14/07/2010. StrictPay Update and Other News

Hi, guys! The main event of the day is of course the long anticipated update from StrictPay which is currently offline. As I expected
I will just give you a brief outline of what was said in the update and will let you consider this first with any comment from me. So here is what we have from this update:
1) there is still no evidence on offer to StrictPay members proving the freezing of their assets. In fact no names were mentioned at all which is very suspicious and makes me suspect HYIP style behavior.
2) StrictPay needs more funds to continue their operation. Just like any ponzi style game as a real financial institution would not accept new deposits while declining withdrawals. Especially at the same time being so thoroughly aware of how the awful situation they are in is.
3) StrictPay will continue their operation with two types of account: in one your money cannot be withdrawn. It can only be done with new funds in the second type of account which I doubt will be used anymore provided they moved the already submitted withdrawal requests to members balances which you can’t withdraw again.

Anyway, the bottom line is the members of StrictPay are pretty much being told to forget about the money they already have in their accounts. Cancel it! Write it off for two years and forget about ever seeing a cent of it. Open instead a new account which will still have to be funded from scratch (and conveniently with no fees.We have heard of some good deeds of the StrictPay admin spending over $100K of their own money to process all the latest withdrawal requests. Then the investors should sit tight and pray in hope to get their money back from the new money which will be gracefully accepted by StrictPay. What if StrictPay has another excuse a year or two later and tells you that their funds were frozen again? Or simply issues another excuse of course backed by from their (unnamed) lawyer preventing you you from hearing about any recovery plan?
I might be wrong of course but it’s the most ridiculous and ludicrous update I ever heard from StrictPay administration and I honestly hope that they are telling the truth. However this doesn’t expire even a shred confidence as it was not backed up with anything but mere words and even worse – StrictPay will warmly welcome some new funds to your newly zeroed accounts and hope that everybody will simply forget about the other funds for a couple of years while there might be another excuse to follow. Sorry if I hurt StrictPay’s feelings but it’s exactly how it looks to me after I read their update. You might wish to submit a comment to this article but first read the update, published from another blog, which recently became an official SP informer:
“StrictPay Customers
We have spent numerous months trying to battle this situation with the banks and authorities that are holding the majority of our funds, as well as trying to keep StrictPay in business by making the changes outlined in the email update sent on 5-29-10. The problem now is that we are not making any progress on the situation with those two entities, and we have received more news from our legal team. They feel that with the latest developments with the frozen funds, that we are very likely looking at this issue not being resolved for at least 12 months as a best case scenario, and possibly up to 24 months as a worst case scenario. We still cannot speak of any specifics, other than to say (as we stated earlier) that two of the major merchants that accepted StrictPay as a payment option were being heavily investigated by the authorities, and we were pulled into that investigation as well due to them accepting us as a payment option, and even more so because all three of us had accounts with the same bank.
Due to the frequency and volume of their requests, one of them found out which bank we were using and specifically got an account at that same bank in order to get funds transfers more quickly, as well as to save them some bank fees. Only a select few customers knew the location of our main bank containing the majority of our funds, and that will never happen again. This is also why we have always sent and received funds from banks other than the ones that hold the majority of our funds.
We know it is frustrating for everyone, but we need to do what is right for our company, and that means that we cannot give any other detail on this legal matter. We want to stress again that there is not an issue with StrictPay being involved with these two merchants, but it is almost as simple as us having the majority of our funds in the wrong bank at the wrong time.
It is important to note that we had a similar situation happen to us quite some time ago with Stanford Bank, and we recovered from that without any issues that involved our customers or the time we took to process transactions for you all. As a matter of fact, we still have not had a single penny returned to us from that situation, but we kept being able to serve our customers none the less. It is also important to note that our owners have recently added just over $100,000 of their own funds to help us try to continue to process as many of the withdraw requests as we could these last few weeks. They did this even though we have not had much support since the original update was sent on 5-29-10, and the situation looked like it was going to get worse.
We understand that we are very behind on many withdraw requests, but we have used this entire 100k with virtually nobody reporting to the various outlets that we have indeed paid them. 70k of this money was used for processing bank wire withdraw requests, including some to exchanger services in hopes that they would continue to work with us, 20k was used to process debit card withdraw requests, and 10k was used to process check by mail withdraw requests. We have not gotten very many deposits, and we have even held off on processing ACH deposit requests until now when we received a better update concerning the situation.
We would hope this shows that we are not just trying to get new funds so we can run, as seems to be one of the widely reported rumors circulating. That being said, we will need new funds to support us in the future, as we will outline below, but this is not in order to accumulate funds for ourselves, but rather to help all of our customers recover their own funds more quickly.
With this latest news of the possible best and worst case time frames it is likely to take to resolve this issue, we are only left with two choices to keep StrictPay in business. Those two choices are:
1. We put StrictPay on hold until this issue with the frozen funds gets resolved. This is going to take somewhere between 12 and 24 months to resolve, and during that time our customers would not be able to get any of their funds out of their accounts. This would mean that there is essentially no more StrictPay activity until this situation is resolved, and we feel that this option does not help anyone in the short term.
2. We keep StrictPay in business and activity continues, including the customer support, transaction processing times, etc. that you all have commended us on in the past before this current situation caused us to fall behind. We do this by creating one sub account for every current StrictPay account, and start each sub account with a zero balance. We allow all current accounts to work as they are now, and all people that make deposits, or receive funds transfers, from this new sub account to another new sub account, will have their funds go only into their new sub account.
Each customer’s older accounts with their current balances can still be used to send and receive funds if they wish, but the balances on those old accounts cannot be used to withdraw funds. We think this is very important as it allows customers and merchants to use these accounts freely again, and you will eventually get these funds moved to the sub account that can be withdrawn out as we will explain below. We have been told that many merchants are not taking StrictPay because they feel they are stuck with “dead funds”, but with the system we will explain below this will not be the case. The new system is a great way to build and work with your current account, and over time those funds will get moved to your new sub account that can have funds withdrawn from it.
To continue with number two above, here is how the new system will be implemented. Any withdraw request from a current account will be refunded back into that account. New customer sub accounts will be the same StrictPay account number but with a “-1? after them, so customers and merchants alike will know exactly what customer account sent the funds (either a sub account which can have withdraws, or the older StrictPay accounts that cannot have withdraws). Sub accounts with the “-1? will only be able to send and receive funds to/from other sub accounts, and older accounts will only be able to send and receive funds to/from other older accounts without the “-1?.
With this new system in place, if customers begin to use our services again as they have done for well over 2 years, we will then start to take no less than 0.75% of the 2% Send Funds fee every few weeks and credit that amount to the sub accounts of every customer. This same credited amount will also be taken out of the older account, and thus customers will be able to again begin to gradually see their funds move from the older accounts that do not allow withdraws, to the newer sub accounts that will allow withdraw requests.
We obviously feel that number two is the better of the two choices. Now it is very important to realize that this will only work if people use our services like they did before. We would hope that will be an easy choice for people to do, as this will help everyone eventually receive all their funds, as well as the fact that our superior customer service was what made us as big as we are now. StrictPay in fact started many of the trends you see in the payment processor industry today, such as the live chat support option, and shorter stated customer service reply time frames that were actually met. We have always been proud of the fact that we were heralded as having the best customer service in the industry, and this will continue after these new changes are implemented. We are sure that some will say they would not use us again, even with the implementation of these new changes, and to those people we would ask “Why?” Before this happened, StrictPay was a top option for many customers and merchants, and if we truly wanted to just fold up shop and disappear without trying to help our customers, we would have done so before dumping over 100k of our own money into trying to keep this afloat.
We also will continue to use what is universally considered the best DDOS protection company, one that is not even connected to this industry, and we would not continue to pay for this service if we wanted to just close up shop.
Implementing these changes also allows us to offer better withdraw limits for our customers. We will still leave the “real time” withdraw request time frames in place so you can see how long requests are currently taking to process, but keep in mind that it will take the first few days of withdraw requests being entered into the system to really become accurate. Here are the new withdraw request maximum limits:
Wire withdraws: $100 minimum and $7,500 maximum Debit card withdraws: $10 minimum and $1,000 maximum Check by mail withdraws (available to U.S. customers only): $10 minimum and $2,000 maximum Please keep in mind that we still have the following options available for depositing funds, and all options will be “no fee” options until further notice: ACH (for U.S. customers only), bank wire, and personal check, money order, or cashier check by mail.
StrictPay continuing to do business should also be welcome news to one of the bigger merchants (and their customers) that were using our services until they had to put things on hold for sometime. There is word that they are about to begin processing refunds to their customers, and once they make a deposit into their new sub account, they will then be able to start refunding StrictPay customers as well. This in turn will provide us with fees from the transfers that we will use to help to move funds from the old StrictPay accounts to the newer sub accounts that you can withdraw from.
The bottom line is this: If people use our services by depositing funds into their new sub accounts (which can also be withdrawn from at any time), and use us as one of their main payment processor options again as they always have, then we will recover from this. Eventually then ALL customers will get their full balances moved to their new sub account over time, and things will be back to normal more quickly than if everyone had to wait up to 24 months in hopes that we recover all of our funds. Lawyer fees will not allow us to get the entire amount back, but we do not foresee anything else cutting into that recovery amount. We all have a lot to lose if people choose not to continue to use StrictPay as a payment option, but we can all only gain if everyone uses StrictPay as they always have in the past.
We would like to leave you with this one last question: What do you have to lose by using StrictPay again, knowing that we have always been there in the past for our customers without issue? If you still have a need for an online payment processor, then why not choose to use StrictPay as you always have.
As always, we appreciate you choosing StrictPay as a payment option, and we shall see over the next few months if everyone will actually help us get back to a sense of normalcy using this new system.
Thank you. Team StrictPay”.

I would like to say that I really liked StrictPay while it was a great payment processor but at this point I simply cannot back this up with any support as this last email is a total nonsense and looks to me likely more than a trick from a well-experienced scammer than behavior I used to expect from such professional (in the past) payment processor like StrictPay was. Anyway, let’s get to some news from HYIP industry.

The admin of FxCrudeOil probably wasn’t aware of this latest update from StrictPay. He emphasized in his own mail to his members that all the payouts had been completed except for those to StrictPay. Anyway, all old StrictPay accounts will be officially devalued soon so nobody would really care about receiving funds into or out of them. This is the latest update from the admin of FxCrudeOil (reviewed here) which also contains some recent stats:
“All payout has been completed except StrictPay.
StrictPay is currently undergoing maintenance
Thanks for all your support
Please vote for us at MNO and other listed monitors
Welcome all new members
New Members Today : 4. This week : 17. This month : 70
Thank you. FxCrudeOil Admin”.

Unfortunately I had to move two more programs to Problem status on my monitoring page today.

The first one is XaresFunds which has simply disappeared with no indication of further return. I noticed that my account with them hasn’t been credited with earnings for a week now and asked the admin for an explanation. However, today I found out that the site simply disappeared and my email was also remained unanswered. So the conclusion is the site is gone and it became yet another victim of the current HYIP crisis.

The second program I have to moved to Problem status today is FreshReturn. The program had a good payment record over the last two weeks. However the last payouts I submitted last night are still on Pending status for over 24 hours already which means just one thing – the program is really in trouble. Please hold off of making any additional spends into FreshReturn – at least until I clear up the situation with the admin regarding the pending withdrawals.

The most recent scam program is SolidInv as you know. The admin contacted me today and asked why I put the program to problem status on my blog and asked me if I knew the meaning of the word “scam”. I said that of course I knew what it meant as not replying to my emails and not paying me within 24 hours means an obvious scam to me. Also I asked him why he tried to impersonate the admin of TrueEarn and make others think that it was his new program and of course he didn’t reply. Why he tried to fool me and other investors will remain a mystery as it was clear as day he was just attempting make a fast buck from those members still hoping the admin of TrueEarn might launch a program. That is why he shamefully stole the texts, design, and plans from him and is now trying to make any excuse for selective payouts. I remind you that some payments from SolidInv are still being processed but it’s just to those who invested via AlertPay and monitors. Big LR and PM amounts are not being paid. So I advise you to stay away from that scamming program SolidInv as it’s going to close very soon as the investors getting aware of those selective payouts.

There were some updates posted on the Twitter of PrivateDiamondClub today. I remind you that the site is still not available due to some issues with their hosting provider HushHosting which simply can’t be considered a reliable option for HYIP hosting anymore. In addition it seems that they have some script issues and somebody tried to steal funds from them. I hope everything will finish well for PrivateDiamondClub as I really liked the program for its consistent payouts and a very original and adventurous story. The latest updates on their Twitter are being republished below and I hope the admin Lars will not mind me updating the members like this:
“Dear members, our site was online today for a few hours now it is offline again. And a hacker tried to steal the files. there were protected.
Seems like a normal investment is not wanted on this market. We will be back in 12-30 hours. I could not even finish all payments…Sorry
We wont disappear. But once we are back, we will focus more on bigger Bank Wire and WU members. And offer phone and SMS member account access.
Just in case it will happen again. Strange. We had over one year never a issue with our hosting provider!”
I know that some other programs are also suffering from the unstable work of HushHosting servers so we’ll wait and see how it develops. Of course I will keep you updated about the latest news from PrivateDiamondClub and will let you know as soon as the site is back online.

I have added another program to my monitoring today and it’s called BullInvest. The admin of the program was very responsive and answered all my questions and suggestions very fast and in a polite manner which means his program might become a big hit when the industry recovers. In my opinion BullInvest has every chance to survive this tough time and enter September in top form. There were different low-ROI plans offered by the program: 1% for 5 days (test plan for only small deposits from $1 to $50), a variable return of 1.3%-1.7% for 130 days (for moderate amounts), 1.9% for 150 days and 2.1%-2.4% for 180 days (for higher amounts). All the deposits are accepted via LibertyReserve, PerfectMoney, StrictPay and AlertPay and the payments are only credited on business days. Your principal in BullInvest will be returned on expiry and compounding is also allowed by the unique script which was custom made by an experienced programmer. The security features of the site are also fine with an SSL-encrypted site hosted on a dedicated DDoS-protected server by Koddos. I will have a more detailed review of them by tomorrow so stay tuned for that.

I would like to thank everybody who took part in the voting on my poll which is situated just under my Shoutbox in the end of my right sidebar of my blog page. The question is: What factor is the most important for you when deciding to invest in an HYIP? I think it was really important to find out what really makes a successful HYIP and that’s why I gave six possible answers to that question to embrace all the possible aspects the potential investors are paying their attention to at the first glance. There were only 34 votes submitted so far, so I still believe you will participate more actively in that poll. The most popular answer so far is – the admin’s personality which attracted 26% of all the votes. So I want to know what you think about that and what attract you more in a program when you consider investing in it.

That’s all for today guys,I’ll just remind you of the following programs that paid me today:
BullInvest (the first payment received), Disalina, OnyxInvClub, InWolton, FluxRates, ReProFinance, FundsOMatic, CherryShares, YesInvestment, GoldenInvestment, EzProfit, AvaInvestment, FxCrudeOil, OilStructure, GoldCollarInvest, CashMiner, Forexica, RedOrchidInvest, HOX and YamaFinance.

I hope to see you all on my blog tomorrow with a more detailed review of BullInvest and more news from the HYIP industry! See you then, everyone!