31/05/09. Interview with the admin of SigmaTral

BEWARE! THIS PROGRAM HAS STOPPED PAYING! PLEASE DON’T INVEST!

Hi all! I hope you’re all having a good weekend so far. Anyway today I’m pleased to have an interview with the admin of SigmaTral. His name is Trent Witsaman and I hope you will find this interview as interesting as I did. He certainly comes across to me as a highly professional man with some serious and well planned intentions for his program. Trent explains it all quite well but remember if you want further information on his program after reading this, obviously you can check his own program yourself, but also refer to my original review published here.

Before we start just let me give a brief reminder that SigmaTral is a long term low ROI investment program that offers you between 1% to 1.5% interest per day for 90 days, or alternatively between 10% and 12% interest paid weekly for 12 weeks. So let’s hear from Trent.

“1. Hi, please introduce yourself to the readers of MNO and tell us a bit about your own involvement in SigmaTral. Is this your first online venture? What other experience do you have in this Industry?

Good evening Paul and thank you for this interview. My name is Trent Witsaman, owner of SigmaTral. Being the owner of SigmaTral has given me many duties and so far everything has been operating smoothly. From 1990-2004 I worked as an Assistant Manager for a local bank by where I currently reside. While working there I received much beneficial knowledge. Then I was introduced by a co-worker (Meredith Malaga), whom is a partner of mine in SigmaTral, to a totally opposite investment opportunity; Foreign Exchange Market. She has successfully worked online with trading currencies and keeping a steady income. I will continue with question #2 with how we got started.

This is my first online venture. I have been a simple investor in many HYIPs. From that I have put together all the necessary details in making SigmaTral successful and continue on with 100% uptime. SigmaTral is still very young and from the start we have encountered no problems. Together with my partner, we will give you the best experience and secure place to invest.

2. Can you also give us some background history on SigmaTral? Why did you decide to open your own program and what are you expecting to achieve by this? Are you alone or do you have a business partner or assistant?

To continue from question #1, once Meredith kept earning a steady weekly income with our reserve funds, we decided together to also give this amazing opportunity to all our welcomed members. We have now planned SigmaTral for a little over 6 months. The idea came along when we wanted to incorporate our knowledge into something magnificent. With our big plans we strive to become big. Our main goal we wish to achieve is one thing, for our investors to gain wealth and have security with SigmaTral. Meredith and I work great together. Our team though has 3 people in it, as Meredith has her assistant for trading (Rex Flemming).

3. I don’t think I’ve ever asked an admin this before but what exactly does the name SigmaTral mean? Just out of personal curiosity.

SigmaTral was picked for its uniqueness. Together our team thought for weeks about something that would give our members a name that can’t be forgotten! Finally, after weeks of pondering, Meredith came to me with this idea. SIGMATRAL. So there is no meaning to the name but this was our plan. We didn’t want something boring and that you would get confused with another domain like most HYIPs. So with our unique name, how can you forget SigmaTral? Glad it got your attention.

4. What are the plans you are offering investors? What are the minimum and maximum amounts to spend? What payment processors are you currently dealing with? Are payouts automatic or do I need to request them?

We offer two investment options. There is our weekly plan and then there is our daily plan.

“Option A : 1.0% – 1.5% For 90 Days” – Daily Payouts and Principal Returned.

“Option B : 10% -12% Weekly In 12 Weeks” – Weekly Payouts and Principal Returned.

Investment Amount for “Option A” Minimum $5 and Maximum $50,000

$5.00 – 1000.00 :: 1.00%
$1001.00 – 10,000 :: 1.25%
$10,001.00 – 50,000 :: 1.50%

Investment Amount for “Option A” Minimum $10 and Maximum $50,000

$10.00 – 2500.00 :: 10.00%
$2501.00 – 10,000 :: 11.00%
$10,001.00 – 50,000 :: 12.00%

We are pleased to offer you a vast range of Payment Processors. They include: SolidTrustPay, AlertPay, StrictPay, LibertyReserve, PerfectMoney and are currently deciding on incorporating EcuMoney. Payouts are done manually. Once you deposit you will start earning depending on your plan. If you deposited in the daily plan then you will see your earnings 24 hours after you deposit. Once it is in your account earnings, you can withdraw them anytime. This is the same for our weekly plan, except payout withdraws are done 1 week after deposit.

5. Are the rates of interest you offer realistic? How long do you think it can be sustained?

Yes. Our rates have been set exactly for the reason they will let us bring in more money from our trading to successfully maintain a stable income/payout ratio. They can honestly be sustained for many years if the trading continues to bring a profit weekly. If one week we lose or break even, it will be no problem. We have a reserve account just for weeks like that. If there was any fear about sustaining these rates, you will be updated about it promptly and changes would then be made. But I don’t see this happening.

6. What about the security of the SigmaTral website? What steps have you taken to protect both yourselves and members from things like malicious hackers or identity theft? What about spyware and anti virus protection? Who is your hosting provider? Are you on a dedicated server and how protected are you from DdoS attacks?

Our site is very well secured; we have decided to give this area major attention for both our members support and ours. We are being hosted by KODDOS with a full Dedicated Server and SSL protection. DdoS attacks should not be a problem to worry about, according to their support. They have protection on their Staminus server up to 700MBs.

Apart from the host we are also setup on the GoldCoders Script (Licensed). Our programmer is highly familiar with this script, so with his recommendation and our approval, he added additional protective measures from any known backdoors.

As for our computers with the latest Anti-Virus and Spyware, we have installed recommended software too. Updated daily too of course.

7. What advertising strategy have you been using to promote SigmaTral to date? How big a role have existing members played in this promotion? Are you satisfied with the level of growth so far?

We started out by contacting you! We were honored to have you introduce SigmaTral in the forums and giving us such a great review. Along with the monitoring advertising for a month and the current banner on your blog, we have advertised well with you. Then into the forums we started out by advertising with DreamTeamMoney. We purchased their May Madness package and went on for 7 days. We have seen many members promoting in various surfs and monitors, which is always greatly appreciated. In a week or so we are looking into buying some ads with MoneyMakerGroup.

The level of growth has made us very happy as well. The ratio of members to active members is amazing. Over half our members have invested and already started earning. This is only a good sign and with our rates we planned to start growing more and more over time to show our stability and support.

8. What can you tell us about the success of the program overall so far? Are you pleased with the level of growth to date? Can you give us any statistics on the amount of members and the total amount deposited? What are your expectations over the coming months? How do you plan to develop and improve in a very competitive business?

Yes, as mentioned above, our success is amazing. Overall we are very pleased with how everything is running. For now we would prefer to not disclose our members information to the public. But I can tell you that we are very pleased. For the upcoming months we have some very high hopes. We will work more in advertising and gaining new members. We have been working a lot on some future ideas and maybe soon some of them will be introduced. We will update you when we decide on what we would like to incorporate.

9. What kind of customer service and support do you offer to investors? What are the most effective ways of getting in contact with you if I have questions or problems? Do you have live chat support? How often is that available?

We have a few options. First you can visit our “Online Support” page to find two options: Live support and our ticket support. We try to have our Live support operator online about 10 hours daily. If you happen to visit when they are offline, you can use the form and send in a ticket and will be answered promptly. Or you can directly send us an email to: support@sigmatral.com

10. What can you tell us about your outside business and trading activities? How are you funding the interest payments to members and is it possible for anybody joining to independently verify this?

Currently SigmaTral isn’t a company right now, but we hope to become one in the future. Our team is internationally based so we decided to open as an investor group instead of a company at the start. At this time our trading activities are mainly focused on ForEx (about 75% of our trading activity) and the best advantages with ForEx is it can be traded from anywhere and everywhere. The rest of our activities are focused with offline investments and for now we are advised not to make public.

11. This is a highly competitive industry and SigmaTral is a new name trying to stand up against some very popular well established and proven programs. How are you coping with this challenge? What would you tell the casual investor are the advantages of getting into SigmaTral instead of any other?

As those well established programs have themselves proven, it all comes down to time. With time, we will show you that we are well secured and will grow to be proven as well. It’s the member’s choice now, but getting in early will only benefit them for future earnings and bring them more profits. If any investors have any questions or concerns, all inquiries are welcomed. Please contact us anytime. As with our rates, always look into stability and safety. As personal experience from me being a simple investor, I’ve seen many lose in high ROI programs and then the wise continue to move ahead in stable plans like we offer. Hopefully in a few months we can join your proven programs list.

12. What are the future plans for SigmaTral? How are you planning to help the program’s future growth and development into a major player in the online investment arena?

We have many ideas and opportunities coming up we are researching more. For now, we intend to help out by purchasing more ads over various forums and sites. If you notice many of the biggest HYIPs have the biggest advertising. We will take this into consideration and begin our journey as well.

One thing is we intend is upgrading our support forum with a professional ticketing system. When this is ready we will let you know in a newsletter.

13. And finally, what is your opinion of the online HYIP industry in general? Would you like to share any of your own experiences, good and bad, with the readers of MNO? Not as an admin, but as (I assume) an investor yourself or as an observer.

Great question. I think the HYIP arena has its obvious scams and some fishy admins. But with careful research and everything the HYIP industry has to offer, it could be very safe. Among many things you need to consider are payment processors, design, script, host (dedicated) and many other details. As long as all this research is done, you could be sure to find many good HYIPs. Observing all this is something I have noticed over the couple years that I have been watching and investing.

Thank you Paul for this great interview, it is appreciated. Also welcome all new members and hope to talk to you all soon. By the way, great blog and job well done.”

Thanks a lot to Trent for that but also thanks for taking such a serious and forthright approach, which is always appreciated when we are talking about the investors and their right to certain expectations from any online program. As I mentioned in my review the program SigmaTral itself is above average but the success now depends on how well it is managed. And the evidence so far all points to one thing. SigmaTral has been well researched before ever being launched and so far has been managed by a man who quite clearly knows what he is doing and has a clear and long term plan for the future of his program which is ultimately beneficial to the members as well.

By way of a slight distraction from this, it’s been an otherwise quiet day on the news front but if I may just incorporate the main story today into the interview (sorry for the hi-jack Trent!) it’s the latest breakdown in LibertyReserve. One reader asked me about it last night but at that time I was already in my account so didn’t realize there was a problem. Account holders are currently unable to access their member’s area and at the moment no information is available from LibertyReserve as to the cause or the duration of the problem. I’ll keep you informed right here as usual of course as the situation develops. But anyway if I can relate this news story back to SigmaTral it’s that programs like this one being managed by an admin with the skill and the foresight to not make his program overly dependent on one single payment processor will be less affected by occurrences such as this. I am of course aware that despite the availability of several different options LR remains a popular option so this will prove a stiff test to any new program, but I expect the damage, if any, to SigmaTral from this will be negligible.

That’s all for today guys, enjoy the rest of your weekend and I’ll be back tomorrow with all the latest from the industry. See you then!