Another billion dollar ponzi collapse - Secure-Investment
Remember this one from earlier this year on the MMG HYIP ponzi forum and Talkgold HYIP ponzi forum ???
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It also released fake press releases on PRNewswire
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and had its' own promotional videos on YouTube:
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Today comes the news on Bloomberg.com
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Some highlights of the Bloomberg article:
Quote:
Investors around the world may have lost more than $1 billion, based on data posted on Secure’s website and viewed by Bloomberg Markets two months before the site shut down.
“This type of forex fraud is an assault on the international financial system -- victimizing investors in multiple countries while concealing where the wrongdoing took place,” says U.S. Senator Carl Levin, who is chairman of the
Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and became aware of Secure Investment when asked about it by Bloomberg Markets.
Customers in 11 countries on five continents say they have seen their money evaporate with Secure. Twenty-five investors interviewed say Secure, which was incorporated in Panama in 2008, had instructed them to wire money to banks in Australia, Cyprus, Latvia and Poland.
The company’s website provided an explanation:
“From time to time, Secure Investment may change bank account information, because it chooses the financial partner that currently offers more profitable cooperation conditions.”
Quote:
Secure never revealed its true location and provided its clients with only some bank and related-company names, along with its call center’s toll-free phone numbers in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, the U.K. and the U.S.
Secure Investment lured customers by creating its own good reputation and by publishing a seemingly successful trading record on its elaborate website. It was all a lie. The company’s claims to have offices and a large staff were also false. At least some of its so-called customer testimonials were actually delivered by actors.
The deception worked -- for a while. In March, Secure’s website was more popular than Forex.com, run by Gain Captial Holding Inc., the second-largest U.S.-based, over-the-counter forex trading firm, according to Alexa.com, a unit of Amazon.com Inc. that tracks page views of millions of websites.
The most common search sending traffic to Secure was the phrase “secure investment.” The average visitor to Secure’s site stayed for almost seven minutes and viewed seven pages, according to Alexa.
Quote:
Secure crafted a tangled financial web to harvest and hide investor money by setting up companies with different names incorporated in Belize, the British Virgin Islands and the U.K. Secure asked clients in e-mails to wire money to bank accounts held by those firms.
By using related companies, Secure obscured the paper trail of investor funds that would end up with the firm.
The only public evidence that authorities have looked into Secure Investment comes from Panama. In July 2013, the website of Panama’s securities regulator, SMV, warned that the company wasn’t licensed or authorized to trade currencies.
The regulator also said Secure Investment listed a false Panama City address as its headquarters.
The office addresses that Secure’s website listed in Hong Kong, London and Sydney were also phony. All of those were at sites run by international office leasing company
Regus Plc. (RGU) London-based spokesman Andrew Brown researched his company’s records and found that Secure never used any of those locations.
Quote:
Secure’s website included 54 video testimonials, supposedly from investors; a six-minute infomercial; and three animated cartoons.
One testimonial is from a bearded man wearing a jacket and tie. After introducing himself as Michael, he praises Secure in an 80-second video. He says he’s pleased with his return on investment.
“Every year, I’ve watched my ROI grow,” he says.
“I’m getting closer and closer to my retirement goals. They take all the stress out of it.”
Michael is actually Al Eddy from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Eddy, 42, who has recorded video endorsements for a fee, says he was hired by an intermediary for Secure and paid $20 to perform as Michael. He says he’s never invested with Secure, nor traded forex nor even purchased a share of stock. Nothing he said in his endorsement is true, Eddy says, adding that he no longer does testimonials.
Quote:
“I’m an actor; actors lie for a living,” says Chuck Hall, another paid performer who did a testimonial for Secure. In his endorsement, Hall, 64, of Fernandina Beach, Florida, didn’t give any name. He told viewers he easily withdrew money from Secure.
“Had no problem at all doing that,” he says in the video. “I’m thinking now about investing in forex again. I think they’re pretty dependable.” Hall now says Secure’s intermediary paid him $4 and gave him a script. “I don’t even know what forex is,” he says.
Quote:
Because Secure had no real headquarters and existed on the Internet only, an investigation would be challenging.
“Law enforcement will have to focus on the bank accounts, wire transfers and financial transactions that -- with international cooperation and some luck -- might be used to get behind the anonymous shell companies hiding the perpetrators and stolen funds,” says Senator Levin, a Democrat from Michigan.
You can read the entire original article on BLOOMBERG.com
