FTC

BULLETIN: In an unprecedented move, the SEC today announced that it had suspended trading in 379 penny stocks, saying the companies were delinquent in filings and ripe for hijacking and scams involving reverse mergers and pump-and-dump schemes. “The trading suspension marks the most companies ever suspended in a single day by the agency as it [...]

Owing to time constraints, the PP Blog hasn’t written much about Zeek Rewards, an MLM “program” married to a penny-auction site known as “Zeekler.” For simplicity, we’ll refer to both arms as “Zeek.” The structure of Zeek and precisely what it does are just plain baffling. Even so, it appears to have a legion of [...]

BULLETIN: The Federal Trade Commission has gone to federal court in the Eastern District of California, alleging that several individuals and companies were running separate, web-based scams in which borrowers were told they could avoid vehicle repossessions by paying upfront fees to the accused scammers and not making payments on their car loans. The scams [...]

BULLETIN: A federal judge has frozen the assets of three Florida companies and their operator, after the Federal Trade Commission alleged a “precious metals” telemarketing scam aimed at senior citizens was under way and had collected nearly $9 million. Named defendants in the case were Anthony J. Columbo, Premier Precious Metals Inc., Rushmore Consulting Group Inc. [...]

ANNOUNCEMENT/ALERT: UPDATED 6:10 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) The PP Blog is publishing this post in an abundance of caution. Based on a security alert the Blog received this afternoon, it may be best to steer clear of the website circled in the graphic above and described below. On Jan. 4, 2012, the Blog reported that the [...]

BULLETIN: A federal judge in the Central District of California has approved asset freezes and  appointed a receiver in a case in which the FTC alleged several companies and a scammer-in-chief were running two mortgage-relief fraud schemes. The scam, the FTC said, traded on an image of President Obama and used at least three .org [...]

BULLETIN: A federal judge in California has ordered the operators and top promoters of the BurnLounge MLM scam to pay nearly $17 million. The FTC brought the BurnLounge pyramid-scheme case in 2007, saying the program “primarily provided payments to participants for recruiting of new participants, not on the retail sale of products or services.” In [...]

URGENT >> BULLETIN >> MOVING: In a case that featured elements similar to the allegations against U.S.-based Internet Marketer Jeremy Johnson, the FTC has gained a $359 million consent judgment against alleged Canadian scammer Jesse Willms and other defendants. The agency sued Willms in May 2011, about six months after it sued Johnson. Wiilms now [...]

EDITOR’S NOTE: Jeremy Johnson and associated companies were accused civilly by the FTC in December 2010 of orchestrating a massive fraud scheme involving hundreds of millions of dollars. At the moment, Johnson, 35, faces a single criminal charge of mail fraud. He denies wrongdoing on both the criminal and civil fronts and has painted himself [...]

BULLETIN: The Philadelphia attorney with an office in New Jersey who was arrested in Alabama last week on a fugitive warrant amid allegations he had stolen more than $1 million from an elderly woman in a trust scam was on the Federal Trade Commission’s radar screen for an alleged mortgage-relief scam, the PP Blog has [...]

BULLETIN: The CFTC has gone to federal court in Florida, charging a company and six individuals in an alleged international Forex and commodities fraud scheme that gathered at least $1.7 million and bilked residents of Florida, California and Puerto Rico. Charged in the case were Alpha Trade Group S.A. (ATG), which also is known as [...]