Well I can’t say it’s been entirely unexpected, but this year it just seems to be reaching unprecedented levels. What am I talking about? Something that seems to have been invented the day after the internet itself. Online scams.

Those of us who have been involved in this industry for a few years should know all about it by now but for the benefit of any newbies reading this, Christmas is traditionally an unstable time for online investment programs. This year is no exception but even I’m surprised by the speed and sheer volume of programs collapsing. Not just the obvious fly-by-night scams that an experienced hand wouldn’t touch, but other more serious programs that appeared to be otherwise sound.

The reasons for this are many, and to be fair, it’s not always down to downright dishonesty on the admin’s part. Likewise it often is the admin’s intention to scam right from the start. So here we are still in only the first week of December and the list of programs closing down is getting alarmingly big. So today I’d like to take a look at some of the more popular ones that have recently stopped paying.

Top of that list would have to be Tradelite. The official line here is that they are on a temporary hiatus while a security audit is carried out. I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but can’t help feel there is more going on than meets the eye. Several of the forums are abound with stories from members who had their accounts hacked by someone who then canceled the contracts and pocketed the money. Some even go so far as to suggest it was an inside job. Who knows? Tradelite was running successfully for around eight months, so it strikes me as a little odd that these gaps in security would only emerge now. Given that the security measures were so seriously flawed, it’s baffling to think that they have gotten away with this until now. Especially since it is only recently that the popularity of the site, and subsequently the money involved, has become so explosive. Even the admin there made the claim several months back, and I quote: “Our company has made quite substantial investments to make sure we offer one of the safest platforms in terms of security and protection.”

The silence from Tradelite during all this has been deafening by the way, which is simply contributing to peoples worries, and will only make it more difficult for them to repair the damage done to members’ confidence. If we ever see them back online that is.

Confusion also seems to be rife regarding an alleged connection between Tradelite and PanaMoney. This however seems unlikely, at least according to their hosting provider. Tradelite was on BlockDos but then went to ZoneEdit servers. Nothing unusual there, in fact they changed host a number of times. But from this latest change they were being redirected to PanaMoney who complained immediately. PanaMoney‘s protection has since been enhanced so they shouldn’t be seeing this problem again. It would also appear that StrictPay are getting involved i.e reviewing account activities and the like, but as they don’t allow chargebacks, that will prove cold comfort to those who lost money.

Speculation and rumor are rife and contribute absolutely nothing beneficial to the situation, and I remind you that Tradelite has been managed with competence and professionalism so far, but with next to no communication from the admin, one can only fear the worst. I look forward to eating my words, but unfortunately I think the damage may be irreversible now. How many other programs can you name to make a successful recovery from similar situations?

Other news for today.

Yes, the season of scams is on in earnest. Today it became obvious to me that another program is walking on thin ice. I’m talking about DailyProfitPond that is now officially in Not Paying status on my monitoring page. They sent out an update regarding this. In my opinion it’s bullshit and I’m not going to republish it here. DailyProfitPond is definitely dead now and I will be very surprised if they pay you as promised! Ok, first they extended the waiting time for withdrawal requests to 3-5 business days. But this decision prover less than popular and affected their cashflow even more. This whole thing together with many complaints of missing upgrades and even missing payouts made the administration of DailyProfitPond take the decision to pay 5% for 30 days with two monthly cashouts allowed instead of 12% for 12 days with payouts on expiry. This is how they explained this whole change:
“We also wish to let our members know that until now, DPP substainability in the long run with paying 12% daily is questionable. A few of our members got scarced and have contacted us that they want such a fine program like DPP to be here in the long run.
We have listen to these leaders and have decided to make some changes that will ensure the longterm success of DPP.
Owing to this, the management of DPP have decided to change the 12% daily plan which pays 144% in 12 days to a more realistic plan of 150% earnings in 30 days.”
Ok, so they listened to some leaders (I have no idea who they mean by that) and decided to make the plan 5% for 30 days. Is it ok? Yes, if you don’t force these rules on your members and pay all them their pendings first. But do you know what they did? They returned all the members’ payment requests to their balance and then actually bought the profit spots for us. Just like Michael from MegaLido did. This is so-called forced re-investment is not only the sign that DailyProfitPond has a very serious cash-flow problem and on the verge of collapse probably but also a sign that they are scamming the members by not paying them what they owe. So it’s definitely a scam in my opinion!

The admin of Frogress Jake fares little better. Just yesterday when I talked to the admin of BlockDos Majeed he confirmed that Jake lost the database for the last week because of a server crash. And you know what? He didn’t make back-ups at all. BlockDos will do that but only if a client asks which Jake either didn’t bother or just forgot to do. Anyway, he knew it perfectly well that the website couldn’t continue without a database and he kept lying to us that everything was in order and he had all the records necessary to pay. You may actually ask me why he paid in the beginning, i.e. for two days after the downtime. I don’t really know but I assume he still hoped that the site would be back online. But now he probably decided to empty his StrictPay, AlertPay and SolidTrustPay accounts after what he’s done with his LR account for sure. That’s why he is now on forums trying to persuade people not to make complaints to those payment processors. This gives him a perfect chance to exchange the money to LibertyReserve and run away. I would suggest you to do quite the opposite. If you were with Frogress and lost your money, just submit a complaint. Even if the money is frozen and will stay in this payment processor at least it will not go to this scammer.

And look what an ugly scam TrafficAlmighty is becoming now! I just saw the admin Tysin is back now on the forums after some members threatened that they would complain to payment processors after the payments were delayed for more than 3 days. He just left an update on MMG forum: “Yes something bad happened. Just assuming is one thing. creating havoc and reporting to the processors is another. I’m just very disappointed at the moment and trying to sort through all this mess. Please bear with me till I come to the best solution“. I can translate it for you and then you will now what he really meant: “Please wait. I have some cashflow problems at the moment but I need to move your money from the payment processors as soon as possible. Don’t submit your complaints because otherwise I will not get your money and my Christmas will be spoiled. I’m just wondering on who else I blame for my own mistakes this time: maybe it will be Money-News admin because he told everybody who I am and how long my latest programs were running (9 and 5 days btw), or maybe it will be an admin of a different program. Oh, I think I know what I’m going to do: I will blame hit-n-runners as usual. I tried the best I could but they destroyed my program yet again. I will issue selective refunds again this time to all my supporters and my reputation will be spotless so I could open another scam next year. Please bear with me“. Sorry for the ugly truth, but I really know what I’m talking about. I had some signals that TrafficAlmighty was going to collapse this Monday but I had no solid proof so I could not publish it on my blog. I can see now that the man who warned me about TrafficAlmighty was right this time. I’m sorry I didn’t listen to him!

So I will publish the thing I know about GigaLido admin though I’m not sure if it’s true or not. The girl that helped the GigaLido admin to translate her newsletters into better English (because English was not her first language) reported to me that Denise (or whatever her name was) just opened another autosurf program called OSABN. Anyway, this is what Denise herself confirmed in the conversation with her just before scamming:
“GigaLido is planned to pay 12×12 for 6-9 month depending on how long we can do it, but we calculating it that way, that we may lower the percentages but not scam anyone! So after 6-9 mo0nth we may adjust the earnings. Hope that’s not shocking for you, but you help me so much, I need to share the truth. I am always direct, we will not scam anyone, well we pay less, but people will earn. I will start new surf soon with lower plans like 1-2%. I thinking the name OSABN. What do you think?This name is special to me. I will then add giga as this“.
As you can see Denise’s predictions regarding 6-9 months online were pure fabrication. GigaLido bearly lived for several weeks which is not a great achievement for such programs. You remember how she left all the members in the dark after some lame excuses about script problems. Ok, you can see that the new program OSABN is already online and ready for another quick scam. So if you want to get scammed then you’re welcome to Denise’s new program OSABN!

I was afraid that MaxShare (reviewed here) would also become a scam and that the hosting issues were just an excuse like we see in many program this time of year. But the admin didn’t disappoint me and after some prolonged downtime the program is back online and all the upgrades are extended by 5 days to compensate for missing surfing days. The admin already made an official update regarding this on the site: “Please Note : The following ad purchases will be extended by 5 days due to our site downtime. It will be done by modifying the purchased date as though it was done 5 days later.” But the most encouraging thing in this case is that the daily payouts have resumed today. So the admin has the full support of the members.

Many programs were hit by DdoS-attaks recently and among them Commoditex (reviewed here). The program is finally back online and with an increased level of protection from its hosting provider BlockDos. It seems that the issues are over and I received another payout today. Here’s the latest update from the admin of Commoditex published when the program was still offline and BlockDos was working on a solution:
“Due to technical difficulties and system maintenance, our website will not be available in some world parts, for the next 24-36 hours.
Our website is under huge DDOS attack the past hours, for that reason the site is not available at this moment.
Our Technical department is working very hard mitigate this situation as soon as possible.
We are very sorry for this inconvenience and we require your support and trust in the best online program, Commoditex.
With more complains our image will be damaged and we require all your support.”

PanaMoney, who recently made the headlines for getting redirected traffic from Tradelite recently underwent an upgrading of their own protection as well and now the site is available again every part of the world:
“Our company’s website has been unavailable within an hour today due to DDoS protection upgrade. However, as our trading system is located on different servers, unavailability of our website does not affect our trading on the Forex market. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
I repeat again that I don’t see any connection between PanaMoney and Tradelite despite this strange redirection many of you noticed yesterday. Moreover, the admin of BlockDos told me that PanaMoney really made an official complaint to them and that the traffic was redirected at a time when Tradelite was not actually on BlockDos servers.

There were several payments made from SurfExchange accounts yesterday but it’s already obvious to me that that program turned into a scam as well. I already moved the program to the Not Paying programs list and I strongly discourage you from investing there anymore. Moreover, I received an email from one of my readers that made his own investigation on Joe Baxter and that’s what he discovered about the admin of SurfExchange:
“About SurfExchange I have discovered something new: admin Joe Baxter is from Madrid. He said to be from Madrid. Today I talked with him in yahoo msn, I speak Spanish, but he doesn’t. However it’s the less. More interesting is the following: in one of AlertPay payment notification from Surfexchange the buyer name is: Paul Okafor. In the others notification the name is SurfExchange. On internet I met something interesting about that: http://www.scamdex.com/MHON/S/msg02962.php It’s the same name used in the past to scam with emails from Nigeria.”

By the way, if you noticed some of DailyProfitPond payments were from Kwasi Enterprises (just like SurfExchange payments from Kwasi account). According to one of my readers Kwasi is a very common name in Nigeria. So do we have a wave of Christmas scammers starting with Akinyemi Odrgan from MegaLido. I wonder is it all Nigerians in this industry. Anyway, it’s not exactly a burning issue for me now that all Kwasi companies (DailyProfitPond and SurfExchange) are finished (just like MegaLido). By the way, somebody is still hoping that Michael from MegaLido will return back after his vacation and start to pay out. Well, “hope springs eternal” as the saying goes and sometimes that’s all we have. But seriously this person needs to be more skeptical and imagine what would they have done in the admin’s place.

Well, I think that’s enough about scammers for today so let’s discuss more positive news. For example, AlertPay recently unlocked the account of Paul, the admin of FastProfitSurf which allowed him to continue his payouts today. I myself received three pending payments and I believe Paul has some good intentions to pay everybody. That’s why I re-upgraded today to show him my full support. Paul is a rare example in this industry when the admin could easily run away with all the money (at least in his LR account) but didn’t do it and chose to pay refunds. I hope all the members will be paid soon and even maybe FastProfitSurf could start again from scratch. Who knows what will happen next. Let’s just wait and see! Here’s the latest email from Paul about his locked AlertPay account:
“Finally AlertPay unlocked my account. I’ve started the payments but you got to understand two things: first, you are almost 5000 members, many with multiple upgrades expired, and I’m just one and I’m doing payouts manually. And second, while AP account was locked, I’ve paid many members on other payment processors and now I will need to do some exchanges to can finish all payments. So, even if it will take few more days, I’ll make all payments. Please do post on forums if you’ve been paid because it will help the others to see they will be paid too. Also, they are not selective payments, or just small payments as somebody suggested on forums. I’m doing payments now for all pending days (few of them at the time for each day) so please just be a little more patient. Thank you for all your support.”

Strangely the AlertPay account of the admin Edgar which is running a very new program 12DailyHits (read my review of the program tomorrow) was also locked today. Though I should notice that his AlertPay account was on temporary lock due to unusual changing of IP addresses that AlertPay considered suspicious. The issue was successfully resolved though which allowed the admin to make all AlertPay payouts successfully. Anyway, 12DailyHits is now accepting SolidTrustPay as well so you can use this opportunity if you’re only using this payment processor. By the way, Stella from STP agreed to answer some questions for an interview that will be published on my blog as soon as I get answers from her (stay tuned for that, should be interesting!)

Sometimes scammers are threatening honest and paying programs like ResidualForexIncome (read my review here) by blackmailing them. I think it’s intolerable and such actions should be prosecuted and condemned by honest program admins. This is the latest email from ResidualForexIncome administration they issued yesterday:
“Kindly be informed that today we have received several blackmailing emails of the same content more likely from Russia.
Of course we did not even think of paying that bastard (he is the one). As we have recently observed fake bad votes and comments have been submitted on goldpoll monitor. We have already contacted Jeff, goldpoll admin to fix this issue. However no one knows how long this will go on. One thing is for sure – we are not going to pay and we will never deal with blackmailers!
P.S. We rely on you and all our loyal members. Please vote for us as your REAL vote will help us shoot blackmailers down. RFI is not only a team of executives behind it but it is a team of members. We strongly hope for your assistance. Thanks!”

I just received an interview from the admin of Youmilex program. It will be published on my blog later this week. Meanwhile, you’re welcome to read my review of this 125% after 10 days program here. In my opinion the admin of Youmilex Edward is running the program well and has been doing so for 45 days already and that’s worth our appreciation, especially in this volatile Christmas period. I have received a very positive newsletter from him today where he announced a great contest for Youmilex members:
“Total active investments in our program have crossed $100000 mark! We are grateful to all our members for their trust and support.
Looking at the positive development we have decided to run a “Marketing Master Contest” or MMC for short!
– Create a new slogan for our program!
– It should consist of at least 3 words and must be unique. If we find your slogan on google you will be disqualified.
– You have to be a Youmilex member to participate. Both free and active members are welcome.
– The contest lasts from the moment you receive this newsletter and to the 24th of December. Winners will be honored on the Christmas Day!
– To participate send us a support ticket with the following title:
MMC slogan member [xxx]
where xxx is your Youmilex ID.
– Up to 5 slogans per member allowed!
– For the duration of the contest referral commissions are raised to 7%!
What will you get if you win? Here are the prizes:
1. $50 paid directly to a payment processor of your choice
2. $30 paid directly to a payment processor of your choice
3. $20 paid directly to a payment processor of your choice
4. -10. FREE $10 deposit
Make the best of your creativity and you will easily win!”

There is some exciting news I received from the admin of AggeroInvestment Roger (interviewed here) and if you are sorry that you missed this great program before it went private here’s the perfect opportunity for you – there will be two days soon when the registration in AggeroInvestment will be allowed by invitation only. Please read the latest updates from AggeroInvestment on my blog and I will notify you as soon as the registration is enabled. You will have then 48 hours to sign-up and receive all the privilegies of being in my referral:
“I have some exciting news for you! I’ll make it quick.
1. Regarding registrations to our program, due to the request of many members and the number of email requests I am getting, I decided to hold a ’48-Hour Weekend By-Invitation-Only’ registrations on December 13 and 14th. You can promote as you wish to your friends already so when that time comes, they should be ready. Remember that this is BY INVITATION ONLY, meaning they have to sign up under somebody, and that when YOU sign-up somebody, IT IS your responsibility to train that new member the ins and outs of our program.
2. ‘10% BONUS SITE’ Contest will start again tonight at midnight!
3. Dutch (Nederlands) translation was added.”

Finally, some news from the admin of EasyCash24:
“Dear EasyCash24 Investors, we like to announce that the minimum investment in the Answer Plan (230%) after 16 days is now US$150 and not US$500 anymore because we received a lot of emails asking us if we can do so. As we always care about our Investors your wish is our command. Happy investing“.

I was paid yesterday and today from the following programs: Youmilex, GoldNuggetInvest, MutualForexFund, SafeAtom, AggeroInvestment, ResidualForexIncome, PanaMoney, NoRiskInvestment, Commoditex, HermisCapital, SurfPal, FXOIC, 12DailyHits, ANOI, InoFund, MajorBarter, 2008-N, LargeSum, Olympex-Group, EKOFunds, URInvest, FastProfitSurf, SummitReserve, Mountain-Mining, EasyCash24, MegaDollarSurf (the first payout) and CapitalCorpex (the first payout).

CapitalCorpex is the newest addition to my HYIP list. It has been running for more than 3 weeks already and looks really interesting and original to me. The investment plan CapitalCorpex is offering is only 2% for 90 business days. No principal is returned at the end of your investment term. The minimum to invest is $5 only and LibertyReserve and PerfectMoney are the accepted payment processors. CapitalCorpex is hosted on a dedicated server with quite an original script and is using some interesting features like DSig which will be further discussed in my detailed review of the program that will be published later this week. Stay tuned and see you tomorrow, guys!