21/07/2009. What’s Going On With GoldNuggetInvest and Other News

Hi guys! Sorry for not having a news update yesterday. I was really busy with my offline chores so I was only able to publish the interview on my blog. Well, to tell you the truth that was the last interview I’m publishing with the admin of a program not on my Personal Favorites list. From now on the interviews will be published only with the admins of the programs from my Premium Listing. I hope this will eliminate a lot of the scams and help me to not waste my blog space on low-quality programs.

Other important changes in my listing include the division of all the programs into three categories: Premium Listing (Personal Favorites), Standard Listing (the programs that are monitored by my blog but are not my favorites) and Basic Listing. The last one is a new category which was implemented by myself because I have many program admins that have low or below average quality programs but they also want to be monitored by my site. Well, I decided to give them this opportunity but instead of reviewing their programs I will only be presenting them on my monitoring page. So in a nutshell these programs from Basic Listing will be monitored only like any other monitoring sites do (program admins are paying monitoring fees and these fees are redeposited into their programs which are then monitored to see if they are paying or not). Just to make things clear: I am not going to announce or review such programs on my blog but you will be able to find them on my monitoring page under the Basic Listing tab.

I’m also thinking over some other aspects that will allow me to make my monitoring site more user friendly for my readers and of course all your suggestions will be highly appreciated. I’ll do my best to monitor only quality programs on my blog and report to you about the scams as soon as I find out. So don’t hesitate to contact me anytime but please allow up to 72 hours to respond. You know I’m really very busy with my blog, monitoring and some pleasant offline things I’m doing in Russia now so please forgive me if sometimes my response can be delayed.

Anyway, I was thinking of reviewing another program on my blog today but some strange events surrounding GoldNuggetInvest (reviewed here) made me postpone that till tomorrow. I know that my readers were quite concerned by a recent mail they received allegedly from GNI’s administration suggesting that they withdraw their deposits within the next 48 hours to avoid losses of an alleged ponzi operated program. Usually such emails are ignored by the members and do not create any panic but in this case it was a little different. The most important thing about that email was that the senders apparently knew the information regarding their individual deposits so they have sent this info to all members spreading panic and hoping that the members will rush wishing to request their deposits and get paid before this “ponzi” folds.

Well, what can I say regarding that? Of course, these things happen and even the sites with the highest level of security sometimes get hacked. That means of course that there is a breach in security in GoldNuggetInvest that should be addressed immediately. And nobody denies that. It will hopefully be further investigated by the administration of GoldNuggetInvest and not to happen in the future.

Although the main purpose of this email was to trick investors into withdrawing their funds from GoldNuggetInvest and depositing them in another “non-ponzi” company. Well, I hope that the readers of Money-News-Online are all smart people and will not panic because of a hacked database and some spam email especially considering that your money is still safe and there was absolutely no problem with withdrawal requests that are always paid on time. Anyway, you can read all the updates on the official forum of GoldNuggetInvest on ASA and you will find the link on their site. I would just like to re-publish this spamming email on my blog with the comments left by Todd (head of the support staff in GNI). His official comments are printed in bold font:
“Dear investor GNI, We are a team acting against spreading of various ponzi schemes and other types of financial pyramides in the Internet.

Problem being two-fold….they have sent this email from a fictitious source…there is no “support@goldnugget.com. We use gmail as our email “addy” second, they don’t know how to spell. May seem trivial, it’s not….it’s indicative of the source.

Using the vulnerability of mysql we broke the website GoldNuggetInvest.

they didn’t “break” the website, they hacked into it.

Our experts were surprized when they saw that there was no single incoming payment from bookmakers to the accounts owned by the owners of this website.

That’s a very good observation. They would never see any transactions originating out of the script on the website. That is not how it’s done.

The payment to investors are made exclusively from the new deposits. It’s a simplest type of ponzi scheme.

And that is a bold faced lie.

We recommend you to withdraw your money to a safer place. This website will be closed in the near future, you have 48 hours to withdraw your money at the most. If the owners of the website don’t close it, it will be done by us.

That is what the extortionists threatened. We pay or they “play.”

If you want to thank us for this information and to get information about where to invest money safely, please e-mail your e-mails to the following addresses:
asdertruda@gmail.com, kathyhaynitzsch@ymail.com, asdertruda@hushmail.com

The truth is now coming out…first they are a team of knights in shining armor, here to save everyone’s cash. Now, they just happen to have a great place for you to invest. Satisfy your curiosity and ask them where they think you should invest? I’m curious. My priority is to first alleviate your anxiety. Your funds are safe.

We hope you will have luck and you return your money.
In order to prove our words, please have a look at the information below:
Your deposits (information from GNI base): …

I have to give them credit. They successfully proved that they hacked into our database….They did not get any funds, but they got into the database.

Guys (and gals)….Recognizing the vulnerabilities to the script, we have in the works (and this was the big surprise) a completely new script that will be implemented within the next two weeks. There has been one heck of a lot of work that has been going into this endeavor, and I’ll be darned if I am going to allow some jerks to ruin a good program. I have good money in this program too. Those of you on this forum have consistently shown your loyalty and commitment to us, Robert and your fellow investors. We have been investigating new charitable causes to help those in this world who are less fortunate. Regretfully, and as a result of the lack of regulatory oversight, hackers, fraudsters and jerks lurk at every corner.

We have options, we can capitulate to those who seek to extort funds, or we can stand up to it and let our membership and heretofore, established integrity and willingness (and wanting) to communicate what is going on. Robert is sleeping. Show your resolve and give it a rest. Programs end when admin splits….Do any of you see this happening? No. what this is doing is creating a headache for me, nothing more, nothing less. Now we get to spend the next week re-assuring our trusted clients that we are a legit operation. All this does is detract from things that we are trying to do to improve the program.”

That was quite a good response. Remember that you are being given a selection of anonymous and untraceable e-mail addresses from someone who has just freely admitted to a serious criminal offense (hacking) and are being invited to contact them for advice on what to do with your money. I must admit though, I don’t share Todd’s curiosity as to what that advice would be. I can tell you exactly what it would be. You handing it over to a career criminal and never seeing it again. In no way should you try to contact those e-mail addresses by the way. All it will achieve is to inform the owner that you react to spam and leave yourself wide open to an avalanche of fraud, spam, phishing, and God knows what else.

Shortly after the panic abated and the members started calming down the admin of GoldNuggetInvest Robert (interviewed here) issued an official update explaining the situation in detail. I think the update really covers everything and answers all members’ concerns they might have even after 3 years successful work online. So if you doubt that GoldNuggetInvest is unsafe you’re free to withdraw your money from a real program and invest it into some ponzi game but if you want to reconsider this hasty decision (if you have done so) you’re also free to continue with GNI. I believe GoldNuggetInvest will be able to continue and I believe that the members will be smart enough not to trust scammers but rather a program with three years proven experience online. The program is really one of the best in HYIP world now.

Here is the official update newsletter from Robert if you haven’t received it yet:

“You may have received a malicious spam email in the last couple of hours, claiming to be from a team acting against spreading of various Ponzi schemes. They state that they used the vulnerability of mysql and broke into our database.

They are also reporting that they haven’t found any trading activity with our script – what is by the way true, since the script is nothing more than a front end for our members and us as well, to manage and calculate your funds . Furthermore they are warning that our website will be closed in the near future, if not by us, by the senders group. And of course the obvious bla bla that you should withdraw you funds with us – and surprise surprise, they added three email addresses you may contact to receive information where to invest you money safely.

This is the really important fact of this SPAM email – thats what it is!

It tells us that the only intention of the sender is to disturb our operation and to grab you intention to another investment program, which is for sure a PONZI scheme, since no serious entity is using the means of SPAM to get your intention.

GNI is operating for almost three years, is as you know a legally registered corporation and has proven over the time again and again that we are a serious and reliable second income opportunity.

There is absolutely no need to panic and nothing and NOBODY will shut us down, not as long as I am in charge of this operation. Since we went public last year we have been attacked, threatened and blackmailed on a weekly base. The last email we’ve received last Friday and the blackmailer tried to extort $20,000 from us. Most probably the email you have received is a result of this extortioner.

This is the downside of such an operation! Our only aim is and was to generate a second income for you, our trusted members and thus offering us an business opportunity to support our families as well. As you all know, we are working hard to achieve this goal and have always sorted out any obstacles along the way. And so we will do again – today as well as tomorrow!

We are currently investigating how this SPAMMER got access to our database and assure you that we will take all necessary steps to protect our members privacy and integrity, what unfortunately is not a simple task, in times where even government databases get compromised. We can however confirm that the database has not been altered.

I don’t want to hide the fact that quite some of our esteemed members panicked and requested a withdrawal of their principal, as a result of this SPAM email, what is understandable, since you don’t know what is going on. We have decided to sent all withdrawal requests back to our members account balances, giving you the opportunity to reconsider if you like to stay with us – or not, now where I got the chance to address this issue. If you still decide to withdraw your principle, please request it again and note that it might take up to 7 days to process principal withdrawal requests, depending on the availability of funds in our payment processor accounts. This is according to our TOS. We will process withdrawals again in the evening hours today (GMT timezone).

Finally let me express my warmest gratefulness to those member who expressed their support of GNI and are believing in our project. I have received many encouraging emails from trusted members. THANK YOU ALL! With best regards, Robert and TEAM“.

I hope everything is clear to my readers now and I hope that you will be wise enough to support GoldNuggetInvest that have been paying us for three years already – the time frame that is unlikely to be surpassed by their competitors on the HYIP market. If you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to contact me or GNI support and I believe that issue is solved for everybody now.

P.S. Just minutes before publishing this article I received a personal email reply from Robert himself where he assured me that there is nothing to worry about and this email was a result of an extortion attempt their program received recently. Moreover, GoldNuggetInvest learned their lesson and they are taking serious measures with implementing a new script which is already under development. Currently the people who will install the new script are busy with converting their database which is not an easy task as GoldNuggetInvest has thousands of members. Anyway, changes are undeway which will make GoldNuggetInvest more secure and safe for investors. And that is a very encouraging sign in my opinion.

Other news for today.

Let’s get to the rest of the news now. I have a lot to report on today but let’s start with the long-awaited update from the new XagaEnterprise (reviewed here). It seems the program has revived on a new site and with the new plan which is now even more attractive to the members – XagaEnterprise will pay 1.2% forever from now on. With the new great design from Doris and hosting from NvhServer I believe XagaEnterprise will eventually be able to regain the trust of the investors. I am going to review the renewed XagaEnterprise on my blog soon straight after the payments resume. On the downside, it seems all the old investors of XagaEnterprise that made their deposits on the old site will have to re-register (you can use this link to do that) and send an email to support with the proof of your deposit. I hope it will be only a minor inconvenience to you considering that very few programs usually return after this amount of downtime. I wish the admin of XagaEnterprise Kevin every success with the relaunch of his program that is scheduled for today. Here is the latest update from him:
“XagaEnterprise will launch on Tuesday, 9 PM EST. Old members have to register to the new website. Send e-mail to us (Subject : Old Member). Inform your new ID, your deposit batches, payment processors you used. We will add your balance manually to your new account.
New Investors are also welcome. New Investors just have to register and deposit using the processor of their choice. Thank you.”

That’s not the end of the story for XagaEnterprise though. I simply cannot ignore the allegations that the admin of the program made regarding their previous hosting partner HushHosting. It was a really serious allegation which was raised on my blog before. Anyway, I believe it would be only fair to get a response from HushHosting regarding the allegations to their address. I’m not taking sides in this matter and I don’t have any additional info regarding it. I just wanted to let you read the opinion of the other side in this conflict. I believe in my readers’ intelligence and I think you will draw your own conclusions from this whole unfortunate and entirely unnecessary affair. Here is the reply I got from the support staff of HushHosting regarding their conflict with XagaEnterprise:
“Hello Paul, as you know we host many programs and did many design integrations for programs. Xaga was bringing as you remember after spamming from our host one of our servers down, since the server center in Japan canceled our agreement since Xaga spammed from the shared IP (shared IP is usual the same IP we use for the nameservers, he was having the cheapest host! We learned no shared IPs anymore for any surf/hyip). But I was still nice and helped him to get a new design, where I give him the original costs Doris charge us, so $75 discounted to what Doris original charge, than he go for NVHserver as I was telling him we do not accept spammers and even I help him with the design, I will not host him, he ask for a refund (what I paid! even he host and spammed from our servers!)
So to blame us for delays or anything, is more than a joke, the complete guy is! remember the email you published from Edward Brown, something like this attitude this guy also have when you not respond to his needs within 3 minutes.
I helped him more than I can, we lost a partner host in Japan about a $ 49 guy, who got (since he ask) for a refund of $ 50, so he made $ 1 with us, and blaming us for his spamming and scamming!
Paul as you remember we host since more than one year hyips and in all this time, I doubt you ever see a admin claim we did a bad job, we be the cheapest real DDoS protector in this industry, helping clients to get the scripts and designs installed (free) more I can’t do for anyone, for Xaga I lost one server partner and $1 (he should keep the change and as I was telling him, his IP is logged, never ever ask me for help anymore, if you help Xaga he stabs you in the back.”

Do you still think that a successful short-term program can’t last for over a month? Then take a closer look at InvestiMates (reviewed here) that has been online for 45 days already, having over 1,600 members already with total deposits of over $230K. And this was the figure at the time of writing. I’m sure they might have increased by the time you read this article. If it’s not a complete and utter success then I don’t know what the word means. Clearly stating in the interview that InvestiMates was simply a game from the beginning (you can read the interview here) the admin managed not only to scare off the older members of his previous program but also he managed to attract many many new members that were so impressed by the flawless performance of InvestiMates that they spread the word and now we have a program that became #6 in my Personal Favorites and haven’t got into Top 5 already just because of the low-Roi giants occupying those elite positions. And it’s probably too late to publish the update from the admin of InvestiMates sent over 36 hours ago but I will do it anyway since nothing has changed since that except that the figures are even more impressive now:
“Dear Mates, We have done it again! We just reaches $200,000 total deposits! Currently at $203,600+ total deposits. With over 1550 members, member support has been overwhelming, we normally experience slow weekends but the past weekend and this weekend has been the greatest so far in the lifetime of InvestiMates. Let’s congratulate ourselves for the great job we are all doing.
If you receive payments from InvestiMates, you may rate InvestiMates at the program monitors to let everyone know what you think about our program.
I guess that would be all. Have a nice day everyone!”

Another runaway success story NovalexFinance (reviewed here) keeps doing a great job as well providing investors with fast flawless payouts and top-notch support. Where else you can double your money in just 50 days? It’s paying me since December 2008 and is showing no signs of any problems. Today the administration of NovalexFinance published their trading results for the month of June and you can familiarize yourself with them by clicking on the link here.

AsianInvestGroup (reviewed here) is also performing well. Traditionally, the weekly statement was sent to members informing them of the rates for the previous which were slightly better than the results announced the week before:
“Our rates for current week are the following:
Optimized Portfolio – 8.7% weekly (+0.1)
Aggressive Portfolio – 10.0% weekly (+0.2)
Optimized Portfolio Premium (for investments of $1000 and above) – 11.7% weekly
Aggressive Portfolio Premium (for investments of $1000 and above) – 13.0% weekly“.

NanoMoneyCorp (reviewed here) which is the only program on my listing (together with GNI) that has been online and paying for over three years informed their members of possible delays in replying to emails connected with some technical issues. Everything was described in the news section of their website so please take note of it when contacting their support:
“E-mail server problems.
Dear investors and partners! Some of you might notice a delay with e-mail answers or even some of them remained unanswered.
We had a mail server crash that caused us a lot of problems. Unfortunately not all the sent us mail was recovered but the work is still in progress.
We are sincerely sorry for any possible inconveniences this might cause to every person sent us an e-mail. And kindly ask you for your kind support and patience. We are trying to cover every missed e-mail and give it a response.”

The admin of RegalProfit program (reviewed here) assured me that he would reply my interview questions as soon as possible and informed me about a couple of important things. So, the instant withdrawal option to LibertyReserve and PerfectMoney was not working for some time and they worked hard to fix it. Now everything is alright and the withdrawals are automatic and instant again. The second important update from RegalProfit is that they upgraded their DdoS protection with BlockDos company to the highest possible level and now the members can be sure that the site will stay online whatever happens. By the way, if you wish to make your personal account with RegalProfit even more secure please do as the admin suggests and then you will be 100% ensured from hackers and money loss:
“For More security please enable security in your account.
1. Login to your account
2. Go to “Security” page
3. Change ” Detect IP Address Change Sensitivity” and “Detect Browser Change”
4. Click on “Set”
5. Finished”
To refresh your memory on RegalProfit let me remind you that the program has been paying for 7 days so far having over 900 members already who deposited over $80K in total. It’s also a very good result for such a new HYIP but it’s not quite surprising for me at all because it’s offering high-profit plans of 27.5%-32.5% for 4 days and 120%-140% after 5 days. The fact that it accepts all major payment processors including LibertyReserve, PerfectMoney, AlertPay and StrictPay also contributes to its popularity.

The main competitor for RegalProfit in terms of success is probably BestInv program (reviewed here). The program has been online for 12 days already and paying all withdrawal requests very fast so far. Of course, you should be aware that BestInv is just a game and therefore not to deposit what you can’t afford to lose but so far their success has been stunning. Of course, the big advertising campaign on the major forums and monitors and the high rates offered by BestInv (120% after 5 days, 145% after after 10 days, 175% after 15 days) with all the accepted payment processors are the main factors contributing to this success. If you want to know more about BestInv program please read my interview with the admin Olivia published here.

GermanEinsteinTrust (reviewed here) are out of the trouble they were undergoing when both websites was partially or wholly inaccessible to members. It seems now the program is back on track and I received my weekly payment on Saturday as usual. It would be nice to visit GermanEinsteinTrust when I’m back in England soon but somehow I doubt it will happen, lol. Anyway, here is the latest update from GermanEinsteinTrust that will hopefully be of interest to members:
“Dear Investors. Here some news from our first trading day this week. At least both of our sites are back online like I promised! But even if we were not online most of the last week we had no problems to pay Saturday’s profits as we are depending on my father’s and sister’s trading results and not on new members at all time. The only problem was the online reminder who reminds me when a 10 day plan is due! But also this issue is fixed. Also watch out for our stock advisory newsletter written by my father Holgar Martens (daily) starting next week! More info about that end of this week!
Today we sold our Centrotherm Photovoltaics AG (ISIN DE000A0JMMN2) very early after the share had a very good run this morning and we made a total profit of 4.79%. The Company, which is based at Blaubeuren, is one of the world’s leading technology and service-providers for the manufacturing of solar cells and solar silicon. The broad product spectrum comprises key equipment and turnkey production lines for crystalline and thin-film solar cells.
Profit for 3 week investors: 1.91%
Profit for 6 week investors: 2.39%
Profit for 10 day Plan investors: 3.35%“.

StableInterest (reviewed here) warned investors about trusting spam emails or depositing into LR and PM accounts different from the ones presented on their website. The advise is very useful and can be applied to any online program really. It will save you some money as well because that is all the crooks need from you. Here is the most recent newsletter from StableInterest:
“Dear friends, Some hackers and phishing threats have been recently detected. Some fraudsters use their own LibertyReserve accounts making our clients deposit their funds not to REAL StableInterest accounts.
Beware! Check the LibertyReserve and PerfectMoney accounts accurately. Any deposits made to LibertyReserve or PerfectMoney account different from our official ones are irreversible. We are not responsible for the wrong deposit made.
Try not to make a direct deposit to any accounts that fraudsters claim to be ours.
The only secured and guaranteed way to make deposit to StableInterest is to login to your account and use the SCI form on our site. So you will be prompted to deposit funds to our accounts.
Once again, beware and double check the deposit information. Every time you make a deposit via SCI form, you will have a Program code in the Memo field of your transaction. If there is not such a Memo, it is a sign the account is fake and fraudulent. Once you have any troubles send your username and program code to us.
Beware of hackers! Regards, StableInterest team“.

You might remember the interview published on my blog with the admin of xChanger Andrei (read it here). This is the only exchanger I use on a regular basis if I need to exchange my LibertyReserve, SolidTrustPay or StrictPay funds. I’m doing this because of lower fees, extremely fast processing times and fast and efficient support provided by the admin. So I can quite recommend them to all my readers, and especially I can do so now when they have a limited promo offer of exchanging your LR to SP or STP with 0% fee. Hurry to take advantage because you will not find such a generous offer anywhere else on the Net:
“Hi there, For a limited period of time the fee for exchanges from LibertyReserve to either SolidTrustPay or StrictPay will be 0% +$0.25 only. Act now if you want to exchange your LR for only $0.25, no matter the amount. Needless to say that you won’t find a better rate than ours anywhere else.
Exchanges from LR are processed as fast as possible since we don’t need any approval for LR transactions like we do for STP and SP ones.
All the best, Andrei & Daniele“.

For the last 48 hours I was paid from many programs and the list is long. Anyway, I will mention them all. They are: GoldNuggetInvest, GeniusFunds, BestInv, Veolex, OnisGroup, RegalProfit, NanoMoneyCorp, NeqxGroup, SteadyGrowthInvest, InvestiMates, Merchandies, AsianInvestGroup, AssetsParty, DirectResult, ExcellentProfit, NovalexFinance, EnscoOffshore, Verifield, InvestmentForge, RoxiTrade, PanaMoney, GlobalTraderGroup, StableInterest, CoolReturn, YesIcanSurf, ElegantMoney and 12DailyClicks (the first payment received).

By the way, maybe you have noticed the newest addition to my Premium Listing. It’s an autosurf program called 12DailyClicks and I have some very positive vibes. I know I promised not to add autosurfing programs to my listing for a while due to their instability and a lifespan shorter than HYIPs but I have decided to make an exception for 12DailyClicks. I think you will like the design of the program and the ever popular concept of 12% daily for 12 days with 144% payment on expiry. I believe that such autosurfing programs like 12DailyClicks utilizing this plan have more of a chance to be successful because of some good memories of old autosurfing members have for these programs. Just remember MegaLido which was one of the most successful autosurfs back in 2008! Well, I’m not sure that 12DailyClicks will be the same or even come close to that but one thing is sure: the admin is quite an experienced person. 12DailyClicks got about 200 members after just four days online and that can be considered a moderate success considering it’s not the easiest time to start your own surfing project. The minimum to upgrade in 12DailyClicks is $10 (the price of 1 ad unit) and the maximum is $1,000 allowed with 6 active upgrades running simultaneously. 12DailyClicks accepts 5 payment processors and all the popular choices are covered: AlertPay, SolidTrustPay, StrictPay, PerfectMoney and LibertyReserve. The script is NeverSay based and the site is hosted on a dedicated Staminus server. The FAQ page is quite comprehensive and the admin is quite responsive and supportive on MMG forum. So we can say that 12DailyClicks has everything in place to be a success but much will depend on how much support the admin gets from the members after the first payments on expiry are processed. So we will wait and see and meanwhile I will prepare a more detailed review pretty soon.

That is it for today and I’ll see you on my blog tomorrow with the most up-to-date news from the Industry!