Autosurf industry

After looking at a few autosurf forums I'm struck by the level of protection of certain views fostered by the different administrators. When the words “ponzi” or “pyramid”are used they are quickly deleted and or vehemently shouted down.
With this sort of legitimization over and over on so called “how to” sites, I see this industry really taking off. At least until the 08 elections.

I'm amazed at all the “let it ride” talk that goes on, and the underlaying notion that profits are somehow less valuable than induction money. Members are just giddy at the prospects of making millions. Many people want to quite their jobs and just live on their 2 – 3% profits per day. There is borrowing from credit cards and family members going on to finance themselves to live the dream and acquire bragging rights.

Some real opportunity here for those who have at least a little common sense.

 

after all of the prep, the due diligence, the whois work, the surf monitor scanning, the emails to admins, reading the forums, and the NetIBA checks, who woulda thunk it would be an unscrupulous pay processor that would drop the hammer and rape everyone out of this opportunity? unbelievable.

that's why i always used to say.. never leave a dime in StormPay 'cuz you just never know. i hope you managed to sweep your money into your bank account, and was zeroed out before the apocalypse.

 

Yeah, I didn't consider the pay processor taking the thunder away from the Government. Jeez, what a great move by SP, surprised everybody.

I employed a 50% sweep of total returns strategy, and as my month end day was set to the 9th, (3 days!) I left 40% of initial deposit in the program(s). SP got $5.37 from me as some sort of a charge back.

PS. Believe it or not, I didn't trust e-gold

 

the way i saw it, since the ACH's were free, and i was committed to using my credit cards for every upgrade, i figured i might as well sweep every single payment. i knew i'd save 3% by leaving it in StormPay, but i didn't feel it was worth the risk.

when humbla posted that letter from StormPay threatening everyone who filed chargebacks, alotta people were emailing me telling me they were no longer using their VISA's to upgrade. i tried to talk them out of it, but they were spooked about losing their StormPay accounts. they also wanted to save the 3% by upgrading with their balances. it turned out they all ended up taking the major shaft.

the government getting involved doesn't really bother me. they're not gonna stop anything. since i haven't been surfing this past week, i've gotten back into online poker. Party Poker's been illegal for years now, but there's nothing the government can do about it since it's offshore. the World Sports Exchange has been illegal for 10 years now, and Jay Cohen even went to jail over it when he came home from Antigua, but they, and and internet betting is still going strong.

with the amount of money this surf and HYIP industry is pumping out, they'll all just set up shop offshore. i'm already over $20,000 in profit, so i'll just take a small piece and ride it out when we're back up and running.

 

StormPay suspended my account too after my chargebacks too. I haven't been following the controversy. What exactly happened? And what did this Girsky guy do?

 

Like I was saying... too sleazy for me.

"StormPay is commonly used by Autosurfing websites, Paid To Read sites and HYIPs. On January 31, 2006, StormPay declared that it would not allow itself to be used on any site which also offered another payment solution, such as Paypal or e-gold. The justification of this move was to prevent the transfer of funds between payment processors, which would increase the likelihood and untraceability of fraudulent money. However, this move was also seen by some as the first step in establishing a monopoly over its niche market.

As a result, many autosurf websites elected to remove other payment options, while others elected to remove StormPay.

By February 2, 2006, StormPay had suspended or frozen numerous StormPay accounts, especially those used by the administrators of Autosurf sites. As of that date, there has been no formal announcements from StormPay about this, but emails sent to StormPay questioning what the issue might be, are responded to with (what appears to be) a pre-generated response:

"Unfortunately, we are unable to process any further transactions on behalf of the merchant. StormPay Inc. certainly understands your concerns regarding this situation. However, the funds of this merchant were frozen by an outside organization pending further investigation. To protect the integrity of the investigation we are unable to release any details at this time. Once the funds are released, StormPay will release the funds to claimant(s) for disbursement."

On February 5, 2006, StormPay posted an announcement on their website stating that they had closed the accounts of what appear to be some major ponzi schemes, because of results of investigations into those businesses by outside investigational organizations as well as our own internal investigations. As a result, possible victims of these businesses had conducted DDOS attacks against them leading to the recent downtime of their service.

Nevertheless, the popular autosurf 12DailyPro.com has announced plans to send a lawsuit against StormPay. Sentiment against StormPay remains hostile.

For much of the period of February 8-10, 2006 Stormpay website (www.stormpay.com) remains unavailable."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormpay

 

I recommended this blog back in the dearly departed, unfairly deleted thread.

While it's true that I want absolutely no part of the ponzi game, this blog writer does play hyip's. He's into what we druggies call- "harm reduction".

Anyways, this guy is good. He strongly recommended bailing on stormpay, back when you could get your money out. If you still want to play the game, you've got to read the blog:

http://netmoneyblog.com/archives/date/2006/02/

 

in a nutshell, it basically went like this..

12daily Pro was using e-gold and StormPay successfully for several months. StormPay was safe, but e-gold, for the most part, wasn't. being that they allowed their users to open, and fund accounts with absolutely no identification whatsoever, it became the processor of choice for child pornographers, money-launderers, and other nefarious ne'er-do-well geek hackers.

what these hackers started doing was they'd set up anonymous e-gold accounts, and dispatch keyloggers and other phishing progs into non-savvy computer user's systems.. allowing them to fish out their login info and passkey phrases. then, using that information, they'd log into the e-gold account, scrub them clean of the money, and send it over to THEIR anonymous account.

or, what they'd do is, an ex-admin from a defunct surf, who kept his password file, would load that file into Access Diver, and brute force his way into other surfs in which the non-savvy user used the same login email and password that they did for their GCI-Surf account. while negotiating his way around the 12daily account, he'd change the e-gold account to his anonymous, phony account, and re-routes the payments.

the surfer, who was getting screwed out of the money, would start bombing 12daily's admin and staff with tickets.. even though it wasn't her fault in EITHER CASE. she'd have to waste her time dealing with those victims, and refunding those monies, when her time could be spent more efficiently doing other things.

hackers used to operate in the stealth of e-gold's anonymity. StormPay and PayPal require too much personal, trackable information about their users. that's why it's the criminals favorite processor. the FBI eventually raided e-gold's offices, and 12daily dumped them.

then they began using EMO.. and this is where this whole apocalypse started. EMO has no fees. two EMO users can transfer money to each other for free.. so almost all of the old e-gold users, and a lot of the current StormPay users defected to EMO. the StormPay exodus was so large, that 12daily didn't have enough money in their EMO account to satisfy the payments.

Charis, 12daily's admin, then put in a request to withdraw $10 million from her StormPay account to transfer over to EMO to make the payments. First StormPay stalled, then they said they could give her half, then they sent her a check in her own name for $10 million knowing that she couldn't cash it unless it was in her business name. Then they said they would wire her $5 million if she promised to tear up the check for $10MM. after she pretended to tear the check, they demanded that 12daily dump EMO. They wanted to be 12daily's exclusive processor.

StormPay then sent blackmail emails to every surf admin demanding that they use StormPay and only StormPay so that they could monopolize the millions and millions in profits. Being that StormPay was the largest, they all acquiesced and transferred their monies over to StormPay. then StormPay balked again, and in the oiliest, most viscous, most unctuous, most reptilian, slimeball move of the millennium, froze every surf admin's account stating that autosurfing was wrong, and they no longer wanted to be in the business. A DAY after they tried to corner the processor market, and got as much of the admins money into their account, then froze them out, and shut down the industry.

Steve Girsky, the CEO and co-owner made MILLIONS of dollars running straight ponzi's in the early 2000's.. then made millions more in withdrawal fees off of the autosurfs running the largest pay processor. they saw an opportunity for one final cash grab and froze over $50MM of 12daily's money, $7MM of Alien Trust's money, and locked Charis and Vince out of their accounts permanently. Then, they froze customer accounts and scrubbed them CLEAN.. in an effort to reverse the profits everyone's been making since 12daily began.. to "protect the victims". They DIDN'T, however, reverse the millions in fees they've collected. Who knows how many millions more they're skimming now that everyone's locked out of their accounts.

then, if that wasn't bad enough, they called the FBI, SEC, and BBB to initiate investigations against the industry AFTER they already pimped their millions out if it. they're trying to keep as much of the money as they can.. which is probably in the neighborhood of $100MM.

Some people had $40 to $50 thousand in their accounts, and Girsky took all of it. people are ready to kill him. He said there's not enough to repay everyone, so those people might not get a dime back. I swept my account after every payment, so he didn't get a dime from me. VISA, who's been flooded with chargeback requests, is honoring all of them because they're aware of what StormPay did. StormPay is suspending everyone who does a chargeback, but at the point, who cares. they have over 20,000 complaints with the BBB so they're done anyway.

It's just a mess right now, but my e-gold surfs are still going strong and paying. the guy who's running autosurfmonitor started his own processor, so the industry will be back up and running soon.

 

yea, he has a cool blog.. except he had a real hard-on for Alien Trust (hard-on in a bad way, that is). seems like he just hated Vince with a passion and i never understood why.

as far as StormPay, they served their purpose. if they had been charging for those wires, i woulda been screwed bigtime. i wouldn't have been sweeping my account as frequently.

they way they unilaterally zero'd everyone's accounts, they'll never recover as a business again. they won't be missed. whoever steps up and takes the surf business is gonna make ALOT of money now that the top dog is outta the mix.

 

Lol, wow. I read on some other boards that Girsky's a lawyer. If he doesn't end up in jail, I hope he at least gets disbarred for this. He only got me for about $20, though.

Do you know how to contact our Alien Trust referrals? One of mine did a $2,000 upgrade the day before it happened. I don't know how to find out if they got their money back or not.