SEC Charges Internet Company With Defrauding the Deaf
he Securities and Exchange Commission said today that it has gotten a court order to freeze the assets of Imperia Invest IBC, a company that: 1) falsely guaranteed 1.2 percent daily returns on investments but really just stole the money; and 2) for some reason appears to have disproportionately targeted deaf people.The SEC says that Imperia Invest raised $7 million from 14,000 investors, more than half of them part of the U.S. Deaf community. According to regulators, Imperia said that investors could only get their money by buying a Visa debit card for a few hundred dollars. That, apparently, was a lie: The company had no relationship with Visa, and it allegedly distributed investor money into offshore accounts and never paid a dime back to any of the people it defrauded.
Imperia’s website appears to be down, but a message-board thread called “IBC/Imperia” on AllDeaf.com offers some insight into the firm.
One user says:
It’s probably a scam.
I checked the website… seems like they have a lot of things to hide from us. No matter what kinds of questions we ask them, they pretty much avoid answering them due to “SEC issues”, “non-disclosure agreement”, “privacy issues”, etc…
And another, apparently pro-Imperia commenter touts the potential reward and downplays the risk:
Same thing about IBC but I was very risk to join IBC just try if lost money that fine… Just postive to get money or not either [Fingers crossed emoticon]
also I join other Minvestment that 1.4% – 1.7% daily that not risk…
Sometime I am afraid to join but not wait til then later sorry so sometime I am very risk to join sometime success or sometime not success that all right that give you good exprenice with mistake and fun….
Good Luck and Happy New Year… Hope 2008 will be better for you all…
Rara
Crazily, a third commenter says that Imperia is not a scam, and points to a site that ranks a bunch of other investment deals that look too good to be true.
Minvestment and Imperia Invest IBC are no risk! You already signed up the Minvestment, you will make sure to see that happen until 150 days later, you will receive $1,000 then deposit $1000 and send it. It is that 2 plan until 150 days later, you will earn $25,000. My friend explained me about it. That sound was so interesting. Imperia Invest IBC is one world income! NO RISK! Minvestment is no risk for the investment program. Go website on HYIP Investment Programs Best HYIP Monitor Rating Scams Forums, you will learn more things are real or scammed.
We are not financial advisors, but we urge caution when dealing with Internet-based investment companies that offer extremely high returns with no risk.
mtaylor@observer.com
Twitter: @mbrookstaylor
Thomson report
In February a popular online investment company, Genius Funds, was banned by the British Columbia Securities Commission to trade in any securities in B.C. The executive director of the BCSC issued a temporary order against the company. The order also banned Genius Funds from engaging in any investor relation’s activities in the province.
The order came after BCSC staff was alerted that a Vernon-area individual had recently wired $25,000 to the company.
According to the BCSC notice, “Genius Funds is making misrepresentations to investors because it offers a rate of return that is impossible to earn consistently through legal means.”
As is known, Genius Funds offers one investment fund that makes payments of up to 1.9 per cent daily, and a second fund that makes payments of up to nine per cent weekly. Today a lot of people make money online with Genius Funds. In addition, the notice says Genius Funds states that it offers the Genius High-Yield Deposit Account that earns depositors interest between 14 per cent and 25 per cent monthly.
The notice also reported that in fact, “Genius Funds is not registered to participate in B.C.’s securities industry. The notice alleges that Genius Funds has breached, and continues to breach, securities laws by carrying out unregistered activity in the province.”
Meantime these days, users of the online investment project have reported that they could not access the website of Genius Funds and some reported they could not withdraw their funds to their e-currency accounts.
One user posted his message on the online forum of the HYIP monitor website Hyipexplorer.com:
"I had a problem with my account and I've emailed support more than 3 days ago. Until now I have not got any reply from them. I used Live Chat and the support representative said it takes around 24 hours to 48 hours for support to reply. I've waited until now and still I have got no reply from them. Live chat repeatedly asked me to not worry and that a reply should be imminent. Now when I try to access the site it fails to load. Does anyone know what is going on and whether if your emails to support are answered? I'm trying to sell my EMGF shares and because I forgot my TPIN my account got blocked. That is the problem I emailed to support. I've waited well over 150 days for my shares to mature and now since support won't answer me and the site being unreachable, I'm beginning to wonder if I'm ever going to withdraw my funds.
Five days now still pending on my payout, 400USD. What is the real problem, GF? What happened with GF? Is it SCAM now?
Could these events be related to each other? Have Genius Funds turned into a scam project after all?"
This remains unclear because HYIP monitors continue to rate Genius Funds as the top investment online project with many users keeping on to invest their e-currencies in it. It is still considered as paying.
On the other hand one member on the Hyip.com forum disputes the HYIP monitor’s opinion as the final and most objective instance: “Put it this way, any program that depends on monitors alone (resources comes from people) is probably 'Ponzi' (this is a speculative statement)...programs that don't are probably NOT. They will perform despite what monitors had to say because they have their own compliance standards to follow as required by their legal jurisdiction. EU base offshore financial institutions are damn strict with their financial regulations.”
Many advocates and fans of the company allege that problems with the withdrawals are just related to maintenance problems and in fact online investors do receive their funds after these glitches on the website.
One such user wrote: “For Christ sake people...if you don’t have any proof than don’t say that it is a scam! I have been waiting for my wire transfer withdrawal for a couple of weeks and I had good support over email and it looks like they have solved the problem now. If you have any sense at all then you should realize that complaining in this room won't solve your problems! In contrary! You would just undermine faith in a company that has always paid! So think twice before accusing them of being a false company!”
Interestingly, Genius Funds does not offer wire transfers as a withdrawal option.
Ecommerce-Journal has sent its questions to the administration of Genius Funds but the company failed to respond and provide any explanations to what is really happening at once.
Later Ecommerce-Journal received this response from Genius Funds:
Dear Ecommerce Journal,
Due to technical difficulties experienced by our servers over the past two weeks, our compliance department decided to cancel all pending payments and have clients resubmit them.
As a result, the accounting department is overloaded processing payments for the past week and some of our investors are experiencing delays with current transfers. We will get on track with all the withdrawals as soon as possible.
We’ll see. Be careful out there.
The preceding article represents the best of what has recently come across John's desk. Highlighted items may include extensively unattributed passages provide by the subject of the article and readers should treat such feature and benefit claims accordingly.
Mark Shuttleworth
[unable to retrieve full-text content]STF "Survival Of The Fittest." HYIP Monitor That Works for You, Not Against You!!! HYIP monitor helps investors to obtain quick and reliable information on high yield investment programs. We have personally invested in all the hyip programs. We don't ... ROI
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