Quote Originally Posted by NikSam View Post
Crowne Gold Inc.
Referenced as a conduit in the infamous EMG/Finanzas Forex forfeiture case filed in the Middle District of Florida in 2010. Some of the EMG/Finanzas money was tied to a narcotics investigation in Arizona.

Affidavit – US v Evolution Market Group

The document above might make your head spin. It shows the methodical layering of money-laundering schemes and how almost superhuman patience is required to reverse-engineer a criminal enterprise. At one level, it makes you marvel at the work the Feds can do. At another level, it makes you wonder whether the MLM HYIP trade (be it "product-based" or a straight-line HYIP such as JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid) has become one of the greatest threats to national/international security. Dark forces simply won't be denied. Hell, in Profitable Sunrise, Americans were sending bank wires to a ghost and telling a straight-faced tale that participants would receive an interest rate of 2.7 percent a day -- plus "compounding."

Zeek Rewards sold the compounding angle, too. And TelexFree, like others before it, appears to have created conditions under which participants could set up their own money-laundering networks. ASD and Zeek both created that condition.

The U.S. Feds have described Crowne Gold Inc. as "an unlicensed business that shady characters used to launder money," according to a Jan. 15, 2013, citation in U.S. Tax Court.

Citation (italics added):

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[Sean M.] Trainor was president and a director of Crowne Gold, Inc. According to Trainor, Crowne Gold was a squeaky-clean small business that allowed its clients to buy, sell, and make payments in gold and other precious metals. According to the U.S. Secret Service, the IRS, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Crowne Gold was an unlicensed business that shady characters used to launder money.

Trainor argued that Crowne Gold didn’t transmit money, just gold, and that any money transfers between his customers were merely incidental. The government
said that Crowne Gold keeps the treasure in one big, disorganized heap and allowed its customers to freely and anonymously exchange rights to their pieces of the pile.

By not registering with the state and federal governments as a money-transmitting business, the firm avoided being subject to antimoney-laundering laws designed to alert the authorities to suspicious customer transactions. That’s what let Crowne Gold charge fees so far above the market that--at least according to government
affidavits--only money launderers and Panamanian Ponzi schemers were willing to pay them

Source: http://www.ustaxcourt.gov/InOpHistor...mo.TCM.WPD.pdf

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A Task Force involved in the AdSurfDaily Ponzi bust (2008) also was involved in the EMG/Finanzas Forex case. Some of the "program" participants allegedly received instructions that, if they wanted out, they had to steal their way out to recover their investments. This allegedly would be accomplished by individual participants gathering money directly from recruits -- and then simply holding on to it. Not sure how much this dynamic was in play, but it set the stage for recruits who recognized they'd been swindled to do the same thing: Recruit a mark. Get his/her money. Call it Even Steven.

Part of the narrative surrounding EMG/Finanzas Forex was that investors were helping kidnapping victims in South America win their freedom.

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