According to court documents made public recently, ZeekRewards ponzi scheme victims may have a longer wait if any money can be recovered, for millions of their money held by payment processor for Zeek being a high risk client, may have been in several Eastern European Banks that have been shut down for fraud, and chances for recovery is remote.
Zeek Rewards was a Ponzi scheme in North Carolina that ensnared MILLIONS of victims in the US and beyond by promising massive profit sharing from the alleged penny auction business if they "purchase" bids to be given away as promotional items and in return gets a profit share based on amount of bids purchased for the next 90 days at daily rate of up to 1.8%. The scheme collapsed in 2012 when facilities was raided by SEC and Secret Service agents and entire operation closed down. Since that time, a receiver has attempted to recover tens of millions of dollars held by third-parties, who were supposed to obey court orders not to move the money, and to be eventually returned. Yet it is clear now this order was not obeyed on many occasions, and tens of millions have gone missing.
Before the collapse of Zeek in 2012 Zeek consultant "Keith Laggos", MLM Expert, boasted that he helped Zeek management to move payment operations abroad. People then didn't ask why. The reason can only be that US financial institutions no longer want to touch Zeek. Now, millions of dollars are out of the US, and potentially out of the reach of the victims, all thanks to efforts of Zeek to continue operating its criminal enterprise by moving money overseas. If this all sounds confusing as heck, let's start from the beginning.
You see, Zeek has to "pay" people for the outrageous sums of money they promised... up to 1.8% "profit share" per day. Even if they only pay once a week, and there are procedures to follow, with millions of members that still means they need bank to handle the load, and by mid 2012, it's clear that nobody they talk to in the US wants to touch them any more. Before then they already switched banks several times, even though they were dealing with some of the biggest banks in the state.
So Keith Laggos, who gained MLM infamy by testifying in Federal Court that in his expert opinion, a Ponzi scheme (later convicted, despite his testimony) is NOT a ponzi scheme, helped Zeek moved payment operations overseas, by using Asian and European payment processors such as Payza and Payment World. And those companies, in return, require Zeek to keep a large amount of money deposited to pay out of... tens of millions of dollars. When Zeek was closed, a substantial portion of this "deposit" has been returned, but 13.1 million USD remains missing.
There are reports that the money may have been moved by Payza and Payment World into various Eastern European Banks, and two of which has since collapsed due to probes by various authorities.
Payment World, based in Hong Kong, is backed by Master Bank, based in Russia, which collapsed back in 2013, and it was a major banking scandal in Russia, as one of Putin's brothers was on the board of directors.
Payza's funds is believed to have been deposited with Victoria Bank in Moldova, but the fund may have been moved to TusarBank in Russia despite orders to freeze Zeek related assets. Tusar Bank collapsed in September 2015 and is being investigated by Russian authorities.
There were also widespread claims by Zeek victims that their credit card were charged by various entities outside of the US, including Korea, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, Europe, and so on for their Zeek "bid purchases". Most of which were denied by the banks automatically, and Zeek was telling members to "allow those". Can you imagine how much fraud can be committed as these numbers got transmitted all over the world, just to keep the Zeek Ponzi scheme going?
Bottom line: Do you know where your money *really* is when you invest into a scheme? Do you have any chance of getting anything bank if something goes wrong?
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