Thread: Banners Broker HYIP ponzi scam

can someone tell me how to screenshoot a page?

Originally Posted by AshKen1

@samuel

What's a 1099?

I've sent noname some stuff from paypal.co.uk and fees vary depending on how much business you do.

In reality, using Paypal would have been the best way forward. Only drawback is the legitimacy of the business - but feel free to tell me I'm wrong.

The nonsense about fees is just that, nonsense. The real reasons that BB won't do business with Paypal is because they'd a) come under the scrutiny of the US authorities and b) Paypal will clawback or hold any funds they consider as being funds for or the result of, criminal activity.

If the best that BB, sorry BBI can come up with is Terry Stern I don't think they'd stand a cat in hell's chance of convincing any kosher financial institution, or government department that they are a legitimate business.

Samuel,

Setting up a legal entity in each country only works if you want to pay taxes in that country, which can get very hairy indeed. The problem with that is, you are creating a PE (Permanent Establishment), and as any international accountant or tax specialist will tell you, you do not want to start creating PE's all over the world unless you want to start spending serious money on lawyers, tax advisors, auditors, paying taxes, filling in forms, explaining to some local tax authorities why you don't want to pay them taxes on your world-wide income, getting into the intricacies of multiple double-taxation-treaties etc. Even if BB were a legitimate business, setting up PE's in every country is quite legitimately the last thing they would want to do.
Google I assume does business in all of the countries they set up PEs in, plus they have the money and kudos to employ top consultants to make top deals with tax authorities, maybe getting exeptions as "representative offices" as opposed to in-country businesses etc. etc.
Believe me, your response would be the wrong answer for most organisation.

For Swiss & Sam inc. you are correct, but we are talking about a supposed $200m or more company. With those resources and revenue in play it is not wrong to do exactly what I said. Google deals with corp taxes pretty creatively:

Google avoids $2B in global taxes with Bermuda shelter

No reason BB couldn't put transfer pricing in place just like their big brother, Google.

Originally Posted by Theseus

The nonsense about fees is just that, nonsense. The real reasons that BB won't do business with Paypal is

The reason Banners Broker WON'T do business with Paypal is that Banners Broker CAN'T do business with Paypal.

Paypal have extremely stringent verification requirements with which HYIPs and get-rich-quick schemes simply cannot conform.

While the occasional HYIP or get-rich-quick scheme might slip through Paypals' vetting system, it's a relatively simple matter for Paypal members to inform the company which is renowned for its' quick action at the merest hint of money laundering or illegal activities.

What scares HYIPers even more than being sprung is the fact PayPal will not only close the account, but will also freeze any funds in that account AND any "tainted" accounts as well.

For all these reasons I push on the payment issue hoping that any potential investor will see this and realise there are reasons why the "company" they are thinking of investing with will not use reputable payment methods.

Originally Posted by SwissSkyBlue

For all these reasons I push on the payment issue hoping that any potential investor will see this and ralise there are reasons why the "company" they are thinking of investing with will not sue reputable payment methods.

Exactly. Nothing about their payment process, start to finish, makes sense. If we accept the premise they assert regarding free cash flow.

If we instead think about it as a guy named Raj skimming as much money out of a ponzi structure, and trying to carefully balance that against newly input investment money so the whole thing stays in a state of controlled hysteresis - then it makes sense.

Originally Posted by Theseus

This one?

Attachment 2784

Whoops, must have missed it. Sorry, still getting used to the format here. Wonder what Terry would have to say about a 'leader'/'AD' for BB in the USA who hosted Mr. Smith. Add this to his list of lies: There has been active BB recruiting in the USA since AT LEAST 2011.

From SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION v. IMPERIA INVEST IBC. The case alleges the unlawful sale of unregistered securities by a company that purported to have multiple business addresses offshore from a U.S. perspective. Snippets (bolding added):

"Defendant's conduct took place in connection with the offer, purchase and/or sale of securities in the form of investment contracts. As investment contracts, the investments therefore are securities, and no registration statement has been filed with respect to the offering of these interests."

"The majority of investor monies paid to Imperia appear to have been sent to three PayPal-type entities: Liberty Reserve, located in Costa Rica; Perfect Money, located in Panama; and Procurrex, located in the British Virgin Islands. Once Imperia received funds from Investors, it appears that Imperia then transferred amounts from these accounts to foreign bank accounts, including but not limited to accounts located in Cyprus and New Zealand."

"Imperia also requires that investors purchase a Visa debit card to access their investment proceeds. Imperia charges customers a fee to purchase the Visa debit card ranging from $145 to $450."

"Visa has not authorized Imperia to use its name or trademarks and has sent Imperia a cease-and-desist letter to halt its unauthorized use of the Visa name and logo."

"Imperia's use of the Visa name and logo is misleading, because it creates the false impression that the investment is legitimate and even endorsed by Visa."

"To date, Imperia, either via its website or through email, has made numerous excuses about why returns have not been paid. As early as 2007, Imperia claimed it could start paying investors only when it had at least 10,000 investors - a number that already has been significantly exceeded."

"In late 2009, when Imperia claimed to relocate from the Bahamas to Vanuatu, it maintained that it experienced computer server problems as a consequence of the relocation which, according to Imperia, delayed payments of investment proceeds."

"Other excuses Imperia provided via its website regarding the necessity to delay payments include but are not limited to (1) its computer server being overloaded and unable to process the payments; (2) a delay in obtaining a trustee agreement for its partners; (3) the need for additional time to verify the identities of investors; and, (4) its computer system had been compromised by hackers."

As the Imperia investigation proceeded, the SEC began to focus on an alleged key pitchman. He ultimately was charged with securities fraud, selling unregistered securities and acting unlawfully as a broker or dealer amid allegations that he blindly promoted an international scam that consumed more than $7 million and made at least $3.45 million belonging to his personal customers vanish.

In December 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice noted that the Imperia case was part of "Operation Broken Trust."

PPBlog

Originally Posted by Brenda

This is the only job app I can find for SP, note the address and company profile

PHP Programmer Job Postings in Toronto | Search Classified Listings

and this one from 7 days ago (?) for BB

Banners Broker Jobs | Simply Hired Canada

Nice find, Brenda... prompting me to sharpen my special dot-connecting pencil.

The address in the first ad is...

Stellar Point Inc.
167 Church St.
Toronto, Ontario (Canada)

...and in the the second ad it says...

"This is a Full-time 9am-5pm job working out of our downtown Toronto office loft."

As I reported in a previous post, this is the address of a condo out of which Banners Broker/Stellar Point's DYZ Media arm operates. Knowing now that it has a loft, we can take a peek inside that very (or very similar) abode...

http://www.torontorentals.com/167Church/ (see the '2 Bdrm with Loft' tab)

Toronto Rentals must have known I was coming; the building's general description is given thus:

"A heritage-inspired building, Jazz is a grand 28-storey residence offering stunning views of the city and waterfront. Located in the heart of downtown Toronto, Jazz is situated only blocks from Ryerson University."

Call me a conspiracy nutjob, but mention of that by now familiar educational institution has sparked an idea:

Given that it's a residential, not commercial, block... given that Chris Smith is an 'IT guy', creator of the Silverline Club cycler website we now know... given that Emma Farquharson, producer of the Choice Network site content, works in the Jazz building... given that they're advertising for a programmer to work there, too... is the whole web development side of the scam actually being run out of Chris Smith's apartment?

Originally Posted by Julie Diligent

Nice find, Brenda... prompting me to sharpen my special dot-connecting pencil.

The address in the first ad is...

Stellar Point Inc.
167 Church St.
Toronto, Ontario (Canada)

...and in the the second ad it says...

"This is a Full-time 9am-5pm job working out of our downtown Toronto office loft."

As I reported in a previous post, this is the address of a condo out of which Banners Broker/Stellar Point's DYZ Media arm operates. Knowing now that it has a loft, we can take a peek inside that very (or very similar) abode...

Toronto Condo-Style Apartment For Rent | 167 Church Street | Condo-Style Apartment Rentals Toronto (see the '2 Bdrm with Loft' tab)

Toronto Rentals must have known I was coming; the building's general description is given thus:

"A heritage-inspired building, Jazz is a grand 28-storey residence offering stunning views of the city and waterfront. Located in the heart of downtown Toronto, Jazz is situated only blocks from Ryerson University."

Call me a conspiracy nutjob, but mention of that by now familiar educational institution has sparked an idea:

Given that it's a residential, not commercial, block... given that Chris Smith is an 'IT guy', creator of the Silverline Club cycler website we now know... given that Emma Farquharson, producer of the Choice Network site content, works in the Jazz building... given that they're advertising for a programmer to work there, too... is the whole web development side of the scam actually being run out of Chris Smith's apartment?

Nice train of thought, anyone live in Toronto?

froMichelle Levick • a month ago −
I have been with BB since August last year. I have put thousands into my account as have others. I have heard of some of my fellow members not receiving their money for more than 6-8 weeks or more.
My story is that I have been making about $10,000-15,000.00 give or take a bit a month. I purchased an account for my father out of my ewallet funds. I was managing the account as being in his 70's about 76. It was too difficult for him to grasp. We had to verify our accounts.... so now they have our personal details ( ?? used for ID fraud). I had been putting xtra money in. I went to check on my account and they have now blocked it. Is it because I was managing my fathers account??? or what. Also I purchased $4,885.00 worth of pannels on the 4th of November. Through no fault of my own the WIFI dropped out. Thanks Telstra!! anyhow I still hadn't received my pannels even after sending them numerous notes and tickets. I had purchased more that day and they all went through fine.
I have sent them numerous notes, tickets etc to contact them to find out what had happened?? I am now totally blocked and so is my fathers account.
According to them I had made over $120,000 (US$) but I had only taken out like $10,000.00 and that was to buy more pannels and to set up my dad's account.
Be warned!!!!
So over the past 17 months or so I have put in at least $10,000.00 of my own money.
What do I do?????
I hate to say it but I feel that they are dishonerable. I tried to ring them but my message was ..."Please check the number and dial again"...
Michelle Levick

from a site called donothingmoney. This lady seems genuine, disgraceful treatment.

Originally Posted by Julie Diligent

Nice find, Brenda... prompting me to sharpen my special dot-connecting pencil.

The address in the first ad is...

Stellar Point Inc.
167 Church St.
Toronto, Ontario (Canada)

...and in the the second ad it says...

"This is a Full-time 9am-5pm job working out of our downtown Toronto office loft."

As I reported in a previous post, this is the address of a condo out of which Banners Broker/Stellar Point's DYZ Media arm operates. Knowing now that it has a loft, we can take a peek inside that very (or very similar) abode...

Toronto Condo-Style Apartment For Rent | 167 Church Street | Condo-Style Apartment Rentals Toronto (see the '2 Bdrm with Loft' tab)

Toronto Rentals must have known I was coming; the building's general description is given thus:

"A heritage-inspired building, Jazz is a grand 28-storey residence offering stunning views of the city and waterfront. Located in the heart of downtown Toronto, Jazz is situated only blocks from Ryerson University."

Call me a conspiracy nutjob, but mention of that by now familiar educational institution has sparked an idea:

Given that it's a residential, not commercial, block... given that Chris Smith is an 'IT guy', creator of the Silverline Club cycler website we now know... given that Emma Farquharson, producer of the Choice Network site content, works in the Jazz building... given that they're advertising for a programmer to work there, too... is the whole web development side of the scam actually being run out of Chris Smith's apartment?

I've been holding off a bit on my research, waiting to see how things were going to pan out over the last few weeks. Truly thought it would be gone by now?!

Originally Posted by Poyol

Nice train of thought, anyone live in Toronto?

what could someone living in Toronto do?

Originally Posted by Brenda

what could someone living in Toronto do?

Visit the address/stake out etc.

I was first approached by a friend about Bannersbroker in June of this past year. When I initially looked at Bannersbroker, I used what I call traditional asset research methodologies to check the company out. The first red flag that came up was what i found on Whois about their website registration and hosting. Companies who supposedly have millions of dollars in assets do not host their websites with cheap web hosting companies. Reading their Facebook posts, I read numerous posts by alleged Bannersbrokers customer support personnel responding to complaints / questions about slow payments to their members, stating that they were "going through upgrades to their servers." What servers? I also noticed that the majority of their praising members, appeared to be bogus Facebook accounts. To be more specific, said members had zero to no friends. Their only posts were to the Facebook Bannersbroker pages, etc. Digging further, I did a Dunn and Brad search on the company and found no record of the company having any credit. A Thomas directory search also was void of any real information about the company and or who they trade with. Those two facts alone told me everything I need to know about Bannersbroker. No legitimate company with millions of dollars does not leave some trail of having done business with some other company. Where do they get their office supplies? Who did they buy and or lease their alleged servers from? Where did they get their office equipment from? Again, no legitimate company with alleged millions in assets does any kind of legitimate business without leaving some kind of credit and or financial trail.

My friend actually established an account with Bannersbroker for me in July of 2012. Since I had no money in to it, I allowed him to do his thing with the account. The account summary indicates that his initial investment of 150.00 dollars has grown to an account worth 1,200 dollars. If in fact that was true, I would be singing their praises, but in reality the account is worthless. First, Bannersbroker charges their customers a 50.00 dollar a month traffic fee. Additionally, you can never fully liquidate an account with them. Upon a members request to close their account, the member loses all his investments and pending withdraw requests. Interesting to note, requests to close a members account can only be submitted by writing to a third party company in Canada.

There are three ways that Bannersbroker allegedly will payout money upon withdraw requests to their members. The first is to have them directly deposit it in their members bank account. For obvious reasons, this option is insane. Their second option is through a prepaid master card through Vector Card Services. They charge their members 45.00 dollars to send them the card. Additionally they charge a service fee for every withdraw request. Finally, they have two online payment service providers, Panza and Solid Trust Pay that you supposedly can obtain your money from. I waited until my account balance reached 150.00 dollars and put in a withdraw request. They immediately charged me 45.00 dollars to send me a Vector prepaid MC and a 5.00 dollar transaction fee. Three months later, I still have not received a penny from them.

Customer support is handled three ways by Bannersbroker. They utilize online support tickets, telephone support and a live chat. The first thing I discovered when trying to submit an online support ticket, was their notice that due to all of the support tickets they receive, they purge them 14 days after submittal. I have sent in 23 unanswered support tickets to this date. Telephone support is also a joke. They charge their members 5.00 dollars per call to call a third party company in Canada, who does not answer the phone. If you stupid enough to sit on hold for an hour or more, the phone eventually just hangs up on you. Finally, their live chat is a complete scam. It does not exist. It is simply a java script that will produce a chat window informing you that you have from 18-25 people in the que in front of you. if you are stupid enough to wait on it, the que never goes down like legitimate online chat status windows will do and eventually, the script times out and informs you that their chat service is "currently unavailable." In other words, there is no real way to converse with Bannersbroker. If they want to respond to you they will, if not, your just stuck out.

In conclusion, Bannersbroker in my opinion is a scam. They are nothing more then thieves who use a ton of bogus praise made up by either idiots that believe in them and or by themselves, poising as numerous happy members. When they do pay out money, they never pay as much out as a member has invested in to their program. If they did not pay out a little money here and there, they would of already been shut down. Regardless, they are not a legitimate business. They post all kinds of excuses to put people off about getting paid, i.e.. "upgrading servers", etc. but at the end of the day, people are still getting burned. I hope that they find the criminals who are running this scam and put them in prison where they belong.

@sixsigmamb

Hello and welcome to realscam.

Your very detailed post gives us more information to use. Thank you so much for taking the time to post here. We're actually a nice bunch of people as others will agree :)

Even if you never post again, what you put here is valuable.

General sarcastic comment:

I do hope that someone not here until Tuesday realises that realscam members actually carry on researching and don't take the time off.

End of sarcastic comment.

@Julie

Your dot-connecting pencil seems to be working really well at the moment!!

Awesome stuff!!

Just a quick comment on the paypal issue. I recently had to update one of mine to a business paypal as I had received more than £1,500 income in the year. I had to provide proof of address for the company and ID of me as the director.

It is common practice now for financial institutions and service providers where large transactions are taking place to verify the ID of clients/ customers. I have to do it myself to comply with my regulatory body and indeed HMRC.

That is one reason I was not surprised (or worried at the time) that BB were asking for ID.

Originally Posted by hendyphilhendy

Just a quick comment on the paypal issue. I recently had to update one of mine to a business paypal as I had received more than £1,500 income in the year. I had to provide proof of address for the company and ID of me as the director.

It is common practice now for financial institutions and service providers where large transactions are taking place to verify the ID of clients/ customers. I have to do it myself to comply with my regulatory body and indeed HMRC.

That is one reason I was not surprised (or worried at the time) that BB were asking for ID.

Yes Phil, most financial institutions do ask for that kind of ID these days. Even the biggest banks get caught out with money laundering - see HSBC recently. How and what did you provide that information to Paypal?

Originally Posted by Poyol

Visit the address/stake out etc.

Jason, we are talking about a multi million scam here, a lot at stake for the guys at the top, would you really recommend this kind of amateur detective work?

Originally Posted by hendyphilhendy

Just a quick comment on the paypal issue. I recently had to update one of mine to a business paypal as I had received more than £1,500 income in the year. I had to provide proof of address for the company and ID of me as the director.

It is common practice now for financial institutions and service providers where large transactions are taking place to verify the ID of clients/ customers. I have to do it myself to comply with my regulatory body and indeed HMRC.

That is one reason I was not surprised (or worried at the time) that BB were asking for ID.

I've got a Paypal business account, Phil and have had for more than 10 years now. In all that time, even when they had to "verify" my identity at the time the new money laundering regs came in, they have never once asked to see my passport, nor have they ever asked that I provide notarised anything to confirm my identity.

Originally Posted by Theseus

I've got a Paypal business account, Phil and have had for more than 10 years now. In all that time, even when they had to "verify" my identity at the time the new money laundering regs came in, they have never once asked to see my passport, nor have they ever asked that I provide notarised anything to confirm my identity.

Me neither. I'm in the USA. The only verification was to link my business bank account and provide my corporation's federal EIN (employer identification number). I'm sure if I started doing a lot of transfers of funds in/out of the USA there would be more validation required, so I don't want to make it sound like my experience is the only answer.

The sheer depth and breadth of the information that BB demands, including notarized scanned images of documentation, in my opinion, is well beyond what anyone would consider normal in this supposed broker-affiliate relationship.

I think we are all pretty well convinced that all of this identification information is (or will be) a nice secondary income for the guys running BB.

Originally Posted by AshKen1

@Julie

Your dot-connecting pencil seems to be working really well at the moment!!

Awesome stuff!!

Thanks, Ash.

Here's something you can all connect the dots for. In fact it could even be a scambusters mascot:

connect_the_dots.gif

Need a clue?

Well... if it looks like one, walks like one, and quacks like one, then...