The Gold Blog

Let’s start with some basics which will apply to all ‘e-currency’ scams and schemes.

It will then become your job to test out some possible targets and comment on the e-currency webs you find. I look forward to reading your comments.

You should be able to recognize an e-currency scam when the entire purpose of the web is designed is to separate you from your money. That usually means after reading just a little inspirational information and a pitch the web will ask you for money…”Order Here” or “Invest Now”. This is the most obvious scheme on the Internet. A small web which hypes an ‘e-currency product’ and then asks you to send money. The ultimate goal is obvious, separating you from your hard earned money any way they can! Here are some other signals.

* Beware of the one page web! It may qualify as a scam.

If you find a really long one page ‘e-currency’ web pitching their sale using everything from genuine ‘expert advice’ to customer endorsements, that one page is most likely an ‘e-currency program’ affiliate scheme. Perhaps, not an outright scam, it is set up on behalf of the unknowing affiliate, this is just an extension of the original scheme. When members join these webs, the ‘program’ will automatically create one page affiliate webs for all its participants. You will often see this text, “If you sign up today, you will also get your own free affiliate web!”

If the program is worth participation, the operator should find it worth spending $8 for an actual domain name and multiple page web template. One page webs or one page sub domains with long.names69.com and a ‘Order Here’ button on the bottom…..are a dead giveaway. As they say in Vegas, that is a suckers bet.

These pages are very long and poorly designed with all efforts leading to the ‘Buy Now’ pitch on the bottom of the page. Please learn to recognize these most obvious schemes and stay away. Here are just a few I found during two minutes of surfing: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

* If you read the ‘e-currency’ web site for 10 minutes and you still can’t figure out exactly how the business makes money, it may qualify as a scam.

I’ve worked in the digital currency field for about 5-6 years and while I’m still not an ‘Expert’ but I do understand how online money works. If I visit an ‘E-currency’ web, whether it offers trading, exchanging, buying or selling I can usually understand exactly what is going on after reading the first paragraph. This leads me to the next big scam signal.

When you visit an ‘e-currency’ web, if after the first page, you still can’t figure out what they are selling or how money is being made, then chances are very good, it is some type of scheme to separate you from your money. Believing in the unknown is a powerful method of convincing someone to spend or invest.

Most visitors will say something like this, “well the web looks good and I see this ad everywhere, it must have some truth to it.” Understanding that people are easily convinced by ‘information’ on the Internet and are always looking for new methods to earn online, these offers entice people to try that unknown ‘program’.

This is wrong. Read the web again, if you cannot figure out exactly how the money is made or lost and how often, you won’t be earning any. This fact is especially true if you get a live IM or contact by email and you hear from them, “You just don’t understand the program”…that may be a big scam.

Don’t be one of those people with the calculator out saying, “well if the web is only half right I’ll still make 9% each month, WOW”, ITS A SCAM. It is all designed to separate you from what? YOUR MONEY Don’t be a believer…investigate!

A great example of meaningless text is below. If you can explain to me in detail how money is made or lost after reading this information or what this paragraph really means, I’ll pay you $10! Source: dxout.com

DXSynergy is a private market where a variety of e-currencies are exchanged for each other in one exchange. DXSynergy is a central currency service for all of these other e-currencies. There are two main parts to the system today; DXPortfolio and DXMerchant. When you first start out in the business, you begin doing e-currency trading in the DXPortfolio side. After months of trading, you may want to get into the DXMerchant side. The DXMerchant side takes more time to manage but your profits and bonuses can be much higher than the DXPortfolio. DXSynergy (DXInOne) has just started rolling out their other products and services to the world, so visit the DXSynergy site to see for yourself about these exciting new services.

So make sure you visit their new Dx web, sporting yet another new name for this year, and become even more confused

Also, never mind the fact that the term ‘e-currency’ is a trademarked phrase owned by Goldfinger Coin & Bullion, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. GoldfingerCoin™ and Goldfinger Coin & Bullion™ are registered trademarks of GFCB, Inc. www.goldfingercoin.com

Again, understand my rule: If you read the ‘trading’ web site for 10 minutes and you still can’t figure out exactly how the business makes money, it may qualify as a scam.

* Do some homework and research it before you ‘Believe’ !

Take all of these items from your possible program web and separately query Google on each one:

• Program Name
• Person’s Name Associated with the program
• The Domain
• The Street Address
• Phone Number
• The keywords from the program web (it is critical so search on these KWs)
• Repeat these same searches but this time also include the word “scam” with each search

After you query each of these terms and read the results of your search, can you see any outright warning? Has anyone else been separated from their cash and is now alerting you via Google’s search results? Are there 4-5 or 25 webs devoted to disclosing “this is a scam”.

10 minutes of research on Google can save you big money and months of ‘e-currency’ frustration.

* Beware of supposed industry ‘Experts’.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Covers.com

By Joe MacDonald, Wed, Jan 31, 2007

On January 16, 2007, the Department of Justice announced that it was charging two founders of Neteller, Stephen Lawrence and John Lefebvre, with laundering billions of dollars of Internet gambling proceeds.

Neteller is a company that was founded in Canada, a sovereign country, in 1999. Neteller later moved to the Isle of Man, and is publicly traded in the United Kingdom. Both are Canadian citizens. These two gentlemen no longer even work for Neteller.

Lawrence and Lefebvre are both charged with conspiring to transfer funds with the intent to promote illegal gambling. If convicted, both defendants face a maximum sentence of 20 years` imprisonment. I am not making this up. That information is all contained in the press release provided by the DOJ.

Twenty years in jail. Twenty years. Read the rest of this entry »

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Wow, the newest entry to the Internet world of online payments, Alipay, is coming on strong…massive growth in just a short time.

Alibaba’s online payment service Alipay announced key metrics for 2006, claiming that it was the year online payments reached critical mass in China. Alipay announced that as of December 31, 2006, the number of registered AliPay users surpassed 33 million. Alipay’s daily transaction volume reached US$12.8 million (RMB100 million), and the number of daily transactions using Alipay reached 460,000.

Jonathan Lu, President of Alipay, said, “Alibaba’s ecommerce community is built on trust and it is also an essential part of our online payment platform. Alipay’s escrow based system has solved the problem of trust for Chinese ecommerce users and is the safest way to trade online in China.”

In 2006, Alipay further extended its reach to merchants outside of the Alibaba and Taobao marketplaces, with more than 300,000 external merchants using Alipay as their preferred online payment platform, including leading local brands Lenovo, CCTV, Aigo, and New Oriental.

Source: Ina Steiner AuctionBytes.com February 01, 2007

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Here is the latest news from BestGoldCard as of Tuesday January 30th, 2007:

(1) Refunds via cheque. For those cardholders who have a BGC debit card issued by “NYCCU” and wish to be issued a refund of their card balance via ** CHEQUE ** please email BGC Support at:

help@bestgoldcard.com

for further instructions. Said refund would be supplied directly by the network. The refund cheque would be denominated in USD and would come from Canada. It would be sent to your official address of record with BGC and only to that address. Please note that it is impossible to change your postal address of record. Any request to have your address changed will be ignored.
Unfortunately it is unclear how long it would take for such a cheque to be issued and sent.

(2) Refunds via your DGC. BGC is continuing to push for the ability for our cardholders to refund their card balance through BGC via their DGC account (e-gold(TM) or 1mdc(TM)). We should have more news about this possibility next week.

(3) New cards. BGC considered launching a new card that would function on the STAR network. Though these cards work well enough we didn’t ultimately feel it was a good fit for BGC or our customers. The STAR network is considerably smaller than alternate networks (particularly internationally) and generally has much higher fees. For these reasons we have rejected the STAR card for our purposes.

(4) New cards — again. BGC is pleased to announce that we have new cards in the works. It is possible that these new cards will be available for sale as early as next week. We should have a more definitive date shortly and will make an announcement regarding the cards and their availability ASAP.

Thank you for choosing BestGoldCard,

BestGoldCard Support

http://www.bestgoldcard.com/

You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. E-gold’s president, Douglas Jackson, says he’s having a tough time getting law enforcement to cooperate regarding his discovery of suspicious transactions while e-gold is being investigated by the U.S. Secret Service.

According to Jackson, he’s been tracking suspicious activity on this service for a year in an effort to expunge the company’s name from its association with carders, botnet owners and child pornography rings. Seems law enforcement would be willing to work with him, but won’t guarantee they won’t use the information he provides against e-Gold should they feel it points in that direction.

Very chicken-and-egg-like. E-gold has started suspending accounts it deems suspect and — according to one individual — without providing much reasoning when it does so. It’s hard to tell at this point who is in the wrong, but clearly someone is. If e-gold is the festering pool of criminal transactions its been made out to be, it’s high time something happened to reverse that, whether it means them ceasing some or all transactions either at their own behest or with influence from law enforcement.

Source: 1/30/07 mcpmag.com

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