18/12/2010. ChristmasCracker Review and Daily News from the Industry

BEWARE! THIS PROGRAM HAS STOPPED PAYING! PLEASE DO NOT INVEST!

Hi everybody! One of the most embattled and beleaguered new HYI programs to start up this week was beyond doubt ChristmasCracker, a new short term Christmas themed game monitored on MNO since the middle of this week. The program was scarcely online for a matter of hours before coming under a massive DDoS attack, however this has since been mitigated and the website moved to a more powerful server. It may even turn out to be a blessing in disguise as whoever was responsible for the attack seems to have gotten their timing wrong completely, as it was launched before anyone had a chance to deposit meaning it didn’t have any impact on investors. Not financially at least but the psychological effects remain to be seen. Anyway, ChristmasCracker is now back online, paying everyone in full, and a lot more secure for the experience so I can finally take a closer look at it for you.

If the name didn’t give it away then the graphics surely will. ChristmasCracker is “done up like a Christmas tree” as the saying goes, and even features a picture of Santa Claus looking like there was an extra shot of rum (or three) in the eggnog, lol! So basically it’s a short term game aimed at generating money for the holidays. And while I know that not everyone likes this type of thing, if you do then there are six plans to choose from. They all operate more or less the same way, making payments on expiry with your principal counted as part of it.

The first plan runs for just 1 single day. You can join with anything from a $1 minimum to a $50,000 maximum and on expiry get back 103% of your deposit.

As we progress through the plans you will notice that as they get more and more risky, the interest rate also increases. Thankfully the minimum deposit doesn’t and you can join ChristmasCracker‘s second plan for just $1 as well. It runs for a term of 2 days and on expiry offers you 107% of your money back. Maximum spend is $50,000.

Your third option is to join a plan that pays on expiry after a 3 day term. The minimum and maximum deposits remain unchanged at $1 and $50,000 respectively and the return on offer is 112%.

Next ChristmasCracker offers a plan that runs for 5 days. Spending limits are again set to between $1 and $50,000 and payment on expiry is of 123%.

At the time of writing there’s just seven days remaining before Christmas itself, so it’s up to you to assess the risks involved with joining the longer term options available. Because the next plan runs for 10 days. $1 is the minimum spend and $50,000 is the maximum. The return being offered on expiry is 150%.

ChristmasCracker‘s final plan runs for a 15 day term and offers payments on expiry. And while it may very well be true that the admin intends to run his program for that long, the success of this plan (as well as all the others by the way) will hinge on the investors willingness to sign up and keep new cash flowing throughout all of the cycles. Minimum and maximum deposits remain unchanged at $1 to $50,000 and the return on expiry is 190%.

LibertyReserve and PerfectMoney are the only ones accepted as payment processors. Not a great choice but it’s pretty clear that this is a gamble anyway, so you know to set your spending limits and stick to them. On a more positive note however it has to be said that all payouts are instant. Despite the fact that the FAQ says the admin requires up to 12 hours to have everything processed, at the time of writing they are instant. Just remember that you still need to request them.

The program is running off a licensed GoldCoders script and is hosted on a dedicated server with BlackLotus protection. Initial problems are well documented elsewhere and don’t need to be repeated yet again except to say that the admin has made a very substantial upgrade of his hosting package (and at some expense too) in order to keep the program open to investors. Any questions can be sent to him by filling out your details on the support ticketing form on the contacts page.

There’s not much to add about the business model of ChristmasCracker. It’s a straight up online HYIP where some people are going to win some easy money and some others are going to lose it. Which camp you fall into depends on any number of things and recent hosting issues which are always a vastly bigger problem for shorter term games than they are for long term ones can have a far more destructive effect. But due to the fact that the program had no more than a handful of paying members at the time the effects here could go either way, either leading people to avoid the program altogether or else just resulting in slower more gradual growth and help it survive a bit longer. The program is at least partially original in the sense that it’s no secret what’s really going on here – unlike so many “financial investment companies” that scammed this month – but ultimately members will vote with their wallets.

We’ll see in the coming days how afraid people really are of instability in the industry around this time but my guess is that ChristmasCracker will still get a few takers. Some people just like these things no matter what and are always looking for a fast and easy gamble, so if that includes you just take a moment to assess the risk against the potential reward and remember that it only costs a dollar to play. It can be a fun way to make a few bucks but it’s only fun when playing for affordable and sensible amounts, so try and keep it that way.

DAILY NEWS FROM THE INDUSTRY.

It looks like I was jumping to conclusions last night about FelixFunds‘ request to submit some sensitive documents in order to apply for a position as a representative for them in your country. I remind you that you were asked to send them your ID and utility bills in order to apply for the job vacancy. Today after some negative feedback from me and other investors the admin of FelixFunds Felix (interviewed here) has withdrawn his offer and said that it would be enough for the prospective candidates to supply just a phone number in the country which they’d like to represent. I think it’s a very fair compromise which could also remove any suspicions of dishonesty. The admin of FelixFunds also apologized to investors for this accidental attempt to obtain some sensitive info and said that it was never his goal to steal somebody’s identity backing this point up with his own lack of experience and running his own HYIP for the first time. Well, I think in this case it can be excusable as after chatting with the admin I was convinced that he was honest in his intentions and did not plan identity theft. I think we can consider the case closed now and I wish I had this chat with Felix before publishing the negative opinion on my blog last night. You should be aware that I also had the best intentions in mind and I didn’t want to ruin FelixFunds‘ reputation but just found it improper to support this decision of sending personal documents like passports and utility bills to an unknown admin. This is the latest explanation from the admin of FelixFunds which was sent to all the members of his program today:
“It seems that some people can think of what we never thought. The only reason for requesting documents for representative jobs was to not put on the site false informations for our members. But some people always think the worse even if that was not our intention. So we decided to drop documents requests and we will only ask for phone numbers to put on the site for who ever wants to be our representative in his own country. I just hope that all of you understand that we would never do a bad thing with or for our members. And never thought somebody could take it this way. We don’t need to steal anybody’s identity and we don’t need any payment processor accounts verified on other names by our own. We don’t intend to open other sites and we do intend to keep this site online and paying for at least few years. Thank you for excusing my lack of experience in this industry and for your trust in us.
Regards, Felix”.
I remind you that FelixFunds is a program accepting deposits made via AlertPay, LibertyReserve and PerfectMoney payment processors and allegedly involved in Forex trading. The currently offered plans are 1.2%-2.3% paid on every business day with no expiry date and the possibility to withdraw your principal anytime with a 15% fee. The other plan offers 117% after 15 calendar days for the deposits starting from $200. Don’t forget that you can also earn a $5 cash prize by answering some questions about FelixFunds and its team in the sponsored daily cash contest which you can find on my forum in this thread. More about the program itself can be read in my review here but please note that FelixFunds has added some new features since the original review was published on MNO.

I received quite a weird email from the admin of what we believed to be a dead program FiboTradePro. I remind you that it was moved to Not Paying status on MNO a few days ago but today suddenly I received a short update from the admin apologizing for the delays with payouts and promising to pay all the pendings within 48 hours:
“Hello dear members:
All withdrawal requests will be process within 48 hours.
We apologize for any inconvenience.
Thank you for your patient. FiboTradePro”.
Please note that the investments to FiboTradePro are not recommended yet until the promised payouts are actually processed. I hope this will happen but until then FiboTradePro will stay on Not Paying status on MNO.

The administration of RussianOilFund (reviewed here) decided to reward their wealthier clients with huge bonuses. To avail of them you simply have to invest at least $3,500 into 2%-2.9% daily plan and then you will get a 3% deposit bonus + $100 one-time cash gift. You will also enjoy your private phone number and personal representative in the program. What is the purpose of introducing such benefits for larger investors? Of course, this is done to encourage the higher deposits in the program whose deposits will be a safe ticket for the program to survive Christmas time and might be used as a payment to the soon to expire first deposits. This is definitely a wise move from RussianOilFund, however I’m not quite sure that there will be many takers to invest thousands of dollars into a program in the middle of December which has been online for 10 weeks already. Anyway, here is the latest newsletter from RussianOilFund issued today outlining the benefits and encouraging higher deposits:
“Hello RussianOilFund Family,
We at RussianOilFund are always looking for new ways of improving our client relations and providing a better investor experience. RussianOilFund would like to announce the unveiling of our Executive Clients program that we have been preparing over the past few months. Our Executive Clients are those investors of ours who have invested in our company a considerable amount. Executive Clients are those who have deposits with us in the Level 3 and 4 categories. These are deposits of $3500 or more.
All our current investors who are in those categories will automatically be enrolled in our Executive Clients Program as well as all new deposits from now on. If you are a previous investor in Level 3 and 4, you will automatically receive an email from your Executive Clients representative here at ROF within 24 hours.
Below you will find an overview on the Executive Clients Program here at RussianOilFund.
Requirement for enrollment: Deposit of at least $3500 or more
Executive Client Benefits:
A personal representative here at RussianOilFund
A private telephone number for Executive Client Relations
A permanent 3% deposit bonus on all deposits
A one time instant withdraw of $100 as an enrollment gift
A once monthly Executive Clients newsletter
Once a qualifying deposit has been made, within 24 hours you will receive your welcome email from a Executive Clients Representative here at RussianOilFund.
Enjoy the holidays with your family as we go into 2011!
Thank You, RussianOilFund”.

You might have noticed that LibertyReserve payment processor was offline for maintenance today but it only took then a couple of hours to return back to normal. Now LR is fully operational and everything seems to be back to normal. I have to say that this downtime was not out of the blue and it was mentioned on the official LibertyReserve blog beforehand:
“Liberty Reserve will be unavailable on:
18 December, between 8:00 and 10:00(GMT)
This upgrade will give you a faster, more productive system.
Thank you for choosing Liberty Reserve.”

Today I was paid from the following programs listed on Premium and Standard listings on MNO:
ChristmasCracker, FelixFunds, FxEconomy, Greenvestment, GainBucks, FutureTrails, MetalicFund, YesInvestment, ProfitixGroup, RevenueBuild, 144CashAds, RedOrchidInvest, YamaFinance, MutualTreaty, GoldMiningFund, AllianceAdvantage, Finansima, TerraProfits, ReProFinance and RussianOilFund.

That’s the end of the news for today, guys. I hope you’re spending your weekend in a very positive way and I hope to see you on my blog tomorrow. Have a good one!