $110,000 in losses.

On March 14th Avalos informed the Californian Northern District Court he was voluntarily dismissing the case. [Continue reading…]

Hot on the heels of North Carolina authorities going after Frank Edward Calabro Jr., another regulatory lawsuit against serial promoters of scams has emerged.

On February 16th the FTC filed suit against Thomas Dluca, Louis Gatto, Eric Pinkston and Scott Chandler.

According to the FTC, Dluca, Gatto, Pinkston and Chandler have violated the FTC Act by ‘advertising, marketing, and promotion of purported money-making schemes‘. [Continue reading…]

Provided details of New Tycoon Plus’ management are sketchy.

Founders cited on the New Tycoon Plus website include Richard Tan (Chairman), Michael Burnett (CEO), Veronica Tan (General Manager) and Patrick Liew (Adviser).

The same names appear as founders on the Success Life website.

Success Life claim to be based out of Singapore and are gearing up to launch a pointless “Success Tokens” ICO next month.

New Tycoon Plus marketing material claims the company is

a fully owned Subsidiary of Success Resources Global Media as Listed on ASX.

Why a Singapore company is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange is unclear.

The actual company name appears to be “Success Global Media”, who are indeed listed on ASX.

There is of course nothing about New Tycoon Plus as part of Success Global Media’s ASX listing.

On their website, Success Global Media claim to be ‘one of the leading global providers of educational resources‘.

Success Global Media provide a corporate address in Singapore on their website, suggesting the company has no actual physical presence in Australia.

Things get even more murky when you consider New Tycoon Plus refers to itself as a “Hong Kong limited company” in its Terms and Conditions.

At the end of New Tycoon Plus’ provided “privacy policy”, there’s a support email address on the “newtycoon.com” domain.

A visit to this domain reveals a marketing page for Success Resources “live seminars and workshops”.

There’s an MLM business opportunity attached to selling these seminars and workshops to a recruited downline.

The Alexa traffic ranking for the New Tycoon website suggests it’s a failed venture.

As far as I can tell Richard Tan is an actual person, although no information about him is provided on the New Tycoon Plus website, ditto the SuccessLife website.

According to promotional material, Tan has recently been speaking at free “Cryptocurrency investor summit” events held around the world.

New Tycoon Plus appears to be Tan’s second MLM venture behind the failed New Tycoon attempt.

Read on for a full review of the New Tycoon Plus MLM opportunity. [Continue reading…]

Ride the Litecoin provide no information on their website about who owns or runs the business.

The Ride the Litecoin website domain (“ridethelitecoin.tech”) was privately registered on September 28th, 2017.

Marketing material for Ride the Litecoin appears on the official BitFundZA YouTube channel:

Conversely marketing material for BitFundZA appears on Ride the Litecoin social media profiles:

This suggests that whoever ran BitFundZA also has a hand in running Ride the Litecoin.

BitFundZA was a matrix-based gifting scheme that launched around October, 2017.

By December, 2017, BitFundZA went into decline and began to collapse.

As evidenced by promotional material for Privilege Car Club also appearing on Ride the Litecoin social media accounts, whoever is running the company appears to be involved in multiple scams.

Analysis of BitFundZA revealed the scheme was likely being run out of India.

As with the BitFundZA website, India is also by far the largest source of traffic to the Ride the Litecoin website (97%).

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money. [Continue reading…]

Charles Scoville has filed a second Traffic Monsoon appeal which, unless I’m missing something, seems to be completely pointless.

Granted the first appeal is widely seen as just an attempt to delay the inevitable, it’s still valid in the sense a defendant can exhaust all defenses available.

This second appeal doesn’t seem to serve any purpose. [Continue reading…]

On March 6th the Power Mining Pool Ponzi scheme was issued a securities fraud cease and desist by North Carolina.

On March 7th the Power Mining Pool website went down.

Here’s the explanation given to Power Mining Pool investors at the time;

We are updating our server to a much faster and powerful server and is taking longer than we expected, so please be patient with us. Thanks.

Nine days later and the Power Mining Pool website is still down. [Continue reading…]

HBM Corporation provide no information on their website about who owns or runs the business.

Marketing videos on the HBM Corporation website depict the opening of a company office in Kiev, Ukraine.

None of the individuals featured in the video are named on the HBM Corporation website.

In the “about” section of their website, HBM Corporation provide an incorporation certificate for “Higher Business Management LTD”.

Higher Business Management LTD was incorporated in the UK on October 3rd, 2017.

Michael McKinney is listed as the sole Director of the company.

No information is available tying McKinney to HBM Corporation outside of the incorporation, casting doubt on whether he actually exists.

UK incorporation is dirt cheap and for the most part unregulated. It is a favorite for scammers looking to incorporate dodgy companies.

For all intents and purposes HBM Corporation is being operated out of the Ukraine by person(s) unknown.

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money. [Continue reading…]

One of the larger channels still promoting ICO lending Ponzi schemes on YouTube is “Team US Crypto Baller”.

Starting out with BitConnect, as many did, since the Ponzi scheme’s collapse the Team US Crypto Baller channel has been used to promote numerous ICO lending Ponzis, most of which have since collapsed.

It was recently revealed that the owner of the Team US Crypto Baller channel is Francesco Dilullo. [Continue reading…]

According to recent court filings, Monat Global are blaming critics for 1000 order cancellations over the past two months. [Continue reading…]

After receiving a securities fraud cease and desist last Sunday, Genesis Mining has finally issued a public response.

Being the responsible company that they are, Genesis Mining have announced they’ll register their securities offering with the SEC and operate legally in the US.

…

Nah, this is crypto baby. [Continue reading…]