22/09/08. Olympex-Group Review and Payment Processor News

BEWARE! THE PROGRAM PAYS SELECTIVELY AND ONLY TO SMALL INVESTORS!

Olympex-Group program seems to be a very established and well-known company at the first glance on their website. They really could achieve many things since May 2008. Such programs as Olympex-Group don’t just appear out of the blue. Oh no, it has been definitely planned very well to become a major player in the HYIP industry. And 5 months of stable work online proves that Olympex-Group turned into a well-known and successful program. But will it last for any longer and what chances for survival does it have in this highly competitive HYIP world? Let’s try to answer these questions in this review of Olympex-Group.

There are four investment plans Olympex-Group offers: 110% after 10 days (with the minimum to invest being $5), 135% after 25 days (with a $10 minimum), 187% after 50 days (minimum to invest is $25) and 360% after 100 days (the minimum is $100). Payment processors accepted are LibertyReserve, PerfectMoney and Pecunix. Olympex-Group used to accept e-Bullion before it closed but it seems the program wasn’t affected at all. Probably they didn’t keep too much money in e-Bullion anyway and that’s why they could continue.

What I like in Olympex-Group is that the withdrawals are instant and it means you don’t need to wait for hours when your withdrawal is processed. I think it’s very convenient. I have already tested this option and was paid instantly to my LibertyReserve account from the 10 day plan I was in.

I like the fact that Olympex-Group is based on a fully customized script and is hosted on a dedicated DdoS-protected server which will definitely give them some more credibility and stability in the long run. The SSL-encryption implemented on their site allows all the transactions to be made in a safe and secure way. Olympex-Group has a very professional layout and even their own custom forum. Surely they spent much money and effort on creating this program and making it a success.

For larger investors there is an option of depositing money using bank wires. It is only available for deposits above $1,000 and only if you intend to invest in the 100 day plan. But will Olympex-Group survive another 100 days to allow you to enjoy your high returns? I doubt it very much and here is why.

Despite all their efforts to provide the investors with valid contact points on their support page (taken from Olympex-Group website): “Olympex Group IBC UK Office: 18 E Tenter St.,Tower Hamlets, London, Greater London E1 8DN UK Phone: +44 (0)20 3286 3322 | Fax: +44 (0)20 7900 6429“. Well it seems that all this info is fake. I’m sure of it with 99% certainty. And here’s why I think so.

Maybe you remember that I was in London recently? Well, my investigation started even while I was still in Ireland. I tried to call their phone number but failed to get any reply. Later on after several days I tried to call them again (during their office hours) and all I heard was a distorted voice of some woman asking me to wait because my call was very important to them, lol, without ever actually identifying the number as belonging to Olympex.

So I was quite disappointed by this approach but as the admin of Olympex-Group invited everybody to visit them in their office I couldn’t miss the opportunity to meet them while I was in London. So I tried to find their office in 18 E Tenter Street. Well, once having found it I was quite discouraged that the building was far from being the one that is shown on Olympex-Group website, i.e. multi-storey building with many offices residing inside. To tell you the truth I wasn’t inside the building because I was there on Sunday so can’t say with 100% certainty that there was no office inside. But outside of this 4-storey building looking very old and tacky I found a garbage bin with some info written on it. Guess what? It was a property of Cawlanda Ltd. – a completely different company which actually occupies this address. You can look at this pic as the evidence.

I still had my doubts regarding if it was really true that Olympex-Group was not there, in this building. So I asked Jeremy Middleton (I doubt very much that it’s his real name by the way) about any confirmation he could provide to me that they had an actual office in that building. As you can imagine it should be not a problem for you to tell me how many storeys the building you have an office in has or who your next door neighbour is on the right side (for your info, it was a police station). I didn’t think I was asking too much from Jeremy to reply to my questions since I couldn’t get him on the phone. But he could not answer this.

Instead of the proper reply to my inquiries which I think I had the right to know as their client I got only this message: “If I get it right you do not trust me at all, it’s a pity. Please provide your phone number, we will call you to sort out these issues.” Well, I provided him with my phone number four days ago but of course haven’t received any call back so far. I didn’t expect to get it anyway because he obviously didn’t know what he was talking about in the first place and he surely wouldn’t be able to explain the issue to me on the phone even if he had called.

Just look at what I received as a reply from Jeremy: “It’s a pity that you’ve been unable to visit us at Tower Hamlets building located at 18 East Tenter St, London. Tower Hamlets is an office building with several companies collocated there.” I should remind you that Tower Hamlets is NOT the name for the building, but it’s a name of the borough in London where this building is located. I know that may buildings in London have names but it was an obvious lie. So I asked Jeremy about that as well and here’s what I got: “Yeah I know that Tower Hamlets is borough in London. It may be a surprise for you, but an informal name of corporate office building is just the same, short is “Hams”. I shouldn’t have used this informal name in my previous message, I apologize.”

Really nice explanation, eh? Unfortunately, it was a lie again. You can have proof here that the building is actually called “Albion Mills” and not “Tower Hamlets” which would be strange anyway to call the building after the borough it’s located in. Wouldn’t it have caused any confusion for you? For me it would certainly have done.

Moreover, their phone number seems to be NOT located in Albion Mills building at all. I noticed that all phone numbers of the companies that collocated in this building started with 020 7 while Olympex-Group‘s number started with 020 3. Isn’t it strange that the phone number has different prefix from the other companies located there? So I’m almost sure that the phone number provided on support page of Olympex-Group website is NOT located in that building.

I will not go any deeper and I hope you understand by now that Olympex-Group is NOT a real company and cannot be considered as such. Please prove me wrong if you can but so far I didn’t see a single shred of evidence that Olympex-Group really exists as officially registered British company as it’s stated on their website:
“Olympex Group IBC is a global investment management company with approximately $6 million under management as at 25th of August, 2008.”

Well, for me it’s hard to believe in it after all the evidence I mentioned in my review. If they can’t even afford a proper office in London with a proper phone line what kind of transparency is that? It’s not transparency at all, just lies.

I’m not trying to say in my review that Olympex-Group is not paying or it’s a bad HYIP. In fact, I like it very much and the fact that it has no real office shouldn’t stop you from investing. Just remember that Olympex-Group is a pure HYIP game like 99.99% other programs. So you should treat it as a game and not a real company in any case.

Despite these facts I’m sure that Olympex-Group will be online for a while that’s why I have two deposits now running in 25 and 50 day plans respectively. This is a very high quality HYIP certainly run by a well-organized group of people who know perfectly well how to manage a successful investment program. I just don’t like their lies about a real office, that’s all. I feel an obligation to give you all the info I know about Olympex-Group though I realize that it can have some bad consequences for the program. I just couldn’t stay away and be silent while my readers throw thousands of dollars in it. I would like to say my special thanks to Nigel who really pushed me to conduct this investigation and hope there will be more to come! Stay tuned!

Payment processor news.

Today I decided to report news only from payment processor world because it’s an essential part of the industry that can affect it in a good or in a bad way in the blink of an eye. Take the recent news that was published by Ecommerce-Journal regarding AlterGold. They seemed to have conducted an investigation as well but in regard to AlterGold payment processor. I was not surprised at all that the result of their investigation was nothing, i.e. they didn’t find any evidences of any office of AlterGold (Digital Group., Inc.) that was located there. In my opinion, it’s a very serious accusation and the silence policy AlterGold is practising currently will not help it because the info provided by ECJ really needs some explanation from their side. The main info was disputed and so the info: “AlterGold is a subsidiary of Digital Group Inc. a registered legal corporate entity in the Republic of Panama in Central America.” can be under question now. It’s a very serious accusation and I would be very cautious regarding AlterGold from now on. At least, while it’s suspending all the work for exchangers till the 1st of October. So now you actually have some serious difficulties with withdrawing your AlterGold funds from your accounts. We’ll see if it’s changed by October as the newly appointed CEO of AlterGold promised in her recent updates but for now I warn you not to store too much money in AlterGold before some clarification comes from their administration.

Almost forgotten now, e-Gold reminded everybody about themselves again by demanding customers provide them with a Tax Identification Number or Social Security Number. Here’s what can be read on the e-gold website:
“As I noted in my post to this blog on July 21, 2008, e-gold Ltd. is working diligently to reach compliance with U.S. law and regulation as quickly as possible. As a major step towards implementing a more robust Customer Identification Program, effective September 18, 2008, e-gold account Users are now required to include a Personal Tax Identification Number (PTID) for the point of contact for any e-gold account they control in order to make outgoing Spends. For United States residents the PTID must be either their Social Security Number (SSN) or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN). Residents of other countries will need to provide their tax identifying number applicable to their country.
e-gold Ltd. remains highly committed to continuing to offer a cost effective Internet payment system making instantaneous settlement, free of chargeback risk, available to customers around the world. We continue to be confident that a regulated e-gold rebuilt to a more systematic specification will be less hospitable to criminals, and more attractive to mainstream business use without being less accessible to those disregarded by legacy payment systems.”
Well, there’s so much speculation regarding this on forums but really what you should do if you’re outside the US (if you want to continue to use e-gold services of course) is to provide them any number you like (I just filled in a made-up combination of random digits) and they will not be able to check it anyway. It’s obvious that it’s another trick by Uncle Sam and surely e-gold can no longer be considered as a reliable and anonymous e-currency. They failed to deliver what they promised and theonce extremely popular e-gold is in deep crisis now.

But we shouldn’t be worried at all because there is plenty of choice of e-currencies left on the market and they all struggle in the fight for the customer. For example, Canadian based e-currency AlertPay which is online since 2004 and which recently announced plans to implement their own debit card in one interview:
“We are still planning on new features everyday and also to add services that would put us on par with other payment processors. Coming soon are the Debit Cards, and soon a new unique way to load funds into AlertPay using your bank issued Debit Cards. We also plan on adding more countries for our direct banking abilities.”
I would like to give kudos to AlertPay as recently I started to use it more frequently and think that it’s a great e-currency. I received my first check from Canada recently for my first test withdrawal and it took only a couple of weeks to deliver it to Ireland.

Other relatively new e-currencies would also be a nice option and if you are considering starting to use them why not try PerfectMoney (read my interview here)? And more especially as PerfectMoney‘s users are not paying any internal transaction fees till the end of 2008 and many programs have started to accept them recently. The payment processor has very bold plans to seize the market and is constantly developing its services. For instance, recently they implemented a new security feature called PIN code which will be used for verification purposes and sent to your email address specified during the registration in case your IP or browser are changed. Of course, you can always use other security options available from your account but this newly developed feature will reduce the risks of illegal access to your PerfectMoney account. As a matter of fact, the security of PerfectMoney accounts was the main topic for the latest update from this payment processor:
“Dear Customers, the administration of PerfectMoney warns you of the danger of fraudulent activity directed against your accounts. Please, be attentive and very careful when working with your accounts. If you keep a big amount in your accounts we urge you to use the security instruments. The more tools you enable the less is the risk of becoming a victim of the fraudsters. Having enabled all the three security options: sms-authentication, Code Card and ID check, you would be fully confident in safety of your funds.
In addition to the main security tools used to protect your account please follow the security guidelines.
Please take the question of your account security very seriously and after having read this warning message ask yourself about the options you use in your account to protect your funds from the fraudsters.”

Another quite popular payment processor despite having only opened this year is StrictPay. I’m now testing how their withdrawals work before publishing a review of it and an interview with their representative. It seems that they have some delays with dispatching the checks to countries outside the US but I will update you on the process soon. For now the main issue of StrictPay was the security matter. StrictPay payment processor (like PerfectMoney) is hosted by Dragonara and recently their provider had to handle some severe DdoS-attacks aimed at their servers. It caused some prolonged unavailability for the StrictPay website. Although now everything seems to be alright and the admin of StrictPay sent out some update to the members regarding the latest events happened:
“We have new DDoS protection that is now kicking in our on server. We have been under attack for one week now, and finally feel we have the protection in place. Our DDoS protection company will be monitoring the traffic 24 hours a day from now on. We would like to pass on a few pointers for you to best access our website.
1) All members please access the site via https. Please do not put the www. in front of the URL until further notice.
2) All merchants, please remove the www. from the beginning of your URL in your automated purchase form until further notice. Your new form action should read https://strictpay.com/payments/autopay.php and your payments should go through.
3) Any person, merchant or regular member, that uses a buy now button, banner, or any image from our site should change the URL to the banner and remove the www. from the beginning.
This change should be updated in the next 48 hours, but in the meantime by removing the www. you can connect to the site with full functionality, and all banners and purchase buttons can be fixed. We apologize about this issue, but it should be resolved soon and everything will be back to normal.
Lastly, our hosting provider has notified us that they will be experiencing a mandatory emergency maintenance period this evening from 12:00 am until 05:00 am. The site may be accessible, but cannot be guaranteed. We will update you as they update us.
We appreciate your patience during this period of adjustment. Thank you for choosing StrictPay.”

This is all the news for today, guys. Tomorrow I will try to analyze the current situation with BristolCapitalGroup and give you an update on how all the investment programs are going. Stay tuned and see you tomorrow!