During 2006 Julie Wilson placed a number of classified adverts in the business opportunity sections of the Sunday papers.

The adverts pointed to a website – passivemoneyplan.com.

She was attempting to promote what American officials called an “ongoing pyramid-scheme fraud” – a 1-Up system called the Prosperity Automated System (PAS).

In September 2006 the Securities and Exchange Commission worked to close PAS, instantly stopping Julie from introducing anyone else into the scheme.

In short, the pyramid scheme collapsed and thousands of people lost their money.

Fast forward a couple of years and this week I received an (unsolicited) email advertising Julie’s latest promotional effort – a “Cash Gifting” scheme which she calls “passivemoneyplan.info”.

Intrigued, I tuned in to listen to one of Julie’s promotional teleseminars.

“We don’t make sales. There are no sales. We don’t have any products so we don’t make any sales,” she told those listening in via the internet or by dialling up a special number. “How much have I received? Well what I will tell you is there are members that are making over £5000 per week and I am one of those.”

Julie, along with a partner, point people to a site with the address passivemoneyplan.info where they promise to share more information about this magical “program” they are using to allegedly make £5,000 per week with “no sales”.

Details are sketchy on the site but the way it has been setup means that the pages are stored on another site with the address “ukmentor.net”.

Until recently, this website was registered to Paul Stevenson of Brighton but earlier this month this was changed to “Whois Privacy Protection Service, Inc”

If you read their site and decide you want to know more you must go back to your “inviter”.

So, I went back to the person who emailed me and asked for the website and password, as instructed by Julie during the teleseminar.

I was provided with a link to the “Number One Success System” at noss123.com. You can reach this directly, no need for a password by going to:

noss123.com/main/

(Just copy and paste into the Address Bar on your internet browser. I have purposely not linked directly to the site.)

Go to that site and there is a link which reads “Guidelines”. You will see that participants in this scheme must be very careful what language they use to promote their cash gifting program.

Probably because they do not want to attract the attention of the authorities.

Yep, they have to try and stay under the radar because this is very, very similar to the Prosperity Automated System. Money is being passed around but there is no product.

On top of that, participants must pass the first money they receive to the person who introduced them – making this a 1-Up program, just like PAS.

I’m very concerned that this is an illegal chain-gifting scheme. And I am looking further into it with the correct authorities.

If you were looking to signup with Julie Wilson, Paul Stevenson or the Number One Success System I would hold back until you can determine your legal position. Don’t just take their word for it, check whether it is legal or not.

More to follow…

As always, comments are welcome below and if I have made any errors I am happy to correct them. Just let me know by leaving a comment below.

Just over a year ago I spent a great deal of time investigating an extremely dodgy pyramid scheme called the Prosperity Automated System or “PAS” for short.

Shortly after I wrote a couple of articles about the scheme, it was shutdown by the SEC and the organiser found himself in a legal nightmare that is probably still ongoing. In addition, thousands of people were left nursing extremely heavy losses after ploughing money into PAS which promptly disappeared along with the “sponsors” who introduced them to the pyramid scheme.

Anyway, PAS died a messy death and is pretty much forgotten now on the message boards. When one pyramid scheme dies, another soon takes its place and there are always plenty of suckers ready to join up and max out their credit cards.

One dodgy HYIP which has just recently been shut down by the SEC goes by the name “Colon End Parenthesis” which stands for 🙂 – a smiley face.

Warning signs in this one were typical of these unsustainable schemes….

Firstly, it was promised you could earn 2% per day on your so-called investment – always a big, big danger sign. NOTHING pays 2% a day, absolutely nothing and anything that claims to is almost certainly a scam.

Then it was hyped that the owner of this particular scheme was a Christian pastor or something similar. For some reason, people really trust people who say they are christian when, in reality, it doesn’t matter what race, religion, colour, sex, nationality, height, weight or hair colour someone is. ANYONE can scam you out of money. ANYONE can make fraudulant promises.

Thirdly, there were very few, if any, negative reviews of this scheme – mostly because everyone who had joined had an agenda. They had to promote it and say it was the best thing since sliced bread in order to draw more investment into the scheme.

Also, the promoter (the “Christian” fella) was very cagey about how the money was being made. He wouldn’t divulge exactly how he could pay all investors between 2% and 10% per day. No real surprise there!

In the end, the SEC stepped in to close down Colon End Parenthesis and bring an end to the cycle of investor’s money.

What was found was that all money invested was basically being paid back out to early investors to give them the “2%” return.

The promoter was also ploughing money in autosurfs and other dodgy internet investment schemes and HYIPs – not the real, offline business that he claimed.

So, in reality, when the SEC stepped in, there were no real records of how the money was distributed and it was revealed to be a complete financial mess.

As it turns out, the official receivers are now contacting people who made money from CEP with the aim of clawing back all the money invested.

It’s fair to say that the “winners” are going to be forced to give all the money back so that the “losers” have a small chance of getting a small percentage of their losses back.

You can read more on the huge thread on the “Money Maker Group” forums. I’m am not going to link to that site from this site because I do not want to promote those forums, they are full of dodgy HYIP promoters and people with Vested Interests in seeing you buy into a range of dubious pyramid and ponzi schemes.

Search them out on Google (and be very, very wary of a very dodgy female Moderator who heavily promoted the PAS scam).

http://www.bizoppsuk.com/prosperity_automated_system.php

I’ve recently received several emails about this one. It’s called the “Global Pension Plan” and promises to help you turn €30 into €55,000 or more!

I got the following email and decided to look into it:

“Hi Ben
Could you be kind enough to look into this opportunity for me, what’s your opinon on this one, sounds too good to be true!….has it got scam written all over it? it was passed on to me by friend.
thanks for your time
Phil”

Well, I had a good look at the site and tried to find out who is behind it and what is going on.

Rather than take up space here, please visit the main site:

Global Pension Plan – Is it a Scam?

Once you’ve read the report there, please feel free to comment on this blog or send me an email to the usual address.

Thanks,

Ben

*UPDATE 23/02/2008* – I’ve had to remove some comments as the blog was collapsing under the weight!

These comments have been archived and you can view them here:

Archived Global Pension Plan Comments

*UPDATE 13/11/2008* – I’ve had a few problems with the blog over the past 24 hours which resulted in a restore from backup. Consequently you may find some rogue symbols dotted around the place – especially where there used to be a € or £ sign. Apologies for this but there are far too many for me to correct!

*UPDATE 22/12/2008* – Just for fun: The Global Pension Plan – Stella’s Updates

*UPDATE 16/06/2009* - Now that Stella is gone or dead or whatever – she’s not writing the updates in any case – let’s just remind ourselves of when the final date for GPP is (from the official site):

“20th of November, 2008
Deadline & General update

The Final Deadline: 31st of January 2009
During the last week and half we have been closely in touch with the insurance company and the financier of this project and agreed the final deadline to be set on the above mentioned date. The current turbulent financial climate has created a great pressure to finish the program as soon as possible. This date is absolute and means, that we MUST reach the initially set target of 100.000 qualified members. Otherwise the program closes without payout.”

Note that Stella said “this date is absolute” so it was surprising when the new ‘admin’ posted this:

“10th of May, 2009
Update

Dear Global Pension Plan Members,
As per Trust Partner’s decision, we hereby announce the final closing date of Global Pension Plan: 06/30/2009 That is the 30th of June 2009.
The current number of fully qualified members is only slightly short of the 100.000 limit.
Trust Partner highly appreaciates your efforts and sends you best wishes and luck for the last month and a half.
Sincerely,
Admin”

*UPDATE 26/10/2009* – Apologies for the problems with the blog over the weekend. A new plugin caused the issues. All should be back to normal now…