ZeekRewards Ponzi goes belly up

Discussion in 'Wall St. News' started by Pekelo, Mar 31, 2013.

  1. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    People just never learn, neither do the authorities:

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/money...rities-600m-scheme-incubated-nc-town/2037975/

    "In a Nov. 23, 2011, complaint filed with the North Carolina Attorney General's office, Wayne Tidderington of Florida called ZeekRewards an "illegal" Ponzi scheme. He said a relative had invested $8,000 and the company guaranteed a return of 125 percent every 90 days."

    The authorities screwed it up and let the Ponzi run for another 7 months...

    ""I put it all together," Tidderington told the AP. "I gave them the roadmap. I said, 'Here's a snake. Here's the gun. Here's the bullets. Shoot the snake.' But they ignored me."
    Over the next seven months, the attorney general's office received nearly a dozen more complaints.
    But it wasn't until July 6 that it issued an order giving Burks until the end of the month to turn over all Zeek-related documents."

    Some early birds got the bounty:

    "Kenneth Bell, the court-appointed receiver, said ZeekRewards may have taken in $800 million. So far, he's recovered $312 million. Hundreds of millions were paid out to investors."

    Best part:

    "The publicity paid off. When the Association of Network Marketing Professionals held its annual convention in March 2012, it called ZeekRewards the model of legal compliance."

    This guy should be shot on sight:

    "Asked if he had anything to say to victims, he shook his head.
    "I never told anyone to invest more money than they could afford," Burks snapped. "I didn't tell them to do that. Never."
    He said if they lost money, "it's their fault. Not mine. Don't blame me."
     
  2. You americans seriously are wierd in how freely you hand out your cash!! :confused: lol

    Here in UK no-one would ever give anyone £80, let alone £800!! :p

    And so the fact that some randow bloke managed to get ''handed'' $800,000,000 (nearly 1billion dollars) in 7months is just a complete and total pile of nonsense!! :D :cool:
     
  3. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    Bullshit, the Brits are just as gullible. Here, I googled "UK ponzi":

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...lients-316million-Ponzi-fraud-pay-just-1.html

    "Nicholas Levene, 48, was jailed for 13 years last November after he admitted orchestrating a lucrative Ponzi scheme which raked in £316million.A city trader who conned millions of pounds from wealthy investors was yesterday ordered to pay back £1."

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17299967

    "A corrupt businessman who masterminded the UK's biggest Ponzi scam has been jailed for more than 14 years.
    Kautilya Pruthi, 41, from Wandsworth, south-west London, was described as a career fraudster who persuaded hundreds of people to invest.
    His victims, who included actor Jerome Flynn and cricketer Darren Gough, were duped out of £115m with some losing homes, pensions and life savings."

    ----------------------------------------

    So you guys made the first guy pay a full 1 pound as restitution!!! That's what I call the land of Ponzi... :)
     
  4. Atleast this occurred in a "Southern" state and not elsewhere. :cool: :D :p :eek:
     
  5. AbbotAle

    AbbotAle

    I sometimes wish I wasn't so honest because if I was a crook I'd have made millions and millions by now.

    There literally is a never ending supply of guilible people in this world who will believe anything if you tell them there's easy money to be made.

    (Doesn't matter if the country in question is the US, UK, China, Mozambique, there's a conveyor belt of mugs)
     
  6. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    What I never understand about the Ponzi runners:

    1. Why nobody shots them in the face?
    2. Why don't they plan a clean getaway?

    About the second ponderable, they probably don't even realize that the system doesn't last forever (just like a Martingale trader) and when reality sets in the police are already knocking on the door...
     
  7. Mate you come to the streets of London and ask someone on the street if you can have 80pence (1usd) and out of 1,000 people you will be extremely lucky to get 2-3people to give you that,
    no-one would ever give you £8.

    And so if i knew where to find millions of people who have hundreds of millions of pounds in their bank accounts i would be doing this scheme myself!! :D :cool: :p
     
  8. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    How about Norfolk? Dude, give it up, the Brits are just as gullible as anyone:

    "Arthur Stimpson, from Norfolk, was 'brainwashed' by an email scam into believing he had won £2.7million on a Spanish lottery and handed over £50,000 of his own money to conmen who claimed it was needed to release the massive windfall. When his own money ran out, Stimpson fooled those closest to him into handing over more than £1.1million in his increasingly desperate bid to get his hands on the jackpot."

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-neighbours-impoverished-web-sheer-greed.html

    "Mr Stimpson, it should be pointed out, attended both university and public school and was a Member of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (MRICS). In other words, he was a man of considerable intelligence and accomplishment."

    "So Mr Stimpson persuaded friends and neighbours into parting with their own money with promises of up to 1,000 per cent returns. "

    "The vast majority of those targeted are not taken in. But a very significant minority are. How significant a minority? An estimated three million people every year, according to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT),"
     
  9. Yes there are quite alot of stupid foolish idiots in the UK too! :D
    Im not some kind of patriot or supporter of other UK people! haha

    But to get handed 1billion cash from people must require you to be able to find and convince around 1million people to each give you £10,000 cash.
     
  10. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    Nope. It is either 10 million people $100 each, or 100K people 10K each. That's what makes a billion...

    Now I see why Brits are so easy to scam. They are just bad at math! :)
     
    #10     Apr 1, 2013