June 2009

THE PROGRAM HAS STOPPED PAYING! PLEASE DON’T INVEST!

Hi guys! Looking back over the most recent posts I made on MNO blog it strikes me that it is high time I added a little variety to the mix. I have been leaning a little too strongly towards low ROI long term HYIPs with a couple of surfing sites thrown in for good measure recently. So I think a high ROI short term program is long overdue to be added to my list, don’t you? A lucky coincidence then when I found the one I’d like to review for you today. It’s called AvartesCapital and I just joined it last Sunday, it having been launched on Saturday.

Similar to yesterday’s review in many ways, I am extremely hopeful for the future of AvartesCapital, but I also have some concerns. There are some problems, and I will get to them, but not problems that can’t be fixed. But problems nevertheless. I don’t usually like to start reviews with negative features on any program (and most programs do have them) so I’ll start with the positive aspects. And there are many. The investment plans for a start are good. More realistic than the average short term HYIP anyway. Remember that high ROI programs generally tend to have a shorter life span anyway, I think that the plans offered by AvartesCapital are good enough to keep it online just that little bit longer than their competitors.

So what are these plans? Well first I should say that on the positive side that all plans are quite affordable. $5 is the minimum spend for any of them. And as is the norm for short term programs, all available investment plans are remarkable in their simplicity. There’s really nothing too complicated going on here at all. So starting with the shortest term option, you are offered 2% interest per day with your principal returned on expiry after 5 days. That’s 10% total profit.

The second plan from AvartesCapital runs for 10 days and offers you the slightly increased rate of 2.5% interest per day. That means that on top of your principal which is also returned on expiry you will be left with a total profit of 25%.

The final plan which offers the greatest reward so as is typical also carries the greatest risk runs for 15 days. During that period you are offered a daily rate of interest of 3.25% along with your principal returned on expiry. If this works out as you expect, then that will leave you with a total profit of 48.75%.

And that’s about it really. There’s not that much to add except to tell you the payment options include PerfectMoney, SolidTrustPay and LibertyReserve. The addition of StrictPay is expected soon, pending the successful completion of their verification process. As I already mentioned the minimum spend in any plan is $5, but what I didn’t say was the maximum is $10,000. Payments are made to your member’s area so remember you will need to request them.

So far, at least as far as the plans are concerned, it’s as good a short term option as you will see anywhere. Where AvartesCapital falls down though is in the security side of things. They make a big bold statement on their “about us” page regarding their commitment to protecting the member’s deposits. But the statement is a straight copy/paste from the website of NovalexFinance and clearly isn’t true. They are using a script licensed from GoldCoders which is fine, and they are also being hosted by Koddos who are dependable enough as well, but they are hosted on a shared server and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, this simply isn’t good enough. In fact it’s just asking for trouble. And if it isn’t dealt with I would have no choice but to regard it as a very negative reflection of the admin’s long term intentions. You may think that in the early stages of a program’s development that a small amount of traffic wouldn’t warrant the extra expense of a dedicated server, but all it takes is one jealous competitor or one malicious blackmailer to attack the program and take it down. And this industry has an abundance of both. Customer support comes in the usual form of an online e-mail ticketing system.

Other than that, apart from the texts been stolen from all over the place the design itself is quite good. It’s easy to use and easy to navigate. The FAQ page is shockingly bad though, with the answer to one question being left completely blank, and a question regarding whether interest is paid daily or on expiry gets the somewhat cryptic answer of “We pay all interest directly to your AvartesCapital account everyday or at end of investment period.” I mean which one is it? It has to be one or the other, that much I already knew, but daily or on expiry?

Am I perhaps making too bid a deal out of that? Well, yes. I probably am. But my point is that I very much doubt that AvartesCapital are the crack team of market players that they say. I would take this one as a game. But a game with good potential for a fast profit. It could be vastly improved on of course, but based purely on the plans it’s an OK short term program if you are looking for diversification. My advice? Treat this program as seriously as the admin has treated it. As the expression goes “you pay your money and you take your chances”. Joining early is recommended. If joining at all that is.

Other news for today.

I would like to dedicate the lion’s share of today’s news section to the strange and rather snobbish update received recently from EcuMoney payment processor. I think after the multiple spam emails about their competitor PerfectMoney which I have received from them (this spam case was actually proven and exposed on some forums) they should leave us alone. But I think that’s not how things are done in EcuMoney. They sent me a rather lengthy update yesterday which was written in the best way of not directly naming names but still accusing their competitors of practically commiting all seven deadly sins at the same time. I’m not just talking about the blatant lies and borderline fascist remarks they continue to put about so generously in their emails. I’ll try to give you this update with my comments after all the paragraphs to let you decide if you wish to deal with such people. Let’s begin our analysis.

“Dear EcuMoney Client, About 6 months ago, EcuMoney entered the e-currency market; for the first time, an e-currency was offered by a company registered outside any famous “offshore country” reputed for their money laundering abilities; for the first time, an e-currency was offered by a company whose records are easily checkable online on a government’s website. In other words, for the first time an e-currency is offered by a company that does not hide for any suspicious reasons.”

Really? Was it offered for the first time? And what about such verified and established e-currencies like SolidTrustPay and AlertPay? Don’t they have real addresses in Canada and providing phone support to its clients? As for easily checkable online government records we will talk about it a little bit later. So what next?

“Want to compare ECU with competitors? No kidding! Just try to verify, on an official Service, where other e-currencies are registered and who is their Director. If you have success, please tell us and we will publish it on our next newsletter!”

As I have said already they compare themselves with totally anonymous payment processors like LibertyReserve and PerfectMoney which don’t require verification from their members therefore (just like EcuMoney itself) can’t be considered anything more than a shady offshore venture which nobody will be able to prosecute if they try to scam their users. As I will prove later they have nothing that makes them comparable to serious payment processors.

“On the technical point of view, EcuMoney came with the largest and the most secure options for their clients. Those options are so interesting that some fellow competitors simply copied them, calling our DIGIcard “Security card”, our Prepaid ECU cards “e-vouchers”, and just copying our “instant SMS notification” system. We are of course happy to help them being more secure, but don’t get fooled by copycats and only trust the original: EcuMoney!”

So according to this logic those who offered some innovative features first should be reliable and those who copied them can’t. I don’t think there is a copyright law preventing SMS notification or any other features which are currently being used by many real financial institutions including real and not fake banks as EcuMoney used to call themselves.

“The last months were a bit hard on the e-currency market. One of our competitors got hacked because of a bug in their API, and a few of his clients lost huge amounts. It was told that some legal actions have been launched, but seriously, to prosecute a company hiding in an “offshore paradise” in Central America isn’t that easy. Just think twice before sending your money, ask yourself “If I have to use legal ways, is there one chance to succeed?“.

Ok, now this was undoubtedly a swipe at LibertyReserve payment processor. This is where “Not naming names” part begins. It’s a very tricky indeed as it will help them avoid any accusations from their competitors (they didn’t call any names, did they?) yet allowing the users to understand who they were talking about. This incident was the only serious problem that happened with LibertyReserve during years of stable work. EcuMoney must have been really jealous of LibertyReserve if they brought this already well reported incident to public attention from the dusty archives. But let’s move on.

“One other of our competitors just decided to launch DDOS attacks against the major actors, including EcuMoney, together with a media campaign through one of their satellite services. No need to comment about this one, when a company uses such methods to fight competitors, it just shows that this company is just a perfect scam! Be very careful where you put your hard earned money: Some e-currencies are just hit and run operations, even if they “hit” a few months before the final running.”

I also heard the rumors that PerfectMoney was ddosing first LibertyReserve and then EcuMoney payment processors. I have yet to see any proof of that of course. But I think sending spam emails to the members with total nonsense about PerfectMoney’s issues is an even bigger crime because such emails create panic, increase exchange rates for the e-currency and can be very harmful to the members of any particular payment processor even becoming the reason for the real closure just as it can happen with any real financial institution. So if you ask me then sending such a spam is definitely not a good thing to do.

“One of our clients told wrote us “XXX [one of our competitors] has the lowest fees, why are your fees so high?”. We checked and saw that this competitor has indeed a nice picture on his homepage saying “the lowest fees on the market”. But a quick comparison with ECU just shows that ECU is less expensive for most of transactions, just because we limit our fee at $5.
A $2000 transaction with our competitor will cost you $10, and just half of this ($5) at EcuMoney. For a $5000 transaction, $25 at our competitor and… still $5 at EcuMoney! So, just don’t blindly believe what you read here and there, and check by yourself!”

Then again we see hidden meaning. They probably meant PerfectMoney who at 0.5%, claim to have the lowest fees in the industry. It’s true indeed that they have no capping like in the case of EcuMoney and can reach $25 and more. But it’s also true that for the amounts of $1000 and less they are really lower than what EcuMoney offers. And to keep thousands of dollars and transfer them in EcuMoney, PerfectMoney and other e -currencies is pretty risky in my opinion. Most of the transactions will be less than $1,000 so PerfectMoney will be definitely a less expensive option than EcuMoney. Not mentioning the fact that PerfectMoney introduced the fees just recently staying a totally fee-free e-currency for over a year which EcuMoney can’t boast at all.

“By the way, in most “serious” countries, such advertising could make the company that uses it to be sentenced and fined. This perfectly explains why some e-currencies that use false statements in advertising are registered in some… how to say… less serious countries! There, all is allowed to scam the Consumer.”

This is what I call racism (or fascism if you prefer). It seems to me the author of this update was the same person that wrote the spam emails about PerfectMoney. Really, dividing all countries in the world into “serious” and “less serious” categories is just ridiculous if not simply dangerous. All the people living in those “less serious countries” should definitely be (and they will be) offended by such comments. Maybe we should also be divided into Aryans and non-Aryans exactly like fascists did? However good or bad EcuMoney was before that, I now have no wish to deal with any group that holds such strong opinions describing New Zealand as a serious country and Panama as a less serious one where everybody can be only ripped off. And look, it’s their official position. Really, I’m speechless about that. Save it for the cross burning, EcuMoney! After that remark my desire was to stop reading this so-called official update immediately but I forced myself carry on till the end to discover even more interesting stuff.

“We receive a lot of emails asking why we do not advertise “like other e-currencies”, speaking about “this” or “that” forum. Yes it is a fact, we do not advertise “there”. Why? Let’s say to be short that we select the places where we want to be active, and have no interest at all to pay persons to post positive messages about EcuMoney. The only positive reports that we are proud to have is our statistic files, and having about 3 millions USD ECU in circulation after only half a year online, is for us more important than any message posted by “bestinvestor” or “honestposter” on any forum.”

Really? That is their official position not to advertise their e-currency anywhere? Well, I don’t believe such a policy can be fruitful. Even well established and real financial institutions spend a lot of money on advertising because it’s an essential part of any business especially internet-based ones like this. Unwillingness to spend money on advertising is a sign of a dumb person in my opinion. How on earth can they even compete with such established payment processors like LibertyReserve? EcuMoney doesn’t have a referral program either because they emphasize their difference from so called anonymous payment processors. But are they real? I doubt it as the real financial authorities of New Zealand did not authorize EcuMoney to process any financial operations and stated very explicitly that: “The above company is not a registered bank in New Zealand. It is not licensed or supervised as a financial service provider by any New Zealand authority. Basic information about the company can be obtained from the database at: www.companies.govt.nz/cms The Reserve Bank has a warning on its website in relation to “offshore finance companies” at: www.rbnz.govt.nz/nzbanks“.

“To make simpler and faster to fund your ECU account, some of our Exchangers have installed an automatic software that allow instant exchanges from other e-currencies to EcuMoney. Some of them also accept bank cards to buy ECU.
Do not forget: We recommend you to work ONLY with exchangers that are listed on our website.
Every day or so, new Merchants accept EcuMoney for their Services. We have selected a few of them“.

Ok, this exchanger thing is a standard feature which both PerfectMoney and LibertyReserve provide to their members as well. There is another interesting thing I can’t help but mention. Among these good merchants there is one questionable one. I’m talking about EcuLotto under the ownership of EcuMoney (though absolutely deniable). Then why am I still receiving spamming emails from EcuLotto to the same email I registered my EcuMoney account with? I’m not actually using the account by the way as I think LR and PM are much better options anyway. Is it a simple coincidence? Then why the attacks on LibertyReserve also strangely coincided with their decision to ban the account of EcuLotto for the suspicion of fraud. For your information that info was published on the official blog of LibertyReserve:
“This warning is to address the decision made by LibertyReserve to disallow eculotto using LibertyReserve. To protect our clients that had complained to us – that after accessing EcuLotto web site their e-mails and multiple currency accounts were compromised and in accordance with the previous notice issued about other payment systems indirectly integrating LibertyReserve in payment solutions – we have decided to ask EcuLotto to stop using our payment system.”

Well, spreading the viruses and stealing the sensitive information on their clients is a serious accusation from LibertyReserve and of course EcuMoney has to distance themselves from EcuLotto. But spamming is still going on as I have said already. Anyway, I opened my account in EcuMoney but I’m not going to use them after reading the article I found on Ecommerce-Journal about EcuMoney.

This is the link to the article and you’re free to draw your own conclusions from that.

I would just like to mention that I’m not a huge fan of Ecommerce-Journal as I believe them to be either owned or at least supported by PerfectMoney and therefore their neutrality and objectivity can be questioned. Of course that by itself doesn’t make the opinions expressed there any more or less valid from the next guy’s. I just found the piece about their alleged office in some New Zealand building quite entertaining. I was almost sure that you would not be able to find EcuMoney’s office in the building listed on their website. Well, my guess was justified and of course no office was found there.

I remind you that I myself conducted an investigation on three investment companies claiming to have their offices in London (two of them were even registered properly). Of course I wasn’t able to find any offices occupied by them and one “registered company” even collapsed shortly after my investigation was published. You can read the article here if you haven’t done so yet by the way! The only thing I’m wondering how much time and money it will take to register your own offshore company in New Zealand that will not need a real office but will also not be authorized by the official financial authorities of New Zealand. I guess it would not be too difficult to do providing that the same procedure applies as in the UK where it can be quite fast and painless. I even came across such sites that will provide you with registration, an office address, and a telephone number in any country of the world that will get redirected to your own phone. And it will not cost you a fortune either! So it makes me smile when I hear the fairy tales about EcuMoney being registered in New Zealand and that’s why they are supposed to be safer than others. It might be true to some extent but will it help you when they decide to scam?

This is the last of the lengthy update from EcuMoney administration:
“Some very exciting news will be posted before the end of the year about others EcuMoney new services, that no competitor is offering. They will probably copy some of them as usual, but once more EcuMoney will have shown that it is one step ahead in the market. Thank you for using EcuMoney!”

I would like to mention that in this article its not my intention to whitewash PerfectMoney and LibertyReserve either. I’m not considering them as a safe option to keep substantial amounts of money in either. I’m just strictly against the approach adopted by EcuMoney who, lacking any moral principles, start a war against their more established competitors, and in such an ugly way. Because it’s not the owners of the payment processors that will suffer here, but rather regular users like you and me. EcuMoney itself should stop bragging about their non-existent uniqueness and better improve their services by means of honest competition and not spamming. Maybe then everybody will benefit from this peaceful competition between these anonymous e-currencies which have one thing in common: total anonymity and impossibility to verify both users and payment processor owners identities. If you play on this field please be assured that for such anonymous transactions you have to pay full price and the amount of scammers there will surely be higher than in other payment processors requiring identity verification from its users like StrictPay, AlertPay and SolidTrustPay.

At the moment of writing this I could not access the following sites: VentureFundsGroup, LloydFunds and XagaEnterprise but since they are hosted by the same provider I believe it’s a temporary problem at their end. In addition, I can’t access my accounts in the following programs which sites are perfectly well accessible for me: Treckswana, FlipReturn, ProspectHits and YesICanSurf. I have already contacted the admins of the above-mentioned programs with the request for help (as their Forgot password feature seem not to be working properly). Well, I guess it will be a good test for their support response.

By the way, the first to respond was the admin of FlipReturn who restored the access to my account quite fast. I could request my payouts again and have been successfully paid already. So I have to move FlipReturn to Paying status on my monitoring page. I will wait for a reply from the admins of the other programs for another 24 hours.

That was it for today and I will see you on my blog tomorrow. Just to finish, here is the list of payments I received today. So I was paid by the following programs: InvestiMates, AsianInvestGroup, GoldNuggetInvest, GeniusFunds, SigmaTral, Veolex, AvartesCapital, CoolReturn, InvestmentFirge, PanaMoney, NanoMoneyCorp, SilverLodge, Merchandies, NovalexFinance, ExcellentProfit, Surfing4Roi, ElegantMoney and FlipReturn (the first payment received). Don’t forget to check out my blog tomorrow for another interview!

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