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

Hello everybody! Before this evening’s news update I have a fairly unusual program for you to look at called Stravia which is a long term HYIP and as such be considered practically brand new. It’s fairly unique in a number of ways – something that can always benefit their chances of success – mostly in relation to their investment plans. But what I think is most noteworthy about them is that while there are certain aspects to Stravia that normally I might not be all that enthusiastic about in other programs, in this case I actually think it’s still got a lot going for it and the potential to be a good little earner for a lot of investors. So let’s see what Stravia have for us, plus their other main features, and see if there’s anything you might like for your own portfolios.

Stravia offer potential members two investment plans to choose from, both of which are long term which is in itself a positive move given that shorter term HYIPs are so hit-and-miss at this time of the year. At first glance you could be forgiven for thinking the plans are almost the very same thing with only minor differences between them. There is in fact one major difference, which is compounding. In the first plan it’s optional, but in the second one Stravia have made it compulsory. Other than that however the description of the plans would indeed sound very similar.

Starting with the plan I myself would recommend, called The Standard Plan, it runs for 70 business days (14 weeks) and offers investors a daily interest payment from Monday to Friday. It can be joined for a minimum deposit of $10, and is in turn broken down into four sub-sections that pay you according to how much you have risked. So starting from the minimum up to a value of $500 Stravia offer a return of 2.7% per business day. Eventually that adds up to a total of 189% which can be considered profit once Stravia return your initial principal as promised. You should however break even (earn back an amount equivalent to your investment) after 38 payments, or slightly longer than half way through the term.
Larger deposits are of course accepted, and offer improved interest rates as follows:
$501 to $1,000 gets 2.8% per business day (196% net profit), $1,001 to $10,000 is offered 3% (210% net profit), and anything above that to a $100,000 maximum is offered 3.5% (245% net profit). Again your principal is promised to be returned at the end of the term for all deposits. Compounding is allowed in this plan and you are free to set your own rate at the start of your term, keeping in mind that 0% is perfectly acceptable if you don’t care for the practice yourself.

And that brings us to the major difference between Stravia‘s two investment plans. I have to say at this point that their second plan is quite misleading, and while I don’t believe this is a deliberate ploy on behalf of the admin, I do think it could be better explained. The thing is that the plan, called The Elite Plan, is described in such a way as to give the impression that you will receive daily interest payments. Experienced players might know better, but for the benefit of anyone new to this business please note that this is NOT the case. It’s true that you will be credited with a daily interest payment, you just need to be clear about the fact that you can’t actually withdraw it. The reason for this is, as I already said, Stravia have taken the step to make 100% compounding a mandatory condition for joining here. In other words that means that all your interest gets re-invested into the plan, and you don’t actually get to withdraw a penny of it until the entire thing has expired. And that doesn’t happen for the same term – 70 business days – as the first plan.

So basically even though I’m not going to describe this as an “on expiry” plan, that is in fact how you should treat it. Confusing? I agree, but if you don’t like it the first option is much simpler anyway. But if you know what you’re doing and wish to press ahead, let’s look at the numbers. Stravia will still take a $10 minimum deposit from you to join, so in that sense it doesn’t have to be a huge risk unless you choose to make it one. For deposits up to a maximum value of $500 they offer a “daily” interest rate of 3% per business day for the 70 business day term. On completion of the term your full earnings plus your original principal are combined and paid back to you in one single payment. And that’s more or less how it works with all investments here, the only thing separating them is Stravia‘s increased rate of interest on larger deposits. These include:
3.5% per business day on amounts from $501 to $1,000, 4% on anything between $1,001 and $10,000, and 5% on anything above that to a maximum value of $100,000.

For the benefit of anyone not familiar with the concept of compounding by the way, let me give you an example. Let’s say you invested $100 in Stravia‘s Elite Plan. This entitles you to 3% interest per day. OK, pretty simple so far. But rather than you getting the 3% for yourself, it gets added to your principal to earn another 3% the following day but only on an ever increasing principal. So for your own $100 you earn $3 on day one. Day two and you now have an active deposit of $103 which is now earning you 3% of that ($3.09 for the second payment, $3.18 for the third, etc,). So it’s not just your principal that earns you money, your interest payments earn further interest payments on top of that. In fact were it to play out fully according to plan you’d be “earning” over $20 per day by the end of the term, all of which goes back to you in one lump sum.

Sounds great, but you know what the problem is, right? I mean other than the fact that the admin might, (and eventually will) struggle to come up with such massive payments. If anything ever goes wrong with the program that’s offering the compounding you’ll never see a single penny of any of that money. Not your principal, and not your interest. Nothing. So if you really insist on re-investing your interest as opposed to withdrawing it, I suggest you never do it in the same program. Re-invest it somewhere else in order to diversify your portfolios, because you’ll still earn money from it but only at a fraction of the risk. The old phrase about not keeping all your eggs in one basket comes to mind. That’s just my own opinion of it of course, some folks are very lucky when it comes to this practice, but I just don’t think luck is something you should be banking on in this industry.

Regular readers will of course know by now that I myself have very little regard for compounding, and not just in Stravia but in all HYIPs. I have never believed it to be “re-investing” as most admins would describe it, but merely a failure by the investor to withdraw what’s rightfully his as you’re not actually “investing” in anything in the first place, just joining an online HYIP. It’s just a question of personal opinion of course and in no way do I think the availability of compounding is a good or bad reflection on the quality of the program offering it, but in the case of Stravia I just want to emphasize that you need to be extremely careful when signing up that you get it right the first time. If you want to use compounding then fine, but it’s very easy to end up with something you don’t want and not be able to change it later. So make sure you do all your calculations and fully understand what you’re going to get from it and what you might lose if your chosen course of action doesn’t work out.

So as long as you know what you’re doing there, the payment options are OK, but could also be improved. Most investors would expect a full quota of all the popular processors if they’re to take the program seriously, despite the fact that they’re only going to be using one of them. Three out of four is a good start I suppose, but Stravia don’t seem interested (according to their FAQ) in improving it later. So your options are joining through EgoPay, PerfectMoney, or LibertyReserve. Payouts to members are made manually by the admin and so need to be requested from inside your private Stravia account area. Once done you are asked to allow anything up to 36 hours to get paid. While you only earn interest on business days, Stravia say withdrawals are processed everyday, so there’s no reason why you can’t get paid on Saturday or Sunday if you requested it on Friday. You’re reminded that minimum withdrawal to EgoPay is $1.

On the technical and design side of things it’s quite good and a very well made and professional looking website. Stravia runs of a licensed, if modified, script from GoldCoders. The website is SSL encrypted in both public and members areas by GeoTrust for safer browsing and more secure transactions. Hosting is by BlackLotus who are keeping Stravia on a dedicated server with support and DDoS protection, and I think most experienced HYIP players will know that their track record is pretty solid, particularly recently when a lot of providers have been hit with attacks on their servers and downtime for their clients. Also worth noting, and of particular use to those of you going with mandatory compounding plan, is a useful built-in calculator that will tell you how much Stravia are promising you for any particular deposit, because with your interest being added to your principal every day it might be tricky to work out exactly what you are being paid for by the end of the term.

If you have any further questions about how the program works or any account related issues then you can get in touch with the Stravia admin by filling in your details on the online support ticketing form and submitting it via the contacts page. Either that or just write directly to the e-mail address listed. If you want to try and speak to someone in person you’ll also see a couple of telephone numbers also listed on the contacts page which you can try your luck with, though no information is there regarding what time (if ever) the phone lines are open. Fans of social networking sites will be able to find Stravia on Facebook as well.

The website content, ie the texts, some is original, and some is copy/pasted from an actual investment bank’s website. Either way the core claim of Stravia to be involved in the international ForEx markets is hardly all that original in itself, or at least not in the HYIP industry anyway. But at the end of the day what you choose to believe or reject is up to yourself, I don’t really think it has any real bearing on whether you can make money from online HYIPs or not myself. I only mention these things for the sake of the newbies, but I think the rest of us know by now not to let these things get in the way of an excellent opportunity to make a profit. And that, conflicting opinions on the merits of compounding put to one side, is what I can see in the Stravia website for those members who know how to play it right. Just remember not to get too carried away with the spending, know what your limits are and stay well within them, and is joining Stravia then try to keep them as a smaller part of a wider more diverse portfolio.

DAILY NEWS FROM THE INDUSTRY

NEWGNI – Q&A SESSION ON MNO ANNOUNCED

The main focus of attention on MNO today was linked with NewGNi whose admin Jurgen (first interviewed here) sent a newsletter covering the exclusive question and answers session can be read only on MNO blog. The newsletter was unusually short, but there was reason for that as you’ll find an explanation of what might otherwise have been addressed by following this link. Thanks a lot to Jurgen for the opportunity to learn more about the next stage of NewGNi‘s development and please refer to the latest newsletter the Q&A session:

“Newsletter 12 December 2012
Dear clients, friends and fans
I would like to bring your attention to our recent Q&A session with the readers of the ever popular MNO blog. This is a must read, so please don’t miss it.
All the questions about NewGNi‘s recent privatization and much more are answered exclusively on MNO. You’ll find the Q&A session here. Enjoy reading!
All the best, Jurgen
Follow NewGNi on Twitter, Facebook and MNO”.

So if you don’t already know, new sign-ups are closed for the time being though existing members can still take advantage of the 1% per business day and 6% weekly plans with no expiry date and a 180 day lock-in period before you can leave. The minimum to invest in NewGNi (reviewed here) is $20 via PerfectMoney, PexPay, EgoPay and SolidTrustPay.

TUREPROFIT – FIRST ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATED

Good news for all the investors of TureProfit who invested in their one 8% weekly for 50 weeks with principal back on expiry plan. Today they celebrate a very happy event marking exactly one year since starting business. Currently TureProfit is one of the most popular programs accepting investments via SolidTrustPay, EgoPay, LibertyReserve, and PerfectMoney starting from $10 and payments usually being instant. The first principals which TureProfit (reviewed here) initially didn’t return were successfully paid already and those lucky enough to join during its first days online in December 2011 have seen an almost tenfold increase in their money. Despite all the admin’s assurances in the latest newsletter issued today commemorating the event we shouldn’t forget that TureProfit doesn’t actually make money on ForEx or gold markets, but rather a high-risk investment program. So do remember this and only invest what you can afford to lose. I must say that my personal experience with TureProfit for about three months since the program came to MNO was nothing but positive, with no problems and payments like clockwork. The admin noticed in his email that TureProfit would keep paying without any interruptions during the festive season and also answered some common questions asked by investors. Full details are in the first anniversary newsletter below:

“TureProfit News – An anniversary celebration.
You have received this email because you are our member. today a year ago, our project officially launched. So today is a happy day, a day to celebrate. Today our project was the first anniversary of successful operation. Here, we thank trust of investors, and the promoters. If careful, you will find that, many well-known monitor sites have already put our project in the top position of their website. These are all authentic. Only excellent project they recommend will be placed in a good position. Next, we will have a $500,000 advertising budget. We will choose some best partners, which includes some search sites and social media. Rely on the media, to promote our project. We think that good project should be shared together by global investors. We warmly welcome all investors from around the world, we are always honest and credible to provide them the best financial services for investors here. We solemnly pledge: ensure that principal of every investor is safe, make that every investor can obtain high returns from here. We will provide you with 24 hours of service, help you solve any problems encountered in our website. Maybe, you still will have such a doubt, why we can offer such a high return? In the our corporation, has a professional foreign trading and futures trading team. They are the leader in this field, with 10 years of industry experience. Our trading team is engaged in the high lever gold and silver trading. So we can use the small capital, it is possible to obtain high returns. At the same time we hold the gold and silver objects, to hedge risk. Finally, we will put the profit sharing to our investors. Here, I would like to thank our company’s trading team, technology support team, customer service team. It is their hard work, our online project is so brilliant. Of course, this is just a good start, we believe that in the next several years our project will continuously operate.
Below we list some questions that investors often ask:
What is transaction code?
When you withdraw your money, you will use it, you should set it with letter or number or the mixed of them.
May I recommend my family, friends to join you?
Of course, they can use your referral link to join us, but your downline must have different email address with you, and other registration information we have no limit.
Can i add more investment?
Yes, you can add as many as investments, each investment has its own cycle, they are independent.
Is it right? You also operate other similar projects?
No, we never engaged in other projects. We also notice, some cheaters, they copy our pictures, text, and even our news content. This is a shameful act. So please be careful. Those false projects will disappear quickly, or never pay you, and don’t waste your money there.
In addition, Christmas and new year is coming soon, we look forward to seeing you again. During the festival, our web site is not affected, we will work normally.
Best regards, Julian Lester
TureProfit.”

DIAMONDASSET – UPDATE FROM LIBERTYRESERVE

The admin of DiamondAsset (reviewed here) re-posted an update taken from the official LibertyReserve blog – a widely known for its weak security and shockingly bad customer support. I’m not sure what the reason of that update produced by LibertyReserve staff was, but to find out more about the insecurity of using LibertyReserve with both external and internal flaws you can read two articles on MNO here and here. I would still advise readers to avoid LR if possible, and never keep big amounts there. If LR themselves don’t freeze your account it’s also wide open to hackers, something else the so-called support staff are happy to stand idly by and watch without ever doing a damn thing to help you with (assuming it’s not LibertyReserve staff themselves robbing you). I have no idea why the admin of DiamondAsset – they pay 1.8%-2.5% for 120 business days with principal return on expiry – bothered re-posting this blog entry, but I’ll just leave it with you and will not comment on it further:

“Liberty Reserve System Update
Dear Client,
Below is an important update from Liberty Reserve to all their existing customers. Please read carefully to get tips on how to secure your account.
“System Update
Dear Friends,
It has come to our attention, that we have to disclose about a little more than a dozen of Liberty Reserve accounts that had to be secured via API protocol after our system has detected suspicious behavior. Please rest assured that no money losses had occurred as all funds in question were moved out (but remained in our system) to help us monitor the situation and to discover similarities between accounts involved. This was done, via few recent system updates, to study the actual source of the concern and to apply remedy as soon as possible. As we have now resolved the issue, money will be sent back to the accounts within days and it is back to business as usual. Unfortunately, warning the users beforehand would have turned out to be counterproductive and delay our resolutions further. For this – we apologize.
Running a system, as complex, as Liberty Reserve requires us to stay on cutting edge of latest technologies and solutions available while continuously trying to improve and make our system easier and more user friendly. This “balancing” act sometimes has its price tag of having to inconvenience our users once in a while, but rewards us with more sound system integrity and security. As always, your funds are safe with Liberty Reserve and you can count on us being there for you, even when it does not visibly appear to be so.
We advise you to never use any 3rd party e-wallet software that has not been produced by Liberty Reserve team, to always pay close attention to e-mails and to NEVER click on any links within those. For businesses-please come up with ways to audit your programmers or other technical personnel and limit or restrict access to your servers for your system admins, as it has been shown many time before that corrupt system administrators, programmers, disgruntled former employees, etc., appeared to be number one reason for unauthorized account access.
Please ALWAYS note that the only accurate source of information will always be available on our official blog or on the web site. Please do not fall victim to false or inaccurate postings on forums, e-mails or via any other media.
We sincerely appreciate your continued support and understanding.”
Source: http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2012/12/system-update.html
Regards, Support Team,
DiamondAsset”.

PROFOREXUNION – NOW ON NEW DOMAIN

There were several contradictory updates from ProForexUnion (reviewed here) today. It looks that their domain with the .com extension was suspended which they reported would be solved within 48 hours:

“ProForexUnion. Domain proforexunion.com was blocked
Dear investors. Our domain proforexunion.com was blocked without warning. Change of the domain can take up to 48 hours. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Sincerely, yours The ProForexUnion team.”

Another update followed shortly afterwards notifying investors that the problem had been solved already, however, nobody could access the website at the old domain:

“ProForexUnion. Problems resolved
Problems with the domain resolved. The site works normally. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you to all those who are with us.
Sincerely, yours The ProForexUnion team.”

A few hours later and ProForexUnion reported a new domain registered on a .net extension and that worked and was a mirror of the .com website which is yet to re-appear despite promises that the issue was resolved:

“ProForexUnion. New domain proforexunion.net
Working with our company you can use this mirror domain https://proforexunion.net
or old https://proforexunion.com
Sincerely, yours The ProForexUnion team.”

Then, ProForexUnion reported that that .com domain was restored while .net could also be used by investors who deposited via LibertyReserve or PerfectMoney into one of the following investment plans with principal back on expiry – 1.2% for 20 days, 1.7% for 30 days, 1.9%-2.4% for 60 days:

“ProForexUnion. New domain proforexunion.net
Dear investors. Domain in the zone “COM” was successfully restored. We also bought another domain for our site in the area of “NET”
Sincerely, yours The ProForexUnion team.”

Finally, the admin issued another newsletter in my opinion clearly showing Russian roots when introducing bank wires via the Russian AlfaBank and the Russian based payment processor LiqPay. In my opinion, the still unresolved domain issues could result in cashflow issues, and that’s why the bank wires were introduced so hastily. In any case, I would suggest ProForexUnion members not to be in a rush to re-invest at this point, but rather wait a couple of days until the situation stabilizes. Here’s the latest newsletter from ProForexUnion introducing direct bank wires:

“ProForexUnion. BANWIRE – ALFABANK – LIQPAY
Added new ability to open and withdraw deposits through BANWIRE – ALFABANK – LIQPAY
For instructions, please contact us. support@proforexunion.com
Sincerely, yours The ProForexUnion team.”

PLATINUMVERTEX – GET SOME FREE CASH FOR VOTING

I’m not sure what the admin of PlatinumVertex is implying by saying it’s the fastest growing program in the industry now and that “Black December is just a color”, but for MNO readers the program is failing to attract any significant attention, let alone any decent deposits. So I would strongly disagree with him, as even if the program is currently running holiday themed contests they seem to be going unnoticed. In any case, I don’t believe fast growth is such a good sign for programs during this month so if the admin is trying to encourage everyone to join PlatinumVertex by saying otherwise, well this is what admins generally do. In fact slower growth would be better for PlatinumVertex in the long run, and not vanish into thin air just before Christmas. While celebrating its first month online PlatinumVertex is yet to see the first investors in profit from its only plan paying 4.5%-6% for 40 business days via SolidTrustPay, EgoPay, LibertyReserve, and PerfectMoney and a $1 minimum. Profit payments will commence shortly so the program needs new deposits and the admin works tirelessly to promote it. The following offer is valid for only a couple of days and to qualify please refer to the rules posted in the latest newsletter from PlatinumVertex (reviewed here) below:

“Christmas Event 2: 1st Month Online
Good day to all PlatinumVertex Members!
I think each one of you already knows by now what program is the fastest growing in the industry as of today. We have proven that even during the December days, “Black” is just a color and everyone still has the right to be jolly and fun!
In our very first month online, please share with us the spirit of Christmas!
PlatinumVertex once again presents all its partners the latest Christmas event: 1st Month Online Event.
Up until Friday we will be returning the favor to you by giving out FREE CASH PRIZES! All PlatinumVertex members are invited and entitled to win!
Here are the mechanics:
1. This event is open to all the PlatinumVertex Members
2. Post your testimonials about your positive experiences or cash outs in the PlatinumVertex Testimonials section and win $0.50!
3. Post your testimonials about your positive experiences or cash outs in the PlatinumVertex Official Facebook fan page and win $0.50!
4. Post your testimonials about your positive experiences or cash outs in the PlatinumVertex Official in the 3 main Forum pages oDiamondAsset – GET SOME FREE CASH FOR VOTINGfhttp://www.talkgold.com, http://www.moneymakergroup.com, and http://www.dreamteammoney.com/ and win $0.50!
5. Show proof of voting in either xxx, www.money-news-online.com or xxx and win $0.50!
6. Win as much as $2 in this event and use your cash to either activate or deposit it in PlatinumVertex so as to earn more or simply cash it out!
7. To claim your prizes, send all the things you have done with your account username to platinumvertex.general@gmail.com
8. Event is valid until December 14, 2012 2000 hours GMT+8 time (HK Time) and emails received passed this hour is no longer valid.
So what are you waiting for! HURRY AND CLAIM YOUR CASH PRIZES NOW!
PlatinumVertex Team”.

SIGMASUM – ANOTHER SCAM REVEALED

Yesterday SigmaSum stopped processing instant payouts and the admin didn’t bother to explain why, let alone actually pay. I consider the program finished now, so please do not invest there. SigmaSum started ok and completed one full 12-day cycle successfully, but then problems started with delayed payouts and the admin failing to credit missing deposits which the program suffered over the last few days. It apparently all led to the inevitable collapse with less money spent by investors during December. I believe the bad management killed what could have been a decent program, and if the admin was more professional and capable of solving those issues on time it might have been avoided. Anyway, it’s only speculation now and we’ll never know what might have been. SigmaSum is a scam now and is on Problem Status on MNO monitor as of today.

GET PAID REPORT FOR 12/12/2012

Here is the list of the programs from my monitor that paid me for the last 24 hours:
From MNO Sticky list: Mox.
From MNO Premium list: ProfitableSunrise, EurexTrade, FelminaAlliance, StallionGold, BensonUnion, 4FXInvestment, ProsperaNova, ProForexUnion, DiamondAsset, FNOCapital, SureInv, InnovisCorp, SecureIncome,  TureProfit, Nubcoyu, Lightraffic, GuaranteedProfit, StartUpInvestCapital, ReferToWealth, Stravia (the first payment received).
From MNO Standard list: UFOWin, AustralianBusinessGroup, PlatinumVertex.
From MNO Basic list: TrackInvest, Fxen, InvestmentCapital, TheInvestmentBank, Finance7, Sun7Life.

That’s all for tonight, guys. Please visit my blog tomorrow to read the interview with the admin of InnovisCorp (first reviewed on MNO here). The next news issue will be posted on Friday. Stay tuned for that and see you all then!