USFIA Update: If you or family or friend invested in Gemcoin, a US Reporter Would Like to Talk To You

Following comment was left on BehindMLM website, and the email address is verified.

Posted by: Carol Matlack
Jul 16th, 2015 at 10:16 pm  (Q)
Hello, I am a journalist with Bloomberg Businessweek magazine. I’ve been doing some research on USFIA and the Gemcoin, and I’m interested in speaking with investors and friends & families of investors, about their experience.
The moderator of this forum has kindly agreed to post my email address so you can contact me: cmatlack@bloomberg.net (This address will only be posted here for a week, so please make a note of it if you plan to contact me.) Thank you.

And just in case, here's Chinese version:

您好我是彭博商业周刊(Bloomberg Businessweek) 的记者。我一直在做关于USFIA和Gemcoin珍寶幣研究，而我想知道投资者和投资者家庭朋友的经验。本次论坛的主持人也欣然同意貼我的电邮地址，以便你可以与我联系：cmatlack@bloomberg.net（此地址将只被张贴在这里一个星期，所以请记下它，如果你打算与我联系。 ）谢谢。

I have no doubt some Gemcoin supporters will spam her account with promo material, about how nothing is wrong and a couple haters are spreading "lies" about Gemcoin. Good, show her why you tell the truth and everybody else ain't.

And if you are on the side of justice and truth, and you have some personal experience on Gemcoin (maybe you were in that "motorcade" that went to Quail Ranch?) let her know.

And as original comment stated, this will only stay up for ONE WEEK STARTING TODAY.

EDIT: And a shoutout to the SierraMadreTattler.blogspot.com, fellow blogger keeping track of the situation in Sierra Madre, neighbor of Arcadia! Thanks for the repost! I added the Chinese translation after you reposted it, sorry!

USFIA Update: Who are they trying to fool with these "screenshots"?

A few days ago, the "official" Facebook page of Gemcoin / USFIA posted this:

Facebook post by Gemcoin / USFIA official page

Can you see the problems? No?

The "Blockchain Wallet" is the first problem.  Blockchain never heard of Germcoin.

Second one requires a bit closer look.... Look carefully:

Getting the details of one of those pictures... See the problem yet? 

Do you see the problem yet? No? Let's go a little closer:

The title says: [unreadable Chinese] Gemcoin Wallet.pdf -- Adobe Reader

That's right, you're looking at a photo of PDF being displayed on a computer screen. In fact, if you open Adobe Reader XI now, you should see the SAME toolbar. Here, I'll even show you.

Screenshot of Adobe Reader toolbar / menu bar

They're showing off a PDF file and claiming it "proves" that their cryptocurrency blockchains are working?!?!?!

How stupid do they think people really are?

Related articles

• USFIA Update: What was USFIA doing before Gemcoin? Exactly the same thing... selling promises of amber
• USFIA Update: Turns out all both the Chinese name and the English name may have been stolen
• Update on WCM777: the more we dig, the more weird stuff we find
• Scam Tactics: Evolution of a Scam, from Proto-Share to Investment Fund to Cryptocurrency

Scam Tactic: Gaslighting (indignant denial)

English: This bright gas lamp has three mantles in UK
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ever heard of "gaslighting"?

From Wikipedia: Gas-lighting (or gaslighting) is a form of mental abuse in which information is twisted or spun, selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity.

Scammers LOVE gaslighting, because they need to destroy victim's sense of reality, so they can substitute their own alternate reality, where selling is buying, black is white, and profit is loss.

Scammers deny facts that they don't want to explain (i.e. inconvenient truth). They will insist that the victims remembered it wrong. It wasn't like that. If victim is already weak-willed, victim will question his or her own reality... Did it happened the way I remembered it, or did I just imagined it? Was the way I learned selling really what selling means?

Scam victims who complained are dismissed as "whiners" and shouted down by shills, denigrated as "unbelievers" who "do not share the vision". Often, there are outright threats, from threats to cancel membership (triggering FOMO, fear of missing out), to verbal abuse to threats of physical abuse to legal threats (Cease and Desist orders) to even death threats. The victims were ostracized and put down emotionally, manipulated into believing it was their own fault for failing, that the system worked for everybody else, thus it must be the victim's own fault. Any one who failed is automatically weak, unbelieving, and sometimes, traitors who want to blame their own failings on the organization, and so on.

Pyramid schemes are very good at that. If one wins, the system gets credit as "the system works!" Individuals get no recognition unless some are needed to be shown in award ceremonies, but only to entice people who are on the fence. If one does NOT win one is blamed for the failings, as in "You must have screwed up! It worked for everybody else!"

Scam Psychology: How does a scam encourage people to adopt a lost cause?

When one questions scams and suspect schemes for as long as the MLMSkeptic did, one'd seen a lot of things, such as people claiming that they forgive ZeekRewards Ponzi even before we knew the full extent of damage (just under a billion dollars), how Paul "ZeekRewards" Burks told newspaper "don't blame me, I never told them to invest more than they can afford", and so on.

Jael Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church picketing Trinity Episcopal Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

However, some time the... fanaticism of certain fans of particular schemes rival that of the pro-life-crazies (who had assassinated doctors that performed abortions, for example, try reconciling that!), or perhaps those of Westboro Baptist Church (well-known crazies of the US). Others appear to be willing to "go down with the ship".

A recent example is Emgoldex, which just rebranded itself as Global InterGold, and some "diehard" Emgoldex fans, eager to defend their own stance on the scam, engaged in conspiracy theory with zero regard to logic.

I won't bore you with long history of Emgoldex. Suffice to say this European based Ponzi scheme had spread via help of the Internet, and nobody really knows where it's being ran out of (may have been Russia) but it was denounced as illegal all over the world, including the US (both state and Federal level), Malaysia, Philippines, even Dubai UAE where it allegedly was based out of.

Yet there are still backers who claimed that "you just don't understand Emgoldex", "you just don't understand MLM", "you are prejudiced against MLM", and so on and so forth. You can find many of them in the comments on this topic.  Some of them are certain of their righteous cause, others are somewhat doubtful but "hopeful" that they had made the right choices, even when facts started to stack against them.