From our Lipstick on the pig file.,...
About Us
Our Goals
Without a vision there is no hope. Our vision is for a better life for the non-privileged individuals and families of the world.
Our dream is to eliminate global poverty in our lifetime. We give hope and assistance in fulfilling that dream to so many impoverished families.
Our goal is to develop new entrepreneurial spirit and economic thinking in the minds of our members. We seek to break the cycle of poverty that exists for hundreds of millions of people around the world by providing for them the education, innovative products and services, systems and tools and management support to help them to support themselves, and to help create a world where the needy have adequate access to economic opportunities and the hope to move beyond poverty. A self sufficient individual who can support his/her family with the basic necessities of life � adequate food, housing, health care and education, does not need to tear his family apart in order to seek a better life somewhere else.Membership
Every once in a while there is a moment in time where everything comes together. When there is magic in the air what could not be accomplished before becomes possible now. The evolution of the Internet has radically altered the way we communicate, innovate, create, express, buy, sell, invest, research, and even date. Just about every human behavior and activity has an online counterpart. We now have instant access to knowledge, intelligence and transactions that never before in history were available. As with all major shifts in business the evolution of the Internet has ushered in new opportunities and categories of entrepreneurs.
Our membership is made up of entrepreneurs interested in global social issues, immigrants and expatriates, motivated and ambitious individuals from underdeveloped regions of the world and of course anybody interested in benefitting from our products and services.
We offer our Members opportunities to improve their lives by taking advantage of
• our educational programs
• earning commissions by marketing our products and services
• utilizing our discount shopping and travel opportunities
• our mobile cash management and transfer capabilities
• participating in our philanthropic and our micro-finance / micro-credit programs, and
• participating and contributing to the Club Asteria Global Forum.
Beautiful goals, entrepreneurial ethics and it's founder is a former director of the World Bank. This is the sort of program that former US Presidents do public service announcements for.,...right? Then why is there a 60 page (and growing) thread on it over at talkgold?About Us
Andrea Lucas, PMD, MBA, CPA, CMC, former Director of the World Bank, published author and mentor, is founder and Managing Director of Club Asteria. Andrea has over 30 years experience in finance, management, consulting and international project development in developing nations. Andrea is a native of Austria, who emigrated to Canada as a young woman, where she learned first hand about the trials and tribulations of being a stranger in a foreign country. Now, this successful entrepreneur is ready to give back to the expatriate community to enrich the lives of the less fortunate.
Simple, it's a ponzi scheme. Well that's a bit of an over simplification, it also has some characteristics of a pyramid scheme, an affiliate marketing program, coaching and "mentoring" services, a shopping portal (the Blastoff Network no less) and whether the founders realize it or not (wink wink, nudge nudge) it also has impressive potential as a money laundering operation.
It's fairly impressive how hidden the nuts and bolts details of the compensation and affiliate plans are. I've found a separate URL for the company and will drag that when I get the chance so some of the following is second hand information.
Three basic membership levels and additional "directorship" positions you can purchased. You can sign up for free but you need to be a Silver or Gold member (at $9.95 and $19.95 per month respectively) to participate in the "revenue sharing" program. Your initial silver or gold payment is ~matched~ with 10 or 20 "asterios" (they're like dollars) and in theory the average 7-10% per week compounding interest rate should allow you to pay your monthly fee just off your interest in about five months. If you're not the patient type you can also add to your "asterio" balance via bank wire or any of many popular payment processors. And yes, of course they offer matching bonuses for cash deposits, 100% direct match for deposits of $250 or more ($250 becomes 500 Asterios). They do have a 20,000 asterio cap on any one account, but cheerfully enough they do allow more than one account per "household."
I'm looking for info on the "directorship" positions but there seem to be areas of the website not available to free members or the public at large. There are five levels of them and the buy in ranges from $1,000 to $9,500 (Interesting note, I did find a page indicating that no money transfers of over $9,500 were permitted without direct authorization of the club. Gee isn't that the cutoff point where any bank would need to file notice of the transfer?). I don't know exactly what your one to nine and a half grand buys you but I'm sure you get your asterios worth.
The Alexa numbers are impressive on this one. And it seems quite possible that the majority of their membership (which could well be closing in on 100,000) are non native english speakers. Russia and India in particular seem very well represented.
In the reading I did one thing really jumped the hell out at me:
Of course it's very laudable to extend low cost money handling options to all corners of the globe but this is potentially dangerous. If you can send money to near any enabled smart phone in the world what's to keep drug dealers (or worse) from using Club Asteria like an international debit card? This is an impressively put together program with many facets. In many ways this is a distillation of several categories of scams but it also shows evolution in it's constituent parts. In the same way that FaceBook wasn't particularly original but rather was a synergistic combination or existing elements, Club Asteria might end up being larger than the sum of it's individual scams.Low Cost Money Transfer Services and MasterCard Prepaid Debit Cards Are Here!
All over the world there are tens of millions of people who have great difficulty receiving desperately needed funds from their loved ones. These are the unbankable people of the world. And when funds do reach them, the high money transfer costs often greatly diminish the final payout. At Club-Asteria we recognize that this is one of the greatest financial problems that perpetuates the cycle of poverty.
We have partnered with the best financial professionals in the world to put together a service that will revolutionize the way you send money home to help your family and loved ones. As a Gold Member of Club-Asteria, you will receive an Asteria Club account that provides you access to online banking and your individual electronic wallet. This will give you the freedom to bank whenever and wherever you want. You can check your balance and transfer funds to your loved ones anywhere in the world. You can fund your e-Wallet by sending money via bank wire, credit card, by using the online payment system available from 24 top banks in the world, by mobile phone transmissions and of course via receipts of your commissions from Club-Asteria.
Your cost for this service is a one-time fee of 2.5% when you deposit funds into your e-Wallet. This is the ONLY FEE that you will be charged for the utilization of your account and all of the money transfers that you want to make. For example, if you deposit $100 into your account, the cost will be $2.50. After that if you want to send funds to five family members, friends or loved ones, your cost would already be covered by the $2.50 taken out of your account (equaling 50 cents per transmission) - there are NO OTHER CHARGES! In addition, we offer the absolute best international currency conversion rates.
Your mobile phone can be used as an account management tool. Most importantly Asteria Club Members can transfer funds to themselves, other members, and check their balance via their mobile phones. SMS text is a way to use your mobile phone to check your account balance, and transfer money instantaneously all over the world. Your loved ones receive the money that you want them to have immediately in real time.
Additionally, you have the opportunity to purchase a MasterCard Prepaid Card. Funds sent to you via SMS text on your mobile phone can immediately be transferred to this MasterCard Prepaid Card. You can then use your Card to buy products and services anywhere in the world where MasterCard is accepted. The MasterCard Prepaid Cards can be issued anywhere in the world and come with chip and pin security that increases the safety to the card owner and reduces fraud risk. There are no credit checks or monthly or yearly maintenance fees for the MasterCard Prepaid Card.
Exceptional Benefits to Club-Asteria Members:
* Your personal e-Wallet
* Online Banking-Mobile Banking (SMS)
* International Instant Money Transfers
* Real Time Online Payments
* Instant Access to Commissions from Club Asteria
* Multiple MasterCard Prepaid Cards Available For Your Loved Ones
These financial services will prove to be one of the greatest benefits of your Club-Asteria membership.
Club-Asteria Shares Its Vision For The Future
With the help of our Network Directors and members we have finalized our Vision for 2011-2012. With the help and dedication of each of our members we can accomplish what we are setting out to do to make great positive changes in the world. It is the cumulative effort of all of our members that makes this vision achievable.
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