payment processors @ BehindMLM

Following the regulatory shutdown of Liberty Reserve in May, 2013, co-founder Vladmir Kats was the first executive to enter a guilty plea. In November, 2013, Kats plead guilty to “money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business”. Commenting on the plea at the time, Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman and U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara [Continue reading…]

In what I believe is the first case of a payment processor founder being criminally charged since I started BehindMLM, Arthur Budovsky Belanchuk, founder of Liberty Reserve, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

This one’s a bit messy, so bear with me. Following on from our February article “How Payza & friends are screwing Zeek Rewards investors“, efforts to recover funds from Zeek Reward’s shady banking operations continue. Our players in this story are: Payza – a payment processor synonymous with the MLM underbelly Payment World – a Hong [Continue reading…]

Yesterday BehindMLM reported on a court order directing Payza, Payment World and VictoriaBank to return $13.1 million dollars in funds stolen through Zeek Rewards. Today the Zeek Receiver’s filed accompanying Memorandum has also been unsealed, shedding light on the games the three entities have been playing over the past three years.

The ongoing battle between the Zeek Rewards Receiver and Payza looks set to heat up, with the filing of a contempt motion on February 12th. The motion requests the court order Payza, Payment World and VictoriaBank turn over stolen Ponzi funds, or in the alternative they be found in contempt.

Back in May 2015, a joint-operation between US, Spanish and Costa Rican authorities saw Liberty Reserve shut down for money laundering. At the time, Liberty Reserve was the payment processor of choice for much of the MLM underbelly. Providing a platform for relatively anonymous money laundering, Liberty Reserve was also widely popular with criminals outside [Continue reading…]

In Zeek Rewards’ heyday, NxPay (NxSystems) was the ewallet of choice by the company. Content to turn a blind eye to the hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud taking place through its processor systems, NxPay was instrumental in Zeek’s ongoing business operations. In acknowledgement of this, the court-appointed Receiver filed a clawback lawsuit against [Continue reading…]

This is going a while back, but last we checked in the Department of Homeland Security had seized Payza funds deposited with Ultralight FS (dba Obopay Inc). The US Department of Homeland Security has seized all MH Pillars dba Payza money on deposit with UltraLight FS. Additional information will be published as we receive it. How [Continue reading…]

It’s a common enough belief in the MLM underbelly that hiding offshore is protection enough. You’re off in your little hidey-hole, there’s no way known US regulators are going to come after you… right?

Yesterday saw Argent Global Network issue a rather strange communication to their affiliates. In it, the company claimed they had been requested information from their payment processor since November 2014, with information only recently having been provided to them. AGN also claimed that, due to legal reasons, they were “unable to further expand” on the [Continue reading…]