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.

USFIA Update: What was USFIA doing before Gemcoin? Exactly the same thing... selling promises of amber

Previously, we have established that the Arcadia based USFIA is the SAME "American Mining" scam that plagued China in 2014, and was destroyed in multiple raids in China as of June 2014. Its head in China, Ho Peng, was arrested in Hunan. The initial reporting agency, Changde police, even went to Thailand to arrest two that escaped there in November 2014.

USFIA had since published disclaimer that they never endorsed the company name being used for illegal purposes and basically disowned Ho Peng. 

But let us examine... Was USFIA doing anything different then vs. now? What was USFIA doing before 2015?

Here's the earliest mention of USFIA 美洲矿业... in California.

ChineseinLa.com classified ad in Chinese: American Mining needs gem commerce reps, dated 06-SEP-2013
They need reps to join US and Chinese markets, no requirements other than speak clearly and be nice

Note that they were looking for 加盟商 / Franchisee (30 of these), and 業務代表 / business rep.

Selling what? Gemstones? Or protoshares of whatever USFIA offers? Interesting, as we have no record of this.

What we *do* know is by March 2014, reps have indeed reached China, and is attracting official attention, because they do *not* have a direct sales license in China. So the reps all lied, claiming "it's coming soon". They attracted enough attention in Liaoning that local newspaper wrote an article on them, leading them to clear out overnight.

And this is their comp plan:

• Invest $1000, $2000, $5000, $10000, or $20000, get "merchandise" and "business center", plus $100 yearly "maintenance fee". 
• Get referral bonus (8% to 15% depending on how big the package your referral bought) 
• Get Leadership bonus (get referral bonus of your upline and downlines down 3 generations)
• Get Passive Monthly bonus (refer 1, get 1.75 shares, refer 2 get 2 shares)
• Management monthly bonus (if you got 2 downlines who brought in 300K each (10000 USD = 1 point, so 30 pts) you get 20000 that month, and it goes up from there. 
• Autoship bonus -- get a share of downline's purchases, if they maintain minimum of $100 per month, going down 12 generations
• Travel bonus and Car bonus

Let's keep this in mind while we check into a bit of history. 

First, let us examine the an old Chinese news on sina.com.cn, reposting news from Hunan Daily:

hunan.sina.com news of 12-NOV-2014, reporting arrest by Changde police
in Thailand regarding the USFIA "American Mining" scam

The part I highlighted in blue is:

据常德市公安局透露，2013年10月，黑龙江人陆巍加入陈力、所罗门杨等人在美国洛杉矶设立的传销组织“美洲矿业”，并成为其在中国地区的传销组织领导人之一。“美洲矿业”在北京、新疆、湖南等地以投资琥珀期权、原始股为名，大肆招募会员。他们将其所销售的劣质琥珀冒充多米尼加蓝珀欺骗会员，还多次以“美洲矿业”之名，在中国举办传销宣传聚会。

Which translates to:

According to Changde Ministry of Public Security, Mr. Lu Wei (from Heilongjiang) joined in October 2013 the pyramid sales organization "American Mining" (USFIA) established in US Los Angeles by Chen Li and Solomon Yang, and became one of pyramid sales leaders in the China region. "American Ming" (USFIA) recruited heavily in Beijing, Xinjiang, and Hunan using the promise of profit from investments in amber options as well as protostocks. They used bad quality amber to pass for Dominican blue amber and defrauded the members, and several times used "American Mining" (USFIA) name to hold pyramid sales promotion and recruitment meetings in China. 

Li Chen (i.e. Chen Li 陳力）is Steve Chen, head of USFIA, UCCA, AFG, and so on and so forth. 

Thus, there is absolutely NO DOUBT this is the same organization, same head, same company. Arcadia is a suburb of Los Angeles. In fact, some Spanish speakers are known to have mistaken John Wuo, then mayor of Arcadia, as "mayor of Los Angeles". Tsk tsk tsk, can't they even check Wikipedia?

USFIA posted an announcement dated June 2014 that Ho Peng was a rogue operator and the company disclaimed any and all relations with him. Then in late 2014 they launched Gemcoin, allegedly "backed by amber". 

Frankly, this already smells like "same wine, new bottle", but let's make absolutely sure... what was AFG / USFIA / WHATEVER doing BEFORE the crackdown in China? 

Here is an video found on Tudou (Chinese Youtube), believed to have been uploaded by a Spanish affiliate of USFIA back around February or March 2014, of their visit to AFG/USFIA HQ in Arcadia California. And they were speaking Spanish, not Chinese. As Chinese New Years decorations are still in display this can't be much later than March, and it was showing AFG, so this is before the introduction of Gemcoin. The video was then reuploaded to China's Tudou by a USFIA affiliate in China who added an overlay for his own website (no longer in service).

AFG / USFIA lobby, circa approx. March 2014. Note this is pre Gemcoin, and around Chinese New Years

And just for comparison, this is USFIA lobby now:

Seems they replaced the back sign to say AFG / Gemcoin, but kept some of those Chinese lanterns in the back. But there's no doubt it's the same desk, same lobby.

USFIA Update: Turns out both the Chinese name and the English name may have been stolen

Today, MLMSkeptic takes a deep dive into the Interwebs, to dig up who is the REAL "American Mining" (it's NOT USFIA), by looking at various corporate listings as well as news from Asia to prove that the name "American Mining" was stolen by USFIA.

USFIA which supposedly stands for US Fine Investment Arts, was known as 美洲礦業／美洲矿业 in Chinese, which translates to American Mining. Chinese Commercial Yellow Pages (CCYP) shows that they are the same:

Screen cap of Google Search Results for 美洲礦業, confirms that USFIA
is 美洲礦業, which translates to American Mining

Furthermore, when the scam was active in China, it used the same logo and Chinese name. This is primary rep Ho Peng at such a seminar in Macao. Ho Peng was arrested in China in June 2014 along with 21 other promoters of USFIA 美洲矿业 in China.

Ho Peng, USFIA top rep in China, at a promo event in Macao April 2014.
Ho was arrested in June 2014 for his role in 美洲矿业 scam. 

And just to confirm, this always has been USFIA's logo. This is the current rendition of the logo:

"USFIA Inc. US Fine Investment Arts"

The address matches. This is indeed the USFIA in question. And this is a US Corporation registered in California by Steve Chen.

Profile for USFIA in California, which used Chinese name 美洲矿业
which means American Mining, even though USFIA
supposedly stands for "US Fine Investment Arts"

However, we do have a problem as there is already a 美洲礦業 in Shenzhen, China. As this is in China, the proper way to write it is 美洲矿业 (simplified Chinese).

And yes, they have a logo. This was from a talent wanted ad they posted earlier:

America Mine Holding Talent Wanted ad in China, short profile on company in Shenzhen, China

And this one is easy to verify via third party sources. Search for AA Mine Mexico brought up an official Mexican government listing of mining projects in Mexico with Foreign Capital:

Official Mexican Government website confirming AA Mine Holding is Chinese owned

Okay, sounds legitimate enough. Is there yet OTHER sources to prove this is the "real" 美洲矿业 , i.e America Mine Holding?

Absolutely!

USFIA Update: Denial in Spain (and fun Spanish Vocabulary)

As previously mentioned, Spain Official Agency CNMV (La Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores trans: National Commission on Markets and Values/Investments) issued a warning against USFIA (i.e. AFG / Gemcoin ) back on May 18th.

In Spain, such illegal unregistered investments, basically HYIP, are known as chiringuito financiero or "financial snack bars".  Chiringuito is an open air snack bar often found on Spanish beaches serving snacks and drinks where you order from a counter and find your own seats. Some are even mobile on a tricycle. Thus, a chringuito financiero is a ramshackle unregistered investment, often without even a physical presence, and only exists via phone calls, email, and websites.  And USFIA (AFG / Gemcoin) was identified as a chringuito financiero.

Normally that's hardly noticeable, as the commission issues dozens of warnings every year. However, one of the comments was quite interesting, on a newspaper called "ValenciaPlaza".

Translation: Israel G. Gomez wrote That is not the website of USFIA.  I see they have contrasted the news and have little idea of ​​what they say, deplorable!

So what website was CNMV talking about? "Usfiamlm.com"

FWIW, usfiamlm.com is now a parked Godaddy domain.  Well, if it wasn't guilty, why is it parked so early? It's not as if Guardia (Spanish Police) raided it, right?