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

Hi everyone! Today is another new departure for money-news online as I set of for my first ever visit to Norway. “Land of the Giants and the Vikings” according to our humorous train driver! As I write this from the train between Gothenburg and Oslo the weather has taken a turn for the worse so after the recent sunshine I guess the best way to spend a rainy afternoon is probably on a train.

Anyway I suppose most of you are a lot more interested in HYIPs than you are in how I spend my vacation time so let’s get on with the details of a recent program I joined called LiberalTrade. So after yesterday’s brief return to surfing programs, today I’m back on more familiar territory with the by now almost habitual subject of short term HYIPs of which LiberalTrade is the latest. Recent trends as you have no doubt noticed been leaning strongly towards high interest short term programs and as that description is what best describes LiberalTrade it’s enough to drum up a certain amount of interest anyway regardless of how it measures up against its peers. In fact after a month online it’s already a popular pick for many so I’ll not be surprised if a number of you are already involved. Personally I’d be somewhat less enthusiastic about this one for reasons I will come to in just a moment. But don’t get me wrong, it’s not without certain merits either.

Starting with the plans, LiberalTrade basically has two different plans with a number of variations within each that depend on the amount you invest. Both plans run for 7 days with one of them paying you on a daily basis and the other one paying on expiry.

Investments begin at a minimum deposit of $20 and for amounts between that and $5000 you will be rewarded with a daily interest repayment of 17% for 7 days. That will add up to a total of 119% of your principal which has already been factored in to the payments and will not be returned. So in practical terms an investment of $100 will get you $17 per day for the next week. You will break even and see your first small profit after six days and finish on day seven with a total of $119.

For those who enjoy a bigger gamble you may join under the next option which will set you back a substantial minimum of $5,001. In return for that you are offered the slightly increased rate of 18% per day for 7 days. That means you still don’t break even until day six but will see the plan out with a total return of 126%. Your principal is already included in that so again don’t be expecting it to be returned separately.

For the rich and the reckless who have decided they can’t possibly get rid of their money fast enough there are two more daily payment options that will accept deposits up to $200,000. Anybody who thinks that’s a good idea should get in touch with LiberalTrade in person.

Moving on now to the payment on expiry options, the first one we come to is open to amounts between $20 and $5,000. The reward this time however will be a once off payment of 120% made on expiry and which includes your principal. Pretty simple to work out then that by spending $100 here today you should expect a payment of $120 next week.

Entry to the next plan will start at $5,001 and offers a once off payment of 127% interest after 7 days.

And finally there are once again two more options that will accept up to $200,000. If you wish to know what they are then speak directly to the admin of LiberalTrade in person. And then talk to a psychiatrist, lol.

The choice of payment processors open to you is exceptional by HYIP standards and has all the popular ones including LibertyReserve, PerfectMoney, AlertPay, SolidTrustPay and StrictPay. That is a distinct advantage to LiberalTrade.

But on the downside, to be perfectly blunt about it, I just do not like their plans. First of all the minimum deposit of $20 is just not competitive. Sure, it won’t break the bank for most U.S or European readers of MNO, but trust me on this, I get mail from all over the globe and I know that that small figure to some can represent a serious commitment to others. And the fact that LiberalTrade‘s main competitors are open to much smaller deposits makes them a more natural choice. But that’s not really my main concern. That would be the difference between the daily payment plans and the payment on expiry plans. Or rather the lack of difference between them. A total of just 1% is not any kind on incentive whatsoever to join a plan that carries a significantly higher risk. I wouldn’t have considered the on-expiry plans a very good idea here at any stage, but after a month online I regret to say I think they are best avoided altogether. On top of that from the eight investment options on offer, six of them are so far beyond the financial reach of 99% of online HYIP players as to render them pointless. Not to worry though, the daily payment plans are almost identical in terms of earnings with a far reduced risk.

The security features of LiberalTrade are decent enough. They are hosted on a dedicated DDoS protected server and while I am unsure at this point who the provider is, they have been running without any significant downtime that I am aware of so it’s probably safe to assume they’re dependable enough by now. A curious thing about it though is that I noticed LiberalTrade has no less than three domains on the one server dedicated to themselves. I’m not sure what if any advantages there are to this as in the event of a sustained DDoS attack they will all be taken down together. No big deal by the way. Just an odd observation. The script is licensed from GoldCoders so will look familiar to most of you.

Communication and customer service is available through an online e-mail ticketing system. They also publish a UK telephone number and postal address in Liverpool. I tried to call their number several times during business hours today but there was no response. You are welcome to try it yourself and let me know if you have more luck than me. I’ll try to validate their address in the UK when I finish my vacation in September. If they are still online that is. They have some rather vague claims about their business activities but this just follows the usual HYIP tactic of talking in circles with little in the way of practical information and less in the way of proof. Nothing new there then!

I guess some of you may question the wisdom of joining a short term program like LiberalTrade after a full month but the precedents have been set with the likes of BestInv amongst others showing the way forward for similar programs. So the risk is there, it always is of course, but that’s up to you to assess yourself at this stage I’m afraid. I decided to give them a chance but let me make it clear to you I am joining this one with more modest expectations than I have with similar short term programs recently. Of course I hope that LiberalTrade can continue to run as long as its peers but that is also the gamble. Diversification of my portfolio by the way was also another personal concern for me, but you may wish to consider that for yourself too.

All said, LiberalTrade has been a reasonable performer until now. There are better options out there for sure, but if you like a gamble as I do then it’s one option open to you.

Other news for today.

First of all I would like to remind everybody that today is Friday by which I don’t mean it’s the weekend party time. I mean that it’s time to place your withdrawal request in SazaInvestments which is as you should know by now only allowed on Fridays. There is not too much time left so make sure you do it today otherwise you will have to wait for another week before the withdrawal button is enabled again. Here is the update from SazaInvestments admin (interviewed here) regarding this:
“It’s payday again for us so please don’t forget to request your withdrawals. Thank you all for your trust in us. Regards, SazaInvestments Team”.
By the way, if you want to find out more about SazaInvestments program please refer to my original review of the program published here.

There was some issue on the STP side again today but fortunately it wasn’t a DDoS attack this time as seems to be the norm over the last few days. This time it was a scheduled maintenance that will hopefully help them to work better in the future. Here is the update from the official STP blog:
“STP Maintenance.
As part of a final solution the SolidTrustPay site will be in maintenance for a few hours on 20 August 2009. We expect this will be completed by 11:00 AM 20 August 2009. All times are EDT.
We thank you for your understanding and patience.”

There must have been some confusion among investors regarding the plans of BestInv administration to introduce another long-term plan to replace the plan that pays 175% after 15 days. Well, according to the latest newsletter from the admin of BestInv program Olivia (read my interview with her here) there is nothing to worry about as a new daily plan will probably be launched in September and another two plans that offer 120% after 5 days and 145% after 10 days might be modified just slightly. Anyway, that is what I got from the most recent update from BestInv (reviewed here):
“Dear Members, There is a lot in stock for you in September’09. Don’t worry The Special plan is here to stay. With an increasing popularity of this plan, we have decided to make it a permanent investment feature, with may be a slight change here and there.
In a nutshell, the famous Special plan will prevail.
Many people out there are wondering what’s gonna happen to BestInv from Sept’09 onwards, well the answer is that we would start with a Daily plan, giving equal emphasis to the present running Special plan.
We all are going to sail smoothly on rough waters and make sure the journey continues for ever.
Happy Investing Guys! ……..all eyes are on ‘Sweet September’.
Warm Regards, Olivia. BestInv”.

It seems InvestiMates has a shortage in AlertPay funds right now to pay the investors there so the admin Roger (interviewed here) encouraged his members to deposit more via AlertPay. It’s a kinda straightforward approach which I like but the admin’s candor while on one hand attract more devoted admirers could also at the same time ruin the program. The thing is that sometimes you can expect nothing less than panic if an admin himself starts announcing a shortage of funds in some payment processor. However Roger’s honesty doesn’t go unnoticed and it seems his no nonsense approach in the highly deceptive HYIP world gives him an advantage of being truly honest and therefore trusted by his members. I can see the reaction on public forums to this news from InvestiMates already and it was quite supportive. I must say I’m not that surprised by the reaction as people really want to support such a good and honest program like InvestiMates with more deposits. In addition, Roger just assured everybody that the current shortage in AlertPay funds is just a temporary difficulty which should be overcome in the next few days. With members’ support that is. There is more to report in InvestiMates‘ last newsletter about the recent script issue that was fixed and didn’t really affect the program’s performance at all. To read more about InvestiMates program and the investment plans it offers please refer to my review published here. Here is the latest newsletter from Roger:
“Hello Mates, Today, we had a problem with our server which caused the database to be rolled back to an older time. The database recovered, was several hours older. Nothing to worry about though, because I check each and every withdrawal to make sure that there will not be double withdrawals, because of this database rollback.
Some members who signed up in the past hours might not appear on the website. So if you referred friends, in the past hours, remind them to sign up again and then if they deposited in their accounts, they can email me about it.
I hope this one problem we encountered today serves as a way for everyone to work together. I hope I am doing my job in a good way where every member is happy.
I will always be upfront and straightforward to you. Right now, we need AlertPay deposits to grow. Just like every payment processor we use, some days they are weak and some days there are many deposits coming in on each processor. This time, it is AlertPay funds that we need to make bigger.
My special request to everyone, if you have AlertPay laying around, deposit them to InvestiMates. This way you are helping InvestiMates live longer while you make some good money too.
I guess that is all I have to say now.
Regards, Roger”.

Let’s now get to some of the more strange updates from program admins. I will start with RoxiTrade (reviewed here) who made a miraculous recovery after laying on some lame excuses for not paying for a week. Well, the payments have resumed but the updates are still, well, funny. So this week they announced that they were in profit in their ForEx account although we should notice once again that it’s a demo account which has nothing to do with real trading and so it doesn’t affect anybody in any way, especially the investors. So what’s the point of publishing the results of a demo account? Obviously it’s being done to mislead the investors as in the case of their fake address in Berlin which RoxiTrade‘s administration failed to remove after the truth was exposed. Well, I must say RoxiTrade could be a pretty decent HYIP if it didn’t lie through their teeth to investors. While it happens on an almost a daily basis I can’t endorse this program. But here is the latest news from the admin of RoxiTrade for your amusement:
“This week trading session will be close next some hours. This week we made good trades and received good profit. All trades were profitable and we made around 270 pips profit this week.”

More scamming tactics were used by the admin of DirectResult who seems to have no conscience at all. Otherwise why would he send messages informing the members that it’s still safe to invest in his program and promising new payouts? I can confirm that DirectResult program has been moved to Not Paying status on my monitoring page and will stay there unless the payouts resume. Please don’t be misled with this recent scamming email you might have received today:
“I am writing to inform you that I am aware there had been some delays recently. I have now hired Susan Kearney to handle payments, with the assurance that the payments are done.
I am personally very sorry about the delay. This will not happen again.
Best regards and have a nice weekend.
Do not forget the special offer. You can still take advantage of it.”

Before I finish I want to let you know that I just joined another program that was launched just today. It’s called RoyalFex and of course that means that they are a team of professional Forex traders. Right. Well, anyway… The design is quite neat and looks professional. RoyalFex program is hosted on a dedicated Staminus server and it is using NeverSay autosurf script so all the deposits are only allowed in installments of $5. There are four plans on offer in RoyalFex. And two of them could be called medium-term plans: 2.2% for 45 days (with $10 minimum, daily payouts and principal returned at the end) and 4% for 25 days (with $20 minimum, daily payouts and the principal which is going to be returned as well). There are two short-term plans as well but unfortunately they are only affordable to large investors: those who are willing to invest $100 minimum for a plan with 140% after 10 days (14% daily) and $200 minimum for a plan offering 130% after 5 days (26% daily). The program accepts many payment processors including LibertyReserve, AlertPay, SolidTrustPay, StrictPay, EcuMoney and PerfectMoney. I just joined the program and added it to my monitoring list. I will let you know when I’m paid and will review RoyalFex on my blog then.

I have been paid from the following programs today: PlusInv, SazaInvestments, 12DailyInv, TenTraders, BestInv, Verifield, StableRoi, SolidCapital, GeniusFunds, GoldNuggetInvest, IncoForex, AssetsParty, GloriousProfit, WLInvestments, FlipReturn, InvestiMates, ExcellentProfit, CoolReturn, StableInterest, LiberalTrade, RoxiTrade, NanoMoneyCorp, PanaMoney, InvestmentForge, CashXpress, XagaEnterprise and OnisGroup. That’s it for today. I wish you all a good weekend and hope that I’ll see you on my blog tomorrow!