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| funky shark (Photo credit: cyanocorax) |
Funky Shark had actually shut down in October 2012, when it was revealed that the founder had solicited money for so-called "Founder's Club" where people are expected to put in up to $10000. As this is essentially soliciting investments, but without any sort of registration with SEC or state-level agencies, such as the Commission of Securities and Investment, this is illegal.
Upon finding this, and probably on the advice of their advisor Kevin Thompson, Funky Shark shut down and refunded all the founder's club members' money.
Today, we found out what really prompted the shutdown... an investigation by Montana Office of Securities and Investment.
According to BehindMLM, which pulled the report from the Montana CSI office, Funky Shark owner Scott Wacker (sometimes written as Walker) received a TON of money, enough that it triggered a bank alert for suspicious activities, which in turn was reported to the Montana CSI office, which quickly started an investigation. This investigation was extremely fast... finished in merely months, and an injunction was filed against Wacker and Funky Shark on November 1st to freeze their assets as Montana CSI was convinced they are operating a pyramid scheme.
However, apparently with help from Kevin Thompson, Wacker had ALREADY shut down Funky Shark (prior to this injunction went into effect) on October 30th. As a result, Montana CSI chose not to file additional charges, but merely to consent that Wacker pay back everybody who put in money... by adding his own money, to the tune of about 270,000 dollars, because that amount had already been paid out as "commission" and cannot be recovered. Basically, Wacker decided to pay everybody back what they put in, AND those who already got paid can keep their money. As a result, Montana CSI merely fined Funky Shark 40K, a pretty low fine considering size of this scheme at over 1 million dollars.
I do congratulate Mr. Wacker on stepping and pay people out of his own pocket.
But what exactly do you need to know from this?
- Just because the owner have the money and good intentions... doesn't mean they're legal!
- You can't "invest" in a company, and then claim it's not an investment!
- You can't count on being lucky... that the perp would actually have MONEY to pay you!
Don't get into this sort of suspicious / too-good-to-be-true biz in the first place!
Montana is the best place to bring your fraud scheme , Fraud is legal in montana . Billing Montana it is trying to get people to movie there scams there . I am not joking this i can prove .
ReplyDeleteAnd what does that have to do with Funky Shark's shutdown? :)
ReplyDeleteSure, show your proof. :)