19/06/09. Some Investigations on Program Locations and Other News

Hi guys! Today I want to take a break from the usual cycle of reviews and interviews and do something a little different with my blog. As a blogger I am of course a great advocate of what’s known in the HYIP world as “due diligence”, i.e doing some background checks on the programs that are trying to convince you it’s a great idea to invest thousands of dollars with them before you actually give them a penny. In theory it’s a good idea and only common sense really when you come to think of it. I mean just because somebody tells you they have ten years experience in trading foreign currencies on international markets doesn’t mean they actually do.

I wonder just how many slick and professional looking investment programs are secretly being operated by 16 year old computer whizz-kids working from their parents garage? Seriously, I know that one of the most successful programs of the last two years was strongly rumored to have been run by a teenager! Just a rumor that we’ll never prove of course and the program I’m talking about has long since collapsed. But things like this are never far from the mind of the more experienced investor, and we all accept that when it comes to working online you simply must learn to accept that there is always going to be a risk involved with handing your money over to somebody who will remain anonymous at all times. It’s a scary thought and one that most people do not wish to contemplate. Which is why the whole online HYIP arena remains something of a minority pastime.

So how does one add a little respectability to this? Somebody wants you to give them huge amounts of money but doesn’t think its a good idea to give you a telephone number or their address in return? Surely some mistake! So of course some admins have realized that the more serious investors won’t want to know about them and if you want to be taken seriously by people with serious money, then you need to improve your act. Seriously! So you register your company legally and you get yourself an office which you then publish the address. Now who could deny that you’re acting in a responsible and transparent manner? You are making yourself available to the public and they can come and discuss some ideas they have with you. And why shouldn’t they? It’s their money at all times, right?

And so that’s just what I decided to do. There is a number of HYIPs advertising themselves as having offices in London and I decided a nice summer’s day was just the motivation I needed to get out there and start knocking on doors. As I left Ireland finally and live full time in London now, I thought it might be a bit lazy if I didn’t at least try. So to start with I thought I would just concentrate on the particular sites covered on my own monitoring page that claim to be my neighbors. There has been quite a few since I started monitoring but at the moment there are just three. (Saved me some shoe leather I can tell you, this place is massive!)

So the first stop was NorthBizz (originally reviewed here). I decided I would start with them as they are the furthest away from my own apartment and I figured I could work my way back home from there. They are (I thought) located in the less than glamorous location of South Wimbledon. Famous for a tennis tournament, a once decent football team that left, and little else I can think of. NorthBizz list their address as Dalton House, 60 Windsor Avenue, London SW19 2RR. Except when I got there they didn’t seem to be home. What a surprise! What I did find was several companies that included a furniture removal firm and a scaffolding crew. But where was NorthBizz? Well I also found a company called London Office. And they were the people I spoke to. They are the ones you will actually be dealing with should you wish to contact NorthBizz.

They explained to me that their business is to provide small firms with a “virtual office”. It means you can rent the address but not the actual property if you know what I mean. And it’s a perfectly legal practice that’s widely in use and has numerous benefits to the client. So let me be perfectly clear about this. I am in no way suggesting that NorthBizz are guilty of any wrong doing here. Except of course that it’s extremely misleading. My conversation continued with me on one side of a locked door speaking through an intercom system in a rather dour south London industrial park. Not a place for a picnic despite the sunshine. I explained to the London Office secretary that NorthBizz is an investment company that is more than happy to accept a maximum of $50,000 from me so I really would like to come in and speak to one of them and get some information on their business. A brochure perhaps, or a prospectus. That didn’t get much of a response. I was informed that the office acts as a mail and message collection center. They will, for a fee, make arrangements to forward all mail, faxes, and telephone messages on to NorthBizz, or else just keep them for collection. Whichever option the client prefers.

They will also provide you with a dedicated phone line if you wish and will even answer the calls with your company’s name. And I quote ” virtual receptionists give callers the impression that they are your own employees working in your own office.” They will give a brief scripted and rehearsed answer to your initial basic inquiries, and will then take your contact details for someone to call you back if you have a more substantial matter to discuss. Like what happened the $170 I gave you for the debit card you never sent me? Oh wait, you wouldn’t be putting that particular question to NorthBizz. But you know what I mean.

Now I didn’t say it was illegal, and the benefits to a small business are undeniable, for example the complete removal of ground rent, utility bills, staff wages, etc. But if a company is prepared to take $50,000 of your money don’t you think that’s a bit misleading? You can see the office here for yourself (Photo 1). And no, I’m afraid that’s not my Jaguar parked outside! And by the way, before anybody starts complaining about me trying to destroy any programs, first of all don’t over estimate my influence. I’m just a blogger. And secondly, and more to the point, this is all information I took from the programs own websites and the results of what I found when I went to visit them, as is my right as an investor.

Next up was a bit more pleasant. I decided to drop in on Verifield which you can see reviewed here. Not a bad program either by the way, so don’t think I’m out to somehow launch a crusade against them either. Just telling you what I found as a regular HYIP player following the information that they themselves gave me. So to start with it’s in an altogether more flash part of town. I’d imagine real estate prices in this part of London rank amongst the highest in western Europe. Legend has it that it didn’t stop Karl Marx enjoying a few drinks around there when he was alive, but that’s another story. Coming down Tottenham Court Road and turning in towards Soho, I found myself standing outside a much nicer building on Sheraton Street. And that is where I was lead to believe I would find Verifield. (Photo 2)

This time it was a more friendly experience though. I entered a big open lobby and approached the security desk and asked where I could find them. The guard looked a little confused and asked me to repeat it. I duly obliged. But it didn’t help. So, handing me an A4 notebook and a pen, he asked me to right it down. Again I followed his instructions and in big block capital letters I inscribed VERIFIELD onto his notebook. He sat back shaking his head and mused over this for a moment before excusing himself, saying that he would find out. He made a couple of calls and then with a big smile said yes, they will see you. Imagine my surprise! Were they really here after all? So he passed me the visitors book to sign while he got me a temporary security pass. He then directed me to the elevator and sent me to the basement.

I emerged into a big but still pleasant and tastefully decorated open plan office where a very nice receptionist was waiting for me. She explained the real situation to me. “This is just a ‘virtual office‘” she said apologetically, “Verifield don’t operate from this building“. OK. So she went on to explain that this was a serviced business center and not necessarily where you will physically find the people who use this as their contact address. So considering that Verifield is an investment company more than happy to take several thousand dollars from me without asking any questions of me, can I ask a few questions of them? Maybe there was some promotional material available as to the nature of their business? Maybe this friendly young lady could direct me in the right direction to find them? The answer to all questions was a resounding no. Nobody here has any idea as to the exact nature of Verifield‘s business, that’s not really their concern. There is no publicity information for the casual investor to call in and collect and while somebody somewhere does know how to contact them, the person I spoke with does not. Even if she knew she wouldn’t tell me, she went on to explain, because that information is strictly confidential. She did give me one hint though. When she suggested I just go to their website and ask for an appointment I asked if that appointment would take place in this office. No came the reply. Absolutely not.

So I decided to call them as they also offer a phone number. I took out my cell phone but to my (pretend) embarrassment I ended up talking to the same woman. So once again no disrespect to Verifield, they remain a good HYIP. But that’s all. And the same benefits of having a serviced business address apply to them as to NorthBizz and indeed every small firm. It’s not every small business could afford to call this address (Photo 3) home.

So what next? Time to head home I guess but there was one stop I could make along the way. Home to me these days is place called Fulham Broadway. Sports fans might know it as the home of Chelsea football club which is next to the local subway station and the poor mans option of Fulham FC overlooking the river. But that’s not what I was looking for today. Any readers familiar with London may know that not too far from here is Kensington High Street where we are led to believe lie the offices of SilverLodge. Of course by now I wasn’t seriously expecting to have it’s co-admins of Louise and Dominique waiting for me at the door with an open armed welcome (Photo 4), but what I did find was a bit more alarming.

In the case of NorthBizz and Verifield I at least found somebody who heard of those companies and explain the situation that they didn’t actually work from those offices but they were indeed real and everything was legitimate. Misleading. But legitimate. This however was a totally different scenario. The office advertised by SilverLodge as theirs is in fact occupied by an actual functioning company. But it’s not SilverLodge. It’s a private firm that carries out environmental assessments on buildings to determine how energy efficient they are. It’s the law here that all property being sold or rented must have a certificate to inform the customer on aspects such as insulation, heating, drainage and so on, and apparently the company operating out of SilverLodge‘s office are among the firms that will get that information for you.

A far cry from the silver mines of Australia and South America, don’t you think? So I decided to have a word with the building manager. He informed me that no such company as SilverLodge or SilverInvest (their old name) has ever been in any office in this building. I explained what they did and offered the names of those in charge. He assured me that he has been in charge of that building since they first opened in November 2008 and during that time nobody of that name or remotely connected with that line of business has ever been there.

I mean if I at least found a secretary to explain that it was just a serviced virtual office as happened with the other two I would have taken that and carried on, but to find an actual functioning business and not a mail collection service operating from where SilverLodge themselves tell us is their office, well that just takes the prize! At the risk of repeating myself I do know how beneficial these hosted workspaces are to small companies but what on earth is the point of publishing somebody else’s address in a building where nobody will admit to ever having heard of you? I’ll leave you to work that out for yourselves as I am out of ideas. The building is managed by a group called Easy Office, and you can check them out for yourself at www.easyoffice.co.uk (Photo 5).

So why exactly am I telling you all this? I suppose you can take it as a word of caution. Not specifically about these three sites of course and I am in no way accusing anybody of criminal activity. But about all online businesses that want you to believe their spiel about how you can get rich quick by handing over your money. I’m not trying to tell you that it’s impossible to earn money online of course. Many people continue to profit from it. The bottom line is this: Nothing is ever as it appears in this business. No matter how good a PR job these guys do, no matter how slick and professional they make themselves appear, no matter what kind of complicated language they use to sound like experts while confusing you, there is one single motive behind every business. And that is to make as much money as possible for its owner. Not you. And I’m not just talking about HYIPs here either. I mean business in general, both offline and on.

So just keep that in mind next time. Nothing is ever as it appears!

Other news for today.

After such an eye-opening investigation I would like to pass onto more positive news for today. Let’s start with the most promising manual surf program EarnerSurfer (reviewed here). In fact, the program is becoming so popular among the potential investors that it got into the list of 50,000 most visited sites online just in 8 days (this is a very impressive achievement). As promised in the previous update Live support was introduced by now so all the members can ask any question to the admin in real time. In addition, today will be the lucky day for some members of EarnerSurfer as the larger investors should expect a nice bonus which will be added to their EarnerSurfer account after the winners are announced. Here is the latest update from the admin of EarnerSurfer program Chris:
“This first week has been no doubt a very great start. We have dealt with and handled all issues and/or questions in a matter of hours! We are glad to see that everyone is happy and have made the decision to join EarnerSurfer. Today I just have some quick news to tell you and a little special promo to start off some fun in EarnerSurfer! And a couple of advertising changes too.
First, we sent out a newsletter 2 days ago letting you know about the addition of Live Support. I’m glad to tell you it was added within the first day of that newsletter. I will be online for a good amount of each day, please contact me anytime and for any questions.
We have been contacted multiple times from administrators of other programs wanting to advertise with us and wanted to get some quality traffic to their site. I say quality because we are very happy with our Alexa Ranking after the first week of being online! (Yesterday – 47193) Check it out for yourself: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/earnersurfer.com
We have gone over the current advertising rates and have decided to let the average member also get some quality traffic to the site of their choice. So, if you are interested in advertising on EarnerSurfer you can see our current rates here.
Now for the exciting news! We are starting our first promotion for you to get a chance to earn some money. This promo will last for one day and will start on June 19th at 12:00am and go for 24 hours from that point. Now for the details! The rules are simple; the top 3 members who make the largest deposit for this day will earn a certain percentage of the deposit amount added to their account. There are 3 levels:
1st largest deposit: 15% bonus to account
2nd largest deposit: 10% bonus to account
3rd largest deposit: 5% bonus to account
In the case of a tie, we will split equally between each winner. Have fun with this and be sure to let other members know if you participate by showing your deposit in the forums! We will update you in tomorrow’s newsletter with the winners, keep a watch out!
That’s all for today, we will be having some other contest/promos in the near future!”

The admin of another surfing program Surfing4Roi which I reviewed on my blog yesterday (read the review here) also published the most recent update on his website. In this update the admin of Surfing4Roi Francesco spelled out the results of their first month in business. The growth of the program was kinda moderate but the admin didn’t have growth in mind as the determining factor for defining the success of the program. In his opinion the most important thing is to keep the growth at steady pace and not lose out to tolerate hit-n-runners. And that’s exactly what Surfing4Roi has achieved. He also promised to allow daily withdrawals on Saturday for everybody to celebrate one month online. Other news can be read in the most recent update from Surfing4Roi which I’m re-publishing below:
“How is S4R going
Today is 18th of June and more than one month passed since Surfing4Roi was launched.
Our first mini-goal has been met successfully and the plan now is to continue to do so as S4R continues to grow.
We are now 261 members: this number is absolutely fantastic. You will think we’re crazy now because other Autosurfs have twice, three, four times as much after a month.
Well, who has more significant growth potential now? The answer is up to you.
Deposits are under $10.000,00, but we will surely pass this threshold in the next coming days.
Anyway we are not noticing a lot of hit-n-runners, and this means members have little confidence to start new cycles again.
709 feedbacks have been left so far in three forums, one monitor and in our internal feedback system. All the other statistics are available on-site, so just surf through S4R and you will find them.
Anniversary Bonuses
Usually on anniversaries or special occasions, admins prepare some specials, offering bonuses.
Well, Surfing4Roi will not offer bonuses, but will give an opporunity to all our members.
Make use of the Daily Withdraw feature again for every deposit that will be made this Saturday.
So be ready to catch this opportunity!
Money-News-Online Review
It’s our pleasure to announce that Paul will publish a review about Surfing4Roi on his blog today: money-news-online.com
It has been requested a lot of times but why we waited so long?
We realized that, sometimes, Paul has to write reviews about new sites based on feelings and perceptions only.
We simply wanted a review based on facts, not on suppositions. So, thank you Paul for your time and keep up with your great blog!
Banner Contest Winners
AIN #78 and AIN #132 win, respectively, first and second prize:
1° $50,00 free deposit into 119% Plan or $25,00 directly into his preferred e-currency account;
2° $30,00 free deposit into 119% Plan or $15,00 directly into his preferred e-currency account;
We kindly ask you to submit a new ticket, and tell us which reward you’ve chosen!
Reporting Websites
We invite you to use the Report link into the surfbar to report websites that do not meet our criteria.
Moreover websites that don’t seem to pay anymore, will be removed from today. So, help us, to keep our rotator system clean and to maintain quality.
We have updated our Terms & Conditions with this new rule ( all F.A.Q. and Terms updates will be always written in green characters).
New Features
The Stats page has been improved this week and we added a cool world map where you can see where visitors come from.
Detailed country and language statistics are also available.
Next coming week we will try to work on the Paid to Post Proofs feature, so that members will be able to earn a greater (and fixed) amount, once they submit the only feedbacks they are able to submit for deposits that are paid upon expiration. Furthermore we will improve the Event Calendar Guide with new useful information.
That’s all for today. So keep promoting, posting, commenting and suggesting.”

The admin of TheDollarDiggers Thomas (interviewed here) considers the success of his program to be the result of team work. Today some important changes were made in the program and the one change in particular was made to ensure the stable growth of the program for a long time to come – the 12×12 plan has been removed. And though this change will not be taken easily by the members Thomas suggested that stability of TheDollarDiggers program is his main priority and in the best interests of all the members as well. Of course this position should be highly appreciated by all the members and I commend on the admin’s capability on handling his program in a very professional manner and always sending updates to the members. Here is the latest update from TheDollarDiggers (reviewed here):
“First I want to say we are having a good week in terms of sign ups and cash flow and weekends is just coming. All of you did a tremendous job and all of that is much appreciated.
I am done paying all requests yesterday, June 18th and all requests today will get paid tomorrow.
Please to all who got paid vote in our monitors that I compiled in here.
Changes in Plans –
Digger 12×12 Classic Plan is now closed for upgrades.
Digger Quick Plan – Daily upgrade limit is lifted from $300 to $500 and will stay in that amount till TDD turned 2 months.
Digger Infinite Plan – I lowered the number of positions you need to buy in 3 Stage Cycler Plan per Ad Pack bought in this Plan from 10 to 5 positions and starting Monday next week the weekly fix percentage will be lifted from 3% to 4% weekly.
Digger 3 Stage Cycler Plan – Still per position is worth $1.30 and you can buy up to 500 positions.
So those are the slight changes for the Plans we have. That is to accommodate the requests of majority of the members and after I made some studies and calculation I found out that I can grant some of them.
2nd Category of the Referral Contest – I am not yet done looking through all the members and I can say right now no once achieved the 12 upgraded referral from June 11 till yesterday June 18th for the Digger 12×12 Classic Plan but I will still check if anyone did hit the requirements to receive the prize for this Category. I will send another Newsletter about it once I am done checking and I will post the result in the Forum we have which is here – http://tddallinoneprogram.ning.com.”

Have you read my recent interview with the admin of YesICanSurf? If not then you can read it here. Similar to TheDollarDiggers program YesICanSurf has their own cycler but it’s running on a different site. Hopefully this cycler will be of some help to sustain the ROA for YesIcanSurf as the rates are sustainable in itself and I think that by paying 1.7% for 120 days of surfing YesICanSurf can last for a long time. Here is the latest from the admin of the program Sarah:
“Greetings Everyone, It’s great to see so many taking advantage of our Father’s Day Super Bonus!! Only 3 days to go, so if you haven’t done so already, please do it now, as it’s so easy to forget !!
Here it is again: Buy 10 adpacks for $20, and receive 5 ($10) FREE !! What are you waiting for??
Please also take a moment to click on the Money-News-Online Interview link to learn more about YES I CAN and our goals and plans:
http://money-news-online.com/blog/2009/06/17/170609-interview-with-the-admin-of-yesicansurf/
Tomorrow we launch another new line in YESICAN CYCLER……$8 line with an ROI of 200% (ie. double your money). Remember, the big secret of cycling is to be there at the exact time of line launch, in this case 7pm “clock time” on the site, which I believe is GMT.
http://www.yesicancycler.com
If you are a YesICanSurf member, and sign up today for the cycler and buy 2 x $1 line positions or 1x$2 line positions, we will credit your surf account with one free adpack!!It’s a win/win situation, folks !
Have a great day, Sarah and Phil“.

OilInsider program (reviewed here) paid the profit based on this week’s “Weekly Petroleum Status” and “Weekly Natural Gas Storage” reports. The total profit was a little bit less this week and made up to 9.8% total. It’s not bad at all considering that on average profits are 10.1% weekly. Here are the official results published on OilInsider website:
“Earned interest of 4.3% for Thursday, June 18 has been paid Friday, June 19, 2009
Earned interest of 5.5% for Wednesday, June 17 has been paid Thursday, June 18, 2009“.

HeavenInvestment also paid me today and I successfully received 104% after just 1 day. I have reinvested some money already as I believe this will be a successful program and may even run for up to a month and beyond. Why not? We have many successful examples of such programs and HeavenInvestment is definitely one of the best in terms of quality. By the way you will be able to read my detailed review of HeavenInvestment on my blog on Sunday but now I’m telling you that the best way to be in profit from HeavenInvestment is to get in early.

Unfortunately I have to move ForexExperts to Waiting status on my monitoring page. The program has stopped paying yesterday and it was very abrupt and surprising for me. Some members though reported that they were not paid even on the day before yesterday so I assume them the admin just made a couple of selective payouts. But the most important thing is that the admin had the decency to send another update from the now obviously already dead program:
“Dear members, In order to make more investors test our service,in the next 48 hours any new investor (including those who have registered but not deposited yet) will get 20% of their deposits directly back to his E-currency account. It is a limited time offer, so please hurry!”
So yeah, if you want to lose your money in ForexExperts you definitely should hurry up. The most amusing thing that the admin replied to me after I contacted her and asked her to explain the reason behind the latest update while many people were not paid yesterday and today. She replied just in a couple of minutes and suggested me to join her and take the responsibility as a co-admin of ForexExperts:
“Dear Paul, I found that I hardly control the current situation only by myself. I need a partner to manage a program together with me. Do you have any interest to co-operate with me to run a great program?”
Of course I refused to do it as I’m not interested in running any investment program either by myself or in cooperation with others. But I didn’t get a reply to the most important question as to why the payments were delayed. So I have no choice but to move ForexExperts to Problematic status on my monitoring page unless the payments resume soon. Please don’t trust other emails from ForexExperts and stop investing there!

Also don’t trust some fake emails sent supposedly from people trying to destroy the reputation of others. Just ask yourself who would benefit from sending emails predicting the impending demise of PerfectMoney which I received today for example. Well, the email has some controversial points in itself and there is really a whole lot of speculation and rumors surrounding PerfectMoney payment processor now. Some of the exchangers stopped accepting them as they have full reserves and delays with getting their money out of the system, others are just taking advantage of the whole situation by introducing the ridiculously high rates of 10% and more for the panicking members of PerfectMoney. I’m not taking sides here and I don’t know what was the real reason behind all this war and accusations and speculations etc. but I could only ask the admin of PerfectMoney Andrew Draper about that email and ask for an official response which he agreed to give for MNO blog. So here is Andrew’s official response:
“Hello Paul, As you can read on TG forum, intelsoft (EcuMoney employee or maybe even a founder) is trying to accuse us in any possible way. Competitors are trying to play dirty in order to ruin PerfectMoney reputation. Once he was busted with EcuMoney mail server IP, while sending those fake emails. Situation with the exchangers are going to be normal pretty soon and the exchange rate is going to be lowered. I recommend users to order direct wires from PerfectMoney payment system and not to sale their PM to exchangers on a speculative rate. In order to sell PM fast you can always use Intexchange.com exchanger. Also as you can see PerfectMoney Finance Corp became a member of VFS network. We are currently working on many updates and soon we will publish some interesting new features.”
Of course, it’s totally your choice whom to believe but I would suggest to all the investors not to panic yet. It’s my opinion and I will stick with it for now.

I was paid today from the following programs: EarnerSurfer, GeniusFunds, TheDollarDiggers, YesICanSurf, VentureFundsGroup, SteadyGrowthInvest, NanoMoneyCorp, OilInsider, NorthBizz, Surfing4Roi, InvestiMates, LloydFunds, NovalexFinance, Merchandies, XagaEnterprise, ExcellentProfit, CoolReturn, Ivy-Castle, EnscoOffshore, SigmaTral, ElegantMoney, GlobalTradeGroup, GoldNuggetInvest and HeavenInvestment (the first payment received).

The newest program I just joined today is Veolex. The site was officially opened a couple of days ago but already has more than 100 members which was hardly a surprise for me. Veolex site is definitely good-looking and utilizing a professional design. It’s running on a licensed GoldCoders script and hosted on a dedicated DDoS-protected server. Veolex is offering long-term plans and paying 2%-2.25% for 70 days in a Daily plan and 15%-17.5% for 10 weeks in a Weekly plan. This is quite a sustainable return so the program could last longer if managed properly. The minimum that you can deposit is Veolex is $10 and your account will be credited with profits every calendar day. There are four payment processors currently accepted in Veolex: LibertyReserve, PerfectMoney, SolidTrustPay and EcuMoney. The admin of the program seemed to me quite a dedicated one wishing to run a long-lasting and successful program which hopefully Veolex will become soon enough. I’m going to review it nere soon so stay tuned for that. I wish you all a good happy weekend and see you on Sunday with another review and more news from the Industry!