07/08/08. Murder She Wrote: The Demise of e-Bullion and More News

Well, for the last couple of days all the news headlines and the forums were flooded with angry and desperate e-Bullion members posts who tried to understand what really had happened with this payment processor. I guess everybody knows know that e-Bullion is dead and there’s really little chance of getting your money back. You can read more in my post published yesterday. But today I decided to dedicate the entire article to this topic.

I remind you that e-Bullion was one of the most popular US-based payment processors and the main rival to e-gold for some years before LibertyReserve appeared on the scene and e-gold came into it’s current difficulties. As with e-gold there were too many warning signs regarding e-Bullion that were noticed by many of us a long time ago so one cannot say that it really came unexpectedly. Well, it really happened very fast but not unexpectedly at all.

First, you should have known that after the e-gold incident all the e-currencies based in the US were automatically in danger. Did you really think that Uncle Sam would leave e-Bullion untouched? Second, GDCA (Global Digital Currency Association) issued a warning against e-Bullion a long time ago already for blocking customers’ accounts without any reason. Many people lost their money in such a way. So did you really think that you could avoid the same fate sooner or later?

Of course, we all hoped that e-Bullion would not share the same unfortunate fate as e-gold. But for me it was obvious that it would happen sooner or later and that’s why I didn’t recommend this e-currency on my blog and didn’t have any money on my e-Bullion account.

Let’s refresh our memory and recall what actually happened with e-Bullion. As you may know that on the 4th of August Pamela Fayed, one of the co-owners of e-Bullion payment processor was found stabbed to death in California and her husband, Jim Fayed, the other co-owner of e-Bullion, was accused of her murder. They had a strange relationship and were in the middle of a complicated and bitter divorce procedure. I won’t offer you any crazy theories of what really happened or who the real murderer was. You can compose this yourself using your exuberant imagination and the versions the tabloids give you. I’m not interested in why this murder has happened but rather what the consequences will be for us, the investors.

But first I just wanted to remind you that even before being accused of the murder of his wife Jim Fayed was arrested by the FBI on charges of conducting unlicensed money transactions and money laundering and huge amounts of money were seized by the FBI. It happened on the 1st of August but even then you had the chance to exchange your e-Bullion funds using some exchangers. But from the 5th of August you cannot do it anymore as e-Bullion‘s website has some strange announcement which is obviously not true. It says: “Dear Customer, 05 August, 2008, 1:00pm PST: The e-Bullion website will be unavailable for a period of approximately four hours while our Tech Dept. performs routine maintenance. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this interruption to service. e-Bullion Management“. Well, I can say that this is an obvious lie and maybe some trick not to let your withdraw your funds while you still could. I guess the administration of e-Bullion had to do it so as not to become bankrupt after all their clients wanted to receive their money back after this August 1st incident.

e-Bullion was online for 9 years and this can indicate that even well-established e-currencies are not insured from this to happen. That’s why I always urged you to be careful with ANY payment processor. You see that such things can happen anytime and you will lose all your money stored in them. In my opinion, to reduce the possible risks you should at least diversify your funds and store them in different payment processors. Of course, e-Bullion was not a good choice for keeping your money as like I said before some warning signs were very obvious.

So if e-Bullion never comes back what will happen to your funds that you deposited from e-Bullion to HYIPs and other online programs? Will you be paid to other e-currencies or is your money completely lost? How will this e-Bullion demise affect the investment programs that accepted it as their payment processor?

In my opinion, different programs will answer this question differently. For instance, SafeAtom already published an update on their site and promised to let the investors know soon what will happen to the funds invested via e-Bullion: “Bad news from E-Bullion. It seems E-Bullion never come back… August, 10 we’ll let you know about all E-Bullion investments with us.” In my honest opinion, SafeAtom administration will find a solution for this issue and since e-Bullion was just one of the 5 e-currencies SafeAtom accepted, the program could continue as it is.

The same can be applied to EliteMoney, another very popular program that accepted e-Bullion as just one option for depositing. I don’t know if you will get your money back but at least EliteMoney will be able to continue its activity for sure. It’s just strange for me that their administration still is not aware of what has really happened with e-Bullion. Here’s the latest update from EliteMoney site: “E-Bullion is still undergoing maintenance: all payments will be made as soon as possible.”

I don’t think there will be any problem with BristolCapitalGroup, ApollonvestGroup or LargeSum. The first two of them are quite new and have other options for depositing. Regarding LargeSum we saw that it started to accept e-Bullion deposits just recently and in the test mode. So I guess the investors shouldn’t be worried about it having a negative affect on these programs.

There is another thing when it concerns your money stuck in e-Bullion. I got some messages from my readers that they hadn’t received their money that they tried to withdraw via Bank wire even before these unfortunate August events had taken place. So I don’t really know how to comfort them but since the US authorities will now thoroughly investigate e-Bullion activities we can hope that the appropriate solution will be found and the money will be returned to its rightful owners. The question remains: when it will happen if it will happen at all. I can’t answer those questions properly, sorry. I just hope that this story will be a good lesson for those of you who still rely on ANY e-currency. Believe me, only in a real bank will your money be 100% safe and not in virtual one. There are some risks involved when you store your money in any e-currency. Just be aware of it and be ready for the worst!

Other news for today.

Let’s start with the good news. One of the most stable short-term programs – UniCreditinvestment announced its first contest last night. No, it’s not another referral contest. Actually it’s much better and there’s some posting on forums involved. If you remember a week ago Ingrid, the admin of UniCreditInvestment complained that too few people supported the program on forums though it has been paying for more than a month already. So in such a way the idea of a posting contest appeared in the admin’s mind and she just gave us the rules on how the lucky winner will be chosen who will get $50 in prize. So here’s the forum posting contest rules:
“Because I’ve seen that members are not posting much in forums we want to encourage them to do it by starting this contest. It’s a forum posting contest. Only UCI members (free or investors) are eligible to participate in this contest. The contest will count your posts on these 3 forums:
DTM,  MMG , CIF . The contest will last for one week, starting from right now. At the end of this time, I’ll personally count all members posts on ALL 3 FORUMS and make for each of them an average. Who will have the biggest average (most posts on all 3 forums) will win this contest. Prize is 50$. Of course I could offer a bigger prize but I prefer to see the results first and if it will be a success than we’ll continue this contest with a bigger prize. I hope you like the idea and this will encourage you to support more this program. No spam (or meaningless) posts will be counted. Enjoy it!!!”

If you are still not a member of UniCreditInvestment I encourage you to sign up and try your luck in this contest. If you want you can be an investor as well and get the opportunity to earn 13%-14% for 8 days, 120%-128% after 8 days or 130%-144% after 10 days. These are the plans UniCreditInvestment offers to its members. You may be interested in reading my interview with Ingrid as well and if you want to do it here is the link.

As you might have noticed CapitalizedInv was not available today because of the extensive DDoS-attack on their site. I’m in constant contact with the admin of CapitalizedInv Paul and he assured me that everything will be back on track soon and possibly for one more day CapitalizedInv site will be inaccessible. The admin Paul asked for the investors’ patience while the site is offline as he’s diligently working with tech people on eliminating such attacks and preventing them from happening in the future. This is the latest update I received from Paul:
“The website will be up and down because we are installing several softwares and doing a lot of work now to prevent this from happening again in the future and to stop the attacks totally. We have been blocking and stopping attacks since yesterday and after we stop the first batch, another one came, and another and another. It will only take at least another day and everything is back to normal. Thanks for being patient.”
In my opinion such severe DDoS-attacks are the real sign of the popularity CapitalizedInv gained during the first weeks online. If you really want to know what is so special about CapitalizedInv I encourage you to read my interview with Paul that was published here.

Good news for those who are members of TrustyPig and are tired of the instability of the site that was under continuous DDoS-attacks during the first days online. It seems that now the deal with BlockDos has been negotiated and they are now installing DDoS-protection shield. Hopefully TrustyPig site will be available for everybody during the next 24 hours. For me it’s already stable and working just fine and I already surfed the 10 required sites to earn my daily rebate. If you can’t access the site yet please be patient and wait. Here’s the latest update from the admin of TrustyPig (read the interview here) regarding this issue:
“I’m proud to announce that we’ve settled a deal with BlockDos and their professional team is already working hardly to help us overcome this problem.
The website will be up and running as soon as the DDOS protection shield is fully installed. This will be finished within 24 hours.
The today’s cashout requests were processed, and I want to remind to the members that didn’t manage to surf the required number of pages that the upgrades are automatically extended if you miss a surfing day.”

I would advise you not to deposit in Profit-Family for a while. It seems that their instant withdrawals don’t work correctly but they are trying to fix this. At least this is how the admin explained the situation: “At this time problems with payments and API function. Please wait! After the decision of a problem the payments will work.” I would not mind waiting of course but am just wondering why not process the cashouts manually like they did before and not keep the investors waiting. I hope it’s not a silly excuse for not paying the members and that’s why I am putting Profit-Family on hold on my monitoring page. Please do NOT invest in Profit-Family until the situation is clear! I will update you tomorrow about it.

Other sites seem to be ok except AcmosTrade which I have not been able to access for several days now. I hope it’s not their swan song just yet and they could continue but after e-Bullion‘s demise it seems to me highly unlikely. Today I received my payments from Profit-Family (before issues with instant withdrawals appeared), Tradelite, UniCreditInvestment, e-Confidence, AgriFund, ApolloInvestGroup, MaxShare, SafeAtom and LargeSum.