Beware! TheBig5 has stopped paying! Do not invest there!

Hello everybody! There’s been a couple of new additions to my monitoring site over the last week, and you know to be honest I’d have to say they’ve been something of a mixed bag to say the least. I think I was pretty up front about the quality of some of them in my reviews anyway (or at least I tried) but there’s one new program that really is a refreshing improvement on things called TheBig5. And I think a lot of you will probably know what I’m talking about already as since launching last Sunday it’s been one of the main topics of conversation among online investors. Many of them are expecting big things from this one, and without trying to sacrifice my own neutrality I’d be inclined to kinda agree with them for the most part. I mean it’s still a high risk project just like anything else you see in the HYIP industry, but I’m talking about being relative to the other new programs currently competing for your money and in that sense it’s really hard to find fault with anything TheBig5 are doing at the moment.

The program is offering short to medium term investment plans. The selection is deceivingly simple as there’s only two of them, but on closer inspection we can see that both of TheBig5‘s plans already have two of the three most important ingredients to succeed in this business – a) They’re profitable, and enough so to make them attractive, and b) they’re sustainable, offering a realistic profit that the admin can genuinely deliver. Sure, if you look around it won’t be difficult to find other HYIPs offering a bigger profit for a shorter term, but what you’re unlikely to find is an admin who is actually capable of delivering it on a day-in day-out basis. That of course is the third vital ingredient for the success of any program – an admin who knows what he’s doing and is capable of managing the program. That’s not something I can honestly say for a fact in this review that TheBig5 have, only time will prove that, but I have to say my own first impression was good and provided everything else falls into place for him (ie the investors are genuinely interested in buying what he’s selling) then we could be looking at the first major industry hit of the Autumn.

Pure speculation of course, so sorry for rambling a bit, but it’s just that these things are so rare in the industry I really can’t help myself. So let’s just stick with the facts for now, and as I said TheBig5 has two investment plans. One of them is a shorter term on expiry plan, and the other is a more medium term one with daily interest payments. That’s the one I’ll start with as I’m guessing it will probably be the more popular of the two, though they both have their good points. It’s called simply “The Five” and it runs for a term of 31 calendar days. You can join it for a minimum deposit of $20, a little above average but hardly enough to bankrupt anyone, and for the duration TheBig5 will pay you back 5% interest per day. They are including your principal as part of the repayments so that won’t be returned on expiry. That means that by the time the plan matures you will have received 155% in total, or your own money back plus 55% net profit. I think that’s easily achievable within the 31 day term and (and this part is crucial!) provided there is sufficient interest from the public can be sustained for a decent number of cycles.

To give a practical example of this plan, let’s pretend you invested $100 there. In return TheBig5 would then pay you back $5 in interest fees per day, which will first of all allow you to break even (earn back your original investment, the most important point in every online HYIP) after 20 days and than start counting the profit every day from that point on. You would complete the 31 day term with a total return of $155, which is your initial hundred plus an extra $55 on top for yourself.

The second plan is called “The Fixed 114“. It’s less profitable than the first plan, is arguably a lot riskier in the sense that it only pays once on expiry as opposed to every day, but then it has the distinct advantage of putting you into profit a whole lot faster provided it actually works out. TheBig5 require the same $20 minimum deposit in order to join, and the plan’s duration runs for 10 calendar days. On expiry of the term you are paid back 114% on your investment, principal included. Or to put it another way – your own money back plus 14% profit.

So if we were to make the same $100 investment in this plan – and keep in mind you are totally free to split your investment between both plans here if that’s what you want – TheBig5 will make one single repayment of $114 to you ten days later. On a profit per day basis obviously this one has a lot less going for it, but it really just depends on the circumstances of the individual investor. I mean if it’s a fast profit you need then this one has it’s uses too, and like I said TheBig5 will do nothing to prevent you from dividing your investment between both plans anyway.

When it comes to payment options I have to say that TheBig5 admin got it right, accepting all the industry favorites immediately from day one. I mean it’s not a difficult thing to do, just to plan things out a bit before starting, but so many admins fail to do this it’s unbelievable. So TheBig5 are currently taking PerfectMoney, EgoPay, SolidTrustPay and LibertyReserve with payouts being made manually by the admin. That means you will need to request your payments manually from within your members account area, and once you do you shouldn’t be waiting more than a 48 hour maximum for all transactions to be completed. For now it’s a good deal faster than that, and I would hope it stays that way, though as the program grows and the workload increases on the admin you will need to keep this in mind. Minimum withdrawal is $1.

Incidentally, compounding is not allowed in the program which is something I welcome. I won’t drift too far off topic here by explaining why, but let’s just say you wouldn’t believe the amount of mail I get from investors making complaints about complications arising from the practice. So I’m just pleased the admin has decided to cut it out right from the start here and I think that will help him prolong the program in the long run. I should also point out that there is no effective maximum placed on deposits. Officially it’s supposed to be $1,000,000 but for all intents and purposes that just means you can spend whatever you like.

The security side of things in TheBig5 is quite good with nothing left to chance. The program properly SSL-secured by Comodo and hosted on a dedicated server by LiquidWeb with DDoS protection from BlockDos whose reputation in dealing with such things is one of the best on the net. The program is also running off a unique script which is perfectly secure. I know this because I have seen it in use twice in the past, and on both occasions there weren’t any security issues that I was aware of (maybe a coincidence but on both occasions the programs in question were outstanding successes too!). If you have any further questions for the admin or account related issues in TheBig5 then you can get in touch with them either by filling out the support ticketing form on the contacts page and submitting it, or else by just writing to the admin directly at the address provided.

And that’s about it really. I don’t have much to say about the program’s texts or content as generally speaking this is purely for nothing more that cosmetic purposes, lending an appearance of respectability to those not familiar with how the HYIP industry really works. That wouldn’t include most MNO readers, but for the record TheBig5 list off all the usual activities such as ForEx, real estate, precious metals, energy commodities, and securities. I can’t say I’ve ever come across an actual offline business with such a varied list of activities, but there you go. The magic of the HYIP world, lol! But anyway, you may do with that information as you wish, I’m just presenting the facts around TheBig5 as they stand in relation to the HYIP industry and so far it looks like a good one. Nobody is actually in profit from it yet of course (they’ve only been here a couple of days) but once the first reports start coming through then we may see some very big things for this one. Fingers crossed anyway. Just remember that good first impressions while important don’t put money in your pocket, so as always approach TheBig5 with the same level of caution you would anything in this business, set a sensible spending limit that you will not over stretch under any circumstances, and of course try at least to keep a more diverse and varied portfolio.

DAILY NEWS FROM THE INDUSTRY

EGOPAY ACCOUNT BLOCKED. WHAT NEXT?

After the LibertyReserve account issues discussed at length elsewhere (click here to read my article) the blocking of my EgoPay account today seemed like another blow that brought back some very unpleasant memories of their precursor AlertPay. When I was trying to check out the transactions in my EgoPay account I discovered that the account was blocked while the message appeared thus:
“This account is blocked. Please contact our support.”

As I had a substantial amount at the time on my EgoPay account I immediately contacted their Live support as they were online at the time. I was surprised to hear the following statement from them:
“We are studying your transactions and will give you an answer concerning your account shortly, it is our biggest interest to solve this matter as soon as possible.
You got fraudulent transaction, that’s why your account is temporarily blocked.”

At this point I had to pinch myself. EgoPay was presented to the HYIP community in the first place as a payment processor with irreversible transactions as clearly stated in their FAQ:
“No, all transactions are final and cannot be reversed. If you have a problem after making a payment, you need to solve this matter directly with the recipient.”

So I was wondering what exact transaction in my EgoPay account was so suspicious that caused the complete block of the entire account making it totally impossible to use. And I received the following answer from them:
“We can not help you more at this time. All you have to do is to wait until the investigation is done.”

Does this you remind you of anything? I had the distinct feeling of deja-vu already experienced with AlertPay (now renamed Payza) a couple of years ago caused by them blocking many HYIP accounts for no reason, freezing the assets of their rightful owners under some ridiculous pretense. I guess AlertPay was able to survive and remained quite popular in the HYIP industry for quite a long time partially due to its reversible policy when any unlucky investor stood a chance of a refund. Later AlertPay decided to re-brand as Payza due to revelations made in the Canadian media about accounts being used to sell illegal drugs online and even child pornography. With such an awfully tainted reputation and now under more intense scrutiny from both the press and the authorities they withdrew (or rather they appeared to withdraw) from the lucrative HYIP market and create a new offshore payment processor called EgoPay which was aimed at continuing to accommodate HYIPs but freeing Payza from under the microscope of the law. The main advantage of EgoPay remains exactly the ability to fund the account via Payza and then withdraw the money back to it with minimum fees. As EgoPay is the only payment processor occupying such a privileged position with Payza, it would demonstrate that EgoPay was in fact created by Payza and is either partially or fulled owned or affiliated with it. I mean nobody had ever even heard of them until out of nowhere they were roundly endorsed by Payza as a favored and recommended alternative, despite having no history and no track record whatsoever.

You might remember that I was really skeptical about EgoPay in the beginning while considering their uncompetitively high fees compared to those charged by LR and PM, but at the same time pointed out the irreversible nature of the transactions within the system as its main advantage. So at the moment I’m pretty confused because my own EgoPay account was suddenly blocked due to one particular suspicious transaction which was fraudulent (though which they have failed to identify by the way!). But then it contradicts the core principle of EgoPay of irreversible transactions and can create a mess when every member will be able to file a dispute like you could with AlertPay and Payza. And then another question arises – why it is still advertised as an irreversible payment system?

The current situation with unannounced account blockages (I read about more unexplained blockages on investment forums today) in EgoPay creates a lot of questions and makes working with such payment processors almost impossible for both investors and HYIP admins. I sincerely hope that the situation with my EgoPay will be resolved as soon as possible, but the fact that nobody even contacted me to highlight the transaction in question and ask what it was for before putting a lock to my account and refused to explain the details makes me think that there’s more to this than meets the eye. Be it coincidence or not but recently I heard a lot of complaints about Payza withdrawals being delayed for unreasonably long periods of time like two weeks or more while their support seems to be less than eager to complete the pending transactions. I have to say that my last bank transfer withdrawal requested last week is still on Pending status while previously they used to be processed much faster. So my guess would be that Payza might have some cash flow issues which they may try to solve with the help of their affiliated payment processor EgoPay by blocking some accounts for no reason. But the danger is not there – can you imagine what is going to happen if EgoPay will follow LibertyReserve’s example and start mass suspensions of members accounts due to “fraudulent” transactions? Because almost every transaction in the HYIP industry might be considered as such if they decide to call it that! Chaos would reign and after the unpleasant experience with LibertyReserve I’m afraid that EgoPay might be next in line for the title of “scam” payment processor if it doesn’t change their uncooperative approach and keep blocking accounts for no reason. I have already created a new EgoPay account just for the sake of accepting ref commissions for the programs I’m currently monitoring on MNO. But I will not be accepting EgoPay for advertising or listing on MNO, at least before I can get some viable explanation from them on what happened to my account and be given back access to it. From my previous experience with AlertPay I know that it could take weeks, but I hope that EgoPay will resolve it faster than that. I will keep you all updated on that, so stay tuned!

HOURHOUR – DOWNTIME UPDATE

HourHour (reviewed here) keeps paying fine despite the downtime yesterday for a few hours caused by instability in their hosting provider. Some already started shouting “scam”, but I was confident the program survive. And I was right! The payments from HourHour are still processed instantly to LibertyReserve, PerfectMoney and SolidTrustPay and manually but very quickly to EgoPay. After the first eight days of monitoring I can see that the first investors were in profit already in the 1% for 120 hours plan and we should expect that hopefully in another two days anyone in the 150% after 240 hours will see their profits too. The admin of HourHour Kirk listed his program on Sticky listing with MNO and I believe he deserves it for the professional attitude to running it and processing payouts fast and promptly. He also keeps members informed and this is what I received from him last night after HourHour recovered:

“About Downtime
Dear HourHour Members,
You may notice that HourHour was offline during the past 5 hours. It is caused by the technical problems of our DDoS Service Provider vistnet.com. Now we have temporary cancelled their service and site is back online now. We will search for a new DDoS Service provider if they can not provide us stable service. Sorry for any inconvenience. And this is the message we got from vistnet.com
“Dear Kirk Walter,
We are very sorry for the inconvenience caused but at this moment we are facing with technical problems on our platform and the resolution will take time. As your website is not under attack now, could you please change the A-record in your DNS and point your domain name directly to your backend IP address, this way you will make your site working. We will keep you informed about the situation with the platform.
Sorry again, and many thanks for your understanding.
Best Regards,
Technical Support Department
Vistnet Corporation Ltd.
Uptime. All the Time. Guaranteed.”
Best Regards, Kirk Walter
CEO HourHour.”

BENSONUNION – REMINDER OF TOMORROW’S WEBINAR AND BITCOIN ADDED

BensonUnion (reviewed here) is a very popular program now running for almost eight months and accepting PerfectMoney, EgoPay and LibertyReserve to a 1.2%-2.45% for 170 business days plan with principal back on expiry. Such popularity also makes it a perfect target for all types of scammers and blackmailers trying to DDoS their website. It looks that after 12 hours of downtime BensonUnion is back online and processing payouts instantly once again. In the latest email the admin of the program Ragnar (he was interviewed on MNO here) invites members to participate in the webinar scheduled for tomorrow where you can ask your questions and be answered by Ragnar himself. Due to my own lack of free time I will not be able to attend, but I would appreciate if anyone participating would share how it went. Here is the latest newsletter for all the members of BensonUnion:

“BensonUnion official newsletter
Dear investors! Yesterday our DDOS protection provider was strongly attacked and for some reason they switched off their network. We have reconfigured our server and domain name and BensonUnion website is back online now. Total downtime was ~12 hours. It can take up to 12 hours until the whole world can access Benson Union website, nameservers are getting updated now. We take care of everything as usual. Please do not forget to participate in our webinar tomorrow at 2.00 PM Eastern Time (GMT -05:00). Conference room URL: http://anymeeting.com/bensonunion1 .”

Other news in BensonUnion includes the addition of BitCoin and the promise to add SolidTrustPay and PexPay very soon. I’m sure that the program will only win from adding as many payment options as possible and will ensure members whether they are investing via a payment processor or a bank wire are fully satisfied. The second newsletter can be read in full below:

“BensonUnion official newsletter
Dear investors! Benson Union has just completed integration of new e-currency – BitCoin. BitCoin deposits and withdrawals are processed through third-party API service BitCoin 24/7 (http://bitcoin247.com). Thats needless to say that BitCoin withdrawals are processed instantly as all other e-currency withdrawals. Two more payment options coming this week – PexPay and SolidTrustPay. Stay tuned for next updates and tomorrow’s webinar with Ragnar Wellington that will take place at 2.00 PM Eastern Time (GMT-05:00). The CEO of BensonUnion will answer all your questions in real-time video conference and will provide all details about company’s business sucess, future plans, upcoming updates and much more! Don’t miss this event! The conference room URL: http://anymeeting.com/bensonunion1 . Thank you for choosing BensonUnion!”

INTRODUCTION OF ROYALUNION

Today a brand new program called RoyalUnion joined MNO’s Premium list. I’ll have a more detailed review soon but for now I will just go over the main features. It launched yesterday and accepts four popular payment processors (SolidTrustPay, EgoPay, PerfectMoney and LibertyReserve) into two investment plans. The first one pays you 3.2% for 45 calendar days with the principal returned on expiry and allows partial or full compounding of your earnings (the minimum to invest in this plan is $20). The second plan starts from a $10 minimum and will pay you a smaller rate of 2.4% but for the longer duration of 90 calendar days. Like in the first plan you will get your original principal back on expiry and can also compound your interest if you like. RoyalUnion promises instant payouts to LibertyReserve and PerfectMoney while payouts to SolidTrustPay and EgoPay will be processed manually by the admin within 12 hours of the request being made. RoyalUnion is running off a licensed script by GoldCoders and is properly SSL secured by Comodo and is hosted on a dedicated server by AntiDDos which seems to be a good choice for HYIPs these days. More analysis on RoyalUnion is coming soon on MNO!

GET PAID REPORT FOR 12/09/2012

Here is the list of the programs from my monitor that paid me for the last 24 hours:
From MNO Sticky list: HourHour.
From MNO Premium list: NewGNi, Finvance, ProfitableSunrise, RightFive, EurexTrade, FelminaAlliance, YachtWealthClub, MTResults, Bull&BearCapital, BensonUnion, PipsFund, TheBig5, DiamondAsset, CornWealth.
From MNO Standard list: UFOWin, 6MagicPay, BGTGroups.
From MNO Basic list: GoldTradeFunds, AoGo.

That’s all for today, guys. I hope you enjoyed the news and I will see you all tomorrow with a full review of CornWealth and all the latest news from the HYIP industry. Stay tuned for that and see you again soon!