Banners Broker Scam Update
After refer your post I take in why banner broker site got huge scammed. In any case, investors properly understand…
UPDATE 28/2/2013: Just days ago, BannersBroker announced the reopening of their Indian office in Goa after ‘the conclusion of a police investigation’. Once again, they have been caught lying. Click here to read the full court order, which explicitly states that the company’s accounts are frozen, and their assets remain in police custody.
UPDATE 29/1/2013: I have just posted a full Q&A session with Terry Stern, the International Public Relations Director representing Banners Broker.
BREAKING NEWS 31/12: Banners Broker’s Goa office has been raided and shut down by the police. The company has been charged under IPC section 4, 5 and 6 of the PCMC (banning) act 1978, 406 and 420. Full announcement here.
UPDATE 4/1: Amid growing speculation over the future of Banners Broker India, CEO Chris Smith has cancelled the company’s ‘World Tour’ that was originally planned to reach Kolkata in February. Smith insisted that Banners Broker is ‘fine’ during his Friday conference call. He blamed ‘a little mischief’ from an ex-employee for the criminal charges brought against the company. The investigation is still ongoing, and the Banners Broker Goan office remains closed. More information here.
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In October, I made a post about Banners Broker being a suspected ponzi scheme. To say that the post has gone viral would be a massive understatement. It is currently drawing several thousand hits per day, with 357 comments and counting.
My Hate Mail has also been buzzing left, right and center.
While that initial post was designed to raise awareness of the scam, critics have said – quite rightly – that it doesn’t offer enough evidence to say, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the program is a ponzi scheme.
Personally, I wasn’t expecting there to even be a debate. It’s pretty obvious what Banners Broker is.
But perhaps I am guilty of overlooking the fact that most people who invest in Banners Broker have no exposure to the real online advertising industry. It is not so obvious without that first-hand experience.
I’ve decided to release this second post to provide a more cohesive look at why Banners Broker stinks, and how we can make such assumptions about it being a ponzi scheme without a single piece of ‘definitive’ proof.
If you haven’t read the first Banners Broker Scam article, I suggest you start there.
Banners Broker in the Media
Before I get in to the evidence and lies, I want to address a common misconception that it is only small-time bloggers who are posting negatively about Banners Broker.
The BB apologists seem intent on tarring us all as sad-acts who have nothing better to do than watch and wait for a good thing’s demise.
I prefer to call it an investment in the public interest. Many people are going to be harmed by the collapse of Banners Broker, and it is not just bloggers who are taking notice.
The Irish media has devoured the fanciful business model after leaders Rajiv Dixit, Chris Smith and co rolled in to town for a gala last month.
Here’s some of the press coverage:
The next time Banners Broker tells you that the negative criticism comes from ‘bloggers with hate agendas’, feel free to ask whether they consider the Sunday World (a major Irish red-top with over 1 million readers per week) in that same category.
The History of Banners Broker
The Banners Broker you see before you today, the alleged worldwide advertising force, is quite a radical leap from the Banners Broker that was announced to the HYIP scene in 2010. Here’s Kul Josun explaining the origins of the program in a very old and very revealing video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1e5KGw87QI
“Banners Broker: Welcome to the worlds first cycler doubler, where you can double your money without signing up one person. Join for free and change your future today.”
To all the commenters in the last post who asked for a definitive piece of evidence that Banners Broker is a ponzi scam, this might as well be it. Upon launching, they branded themselves to the notorious HYIP community as the world’s first ‘straightline’ cycler doubler.
What this means is that your payouts come from within the system (cycled) directly from sign-ups below you (a straight line).
Here’s a fun task for you:
Go to Google, and search “straightline cycler doubler“.
Here you will find a revealing look in to the world of Banners Broker before the modern narrative of an online advertising network.
Look at the early press releases, look at the very first forum posts, look at the YouTube videos. Tell me it doesn’t stink.
Now tell me why this company should be considered in the same breath as real online ad companies.
Why did Banners Broker brand themselves as a moneymaking system to the HYIP community when the nature of their alleged business model (if it were true) would be more fitting on TechCrunch?
“Banners Broker Uncovers Industry Shaking Algorithm; Banner Ads Never to be the Same Again!” (Yeah, I never saw that headline either.)
The answer is because Banners Broker’s roots are tied to the shadiest realms of HYIP. Recycled cash is the real source of their revenues, not an industry-changing algorithm in the online advertising space. And that’s why Banners Broker pitched their company directly to the kind of individuals who would be looking to invest in it: amateur investors a few small worlds away from Silicon Valley.
To put it simply: they know the hand that feeds them.
And it is not advertisers.
My favourite part of this video is Kul laying the smack down on other HYIP programs, “The hype and maths don’t work. Period.” And yet, he brags…
Seems like a legitimate online advertising company!
Seriously people, these opportunities do not exist legally. Not in this world or the next.
Anybody who tries to convince you of such BS should be red-flagged and banished from business conversation for the rest of his days.
Before you invest in the next get-rich-quick program (or Banners Broker if you are new to the idea), consider that the world’s greatest investor – Warren Buffett – has written his name in to history by producing an average annual return of just over 20%. A staggering feat in the investment arena.
Now ask why Warren Buffett isn’t investing in the ‘stock’ of Banners Broker panels, a program that the apologists claim can deliver an upwards annual return of 300%.
The answer is because Warren Buffett prefers to work with real companies, not smiley faced Primark suits fresh off the back of a ‘World Tour’ lorry.
Chris Smith… The Man, The Myth, the Stock Photo
In the video above, you will notice that it introduces Chris Smith as the mathematical genius behind Banners Broker. Except that isn’t the same Chris Smith who can be found travelling the world today.
In fact, that Chris Smith is a stock photo that can be purchased for £18.00, which was evidently too much for “We Are Cash Rich” Banners Broker as they have cropped it above the watermark:
Small details, guys.
I hate to point out the sheer unprofessionalism of this company by resorting to stock photo CEOs, but it goes a long way to understanding the bigger picture. We are dealing in smoke and mirrors.
Nothing is ever what it seems with Banners Broker.
“In Defence of Banners Broker…”
You may have seen this article, Debunking the Scam, that attempts to explain – in Clickbank sales letter form – ‘how the Banners Broker model works’. It has become the Bible of Cult BB, a source that is supposed to deflect all criticism. There’s just one problem: it’s a steaming pile of you know what…
Let’s look at some of the points raised:
From Debunking the Scam
So the product of Banners Broker is: Advertising Impressions.
The end user – the advertiser, who never sees or hears of Banners Broker, gets ad space that hosts his advertising, and visitors to the various websites where that ad is displayed, see that ad.
There’s the product.
Hold on, hold on. WHAT? This is one of the stupidest defence arguments I’ve ever heard.
The advertiser never sees or hears of Banners Broker?!
That’s a pretty dumb theory considering an advertiser needs to sign up through BannersBroker.com before he can use the advertising system. Or is that just there for show?
The purpose of Banners Broker is to act as the middleman and broker ad impressions. We already know that Banners Broker gains access to publisher websites by brokering through Clicksor as a reseller (see this description).
Note here, “Selling traffic has not been this easy before. Become a Clicksor authorized reseller now and experience the simplicity in selling traffic to your advertisers.”
Clicksor provides the publishers. It’s up to Banners Broker to provide the advertisers, which is the whole god damn point of reselling. The fruitcase above has clearly not understood this when he comes out with tripe such as “the advertiser never sees or hears of Banners Broker“.
I mean, come on dude. Does the following link mean nothing to you?
http://bannersbroker.com/main/advertiser
I suppose the advertiser has to sign up wearing a blindfold then?
Or is – as I somehow suspect – the argument designed to distract our attention from the fact that not a single Banners Broker advertiser is known to exist?
Moving on to his next crazy suggestion…
From Debunking the Scam
Banners Broker is just what it says – a broker in the banner advertising field. A unique broker – unique in that no one else does what they do.
What’s a broker? The dictionary says: “a broker is a person who buys and sells goods or assets for others.”
Banners Broker “brokers” in a slightly different way than has been done before on line… here’s an overview:
There is a network of websites and advertising companies that comprise what is called the “Blind Network”(Click here for definition) (an Internet ad industry term).
Note, that I didn’t say – Banners Broker operates within a Blind Network.
They operate within T-H-E Blind Network.The same Blind Network that millions of advertisers and publishers already operate within.
The same Blind Network that successfully generates BILLIONS of Dollars of revenue every year.
This isn’t something invented by someone to trick you – it’s how the on-line advertising industry works – (so how can these so called “insiders” be inside anything but their own rear ends?)
Let me keep this short and sweet. There is no such thing as ‘THE Blind Network’.
If ‘THE Blind Network’ is real, and Banners Broker operates within ‘THE Blind Network’, who else operates in ‘THE Blind Network’? What is ‘THE Blind Network’?
And if Banners Broker is a pawn in somebody else’s ‘THE Blind Network’, what makes their business model so special that it can’t be replicated by a competitor? Ever heard of the law of competition? Unless Banners Broker took out a patent on banners, we need to have a serious adult discussion.
If we are to believe the margins – eye-watering as they are – why isn’t every single broker in the world rushing to be a part of THE Blind Network?
Answer: There is no such thing.
This idiot then goes on to contradict himself by saying that Banners Broker operates in the same Blind Network as millions of other advertisers and publishers.
So what is its competitive advantage?!
Again, no mention of what this Blind Network actually is, or who runs it… Who needs details, right?
Note on the author: Seriously, who hyphenates “on-line“? Can we really trust that this guy has departed the twentieth century? Maybe the Millenium Bug struck after all.
In a recent development, Banners Broker has debunked any suggestion that it is ‘THE Blind Network’.
The Blind network is NOT created/nor owned by BB, but controlled by 10 other brokers, including Google.
I’m sorry, but this explanation is also a pile of steaming BS. Are we to believe that Banners Broker is brokering ad sales through Google, now? Complete rubbish. Google does not need a company like Banners Broker. It has its own properties to handle publishers and advertisers: AdSense and AdWords. There is no ‘broker’ middleman.
The Choice Network… Now Comes Served With Ads (Or Does It?!)
A key point in my first post on Banners Broker was that the so-called Choice Network was no more than a damp fraudulent squib. The websites in the network clearly belonged to Banners Broker, and none of them had advertisements from legitimate companies.
Well, there must be pigs flying in the sky, because the BB apologists are telling me that the Choice Network is now fully operational, and filled with real ads from real companies.
I took a few minutes to verify their claims, and sure enough, ads from reputable companies are now displaying:
Hold on, though. Before you get excited, we should know better than to take what Banners Broker says or does at face value.
Is this advertising campaign really running through the Banners Broker Choice Network?
No, it’s not.
Banners Broker is serving these ads from ox-d.bannersbroker.com, which can be IP traced to New York City where the server is owned by OpenX Technologies:
OpenX is a powerful ad exchange that offers publishers the chance to sell their own inventory, or broker through the OpenX Market where a number of renowned brands can pick up the scraps. Brands like… WillHill.
It’s debatable whether Banners Broker invested in the Enterprise Edition or the Free Version (for hobbyists), but what certainly isn’t debatable is the fact that these ads you see on the Choice Network do not come from advertisers signing up to BannersBroker.com.
They are sourced from the OpenX Market, probably as remnant traffic.
You could sign up to the same service today and have your very own ‘Choice Network’ up and running in hours.
One thing is for certain, you will soon see that actually, yes, it is possible NOT to make money with the Banners Broker system. The real one, anyway. These ads produce only an industry standard return, nothing like what would be required to turn a bunch of third party investors in to millionaires.
So, what are we to make of all those months where the Choice Network was stuck in ‘Test Mode’? I guess that’s how long it took BB’s in-house programmers to configure OpenX across their portfolio of dud sites.
Changing the face of the online advertising industry?
Yeah, that might take a while.
Note: Thanks to the helpful peeps over at RealScam for piecing together this latest lie. They’ve been tearing the scheme apart with much greater dedication than myself!
Once again, we could forgive the lies surrounding the Choice Network if the flagship Blind Network delivered on its promises. But it doesn’t. And one begins to question whether it ever will…
An Update on My Experience as a Blind Network Advertiser
How many BB investors have actually advertised on the Banners Broker Blind Network? I know a lot of them like to talk about it, as if it’s some kind of revolutionary invention.
But have they actually tried it?
I have.
In my first post, I mentioned how I had setup a campaign on the Blind Network. 7 weeks later, I decided to login and see how my campaign had performed. Boy, what a disappointment.
After negotiating the new security gateway…
(Seriously, who asks for FIVE security questions? Even my bank only needs two. I guess they’re harvesting security answers as well as passports these days…)
I finally reached the reporting section for my test campaign…
Yes, in over 7 weeks of running a broadly targeted campaign on the Blind Network (one category in the UK), I have received a grant total of 866 impressions! That’s a total advertiser spend of just over $0.86 in 7 weeks.
If Banners Broker can’t send 1000 impressions of traffic to a UK campaign in 7 weeks, how in the name of Lucifer’s balls is it able to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue?
Tell me, apologists! How does an advertiser spend millions of dollars on this platform when I can’t even spend ONE dollar in 7 weeks?
What you see above is the Banners Broker’s take on a ‘campaign report’.
So, let’s say I’m a professional media buyer.
Where do I find my breakdown of performance by creative? By channel? By hour? Where do I exclude targets (a damn near critical option for blind networks)?
Banners Broker tells the world that it is paying millions of dollars to its affiliates. Maybe that is the case. But the money is damn sure not coming from advertisers. I beg anybody to test this joke of a system and tell me otherwise.
Banners Broker and Clicksor
If we crawl through the heaps of misinformation on how Banners Broker actually serves its banners, it becomes clear that the company is brokering through Clicksor (a broker within a broker, if you will).
Clicksor is a legitimate company that I have worked with in the past. I’m sorry for sullying their names in the same sentence as Banners Broker, but we have to point out some crucial information:
In the latest 2011 data, Clicksor’s parent company Yesup Ecommerce Solutions Inc posted annual revenue of $17.5 Million dollars.
And yet Banners Broker claims to have paid out over $100 Million dollars, by brokering through Clicksor.
HOW?
Why is Banners Broker’s $100 Million in affiliate payouts not reflected in Clicksor’s accounts? They are receiving the same advertiser trade and they are further up the chain.
We would have to assume that Banners Broker is the only company working with Clicksor, and that Clicksor is the only part of Yesup producing revenue, and even then the maximum revenue pales in significance to what Banners Broker claims to be paying out to its affiliates. The markup must be astro-bloody-nomical.
It’s an economical impossibility.
Which is why Banners Broker has acted quickly to change its story.
David Hooker, BB’s latest snake-oil man, addressed this issue directly at the recent Irish gala.
“His presentation consisted of filling us in completely on how the Blind Network works and how it has 10 major Brokers running it. How Banners Broker linked up with the smaller of these Brokers (Finch: He stresses ‘smaller’ for good reason. He knows the previous numbers and ‘direct relationship’ clearly identified their model as a fraud)) and how now one of the largest Brokers has given green light to link with them. Chris later said that the linking up of software is almost complete and they will soon be good to go.”
If you know anything about advertising through a blind network, this is pretty hilarious.
What advertiser in his right mind is going to work with a broker that re-brokers through any 1 of 10 different networks? Why would the advertiser not just go direct to his broker of choice for half the price… and, screw it, some actual control over his ads?
It’s like me saying, “I want you to give me £1 for an ice cream that we both know you can buy for 50p. Except, I’m not even going to let you decide which ice cream you have. I’ll take that extra 50p and pick whichever of the 10 vans I want to buy it from (even though you may have a preference!). Then I’ll go to a bunch of investors and pitch them my breakthrough idea on the basis that brokering ice cream is the “next big thing” and billions are made every year by doing so. How about we ask for £3000 for the Black Cone Package – ‘Double your Cornettos, Magnums, and Twisters in a month!’ Yeah, pop-business. The proles will love that.“
There’s a problem with the model. People aren’t stupid! They know where they can get their ice cream for 50p, and they are not going to pay you double for less choice and poorer service. The same applies to the Banners Broker business model. Advertisers are not stupid. They are not going to pay Rajiv Dixit and Chris Smith more money in return for less ads and less control over where they appear.
In any case, who are these ’10 major brokers’ that Banners Broker has suddenly started working with? Why no names?
Tell us David, has Clicksor become the “smaller of these brokers” because you’ve been found out – publicly – by claiming to send your traffic through a network whose parent company reports only a tiny fraction of your own claimed revenues? I guess if you announce “10 major brokers” (conveniently without naming them), we can’t look in to their much more transparent workings and directly shoot your bullshit down for what it is.
It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?
This is a lie aimed squarely at the bullet holes shot in the previous lie.
Note: We know that Banners Broker has been brokering solely through Clicksor because publisher.bannersbroker.com can be IP traced directly to a Clicksor server. Good luck split testing that with your 10 other brokers!
“Get Paid by Turtle Mail“
When working with reputable companies, you expect to also deal with reputable banks.
When working with Banners Broker, that is not the case.
Withdrawal requests are handled in one of three ways:
- The pre-paid BB card
- Solid Trust Pay (STP)
- Payza
The withdrawal methods vary from country to country, but it’s immediately clear that accessing your funds is not going to be as easy as it should be with a world renowned advertising company. There are no cheques, no direct deposit, not even a PayPal option!
With all due respect to Solid Trust Pay and Payza, their brands are known for dealing with the type of Internet businesses that can’t get approved anywhere else. They are staples of the HYIP community. And as for the pre-paid BB card (for some investors, their only option), this is the equivalent to being paid in cash.
You might as well be receiving an iTunes gift card.
Hey, give it 3 months and that will probably be the only payment option left.
There is absolutely no excuse for:
Withdrawal methods that require the user to jump through hoops with notarised ID before he can get his money.
Taking weeks, sometimes months, to process the bloody transactions in the first place. All the while charging the user on time every time for admin processing fees and traffic packs.
Banners Broker will take your money, but pay you only when they feel like it.
Which soon will be never.
They claim that their payouts are running smoothly with minimal backlog. A quick search of the Internet and that is clearly not the case. Selective payments rule the day.
The Tax Conundrum
A wise man once said, “The only thing certain in life is death and taxes.”
All money earned through Banners Broker is taxable, even the money that you haven’t yet withdrawn. Yes, your total account balance would be considered a form of stock in the eyes of the exchequer.
This leads to the rather awkward situation where Banners Broker investors need to be paying tax on income that they haven’t yet received. Failure to do so is in clear breach of the law (I’m referring to the UK, you will need to research this if you live elsewhere).
Let’s get this straight…
You are liable to pay tax on ALL of your “My Total Earnings” minus the costs accrued from account fees and buying traffic packs.
Your account might look like this:
Total Earnings: £15,000
Withdrawals So Far: £2,000
Invested in to the System (Total Costs): £3,000Total Earnings – Total Costs = Taxable Profits
£15,000 – £3,000 = £12,000Basic Tax Rate is 20%
(£12,000 x 0.20) = £2400 now due in tax.
So let’s say you have managed to withdraw £2000 from Banners Broker. You now need to pay the taxman £2400. Doesn’t sound like such a good investment, does it?
You are at a loss.
It’s not going to get better either! The Banners Broker system is designed to exponentially increase your My Total Earnings while allowing you to withdraw only a small fraction of your funds. It’s a bait ploy. But fatally, it assumes that you are the kind of person who doesn’t bother paying tax.
Well, do you?
With the January 31st deadline for self-assessment rapidly approaching, there are a lot of Banners Broker investors that are now required by law to hand ALL of their profits to the taxman while waiting for Banners Broker to pay the rest of their earnings.
Will that happen? Of course not.
If you don’t care about being involved in a ponzi scheme, I highly doubt you care about paying your taxes. But you should start thinking about it.
Lies, Lies, and More Lies
Troy Dooly recently posted an article on MLM Helpdesk writing off Banners Broker as a ponzi scheme. Here’s how Banners Broker chose to deflect the criticism:
Yes, by falsely claiming that the article was written in an attempt to extort money in return for deletion.
Talk about a stroke of twisted genius. I hope Troy sues.
Here’s more from David Hooker on the subject of us pesky bloggers speaking critically of Banners Broker:
“He also talked about how he tackled the bloggers that were writing negative stuff. One was a friend of his and wanted Banners Broker to pay him £900 to correct his negative story!!!!
Another one, when offered the chance to come to BB International to see for himself what Banners Broker does, declined, and said he was broke!”
Hooker wisely opts not to name any names. If he did, he’d be sued to Kingdom Come.
This is the current tactic for deflecting criticism: accuse the blogger of trying to extort money. Well, if I hear even the slightest whisper that this article is written to extort money, I’ll be unleashing a lawyer so far up David Hooker’s arse that his next rousing presentation is delivered directly to a judge.
I guess rejecting all criticism as an attempt at extortion sums up the state of mind at Banners Broker HQ perfectly. What are they scared of in there?
Common Misconceptions
Let’s play some FAQ with the common responses from BB apologists. If you read the comments from the last post, you’ll already be familiar with the holding patterns and the dumbfounded logic.
I’m making XXXX/month from Banners Broker. It’s negative people like you who will never make money online! I’ve quit my job already!
I’ve said it so many times that my fingers are starting to resent the same keyboard bashing:
The fact that you have made some money from Banners Broker does not mean that it is anything less than a ponzi scheme. It just means that you are luckier than the poor suckers further down the food chain.
Important! The high balance in your account does not mean that the money is yours. It is text on a screen. A promise in a hurricane. The money is only yours when it lands in your bank account and for most people, this is the where the frustration begins.
Money withdrawal times are increasing. Payout methods are decreasing. Excuses are growing more and more ridiculous by the day.
Just because a page in cyberspace says that you have $17,000 waiting for you on the other side of the rainbow, that does not make it so. Weigh up how much money you have invested versus how much you have withdrawn. Now do an honest appraisal of the situation: “Have I really made money here? Or have I inherited a gigantic stack of IOUs?”
But I’ve met Chris Smith and Rajiv Dixit in person! A scammer would never show his face in person.
If you believe this, God help your wallet for it is ripeth to be plucked.
History is littered with ponzi schemers that travelled the world to sweet talk their prey. Take a look at Bernie Madoff. He hardly lived in the closet.
Why would a ponzi scheme go on a World Tour if it wasn’t credible?
Good question.
Let me rephrase it.
If Banners Broker is truly about a revolutionary advancement in the online advertising industry, why is the company touring for investors instead of advertisers?
It is advertisers who make the BB world spin round.
They are the ‘alleged’ heart of the business, the rainmakers if you will.
So why is there no evidence that a single Banners Broker advertiser exists? Why does Banners Broker spend its days trawling the world for fifty buck investors when its the big brand advertisers that pay the bills?
This company cannot survive without recruiting a large number of the most reckless advertisers under the sun (who also conveniently have the most extravagant budgets).
How do they recruit these elusive, nonchalant big-spenders (who don’t care which of the 10 networks you throw their ads on for twice the price)?
It’s certainly not by going on tour at advertising trade shows, or reputable conferences, or by offering a single interview to a reputable trade journal.
No, no.
The CEO of Banners Broker prefers to spend his time sharking across the dancefloor at Irish galas, eyeing up the next Primark suit for a Yellow Panel bonanza.
Sourced: http://www.realscam.com/f8/banners-broker-hyip-ponzi-scam-897/index123.html
He calls it networking. I call it a waste of bloody time for somebody who *allegedly* has much bigger fish to fry.
You don’t find Zuckerberg skirting for fifty bucks on the outskirts of Mumbai.
How can it be a ponzi? It doesn’t require referrals. I can make money without referring a single soul!
Practically every big player in Banners Broker is sitting on a mountain of referrals. It is the secret sauce behind their incomes.
True, you don’t have to refer people to join the program. But at this stage in the game, you are going nowhere fast if you choose to sit still, waiting for your panels to progress. This program is designed in such a way that dragging in more investors is the safest way to guarantee your own investment.
If you think the program can survive without referrals, you might want to consider this latest nugget from the Banners Broker blog:
“BB will be around as long as affiliates want to remain a part of the program”
Freud must be smiling in his grave.
Banners Broker is approved by MasterCard. Do you really think MasterCard would approve a ponzi scheme to use their cards?
This is such a nasty little lie that Banners Broker has been forced to tell its affiliates that, actually, there is no approval from Mastercard, and indeed no backing whatsoever. Banners Broker buys its pre-paid Mastercards from Vector, an independent reseller.
If you think there is a legitimate relationship between MasterCard and Banners Broker, I would advise that you keep it to yourself. Banners Broker are now so hypersensitive about this damaging lie that they are terminating the accounts of users who imply any such relationship exists.
If it was really a scam, it would have collapsed already.
There are some ponzi schemes that have lasted 20 years and there are others that have crashed and burned in 20 days.
If you believe that size or longevity defines a ponzi, let me assure you: it doesn’t.
It only defines how memorable the ultimate collapse will be.
In Summary: What is Really Happening?
For those of you who don’t have the time or attention to read all of the above, here is the bullet point breakdown of what is currently happening with Banners Broker, and what you can expect to happen over the coming months.
Your Panel Movements Will Grind to a Halt – Thousands of BB members are already reporting that their panels have been static for days, and that they have been slowing over the last few weeks. There’s a very simple explanation for this. Banners Broker doesn’t have the cashflow to pay what it owes, or to deliver the returns that it is promising you. Certainly not over the Christmas period where members are rushing to withdraw. Your panels are going to move slowly probably for the rest of Banners Broker’s very short-lived existence.
Withdrawals Will Continue to Take Forever – It’s not going to get better. The Banners Broker program is showing severe signs that it is overstretched. You don’t need me to tell you that withdrawal times are getting worse. Compare them to six months ago.
More ‘World Tours’ – Banners Broker is losing the online battle for publicity (with articles like my last swamping their brand at the top of Google), which is why it is throwing resources in to offline ‘tours’ as a means of recruiting new investors. This looks set to continue in to the new year with a tour of India planned. Will Banners Broker make it that far? I couldn’t possibly say. But if you’d like a long list of ‘deeply troubling questions’ to ask them in person, feel free to email me.
The Press Will Continue to Circle – The Sunday World has reported three negative stories in three weeks on Banners Broker. The Irish Examiner is also chiming in. I know for a fact that at least two major UK newspapers are interested in the fate of the scheme, as I’ve been speaking to them personally. Expect to hear lots more negative press about Banners Broker in the following weeks. The knives are being sharpened from all angles.
The Trolls, Shills & Pimps Will Blitz the Comments – The slightest hint of criticism and they always do. Just ask yourself, “What is their motivation?” If they were really making money from Banners Broker (and I’m sure some of them are), why do they care what anybody else thinks? The reason they defend this program so devoutly is because their future income depends on it. I hope that this post convinces you to think twice about your own.
Is Banners Broker ‘Definitely’ a Ponzi Scheme?
In my last post, I came to the judgment that Banners Broker is a well-disguised ponzi scheme. I stand by that judgment.
In the comments, I faced a lot of questions from readers who thought I couldn’t possibly say with ‘100% conviction’ that it is definitely a ponzi scheme. As much as it pains me to admit this, they are correct.
Theoretically, there is still a tiny chance that Banners Broker isn’t a ponzi scheme. Until the inevitable collapse, there remains a tiny shred of doubt.
The problem for those who back Banners Broker is that it is down to them to answer: “If Banners Broker isn’t a ponzi scam, what could it possibly be?”
The existing business model is riddled with flaws and impossibilities. There is simply no way that the money being paid to investors could have been delivered by online advertisers in the model that Banners Broker is claiming. Zero chance.
And that’s where this research ends.
If you believe that Banners Broker can operate as something other than a ponzi scam and deliver such spectacular returns, you are welcome to carry on believing, to keep on throwing your savings at the cause.
If, like many, you are coming to suspect the workings behind Banners Broker for something more sinister, you may wish to cancel your ticket to the BB World Tour, roll out your mock-Bannatyne accent and repeat this loud and clear:
“I’m out.“
Just saw something funny on RS.
If you are a member of Banners Broker and receive/d your BB Mastercard check out the top right of the page the card is attached to you will see the BB logo and it says “Banners Broker” and underneath it “Advertising Network”.
Well there’s one for the books then Terry/David Stern! I thought that Banners Broker wasn’t in the Advertising business?!?! Lie upon lie upon lie.
tell driscoll to do one… when BB comes crashing down its bastards like him who will have your money in his pocket paying for villas in the carribean or wherever else he has properties.. why do you think he got out ? That poor guy who took his own life last week… its bringing this dirty shower to the forefront..
WILLIAM, I think you will find now that you will be waiting forever to recieve the draw down you want…
There might not ecven be time to cap and withdraw if things are coming down on BB..
Hello all,
Bannersbroker is a real business. Dont mind any negative comments. It is expected to hear, see or read negative comments when a new business model has suddenly taken over the already existing so called direct sales marketing companies. Bannersbroker was rated 3rd in the 2013 poll for the best direct sales marketing company in the world.
BB IS REAL.
Frank,
Have you got any evidence/ answers to questions that go against Finch’s article that may confirm your viewpoint?
The poll for direct sales marketing was voted for online, doesn’t really say a lot. In fact if I remember rightly out of 300k affiliates only about 4k voted for BB!
Banners Broker has gone….
nothing is sat on the Domain..
only two possibilities..
They have changed server and not told anybody or they have gone bust !!!
mr Finch , congratulations on exposing these Bastards…
FRANK
please log in and tell me how your panels are doing ??
Ha ha ha ha ha ah
BOOOOOOOMMMMMM
too good to be true! the site is up and running, well limping again!
The site is back up now.
I don’t expect the site will disappear with a sudden big bang. I think their ‘exit strategy’ is likely to involve slowly starving their affiliates of payments, and by asking them to do ridiculous tasks (like 36 blog posts to qualify a panel).
People will eventually lose faith, get frustrated, and give up on their money.
The most recent webinar reeked of Raj speaking to the authorities rather than Raj speaking to BB affiliates. All he spoke about was compliance and longevity. Compliance is important for a business. But it’s not the sort of thing you make your number one public concern. You deal with it behind the scenes, not in the public domain.
BB speak loudly and openly about compliance in the same way that the guy with the tiny dick spends all his time bragging about it.
It’s to make up for what they lack.
In this case… a product.
@ William Hitch
“i was approached by someone from BB to join another scheme called flexcom – apparently ian driscoll also heads this up in the UK and is a MLM scheme – it looks more like a pyramid scheme but im not entirely sure of it. ”
The first clue whether or not it is a Ponzi scheme is the names of the people involved. Peope like Raj, Chris Smith, Driscoll, etc. know only one type of business and that is scamming. Why do you think every “business” they get involved with lasts only 2 to 3 years and then shuts down because they don’t bring in enough new members to pay their current ones. They then take the money they scammed and get involved in a new one, like FlexKom. Yeah they call it a franchise not MLM but it requires recruiting members, same thing. If you ever see them start a company whereby they promise you a ton of money without recruiting any new members, without building a downline, let me know and I’ll be one of the first to join. Other than that it’s just a duplication of their previous companies and they are very good at it. They have yet to start a company that earns revenue from selling a product only, not from recruiting new members.
Description of FlexKom as per one of their conmen.
“Not MLM, HYIP etc… A real business, with a real product that EVERYONE will want and EVERYONE with use!
Imagine a Franchise business that costs under £1000! €1100
Imagine a company that gives you a new Mercedes for building a team of THREE in your Franchise network.
Imagine a company where Franchisees are earning over £200,000 EVERY MONTH!
“
one good thing about BB is that it has highlited to me and lots of others how these scams work… wont be as easy for flexicon to recruit and start up..
@ Paul Smith
You would like to think so. More than likely what Driscoll will do is recruit everybody that has made a lot of money at BB and use them and their downlines to get FlexKom started quickly in the UK and then take it from there. Sad but true, there are always people out there who keep thinking that the next one just might be the one.
I know people who have joined so many of these, hardly ever get their money back but keep hoping. Unless you are one of the ones who gets in right at the beginning your chance of making a lot of money (without working for it) are better in Vegas or just buying a lottery ticket.
I stopped posting here due to Scumface and Shitbag, but here is some news for the rest of you:
KR: ‘More than likely what Driscoll will do is recruit everybody that has made a lot of money at BB and use them and their downline to get FlexKom started quickly in the UK and then take it from there’
A) He already has. He persuaded someone I know who had withdrawn some money from BB last Autumn, to hand over a large chunk of it in cash as a downpayment on a Flexcom franchise!
B) The downtime on the server was so that they could delete all pending payments to STP by pretending they have tried to pay affiliates. It’s a lie and the same con trick they pulled before Christmas when they reversed a load of pending requests blaming human error:
‘REVERSED ON 2013-03-08 03:15:34 This is the STP Message we received when trying to pay you:Rejected – Unknown User’
C) There is now no option to re-submit payment requests to STP, which means anyone who still thinks they have a chance of getting a penny back must apply for one of their non-working cards, with all of the identity theft risks that involves.
I wonder how could people get away with the law and running Ponzi Scam scheme one after another. why they are not prosecuted and sentenced?
I’d like to see someone DDOS the fuckers and drop their shit in seconds then leave it going on a dedicated server indefinitely 🙂
My only concern is honest people would lose a chance at recovering anything.
BB is paying 3 months old STP requests
yeeees
@ Affiliate
It’s pretty tough to prosecute them when they don’t sign any contracts, everything is on line and they register their companies off shore in a country where money laundering is the flavour of the day and Banks don’t want to know where the money is coming from.
Thanks for the advice guys – think i will stay from flexkom – It looks like a pure MLM Ponzi scheme – was reading up on the concept and it involves you selling selling terminals to shops and then that shop will provide a customer with a discount – in this recession i dont know which business owner would reduce their price on their products – plus on top of that the terminal costs the shop owner around 300 quid. Ian driscoll seems to get over excited on his webinar about this but just ends up mumbling on and then the viewers find it so hard to believe.
My panels have capped in Banners Broker so i have requested the money to my card – lets see how long this takes guys… Ive already made the mistake of providing my id and address so all i have done now is opened a new bank account just in case they hit the ground and end up doing something dodgy – not going to recruit anyone anymore.
BB is paying 3 month old requests ??
ha ha ha .. what kind of a genuine business takes 3 months to pay a withdrawal request ??
What a CON…
close them down now !!
Ha ha ha ha ha ..
@fgbhot..can you please answer these questions?
1/Why is it that the only people who are getting paid are the ones who say nice things about BB? Nobody saying negative things seems to be having any luck…which seems to indicate that payments are manually selected rather than automated. Computers, after all don’t care if someone is mean to them.
2/Why do you think the website keeps closing for maintenance? Because BB is SO busy handling new business..when banks deal with MILLIONS of pounds of transactions every day in seconds, not weeks. IF BB is a multi million pound business then there IT dept should be absolutely SHIT hot and have the BEST guys in the world don’t you think?
3/ Why does BB need so much identification? My online buisness requires just my email and a paypal account and it pays ON TIME, ALWAYS. AND it doesn’t close my account if I say something bad about it!
4/ How do panels ‘mature’? Cheese matures, wine matures, teenagers mature eventually…but ADVERTS? Not so much…
I joined BB back in may last year,yes I’ve withdrawn a lot more than I put in, and I’ve defended them all the way, but now I have to say I’m having serious doubts about them,mainly due to all panels now slowing down ,withdrawal times are an absolute joke, and support even worse, the sites never on a full week without going down,……they put the withdrawal times down to too many people requesting payments and they want 1 million affiliates!!!!!!!!!!’ No I think its on its way out, I enjoyed the ride while it lasted, but now I am concentrating on other businesses.
@ John
Why should panels slow down? The advertising industry hasn’t slowed down any. Companies are still spending the same amount of money on online ads. And if they aren’t, then BB’s business plan isn’t a good one to get into for new members and anyone in it should bail out while they can.
What this should tell everyone is that the panels are really just that, colourful graphics on a computer screen having nothing to do with advertising but change colour/mature as the members donate more money to the system.
Only BB sells panels and claims they are ad spaces. Everybody else in the world that sells actual ad space can show the advertiser what website the ad is on, who visits that website and how many impressions the ad has received. With BB, no one has a clue or if they do they don’t seem to disclose any of that information.
@ John
Wise move. I think there will be many, many more who will take the same route especially from next month when people realise they will either have to pay more to withdraw less or produce 36 word perfect and grammatically correct unique blogs to qualify just one blue panel. Who in their right mind would do this?
One can only assume they want to sell them on or why else would they need them? I forget what the going rate is for unique content but for anyone who has the time or the talent to produce it, Google will tell you where you can sell your work. Don’t forget to copyright it. LOL
And here we go again it will never stop this topic!!
Finch will become popular of BannersBroker sick man go to mental hospital maybe you can write a new article about your mental hospital!
@ ken
BB say the reason for the panels slowing down is due to the “holiday” season over christmas, and will pick up again, what a load of tosh.
And as for getting paid!! payout dates are now way behind how can this be? prosun and HRS payout same day!!!!!!!!
@ john
Well according JP Morgan, IAB Interactive Advertising Outlook’s latest reports, Total Pages Viewed (impressions) December 2012 was the 3rd highest month in 2012 in pages viewed. In 20111 it was the 2nd highest. (www.iab.net/media/file/IABJPMorgan_2013FINAL2.pdf)
So much for a slow season when it comes to BB’s product: “ad impressions”.
Q1 is always the slowest and it then picks up gradually getting better with Q4 (with all the holidays) being the highest.
BB being in the “ad space/impression” business should have done their research and not made such a stupid statement.
On the other hand if they really were in the ad space/impression business and not in the scamming business they would have known that as their ad impressions would have shown an increase just like the brokers where they purchase their ad space from showed an increase.
I have just logged into TalkingBB and have to say it reminds me of the scene from downfall (The last days of the Third Reich)
All forums apart from the sunset lounge have been closed. In this forum members (the die-hards) discuss how they are sipping away at theirfavorite drinks whilst talking about positive things.
Does anyone remember the drunk SS guards in the Furher Bunker who still believe in final victory because they had nothing else, the forum definitely reminds me of them.
I always wondered why BB never recruited the best and brightest and instead relied on the ignorant, clearly it is because once people started to ask questions they have gotten scared. They have even closed the forum down because they feel it is going to implode.
Ein package, Ein BB, Ein Chris Smith lol. I certainly won’t be going down with this idiot.
regards
yes mark they saw that people started to talk verry negatively on talking BB after the 2.9 launch and couldn’t put anything against it. Seems like ian the sherrif 😀 couldn’t cope with it i guess well it kinda hurts if you are defending BB with body and soul and suddenly you know you have been scammed :p
kind regards
brenie
@mark, yes I.m a member of that forum and I have to admit was a godsend at the beginning for me to ask various questions and get answers to everything I needed. But as time as gone on and people started to moan more and more about bb the attitude changed and you dare not say anything negative about bb, some people on there are unbelievable “the leaders” as they like to call themselves, there so far up each others arses its unbelievable ! Now like you say it’s virtually come to a standstill, why? maybe bb as put pressure on them!
Stop hating on Banners Broker all you Banners Broker Haters. Can you not see you keep getting proven wrong over and over again?
No Garel. I have posted here but I can’t get paid. I still can’t get paid. Over 3 months now. How are BB proving me wrong?
@GAREL…the BB forum has been closed down because BB AFFILIATES were being negative, NOT US! But come to think of it I quite like the idea of a BANNERS BROKER HATER CLUB…I’ve just become its first member! And I bet I’ll get more people to join MY club than yours!
I just did a quick check on Garel. He claims that advertising is a 700 trillion dollar industry. We have another liar. There isn’t even that much money in the whole world you idiot.
You are also claiming that BB will double your money. Thats against the rules, isn’t it? Naughty boy Garel.
Also, according to your linkedin page you are in BB for less than years, yet in the other thread on here you say you are in BB 3 years. Another lie.
It really does seem that the only ones left promoting the BB scam are liars like Garel. Would you trust them?
Anyone seen or heard of Simon Stepsys since he beat a hasty retreat from the Bolton bash?
He was all over everywhere like a rash until 2.9 was announced.
Perhaps he’s too busy blogging. 🙂
@ Ken Roklin
Thank you for answering my question and I understand it now.
@sue…Stepsy is now a used car salesman according to his facebook page. Maybe thats because he cant write all those blogs so BB have closed his account and taken his money???
I saw a post about who controls the BB engine. most affiliates did not know and the leaders said Chris. So basically when the engine reaches the cash limit of profits for BB and Smith then panels move and people are paid.
Hi,
I am not going to leave my email or real name in case my BB account is blocked. BUT I am unhappy with BB. The new BB version 2.9 forces us to make a huge change. One change, they call it organic traffic, which means I am forced to recruit or earn advertisement credits, or start making blogs to to earn. http://youtu.be/1TVq1ofEXwY explains the change. Biggest mistake BB made. My upline affiliate is waiting for their money for over 2 months now.
I can make more money blogging with clickbank, CPC, CPA products and did not want to blog for BB, I am gonna make less or nothing now. Also my panels are frozen for a while. I wish I read your posts before I parted with my monies.
If you are thinking of BB. STOP and look into less riskier businesses it is now harder for newbies. And I don’t trust them anymore – they could change again tomorrow.
And they will keep changing. They have to as there is less and less money coming in and more and more demands on this same pool of money. ITS…A…CYCLER.
This is what happens to all cyclers in the end. Time for people to wake up.
Over 3 months, still no payment.
I opened an account with a company based in Canada called Banners Brokers (www.bannersbroker.com) which invests in the internet.
I opened the account on 07/01/2013 with a credit card payment of $627 US dollars (08 Jan 13 £390.63).
After looking into the company further, I was not satisfied with the company. So on the 28/01/2013 the account was closed when they received my letter to close the account and refund my payment.
There terms and conditions states:-
– The account should be closed within 30 days a letter requesting closure
– Copies of two ids.
And an refund will be issue within 7-10 days (http://bannersbroker.com/main/refund_policy_int). Which I followed and completed.
It has been more than 40 days and I have so far received nothing.
I have called them on 4 occasions (on 27/02, 04/03, 06/03 & 07/03) and they just keeping on promising the payment will process soon and will send an email with an update, but still so far received no correspondences or updates.
Still waiting for my refund!!!
@BBinsider
2012’s stp/payza have being paid according to what I read on many many forums
Are you sure you were not in negative balance while waiting for payment?
The problem now is about BB cards, they are up to 22 days overdue
Hey Arif
Claim the money back from the Credit Card Company. They will be more likely to listen, but do it soon.
I personally think your very wrong in doing articles like this claiming that this is a scam … I am 18 and started banners broker 6 months ago … although I agree that the process is long I have made my money on bannersbroker, I have actually tripled it and had the money in hand using the bannersbroker card at a cashpoint just as with any mormal debit card. Some people may ready your article and think your a very intelligent person and thank you for drawing their attention to this so called ‘scam’. I personally think you are STUPID and think that if you have had problems and haven’t made your money then your doing something wrong … bannersbroker is easy, Its work where there is nothing to do apart from sit and watch, I am not the only one either, i have numerous friends and family that also have made a lot of money from this … It is people like you that get thus businesses shut down, This would not be good for us… the normal working class people that need some extra cash to get through hard times. If i didn’t have my money from banners broker I WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO SEND MY DAUGHTER TO NURSERY. I work hard and so does my husband but bannersbroker has saved us and i sincerely hope that you BASTERDS trying to out it as a ‘scam’ dont ruin it!!
@fgbhot: Nope, was not in negative. Everything is as it should be. The problem is, this, like any other cycler is running out of money. They can only give money out if they have enough coming in. The recruitment is drying up so they haven’t got the money.
It really is that simple. Please don’t be falling for the ‘its the affiliate’s fault’. That is rubbish. Just to let you know they will be trying that tack alot more now.
@Chloe: If you have nothing intelligent to say, you really are better off not posting. By the way, how many BB rules did you break in that one paragraph. Hope you are doing lots of recruiting or else you could see your account frozen after that brain fart. – And just so you know, the money you have got through this cycler has come out of other working class folks pockets who can’t get their money back now, so QUICK THE TEAR JERKING.
@ Chloe
“This would not be good for us… the normal working class people that need some extra cash to get through hard times. If i didn’t have my money from banners broker I WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO SEND MY DAUGHTER TO NURSERY. I work hard and so does my husband but bannersbroker has saved us and i sincerely hope that you BASTERDS trying to out it as a ‘scam’ dont ruin it!!”
A couple of things.
It is obvious you have limited business experience and do not know the difference between a legal business and a scam. It is very simple, a Ponzi scheme relies on the funds from new members to pay existing ones. If BB was a legitimate business it would earn enough revenue from selling ad space/impressions and not require members to sign up new ones.
With BB you do NO WORK. You buy a nice computer graphic and keep paying monthly fees to BB who keep piling up the cash in an offshore bank account. If you need extra cash then how about getting a job like the rest of the normal working class instead of scamming people to join a PONZI scheme. If you got some money back that’s good for you but not good for the single mother who is barely getting by and just got conned by someone like you to donate money she can’t afford just so you can get some money back in a scam. The only work you do at BB is to con new people into the scam.
@ myself
“It is obvious you have limited business experience and do not know the difference between a legal business and a scam.”
Wasn’t really a good statement to make. There are a lot of knowledgable people out there that have fallen for the scams of MLM. The business models are often very complex and it takes a fair amount of research to understand how some of those businesses actually work. The presenters at the conventions do not present the actual business model but try and sell the dream. They obviously won’t tell you it’s a Ponzi scheme but instead try and show you how everyone that pays some money can double, triple, ect. their money by doing nothing. That should be a red flag for anyone looking to invest in the business to do more research before jumping in. Statistics show that over 99% of people in MLM businesses lose money.
Word is that Mastercard has just pulled the plug on the BB card. Message in dashboard.
Game over?
Urgent Notice
March 13, 2013
Dear Banners Broker Prepaid MasterCard Cardholders:
As of today March 13th, 2013, the Banner Brokers Prepaid Card program has ceased to operate. Vector Card Services Limited is contacting cardholders regarding the winding down of the card program.
As of the date of issuance of this email, there will be no further authorization of loads to cardholder accounts and cardholders will have a limited time period to withdraw all funds from the card. As a cardholder you have until Friday March 22nd, 2013 to withdraw all funds from the card.
At the end of this period all remaining funds on the card will be returned to you the cardholder upon completion of the appropriate paperwork and receipt of a copy of your passport.
Our strong recommendation is to withdraw all funds from the card. This is the simplest option to draw down all remaining funds from your Prepaid Card. More information will be communicated to you. A second notice will be sent to you with a link to a full FAQ to address your questions. Please contact your Banners Broker representative for more information.
Vector Card Services Limited
What excuse are they going to give their followers now that Mastercard have dropped them or are they just going to call it a day and wrap it up , panels have ceased to move and there`s another ponzi waiting in the shadows ready to entice another army of drones , its got to be the end now .
From another room, from David Hooker
First of all there is nothing to be alarmed about, MC was only one of the ways in which affiliates can be paid – it is not the only way.
As you are well aware there have been many unwarranted negative blogs traversing the internet caused mainly by affiliates with a grudge. Most of those blogging sites are generally “cut and paste” and have no depth or value. However, that being said, and regardless how inaccurate these blogs are read by the authorities as well as banks.
It is also well worth noting that certain credit card companies are not comfortable with direct sales companies.
We are of course looking at alternative methods and yes once again we are experiencing challenges which we are all well equipped to overcome.
Keep the faith
David H Hooker
International Compliance &
Business Development
anyone want my webinar log on for tonight BB meeting
Why did Vector make the announcement before BB did. Did they not know
Also if they are so well equipped to handle this challenge why cant they handle more than 1 question per inquiry on there call system and how come they find it hard to answer the most basic of questions.
It seems they are capable of overcoming hurdles only when it suits them to do so.
Well all I want to say few days left before this BB will COLAPS it is pozi..,scam but not real business.
Message for those who like BB don’t bring in more victims t will fall back on you,and they will find y and….work it out your selfs.
Seems anyone can register to hear
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/167974734
Hey Finch,
Good work. Would like your opinion. Do you think the SFO might take action in the UK? The Fraud Act 2006 (sec 2) might seem applicable.
Also, for affiliates who paid into BB with credit cards, are they likely to be covered by section 75 Consumer Credit Act 1974?
I know these questions don’t relate to your field of expertise but I’d like your take on them anyway.
Thanks
Banner Bollocks
On another note, will those persons that paid a fee for the mastercard get a refund
Have tried to access live help
“Live Chat is currently unavailable.
Please Click Here to submit a support ticket”
Clicked on it and ir says “File not found.”
I guess they have taken down that part of the site so they dont have to ansa questions today
Interesting telephone call with David Hooker on Realscam.
panels are moving no problem… had 3 greens come out in the last few days..
the card has been removed now..
Finch , they are saying that they are going to get an auditor in to look at the business of BB to prove it is legit… the Vector Card guy has been on speaking about the negative comments like this blog.. so mastercard have pulled out because the chit chat is giving them a bad name ..
have to wait and see what this audit shows.. its a big step and could prove things one way or another
LOL, I look forward to that.
Any auditor that finds Banners Broker to be a legitimate business is not a legitimate auditor.
Here’s that phone call of Hooker getting crucified: http://www.lincolnplumberandelectrician.co.uk/Phone%20Call%20With%20David%20Hooker%20on%2013-03-2013.mp3
payouts will take months now… how unfortunate for me but so good for BB
ha ha ha ..
nearly as bad as Milwall getting into the semi finals… lol
@Paul Smith: You don’t seriously believe that auditor rubbish do you? Stop playing into their hands. These are all stalling tactics.
im not bothered anymore… I will sign up with STP now to try and withdraw but not holding my breath..
I have heard some real bad stories about these payment companies… 3 months to pay etc … lol
Finch the telephone call was interesting.. No refund for that man then .
Again, its not the payment companies, its BB. The problem is BB.
So now they are capping STP at $10,000 per month, so we just lost out on 6 weeks worth of card payments that were delayed, now we lose out on an STP cap each month, really is anyone going to defend these guys anymore …
Always find ways to delay payouts and stall.
PS – how can anyone audit BBI when they have had staff steal millions of dollars ? Terry Stern care to answer ?
@ paul smith
BB may get an auditor to look at the business but that doesn’t mean they are going to make public the auditors findings. In fact, I guarantee they won’t even get an outside independent auditor in to look at their books. The most they’ll do is get their accountant to make a statement stating that the business meets accounting principles and laws in the country where it is incorporated. That’s it.
Well, well, well… No more debit/prepaid cards for Banners Broker. Today’s announcement on their own website… so much for the bullshit that BB promoted about finding a global and easy way for affiliates to access their profits.
….. read what they said and judge for yourselves ……
”
Urgent Notice
March 13, 2013
Dear Banners Broker Prepaid MasterCard Cardholders:
As of today March 13th, 2013, the Banner Brokers Prepaid Card program has ceased to operate. Vector Card Services Limited is contacting cardholders regarding the winding down of the card program.
As of the date of issuance of this email, there will be no further authorization of loads to cardholder accounts and cardholders will have a limited time period to withdraw all funds from the card. As a cardholder you have until Friday March 22nd, 2013 to withdraw all funds from the card.
At the end of this period all remaining funds on the card will be returned to you the cardholder upon completion of the appropriate paperwork and receipt of a copy of your passport.
Our strong recommendation is to withdraw all funds from the card. This is the simplest option to draw down all remaining funds from your Prepaid Card. More information will be communicated to you. A second notice will be sent to you with a link to a full FAQ to address your questions. Please contact your Banners Broker representative for more information.
Vector Card Services Limited”
Don’t make excuses for them because I used my bank for a small withdraw and it took 3 months which suppose to take only 7 days. LOL, who believe their lies. Glad I didnt made any attempt to recurit anyone.
The MP3 link was interesting he refers to the affiliates as idiots “…Expose to those idiots…”.
Just to be clear who is this guy. He is is not presenting an approachable picture for BB with that digressive behavior, I felt.
I am gonna contact my bank card company and try to get my money back.
lol, i’ve just found an exploit which has put 3,000£ in my account lol..
Would be funny if i could withdraw it
Wake up BB’ers, MasterCard have not pulled the plug, this was always exit strategy between BB and Vector. Keep the money and blame someone else. This was always going to happen, don’t been fooled. They are still lying.
Was thinking something similar could be happening Jim.
But I think in the end it is probably too risky a strategy for BB as even the most hardened supporters can’t believe the guff that a behemoth like Mastercard care about a handful of blogs when it comes to their overall brand. It is just too ridiculous to contemplate. Especially when they are looking to lose many millions in revenue by pulling the plug on what is meant to be a totally legitimate business. It just wouldn’t happen in real life.
But we are now seeing the end times for BB so anything to give an excuse for delays in payments is a possibility.
It also shows that any true business worth its salt would have sued all the bloggers a long time ago for libel if they could as by not doing so they risked losing their important partnerships from the fallout (according to them) and their brand is hugely tarnished. The very fact that they haven’t sued ABSOLUTELY proves they are a scam and wouldn’t be able to survive a court case due to discovery.
Anyone who thinks about recruiting now is just downright dirty and immoral as they now KNOW that BB is nothing more than a great big fraud and if they do recruit they deserve to be sued by their down line. Gullibility can no longer be an excuse.
Despite the public announcement some BB affiliates still claim that Banners Broker Is endorsed by Mastercard:
http://bbdealer.co.uk/
•Banners Broker is a legitimate and licensed business, endorsed and working with Master Card
The owner of this site knows this is untrue yet choose not to ammend.
Something very strange in the webinar with Chris Smith and the bloke from Vector, not sure if anyone else noticed this, but listen from around 8:40 on-wards where the CEO of Vector is talking about the online blogging campaign against BB and how “WE” tried to handle it. If you listen he keeps talking about WE rather than they (i.e. Banners Broker), this is very telling I think as it looks like Vector and Banners Broker are perhaps a bit closer than their cared to disclose and also might explain why vector are not distancing themselves from BB.
Also looks like Vector’s domain was registered only a few months before Banners Broker and very little mention of Vector online that doesn’t include the mention of Banners Broker.
hmmmm it gets murkier
Nick – you may well be spot on there. Vector choosing to side with BB against M’card? Which would you choose? Enough said.
Chris Smith claims all they got from Mastercard was an e-mail telling BB they no longer wished to be associated with BB.
Well, anybody with an ounce of intelligence knows that in order to terminate an agreement, especially one that is worth millions of dollars, you don’t do that by sending an e-mail. You send them a registered letter or at the minimum you courier a letter signed by an authorized executive terminating the contract according to the terms and conditions of the contract and listing the reasons for the termination, whether it is with cause or without cause.
Vector Card Services Bank partner is Choice Bank Ltd. in Belize, an issuer of co-branded and prepaid MasterCards. The Vector Card domain was registered about the same time as BB, July 2010. The Owner of Vector, Ted Nham had worked for DCR Strategies Inc. until July 20, 2010.
Why would Ted leave an executive position at a company to start up a competitive business with no customers unless he already had an agreement with BB. As BB goes so does Vector. BB is probably their only client. This so-called termination by MasterCard looks to be just another way of stopping payments and a stepping stone to shut the company down.
Domain Name: VECTORCARDSERVICES.COM
Created on: 26-Jul-10
Expires on: 26-Jul-15
Last Updated on: 05-Oct-12
Registrant:
Vector Card Services
451 Pettit Trail
Milton, Ontario L9T 6W8
Canada
Administrative Contact:
Nham, Ted tnham@cogeco.ca
Vector Card Services
451 Pettit Trail
Milton, Ontario L9T 6W8
Canada
+1.4169030955
Entity Name: VECTOR CARD SERVICES, LLC
Filing Status: Active Date Filed: 09/21/2010
Type: Domestic Limited-Liability Company File Number: E0457122010-1
Registered Agent:
Nevada Corporate Headquarters, Inc
101 Convention Center Dr Suite 700
Las Vegas, NV 89109
Facebook page post (this shows the lengths at which BB protect non-compliant affiliates and allow them to run around using logo’s passing them themselves off as official and spread lie about anyone who questions BB)
Banners Broker Network – Hi Peter Hedges, Mr Martin Osborne( Finchsells) has joined his family members with BB and they all making good income now. Finchsells wants more traffic to promote his rubbish business’s and this is the only reason he is targeting some best companies on the planet. All the BB’ers are making a real fortune, do you thing Mr Smith paying all this from his pocket? No, but from the money which BB making.
@ question
BB one of the best companies on the planet? You are absolutely correct – up to a point. You forgot a couple of words, allow me to do that for you. BB is one of the best Ponzi scheme companies on the planet.
Everybody is making a fortune. Well, some are but I guarantee it’s not you or 95% of the other affiliates in BB. BB itself states the average income of a person who participate of the Banners Broker program is USD $287.00/year. Now that’s what I call a fortune. let me see what can I do with all that wealth. I can buy a case of mediocre wine or take my wife out for 1 dinner at a good restaurant.
BB stated they had given $70 mil back to affiliates. Well that seems like a lot until you do the math. With say 300,000 members that works out to, WOW $233 per member. Where’s the rest of the money, about $250 mil /year going that they are collecting from members just for their admin fees and traffic packs? I’ll tell you, in an account in Belize where no one can touch it.
Ken, That was me posting a message which is on the FB page “Banners Broker Network”, which is a non-compliant page yet allowed to continue … Top part is me, bottom is the ctrl-v
On the subject of payments. Everyone just got screwed by BB out of 6 weeks of card payments and they don’t even realize it … and they have to wait 1/2/3 months for the next payment through STP due to the millions owed in the backlog to October.
@Question – It says a lot about that page. They’ve banned me from commenting, and yet they continue to spread lies about me. If they were so certain of their facts, maybe they wouldn’t censor the people they like to talk shit about?
Amusing!
@ question
Sorry, I should have redirected my post to the Facebook page you referred to. My bad.
Guy, this is hillarious. When you cancel your Withdrawel request to the card, click confirm every half a second or second and it withdraws your money over and over into your account. I’m now 6 grand up, can’t do it any more though as i can no longer withdraw lol.
Anyone who still believes in BB is a complete fool.
i have 100% proof how BB itis piramis daily foto and more
blog coming soon
—————–
Guys, its all over for BB…..
…it aint over till the ‘Banner’ is banned and the ‘Broker’ is broke…
…or the website stays down lol
….which, unfortunately, has again raised it’s ugly head!
Banners Broker will be banned but by no means is BB broke, just thousands of affiliates. BB has their millions in Belize ready to start another scam.
So….. This blog and a few others have got Mastercard running scared….. I’ve just listened to the webinar. They sound SO disappointed. What a pile of shit. It’s turned out that we’ve provided these liars with an excuse to close off the final method of payment. Blame the bloggers for ‘damaging the Mastercard brand’. As if Mastercard give a flying fuck. The Vector card was NEVER endorsed by Mastercard, and in any case, if BB had ever been a legitimate business, they would be easily able to counter the negativity by behaving vaguely in the manner of a reputable company.
The end is nigh. Thank Dawkins.
The excuses that Banners Broker comes up with are incredible.
Anyone that believes MasterCard was worried about its brand name being stuffed with the blogs demeaning BB, please read:
MASTER CARD IS ACCEPTED AT MANY BROTHELS WORLDWIDE. BROTHELS ARE *NOT* REFUSED MERCHANT FACILITIES…..
Does this mean MasterCard believes **PROSTITUTION* is a more respectable business than Banners Broker??? So funny.
The real reason is credit card companies and their banks have a legal obligation to REFUND the money that is being charged fraudulently on their cards. If someone disputes a charge, the bank issuing a VISA or MasterCard would refund the charge then deducts that amount back from the MERCHANT.
Problem is, Banners Broker is NOT a decent merchant…. so the issuing bank (not MasterCard) is not able to trust BB giving the cash back…….
MasterCard and VISA worldwide do not give or take monies. They run their card systems through accredited banks….. Unlike American Express which handles the money directly between consumers and merchants.
Now, the Banners Broker MasterCard was not a charge card (credit card) but a debit (pre funded) card…. You could only spend what is “in credit”.
Guess what, the question is why could BB not charge up (put cash) into the accounts of its MasterCard holding affiliates.
My biggest concern is for the thousands of PENSIONERS who have over invested in BB. These people (most are over 60 years old) do not have surplus cash and many do not understand the world of the internet (other than how to open a browser and click on things).
What is telling about all this bullshit is the REFUSAL by BB to allow payments via PayPal…… when millions of businesses (yes, including online ones) use this payment channel with ease.
here comes next stage bb tell members that panels will not move unless an ad campaign is active, as if the campaign causes the panels to cap SUPPOSED TO GO LIVE 1ST APRIL YET SHOWING ON EVERY SITE ALREADY.Yet again bb move the goal post and tell its members they must generate a percentage of their own so called traffic
Panel movement will not occur without an active campaign.
Diann, the funny thing is people having a campaign on the choice (shell companies) network in no way makes BB money any from advertisers nor does it affect your panels on the blind network. As you said another hoop to say sorry no funds generated for you and oh look we are legit people have to do work.
Still no BB affiliates kicking dust about the BB self imposed $10,000 a month cap to STP/Payza yet …
Does Payza even work for the UK people recently ?, it didn’t a few months ago.
irishexaminer.com/archives/2013/0315/world/mastercard-withdraws-prepaid-card-services-from-web-ads-broker-225551.html
I also like how BB wil be cjecking the quality of written English on the blogs lol.
Also no support tickets at the moment.
”The option to submit support tickets is currently disabled from the 15th and 16th. This option will become available again at 4:00 PM EST on Sunday March 17th. You will still be able to check and reply to existing tickets by going to the View Tickets section of the support interface. We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause. Regards, The BB Team”
**Update** VectorCard Services work in Partnership with Choice Bank Limited, Choice bank are the principal issuer.
Choice Bank terminated its MasterCard prepaid card program associated with Banners Broker based on negative consumer feedback. If you would like to know more please contact Adettte Tillett, Chief Compliance Officer, Choice Bank.
Adette Tillett
Chief Compliance Officer
Choice Bank Ltd
Tel: 501-223-6850
Fax: 501-223-6853
email:atillett@choicebankltd.com
Ridiculously, BB have cancelled ALL active advertising campaigns and told affiliates that they must now have an ad. campaign in order for their panels to move! So, anyone who believes in this charade has to set up another campaign to get their panels moving again..BUT…. IF these campaigns actually existed in the real world, it would have been the case from day one that the campaign had an effect on traffic and hence affected the speed at which panels completed.
This latest pitiful attempt at ‘compliance’ merely serves to prove beyond any doubt that panel movement is a simple computer program that can be switched on or off at the will of BB and has nothing to do with ‘brokers’ buying/selling ad space, or any adverts appearing anywhere, ever!
Hello Everyone,
It seems that there are a large number of people wondering why panel movement isn’t working as it should, well let us explain.
As our hard working IT team diligently works to make our website better in v2.9 and building toward v3.0 it requires that certain features of the site be placed on hold. The ability to visualize panel movement is one of those features. There is no need to be alarmed however. The software is still actively recording panel traffic, and once the work on the site is at a level where the panel movement can be switched back on, you’ll see your panels as they’re supposed to be. This is an unfortunate circumstance, but a necessary one in order to ensure the stability of the site.
As you’ve no doubt noticed, the site itself has been experiencing some downtime as our IT team works on the back end of the website. This is temporary, but can’t be helped. There is nothing wrong with the site or your panels, it’s an unfortunate by-product of working on the site to make it more stable.
With regards to the BB Card and payments….
We are currently assessing other payment options, and we’re doing so cautiously but quickly. It’s our intent to put in place a solution that addresses the needs of as many affiliates as we are able. We have received all of your email with other options, and we thank you for those submissions, however, we ask that you grant us your patience as we move quickly to put new options in place.
Payments are currently proceeding through STP and Payza during this transition. Please be aware that payments are currently limited to $2,500 per request, at one per week, up-to $10,000 maximum. We are pressing forward with processing as many as we can as fast as we can, so please be patient. If you have any concerns, please contact support and they’ll address them for you.
Once again, we sincerely appreciate the patience and understanding you’ve put forth. We understand your frustrations, and are actively working to solve all situations as rapidly as we are able.
The company is strong and moving ahead. Your support and enthusiasm is greatly appreciated.
Thank You.
The Banners Broker International Team
What a load of crap:
“As our hard working IT team diligently works to make our website better in v2.9 and building toward v3.0 it requires that certain features of the site be placed on hold. The ability to visualize panel movement is one of those features. There is no need to be alarmed however. The software is still actively recording panel traffic, and once the work on the site is at a level where the panel movement can be switched back on, you’ll see your panels as they’re supposed to be.”
If this would be true, my red panels would have capped by now. If the recording of panel traffic was running but not being visualized, the panel should have completed anyway, and the money should have appeared in my e-wallet.
On of my red panels is currently at $1,576.21 / $1,620.00, it has been stalled since 04 March. It moves 11$ a day, so anyone who can count knows BB is just making new excuses for panels not to cap.
Real companies have development, validation and production platforms, where new features are developed in dev first, then tested in val, and rolled out in production when val does not trigger errors.
I can know, my main business is change management for a real IT department providing power to half our country … so you can imagine what would happen if the equivalent of panels and payouts being stalled in our business.
@ Mark
“I also like how BB wil be cjecking the quality of written English on the blogs lol.”
Pretty funny. Chris, Raj, etc. are travelling all ver the world recruiting members that have a limited amount of English knowledge yet once signed up are required to write blogs in English in order to “move the panels” or sign up new members. They did this, supposedly, to be compliant with the laws of the country in which they operate.
However, if members don’t want to write blogs they can accomplish the same thing by recruiting new members. Well isn’t that paying members to recruit new members (as in Ponzi definition). How is that being compliant? Not in North America it isn’t.
Excuses, Excuses, and more Excuses…. plus a dash of apologies… works wonders on the ignorant…
<<< Posted on
http://talkingbb.com/index.php?topic=4652.msg60220#new
Hello Everyone,
It seems that there are a large number of people wondering why panel movement isn't working as it should, well let us explain.
As our hard working IT team diligently works to make our website better in v2.9 and building toward v3.0 it requires that certain features of the site be placed on hold. The ability to visualize panel movement is one of those features. There is no need to be alarmed however. The software is still actively recording panel traffic, and once the work on the site is at a level where the panel movement can be switched back on, you'll see your panels as they're supposed to be. This is an unfortunate circumstance, but a necessary one in order to ensure the stability of the site.
As you've no doubt noticed, the site itself has been experiencing some downtime as our IT team works on the back end of the website. This is temporary, but can't be helped. There is nothing wrong with the site or your panels, it's an unfortunate by-product of working on the site to make it more stable.
With regards to the BB Card and payments….
We are currently assessing other payment options, and we're doing so cautiously but quickly. It's our intent to put in place a solution that addresses the needs of as many affiliates as we are able. We have received all of your email with other options, and we thank you for those submissions, however, we ask that you grant us your patience as we move quickly to put new options in place.
Payments are currently proceeding through STP and Payza during this transition. Please be aware that payments are currently limited to $2,500 per request, at one per week, up-to $10,000 maximum. We are pressing forward with processing as many as we can as fast as we can, so please be patient. If you have any concerns, please contact support and they'll address them for you.
Once again, we sincerely appreciate the patience and understanding you've put forth. We understand your frustrations, and are actively working to solve all situations as rapidly as we are able.
The company is strong and moving ahead. Your support and enthusiasm is greatly appreciated.
Thank You.
The Banners Broker International Team
….WHAT A CROCK OF S**T!
“Payments are currently proceeding through STP and Payza during this transition. Please be aware that payments are currently limited to $2,500 per request, at one per week, up-to $10,000 maximum. We are pressing forward with processing as many as we can as fast as we can, so please be patient. If you have any concerns, please contact support and they’ll address them for you.”
STP doesn’t have a cap of 10,000, there is no need for a 10,000 cap for compliance or moving money around or paying affiliates ect. Every other company seems to manage just fine doing more than 10.000, A LOT MORE.
The cap and “one per week” is there is buy BB time, avoid paying the full amounts people are entitled to from their Ewallets. 10k to STP then you have to have a company to invoice them for anything more and wait 90 days.
Anything to prevent you from getting a hold of the produced value the accounts enable or should enable you to request without jumping through these hoops and climbing the insanity walls of creating companies and getting a bank account and waiting a quarter of a year.
BB Facebook page, this is to demonstrate just how little the hardcore blind affiliates really know about BB.
“Paul Strachan – Nik, One thing that most people forget is that when BB first started, the only way to earn was by referring others or by being a publisher. The traffic packs came out so that anyone could get the chance to have a slice, now bb have to change in order to stay compliant in all countries”
Wrong Paul ! when BB first started we stacked multiple green (16 weeks) packages like the roots of a tree 1 – 2 – 4 – 8 – 16 ect. They then moved to traffic packs and a single position per person to avoid being called a cycler at the start of 2012 and called the whole thing passive or recruit as we were renting space and buying traffic.
By your explanation BB was and has never been compliant, BB is not registered nor compliant in any country as they are located in Belize and Isle Of Man not to mention the shell companies behind BBI, they have not been audited by a impartial reputable 3rd party nor do they have full accounts as they cannot with staff who have stolen millions by Terry Stern’s own words.
Stellarpoint might be compliant because on paper they offer support but off paper they are Banners Broker and manage people money (account management system) handle payments, ID’s and have full access to everyone’s personal information which they do not keep confidential. Hooker on the latest released call to a guy keeps saying we are compliant, have an office, staff people can come see, he is 100% correct. But he is also talking about Stellarpoint not Bannersbroker, I know it’s confusing for him trying to remember which shell company to use in conversations.
Why the 2.9 changes ? simply put BB can only survive so long without fresh cash, they are using false inflated membership numbers and events to draw people in whilst ignoring problems, they are using ever increasing tactics to stall cash generation within the system and funds leaving the business to members, yet it’s still as easier as ever to put money into BB through multiple methods …. strange yes ?
2.9 gives you 3 options, only one is viable to make up the 33% short fall from not being able to use that amount as traffic packs, the viable option is recruit. Writing blogs won’t make up the traffic you are losing out on, the campaigns don’t work never mind the choice (shell companies) network ones.
BB screwed up big time by removing STP/Payza and getting cocky about the card system, now they have to run back to STP and Payza after trying to shift the blame to them in the past when it’s always BB who mess up and never pay on time.
Lets see if the first STP payments hit in the stated 10days for the $500 membership people, whilst they’re at it maybe the people waiting on 5/6 figure STP payments from October to January each month will be paid finally …
Please expose profitclicking.com too ..They are scammer no. 1 .They have not paid their members for 6 months and still running this useless profitclicking.com site
I have been following this debate as alot of my friends invested quite heavily in this(the max 5 grand a pop). It is getting more apperent over the last few months that the end is nigh.
The irish media have been doing a good job of trying to expose these crooks.Here is the latest Headline from a widely circulated Broadsheet based where BB have there irish head-quaters in Cork. The Paper is the Irish Examiner it published pieces in Nov & Dec last year as well. I can post links if people are interested
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/mastercard-withdraws-prepaid-card-services-from-web-ads-broker-225551.html
Folks, its over get your money,apoligise to your friends and family for dragging them in AND GET OUT.
I really appreciate the reports you have made available here – I was approached about this scheme recently and was tempted because where I am living, in an ex-pat community, it is very difficult to make money and BB are holding seminars in the area to tempt people in.
I was inadvertently caught up in a pyramid scheme about 6 years ago in which we and lots of friends and aquaintances lost money – there are so many similarities – although this one is a lot larger….. all of the jargon and technical speak was what first alerted me – none of it makes sense to any who are truly in the know in the internet industry – but to potential investors of BB, if they understand it they will be told they are one of the privileged few and so intelligent to understand the system, if they don’t understand it they will probably be ‘wowed’ by the apparent ‘outstanding industry knowledge’ of the BB directors or too afraid to ask too many questions for fear of looking stupid! My advice to anyone who is wavering is if there is even a hint of a ponzi scheme here, even if it isn’t proven 100% and if other people are telling you they have made pots of money – run as fast as you can in the other direction – it just isn’t worth the risk to you, your reputation and your friends/associates who you may bring in as affiliates.
Our servers are currently being updated to withstand the demand for many more affiliates. Please be advised the payout times listed on the site are estimates and not guarantees, and that it may take significantly longer to fully process withdrawal requests. Regards, BB Team.
Some affiliates are still advertising that BB are a “endorsed and working with Master Card”
http://www.4networking.biz/Members/Details/24655
For many affiliates this was their main USP (unique selling point) for promoting BB. “MasterCard would never back a dodgy company, therfore it must be genuine”.
Yep, and they will continue to do so. Will be interesting to see how MC handle it. Thats if they do anything.
MC didn’t drop BB without investigating anything that concerned them, which means BB either closed ranks or couldn’t provide the above board stuff that was required. If anyone has had serious dealings with BB you know that both these points would have happened.
The notion MC would drop a company on internet hearsay is funny and more so pathetic that the BB cultists would eat up such an idiotic line from Chris and Raj. They definitely know their audience …
I’m assuming that BB didn’t have the money to pay out affiliates, so they had to come up with an excuse. Pretending that MC dropped them gives them this excuse and allows them some more time. Thats just a hunch though.
Glad to see that this blog is now near the bottom of page 1 on bb google search. Soon to be off the first page and then GONE for good…..
Mikey – Whatever you say dude. Still bringing thousands of inquisitive users to the facts every day…
According to BannersBroker, it’s people like me (the ‘negative bloggers’) who are stopping you from getting paid. I’m flattered by the association. The fact that BB’s legal crack team still haven’t closed me down must be quite hard for you to stomach. Well, guess what? I’m still here and you’re still not getting paid.
Soon, the rest of your ponzi earnings will be gone for good, and you’ll be wondering why you didn’t listen to the negative trolls from Day 1.
Have a nice day.
@MikeyM: Why, what difference does it make?
Think you are wrong, by the way. Still showing up as 4th result here and daily mirror blog is even higher. You want them to disappear too?
MikeyM feel free to address all the points and even my points as an insider like yourself …
How is everyone getting on at banners broker today?
The site is down again, and has been all day????
I am surprised
Well, I had signed up with BB last year, but did receive more than twice what I started within a four month period, without recruiting anyone. Concerning Flexcom, from what I have read that has nothing to do with BB. Every BB affiliate is their own person running their own business and nothing stops them from being involved in more than one business at the same time.
Personally, I am an eToro affiliate as well as a BB affiliate, but if I tell anyone about eToro, this does not imply that BB is associated with eToro. They are two completely separate companies.
Further, if I don’t know the details of a business model, I would not immediately label it as an ‘MLM scheme’ but rather an ‘MLM-type business’. That being said, I personally do not like MLM schemes that forces people to recruit in order to make a living, making money off other people who can’t make money. That is why I was attracted to BB as it’s business model is not based on MLM. The persons I introduce can make without *having* to recruit others.
BTW, for the record, it is inaccurate to say that the BB website has ‘disappeared’. As you would know by now, it has been up and functioning since Mar 8th. Why the haste to see it ‘disappear’? It seems as if many people are actually wishing it stays down. But it keeps on going.
@ BBinsider
“I’m assuming that BB didn’t have the money to pay out affiliates, so they had to come up with an excuse. Pretending that MC dropped them gives them this excuse and allows them some more time. Thats just a hunch though.”
All credit card companies have policies as to who is eligible to offer one pof their cards. MasterCard’s policy (as all of them) states that the company must be compliant with all the laws of the country they operate in and they all have anti-money laundering policies. They also reserve the right to audit the companies to ensure they comply with their policies.
I wouldn’t be surprised if MasterCard, due to the bad publicity, did audit their books and discovered what thousands of us knew from the beginning, it’s a Ponzi scheme and is non-compliant. However, MC had the option to just suspend BB until it is compliant. MC has a lot of options available to them, ranging in fines to suspensions, before terminating a client contract, especially if it’s a fairly large client as BB claims it was.
Why did BB wait until now to make changes to their business model to become “compliant” unless something happened? Also most companies make sure they are running a legitimate business and are compliant before they launch a business and not wait until they get the scam tag attached to them.
BB, knowing it’s still not compliant, would rather just not have any more audits and would rather deal with payment processors who don’t ask questions.
And as per your hunch, it may just be that this is a step into delaying payments before ceasing all payments.
@computer guy
You say that each bb affiliate is running their own business. I also run my own business. Bricks and mortar stuff, tangible assets, end products and customers i can actually see. I can also withdraw cash from the business if and when required.
Keep up the good work Finch,
Thank you for taking the time to show people what real due diligence needs to be done when investigating a “business opportunity”. It is a mystery that anyone could read your work and come to any conclusion other than BB being an outright sham.
@ computer guy
If BB isn’t a MLM company why does BB pay affiliates to recruit new members and encouraging them to build a downline? Why not ban the recruitment of new members or not pay anyone after the 1st member they recruit? If it’s not an MLM, why must one have a sponsor to join? I’ll tell you why, so they can show how by building a downline you don’t have to buy as many traffic packs – your payment for recruiting new members.
Payment may not be in cash but in traffic, which is the same thing since otherwise you have to buy traffic packs in order for your panels to “move” or write stupid blogs. How in the world does writing a useless blog create traffic when it is on a site that nobody visits?
If in fact you are making money from BB it is not from the sale of a product but from people who will never get their “investment” back, especially now that BB is in its last stages of existence.
Under maintenance
March 19, 2:45 pm EST
Hello Banners Broker Universe!
Unfortunately beyond our control, our servers our down at the hosting provider level. We are in communication with them and they have mentioned that they need up to 24 hours to restore services. We understand that the timing of this couldn’t be worse. We have the Second Annual Niagara Convention coming around the corner. Please read the info on http://www.thebbtour.com and get ready to purchase tickets! This will be an event that you surely do not want to miss!
Please feel free to contact us using the numbers listed bellow.
Looks like it could be all over.
”Under maintenance
March 19, 2:45 pm EST
Hello Banners Broker Universe!
Unfortunately beyond our control, our servers our down at the hosting provider level. We are in communication with them and they have mentioned that they need up to 24 hours to restore services. We understand that the timing of this couldn’t be worse. We have the Second Annual Niagara Convention coming around the corner. Please read the info on http://www.thebbtour.com and get ready to purchase tickets! This will be an event that you surely do not want to miss!
Please feel free to contact us using the numbers listed bellow.”
However they have still managed to kep a page open which allows you to buy BB world tour tickets? How thoughtful of them.
…if I had a penny for every time someone has said ‘this could be over’ I’d be richer than er…Chris Smith lol. Seriously through, we can only live in hope!
@Ken: I don’t think there is much mystery as to why they changed things now:
They are running out of money, they need to stall payments. The compliance issue is just a smokescreen. A?ll the changes are to slow payments. Compliance makes no difference to them.
People are over-complicating things. Its much simpler than people think. EVERY thing is about slowing payments. EVerthing else is just smoke.
I’ve just gone onto the BB world tour site and found this:
General Tickets: $200 USD
Included in the ticket are the following:
•Friday Information Session
•Saturday Workshop
•Sunday Convention
Add-on included:•Saturday and Sunday unlimited Coffee, Tea and Water
•Saturday and Sunday Buffett Lunches
Saturday Night Gala Dinner Tickets: $150 USD
Included in the ticket are the following:
•Admission to Saturday night Gala
•Entertained by Band and Comedian
•Plus a great dinner, dancing, and socializing with BB Affiliates
V.I.P. Tickets: $500 USD
Included in the ticket are the following:
•Friday Information Session
•Saturday Workshop
•Sunday Convention
Add-on included:•Saturday and Sunday unlimited Coffee, Tea and Water
•Saturday and Sunday Buffet Lunches
Preferred seating in the front Access to VIP LOUNGE for the Saturday and Sunday events. Lunch served in the VIP LOUNGE
Saturday Night Gala Dinner Tickets
Included in the ticket are the following:
•Admission to Saturday night Gala
•Entertained by Band and Comedian
•Plus a great dinner, dancing, and socializing with BB Affiliates
Preferred seating and tables near the front
The prices are INCREDIBLE!….talk about squeezing every last drop. And the saddest thing is, these idiots will probably SELL lots!
Whats that film where people invited freaks to a dinner so they can laugh at them? This Gala could be similar except the freaks actually pay for the priviledge!
Whats that film where people invited freaks to a dinner so they can laugh at them?
BBinsider, it’s “Le Diner de Cons”.
“Con” being an appropriate word in this case methinks!
Thanks Della.
We keep saying you couldn’t make this up but people did, and now BB seem to be using it as a blueprint!
I have been working in the cycler area for a long time but zeek and BB have even amazed me, as in, how stupid people can be…
We seem to have gone to a whole new level of muppetry.
Site has been down a really long time now…even by BB standards…
$50 says you can’t buy all the tickets with your Ewallet funds, fresh money please guys …
Anyone that knows anything about web hosting service providers, big and small, would know that almost all of them today offer a 99.9% uptime guarantee. That is, they would only be out of action 0.01% of the time (maximum).
That is about 7.3 hours per month. Yet, BannersBroker is down and says they will be down for 24 hours…. amazing. Actually, it’s not amazing. It’s a simple untruth.
Notice how every delay in payment, every cancellation of a service, every website down time is “beyond our control”.
Of course, their website is up enough (not totally dead) to have their home page and message displaying… hmmm.
Those who choose to live in denial will pay the ultimate cost (lose their money).
It matters not whether people choose to live in denial or live in de knowledge! I’ve known for months that BB is a scam, but it has not altered the fact that I’ve been unable to recover my money. They still owe me £500 from last October and have done everything in their power to lie about why they can’t or won’t pay. It’s NEVER their fault is the company line.
The only difference between ‘us’ and those who live in denial is that they are in for a big shock soon. The stupidity of the many loyal drones who still think BB is a credible entity is remarkable. But with regard to paying the ultimate cost, they’re no worse off than those of us sussed out this scam six months ago.
This must be the last knockings….website down (stalling tactics/blame server), no customer support since last week (stalling tactics), closure of BB card (stalling tactics/blame blogger tactics), move back to STP (stalling tactics/blame STP for slow to non payments.
I’m past giving a shit if the fucking website never appears again, but 1000’s of poor bastards will be shitting their nappies when they realise their ‘business’ is nobody’s business. Not even theirs.
“….. but 1000′s of poor bastards will be shitting their nappies when they realise their ‘business’ is nobody’s business. Not even theirs.”
And there you have it. Nicely put.
Still saying its not there issue but at the ‘hosting server level’. Who is doing the hosting for BB?(I know its all bullshit but just want to call their bluff)
I have lost a lot of money in this scam but can now laugh at myself for being sucked in and put it down to experience..
They have posted comments on the homepage of all the deluded knobheads we love you Raj , Chris we understand what you are doing.. etc etc .. ha ha …
The website is offline most of the time and yes they have a ticket sale page up … ha ha .. so if the server is down how is this page up ?
What makes it more of a bummer for me is that i only signed up at the end of december and didnt do my homework till after I had paid my 5k dollars .. 🙂
5k, thats alot of money to do no research. Can I ask why you made the decision?
I joined BB last November after being ‘recruited’ by a trusted and respected friend. We are both now very worried about losing our money. Can anyone tell us if we may be entitled to a refund from our credit card company under the mis selling rules?
simple.. a friend of mine signed up and he was put on to it by his mate of 20 years .. so he trusted him .. and we both did the max…
I act on impulse and thought it seemed a good business at the time.. now you can see through it and what it really is with all the brain washed followers.
Sorry to hear that. Don’t want to be prying but is that money you can afford to lose?
I run a small business in the North West of england so i put it through that …
i will run the account till it crashes or finishes… but I do not expect anything out of it.. If I do get some stake back at least its something… no the BB card has gone it will delay payments by months and that is exactly what the raj or chris..want to give them time to filter away the stash they have made from it.. i got to hand it to them though .. its a Scam of the highest order… the website and everything looks professional ..
The site has been down for way over 24 hours now. This is not a hosting problem. Server problems like this simply do not exist for large companies.
There must be some other reason why the site is down. Either their ponzi automation machine has lost its way (God forbid, panels actually moving?), or it’s another holding mechanism to stop people withdrawing, or something has happened behind the scenes.
Speculation is speculation.
But for those wondering when this thing will actually die, it’s already dead. A pyramid doesn’t recover from such a mass loss of confidence. BannersBroker will be carefully monitoring whether it’s worth carrying out another round of payments to try and raise some confidence, but they won’t pay people unless it facilitates another round of recruitment and growth.
just looked at the ticket prices…. $ 500 for a ticket and you get unlimited coffee and water all day !! ha ha ha … get stuffed … you can book a week in teneriffe for that !!
Anyone can use a site like http://www.whoishostingthis.com/ to see which internet service provider is hosting the BB website.
Hosting: Linode host the domain bannersbroker.com
IP Address: 50.116.55.17
Name Servers: ns19.domaincontrol.com, ns20.domaincontrol.com
Now, this provider is not experiencing any downtime. They don’t have any failed servers or failed connections to the internet. Indeed, ALL internet hosting service providers have multiple servers and backups…. a crash of any sort would only be for minutes or an hour at most.
Sadly, the suckers that don’t want to believe it’s “game over” are the poor pensioners who thought they bought into a “business” to compete with Google (bad joke)…. and all they need to do is buy panels and activate them with traffic packs.
On most BB-devotee chat sites and groups they are crying out loud “don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs”. Problem is, there is no goose and there has never been any golden eggs. Poor sods.
BannersBroker for me has been an expensive online computer game…. you pay real money and you make virtual money. And every day you can see your virtual bank going up in value.
Nothing wrong with that, is there?
Would anyone like to call Chris Smith’s cell phone and ask him for clarification as to why the site is down and which servers need repair?
I found this number 647-497-9238. Apparently, it was working and he answered it as late as 2 weeks ago.
BB domain is hosted by Go Daddy and they have over 35 million domains they host. I doubt they have 35 million companies down for 24 hours. BB’s website may be down but certainly not their domain servers.
The interesting thing is, if you check on the BB site through “Is it down right now?” (which tests websites by “pinging” them) the answer comes back that the BB site is actually up and reachable. It then says that it may be down “just for you”.
And, of course, the BB site is managing to show a sign which says that it is “down at hosting provider level”. Now, I am not a computer person at all, but that does seem odd to me. The site is down at provider level…..but up enough to show a notice? Maybe this is possible, I would not like to say, but it seems curious.
But then the whole thing has seemed curious to me for many months!
Ken Roklin, the domain name BannersBroker.com is registered with GoDaddy.com
But the actual hosting company is Linode. You can use http://www.whoishostingthis.com/ to check who is hosting any website.
It doesn’t really matter. Both service providers are 100% up and running. There are NO servers down.
Della Cate is right.
If the so-called “server” is down, then which server is currently hosting the stupid one page message they have now.
It’s all bullshit and we’re doing too much analysis to prove something we know.
Hello all, the website of a hosting company can be ‘100% up and running’, but this does not necessarily mean that the site or ‘node’ of their specific client is up. The level of service provided is limited by the amount of uptime that the client pays for.
This was found on the Linode website under FAQ:
“What is your SLA?
We’re not going to lie to you: server maintenance, upgrades, hardware and network issues, all affect a Linode in the same ways as any other provider. What we can boast about is our commitment to resolving these issues in the quickest fashion possible. Most customers will tell you the last time they rebooted was to take advantage of a plan upgrade. 99.9% uptime, or your lost time is refunded back to your account.”
My words – There are ways to increase uptime. You can go from 99.9% to 99.9999%. for every additional 9 digit, there are increased costs which would include combinations of redundant servers, sites, load balancing at all layers from application to presentation to transport to physical. If a site is just 99.9% available, it is still possible for it to go down due to an unplanned outage. Even Google has experienced this several times over the years:
http://news.cnet.com/widespread-google-outages-rattle-users/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/172614/google_outages_damage_cloud_credibility.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/major-sites-experience-outages-internet/story?id=17575288
In the even of downtime, it is also typical practice for many organizations to reconfigure the landing page with their domain name provider, eg GoDaddy. So that is why you can easily get a static page stating that the website is down. The actual location of this temporary page can be anywhere. It can even be in someone’s dropbox public folder, as it is very small.
That being said, we do not know exactly the nature of the issue nor the configuration or resiliency level being hosted at Linode. What we cannot say is that a site being down is definite proof that the affected company is a ‘scam’. It happens.
@Computerguy this all might be true, but a $100 million+ online business who’s job it is to broker traffic cannot justifiably have this amount of downtime so often. It is totally crazy and if Google went down this much they wouldn’t have a business right now.
It is back up now so I didn’t have a chance to test, but I bet it had absolutely nothing to do with the hosting. Next time it is down I’ll check in depth.
I do see that realscam.com is genuinely down. Looks like it wight be a DDOS attack.
I do see that realscam is currently down and that is what a real outage looks like. In fact it looks like it could be a DDOS attack. Wonder who would be interested in doing that???
@Ken Roklin
“If BB isn’t a MLM company why does BB pay affiliates to recruit new members and encouraging them to build a downline? Why not ban the recruitment of new members or not pay anyone after the 1st member they recruit? If it’s not an MLM, why must one have a sponsor to join?
Ken, one does not *have* to sponsor to join. In fact, joining is free. The Free member has access to 1000 impressions which they can use to advertise their own product or service. Building a downline is NOT a requirement to earn.
“…by building a downline you don’t have to buy as many traffic packs – your payment for recruiting new members.”
The company does give credits in the form of traffic for those who invite others, so if person A invites person B, A gets the credit. If person B invites another person C, B does get a credit, A gets absolutely no benefit. Thus the ‘ML’ part in MLM does not apply. Call it Direct Sales or Affiliate Marketing if you wish, but not MLM. Further, since the credit is not in the form of cash, the receiver of the credit has to use it before anything can be earned.
“Payment may not be in cash but in traffic, which is the same thing since otherwise you have to buy traffic packs in order for your panels to “move” or write stupid blogs. How in the world does writing a useless blog create traffic when it is on a site that nobody visits?”
To begin, we can’t make a generic statement and call blogs ‘stupid’. Some people share their personal experiences and genuinely wish to share it with others. That is a subjective opinion. Further, the point of writing blogs on small sites IS to increase the number of visits to those sites. In fact there are industries dedicated to recruiting bloggers to increase their site visibility. Remember that the terms used in blogs are searchable. So some people use the technique of looking for most frequently searched for terms on the net, then use those terms in their blogs knowing that this would generate more traffic.
“If in fact you are making money from BB it is not from the sale of a product but from people who will never get their “investment” back,
There are 3 main ways to earn revenue in BB.
(1) If someone registers as an advertiser only, you get 10% of all they spend in the advertising service. The tools used include geo-targeting, contextual targeting, down to the level of selecting specific cities to run campaigns.
(2) If someone registers as a publisher only, you get 10% of all revenue they receive as a result of traffic on their websites.
(3) If someone registers as an affiliate, you get credit in the form of traffic, which you can use to qualify panels, earning from spots rented on other publishers websites.
To say that the above are not ‘products’, well they are in fact ‘services’. Companies can and do pay agencies and brokers to have their websites advertised as a service. So it may technically be accurate to say there is no sale of physical ‘products’ but there are ‘services’ being provided.
“especially now that BB is in its last stages of existence.”
This is also a statement of opinion, based on interpretation of information received thus far. That does not make it a fact. I have observed people for over 1 year now expressing this opinion, but they are still waiting to see it happen.
“The tools used include geo-targeting, contextual targeting, down to the level of selecting specific cities to run campaigns.”
Have you seen the information on philsmy.com relating to his attempt to use the so called “services” of BB? It just didn’t work and Phil is a professional advertiser.
A campaign is set up on the BB website, is so basic that it is unlikely to have any impact and the reports provided are dreadful. The percentage of click throughs in something like a 3 month campaign were miniscule and cannot be regarded as value for money.
I am sitting here wondering which side of the fence you are on computerguy
Computerguy you seem faithful so lets have a shot –
Why are all the choice network sites fake companies using old BB addresses ? All the choice sites are dead and the blog idea won’t change this.
Why are there no legit advertisers doing reviews on how much their businesses and sales have grown, note actual businesses not their BB accounts.
Why do publishers get dodgy ads, no support tools and non-payment ?
Why are Stellarpoint’s promoted premium clients all fake companies ?
Why is BB, Stellarpoint’s only real “client” and that’s because his friend Chris Smith owns it. And even then Stellarpoint is a fake shop front to have a physical presence and keep BBI virtual, unreachable and simply a name and logo.
How come Stellarpoint handles payments, funding, money management (account management without advertising so far …) ID’s and personal information ect and they don’t keep peoples info confidential. All this and they don’t pay tax or VAT in the countries they operate in, ahh because they offer “support” for BB … yet their support is so bad they should have been terminated long ago.
David Hooker keeps saying they are compliant, they have an office, staff and people can visit. Why does he not correct himself and say this is Stellarpoint and not BB as BB has none of the above.
Why is Lorenzo Gurini using the BBI system and website to pass off Townbeats as a legit company when it’s simply him, who purchased 500 sets of headphones and is trying to flog the for a profit ?
Name the two shell companies behind BBI
seems Banners Broker have missed a trick, when their site was ‘down’ they could have claimed that the naughty bloggers caused a DDOS attack and that was beyond their control, blamed good Mr Finch here, apologized and asked affiliates for their patience again!
Nick – yes, RealScam is down. I have just tried it and got a “Content Encoding Error” (whatever that is). Been down for a few hours now.
I have no idea what a DDOS attack is, I have googled it, but what is it in layman’s terms?
All very perplexing………and that it should happen now……
Yes, please someone tell me what a DDOS attack is? I once had my email hacked into because I replied to a spam email in a not very nice way lol, but it is really scary how people can just ‘pop’ into your computer/systems. I hope RS is back soon, feel like my right arm is missing lol
…just googled it. Basically website is overloaded with fake traffic ie emails and gets exhausted and confused and won’t work anymore? Think we could try that on BB lol!!!!!
I wouldn’t put it past BB to try something like a DDOS attack. But I’d be impressed if they managed to pull it off. By all accounts, they can’t seem to organize even the simplest piss-up in a brewery (or dinner at a gala).
A few days ago my mother pretty much announced that I’m her son on one of the BB Facebook pages. Within about 48 hours, her account was frozen by Facebook after repeated login attempts from an IP in Canada. Seems a little suspicious to me. I’m trying to get the IP that was used for the login attempts.
Wouldn’t be surprised if it matched one of the many addresses I’ve got associated to BB…
DDOS attack is a “Distributed Denial Of Service” attack. This is basically a load of computers around the world that have been compromised (usually by a virus/trojan) and controlled by the owner. This is called a Botnet.
The owner of the Botnet can then tell all the computers to open a certain webpage over and over again at the same time thus overloading the server and bringing it down.
It’s very hard to protect against as the computers in the Botnet are real and all come from different IPs, so its hard to distinguish them from real users.
Oh and chances are if your anti-virus is not up to date then your computer could also be compromised and part of a botnet.
@Computerguy, you are aware that the 1000 impressions they give members is probably worth around $0.50 max. That’s if they exist at all (which they don’t). 1000 impressions lol!
Is her FB email the same as her BB one Finch, would be very telling if it is as I thought you needed to use an email to log into FB.
my 100k blind network campaign from November hasn’t even used 1000
Here’s why the RealScam site has been down today:
http://www.patrickpretty.com/2013/03/20/realscam-com-antiscam-site-is-under-ddos-attack/
@ computer guy
re-sign-up
On the BB website:
“Banners Broker is a private marketplace, signups are by referral only at this time. Please contact your referrer to receive their referral link.”
Re: MLM
“he company does give credits in the form of traffic for those who invite others, so if person A invites person B, A gets the credit. ” That is enough for a company to be an MLM company as per the definition.
From Wikipedia: “Multi-level marketing (MLM) is a marketing strategy in which the sales force is compensated not only for sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of the other salespeople that they recruit. ”
Re Blogs: “To begin, we can’t make a generic statement and call blogs ‘stupid’”. My statement wasn’t a generic statement it was a statement directed at BB blogs that I read. I should have been more specific, but over 90 % of the blogs from affiliates that I read I deemed STUPID as all they were were poorly written, factless and promoting a Ponzi scheme.
Re- products: I agree with you that the items you list are services and as such products, however, BB doesn’t earn the majority of their revenue from these products. BB’s primary source of revenue is from the fees it charges its members and from recruitment of new members not from the sale of products and services and therefor any money members get back are from these fees and not from the sale of a product or service.
I agree that my statement that BB is in its last stage of existence is my opinion and I base that on the track record of the owners involvement of similar businesses. What proof have you got that the owners in their previous businesses/scams that they have been involved in has lasted longer than 3 years?
time for next laugh
IMPORTANT WEBINAR 3/20/13- Announcement from Chris Smith:
Chris speaking:
Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. This is Chris Smith. I wanted to do a quick impromptu webinar to announce a few things as to why our site has been down. And is going down again. People have said we are not communicating, so we are trying to do that now.
A few days ago, yesterday, the site was offline until this morning, over 24 hours. This was out of our control, it was the hosting company, and we waited for the resolution to the problem. Today we have made the decision that because we have alot of members who depend on us, we have lost faith with that provider, and we have decided to move on to a new provider. We want to provide you the best servicee, to all our loyal members who have been with us for the past 2 years. Rapid growth has caused some of the difficulties, and we are now seeking better support from a provider. We want to make sure we are able to provide a more stable platform.
With this change we will have a larger port, which should address some of the items we faced last week with the increased amount of traffic which comes with 2.9. We’ve now seen what is required, and the new server will be able to perform much better. It will take a day or two to do the migration. Migration will begin in the next hour. The downside is the offtime. The upside is that when we are up we will be in a much more stable environment and have a much better relationship with our provider. So that is the news I wanted to share with you.
We are looking forward to bringing you a bigger and better and more stable environment. BB is here for you. Talk to you soon.
end of webinar
A LARGER PORT!! HAHAHAHAHA!! Chris Smith the COMPUTER GENIUS!
The only LARGER PORT Chris is going to have is the one he is currently using to defecate with.
Chris Smith is insulting the intelligence of his followers (300,000 of them).
As we all know, hosting companies operate hundreds and often thousands of servers… all racked up in server farms. If a customer runs out of server space, speed or bandwidth then they simply buy more storage, server processors and so on…. They don’t go to another hosting company.
First, for months there are excuses why payments are not made. Blame others, blame MasterCard, blame the size of payments,…. But now, its the technical infrastructure that is blamed….. They cannot cope with the demand.
The testing question is: what will they use for an excuse next? Maybe Google will be blamed for stealing marketing dollars from the so-called blind networks? Or maybe it’s the Cyprus government threatening to take 10% of everyone’s bank deposits.
Please help me here… what is next on the list of excuses? Should we get Chris Smith an introduction to the German government so he can borrow some money?
What a load of rubbish. Their homepage doesn’t need to come down as they are managing to show that holding page, which is hosted on their server by the way.
Migration between servers and/or hosting providers need not have any (or very little) downtime. More lies.
Funny how their subdomains are still up (e.g. support) showing that their hosting is fine.
Wonder why they are doing this. Maybe they are going to try to claim hackers are sabotaging their technology as a reason for shutdown.
I agree, BB’s latest excuse is very poor. The company I work for run a multitenancy datacetre which we sell to clients (i.e. “Cloud”) The datacentre is built to 5 nines and the compute platform is 4 nines, everything is fault tolerent, if a server fails it would simply V-Motion accross to a new server. In essence were talking about an annual downtime of between 5-50 minutes.
In my opinion these recent outages are just an excuse to keep hold of peoples money for a bit longer….
Unfortunately the website will be down anywhere from 24 hours + when transferring it to another hosting company. That is due to transferring the DNS from the current host to the new host and uploading the files to the new servers. The new DNS record must be sent throughout the world’s WHOIS servers. Then the company will need to test the site to make sure all the files have uploaded and are working. That will take some time as well.
Even though Go Daddy is a low cost hosting company it is up to BB to buy more storage to ensure their server can handle the traffic. The server being down has nothing to do with Go Daddy and everything to do with BB. Moving to another hosting company will not solve BB’s problems. Even though the site is down I’m sure they have no problems in collecting their admin and traffic pack fees from their members.
It does look more and more like another delaying tactic while they get as much money as they can (about $15mil/month) prior to shutting it down.
Perhaps the old hosting company have pulled the plug and no longer want to be associated with BB, just like MasterCard, perhaps somone should inform their new hosting partner. Most people would plan a transition between hosting partners.
For the record, ALL of the hundreds of DNS changes I have made, including nameserver transfers, have taken at most 1.5 hours to propegate, with the mean time sitting at around 20 minutes…
Was going to say the same thing as Anon, DNS doesn’t usually take so long and also your website doesn’t need to go down at all when you move over, you just have 2 functioning versions of the front end of the site on both new and old servers and then the DNS propagation will show to be seamless. It’s only the back end db that you’d need to switch off while you are waiting otherwise you’ll have un-synced data.
Maybe they need that amount of time to pack their bags and move?
What a coincidence, last week, another ponzi Profitable Sunrise went offline and took $100 million+ … folks on Facebook are still waiting for that mighty migration of servers. It’s funny how these scams are using the same excuses.
BB in the Irish press again, if anyone wants to read it:-
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/investment-firm-assures-clients-after-setback-226070.html
I remember, two or three months ago Finsch wrote that it will be a miracle if BB will last till spring. First day of spring is today, but the page is down for three days – so no miracle today? 😉
The rumour has it that the SEC have gone in. No surprise there lol
is it possible that american government can investigate Belize company ?
no answers like: “everything is possible to american government”
That has nothing to do with it. Bank account offshore etc. They trade out of Canada. And a ponzi will get closed down no matter where it is .
is there any source of this rumour? it is important to prove this kind of information.
I’m curious what amount of money did people payed in and out. But more curious about “payed in” ?
Guy you’re forgetting, Chris Smith and Raj Dikshit might have the BB followers fooled in respect to them pretending Stellarpoint is not really Banners Broker ect and only offers support, but to any government agency they see right through that little setup.
It doesn’t matter if BB is in the IOM or Belize, Stellarpoint is BB. There are also at least two more companies behind BB as well.
@ Jane
“That has nothing to do with it. Bank account offshore etc. They trade out of Canada. And a ponzi will get closed down no matter where it is .”
Actually that is not true. BB is not a Canadian company (only the owners are).
Banners Broker International, International Head Office 35 Road Belize City, Belize C.A.
Canada cannot shut down a company that is not operating in Canada. Stellar Point which is an Ontario Corporation, as per their website, is a consulting company offering sales training, coaching, customer service and web site development. There is no mention of BB on their website anywhere.
Canadian authorities can’t shut down BB. It could shut down Stellar but what for? There are no contracts between Stellar and a BB affiliate. Raj has learned a lot from his previous scam, IFC (headquartered in Ontario) which was ordered to cease operations based on their business model – Ponzi.
Does anyone know if someone who deposited funds with BB using a credit card and has had nothing back (because I couldn’t bring myself to recruit), are likely to get their initial deposit back from the credit card company. I think they call it a section 74 in the UK. I’m down about 2k (£)!! Bit of a mare… feel stupid.
@ Ken,
Ok, well they have gone irrespective!
little joke time:
What is the similar organization to SEC in Belize ?? ;)))
ECDP – El Controlario Del Ponzi Scenario;)
@ BB
Don’t feel stupid. Business is a risk and Banners was HIGH RISK. With any business you only put in what you can afford to lose. If it fails you don’t lose everything, if it takes off happy days.
Easy Money for doing nothing is HIGH RISK. Unfortunately, the writing was on the wall when it started over 2 years ago.
It was so easy to predict.
Such a pathetic, infantile form of coaxial, teletubbie web page, can never be called serious business.
It is better to invest in a trip to Las Vegas – same chance to win.
Shame on people who put more than few bucks to play.
@Banner Bollocks
If you deposited within the last 120 days you could ask your CC company for a refund.
Good luck.
here David Hooker shows how BB ARE AFFECTED BY THE SITE BEING DOWN [ONLY KIDDING]
Friday Q&A Webinar
David Hooker speaking:
Chris is traveling and tied up with corporate things. A tremendous amount happening. I’ve been in Paris, and have now arrived here in Spain meeting tremendous leaders and members later tonight.
Blue Mercedes promotion. Blue mercedes panel. Someone will be driving a beautiful Mercedes which will be given away in Niagara Falls in July.
You need to be present in Niagara Falls to be eligible to win.
WEbsite has been down for maintenance due to problems with major cyber attacks which have affected our service provider, so we have now decided to change service providers and will be back up soon. There is a new maintenance message up. The website will be back up soon.
Stephanie spoke about the upcoming convention in July at Niagara Falls, Canada. When the site comes back up, please see the information about buying your tickets. http://www.thebbtour.com
If you need a letter of invite for this convention in order to get a visa to attend, please contact your IC in your country. If you are in a country that does not have an IC, please send email:
fax@bannersbroker.com to request the invitation letter and one of our team will get back to you.
Tickets for the event will be on sale early next week. If you have any further questions, please call Stellar Point for more detailed information. Stellar Point is hosting our wonderful event and can give you all the detailed information.
If you are serious about your business, you really should attend the invention. It will help grow your business in the future.
We are anxious to get back online for a faster and smoother experience on the website.
Thank you.
end of webinar
Well that’s a lie.
You can’t put up a holding page without re-routing the DNS (which they didn’t do) and you certainly can’t have sub-domains like support.bannersbroker etc. working.
It wasn’t a “Cyber Attack” (or DDOS) as they claim, it’s a downright verifiable lie.
How did we guess they were going to try to push that line? Or maybe they are getting their direction from this blog 🙂
@Nick
They are getting their directions from here and at RealScam, and probably every other HYIP thread discussing them. Blooming internet, bit of a scallyway isn’t it.
If the Canada event is anything like the UK one, they might as well just do it all through online webinars because that’s how helpful the thinking people thought the UK event was, a waste of money and time, gala was a rip off as well.
“We are anxious to get back online for a faster and smoother experience on the website. ”
Every thinker has been waiting for this for nearly the past 3 years you fool Hooker, it goes from one joke to another each week with BB and it’s “management team” of clowns.
You know their membership numbers are fictional when they are only expecting 2000 (less than 1% or even half a %) out of 500,000 + at their 2013 mega event.
Just a FYI, use it as you will….
I thought you all would be interested in knowing, that the gentleman that put BB in the situation they’re in…the man behind the “straightline-doubler-cycler” introduction, and all of the other crap BB has had to address and deal with for the past 2 years, Kul, is about to open his own version of BB in Portugal April 1st.
My sources inform me, that he was the initial VP of sales responsible for putting BB on the map, he spread the talk about how the program would double your money, and he was subsequently fired for doing all of that and putting BB in the position they’re in now. If you really want to take a look at how scams get started and how they grow, this is the direction you’ll want to look. He’s behind the $1.4 Million dollars taken from affiliates wrongfully in the UK, and he’s why you’ve got over 500 posts about BB being questionable. Everything he did was poison to BB, and they’ve spent the past year trying to fix what he broke…inside and out. Does BB have problems of their own? Hell yes, but they’re at least working to fix things from my findings. Kul however, has no interest in playing above board…he’s looking to get rich and run.
After looking at my available options, you Finch are the best means to draw attention to this person, his “new company” which is a BB clone by the way, and exposing information so others run from him. He’s counting on your help in keeping BB as the bad guy in order to draw affiliates away to his scheme to get rich off them and then disappear.
BB has issues, and I’ve been digging deep to see where they go, and this fucktard Kul seems to be the main poison BB has been trying to extract while trying to keep their heads afloat. He’s a cancer and people need to be warned of his actions.
As I uncover more information I’ll pass it on.
Keep up the fight!
W
I am not an “affiliate” with Banners Brokers, but I have several friends who have substantial amounts of money invested in this. I have been reading this blog on and off for a few months and have found it very informative, actually this blog is what made me steer clear of this wonderful “once in a lifetime opportunity” and I cannot thank you all enough for that. Anyway, I just found out that the bannersbroker.com website cannot be accessed at all. What comes up is “This webpage is not available”
The webpage at http://bannersbroker.com/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address.
Error 103 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_ABORTED): Unknown error. This certainly does not look good, and I really feel for anyone who got suckered into this mess
@Whistler – BB is and always has been a Ponzi scam. No one is trying to clean it up.
The web site is back up again
like a phoenix bb rises from the ashes a brand new more powerful server free blue panel to the first 1 to find the amazing new server that is going to take bb affiliates to the next level
only kidding about the panel lol.
After reading all of these comments, I think I’ll give BB a miss….
Looks like BB are’nt the only ones.
Dear Friends,
Profitable Sunrise Technical Team is presently doing server migration*. This will give you a more productive system.
Downtime : Approximately 36-48 hours.
Sorry for the inconvenience caused.
Have a Blessed Day!
Profitable Sunrise Team.
BB site is down again!!
Look Whistler… get it into your head .. its a rip off a con a ponzi .. whatever you want to describe it as. I have invested a lot of money into it and I am now finding it to be a get rich quick scheme for all the ones with big down lines etc… I will not have a downline because I am not dragging anybody into this scam.
Get a grip pal and dont be brainwashed by the few who promote it..
I used to think it was a genuine business untill I started to learn about internet advertising and how BB never discloses any happy business customers etc … That says to me .. its a very clever Ponzi… and pretty panels to watch as they fill up over the weeks…
Hey Whistler,
Where is the evidence that you’re relying on to make your assertions? Are you providing a person opinion or providing us with facts. If they’re facts, please provide the independent sources that we can verify. It’s easy to say that a rouge employee has embezzled from BB and was the cause of its problems.
Whistler isnt brainwashed. He is lying. Come on guys, time to take off the blinkers!!
I think it’s fair to say that everyone on this blog would love to find a genuine and honest way where money can be made easily. That a Google online advertising competitor can show affiliates how to double their money every few weeks. Even people on Wall Street would jump on it. The trouble is BB has NEVER provided any independent or verifiable factual information. Instead, BB blames the whole world for its poor performance (not paying on time, server down time, slow movement of panels, etc.)
The most polite way to describe the true-believers who insist on believing whatever the thieves at BB tell them is that they’re cult followers. By definition, a cult requires its followers to never question what they’re been asked to do.
In the absence of facts by BB, many of us here have tried to verify the information about so-called blind networks, about the value/income from panel advertising, about the likelihood that an internet server can be offline for 1 to 2 or 3 days in 2013…. and so on.
The cult followers probably still believe in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. Madoff ran his scheme from 1960 to 2008 before it collapsed. But it was Ponzi and nothing but a Ponzi.
Madoff confessed to his 2 sons that his Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was “one big lie” and is now in prison.
The boys behind BB know this… that you can run a Ponzi for as long as you can keep recruiting suckers to fund the cash they need to pay the people up the rungs in the pyramid…. and when the music stops (no more fresh blood) they will be far from the law… and hide in some tax shelter place under a rock.
It looks like BB has moved their website to an in-house server:
http://www.whoishostingthis.com/hosting-reviews/no-profile/?q=Banners+Broker
This way, anything goes!!!
In house server….can you please explain what that means for us technophobes! Cheers.
it basically means no webhosting company wants to be associated with this scam so they have no option but run the server in their own dirty office rather than in a professional high-grade data-center.
the new all powerful server is down again with time out notices flying across the globe
…does anyone know where the MAIN office is? The one with the crap server?
Let me post this awesome rebuttal by theguardianuno
[quote]First I will lay out a picture for everyone on how things have happened, I will then address Whistlers post.
Let me make this clear the official story BB uses now is not entirely true, neither was the story Kul used at meetings when he travelled around each country under Chris Smith’s supervision and direction as the “VP of sales and marketing”. BB started with Kul Josun, Chris Smith, Lorenzo Gurini and Raj Dikshit. They borrowed $30,000 from Kul Josun’s brother who they paid back $90,000.
When I say BB is run by amateurs I truly mean this and you will understand why. There has always been fighting behind the scenes, Chris Smith is a quiet guy who lets Raj Dikshit command everything. In the early days Kul Josun used to think his position was higher than it was and would order the staff around like he was above them. This caused problems between him and Lorenzo Gurini which eventually lead to them all send Kul Josun off to do meetings when they were up to something and didn’t want him to know about.
So Kul Would travel to the UK, Ireland, Portugal and doing meetings with the people who would be the IC’s eventually. For anyone who attended these meetings it was clear Kul couldn’t answer any questions and he would sit back basically and everyone thought he was awesome for some reason. He also told people he was the only owner. I have it on good authority that the then that “not IC’s” didn’t have contact with Chris Smith and Kul was their only contact for any problems.
Kul was never a professional, I know many people who joined BB in those days who were waiting weeks for their accounts to be funded because Kul messed around. People were told to send funds to bank accounts which Kul would then fund their Ewallet. This was a time when people would join with 20/30/40k +. Eventually his daughter came into the picture and they would take peoples details who had problems and say they would fix things which never happened.
I have a person who now regrets their actions but they were involved with the scammer group I mentioned previously, this group was originally going to blackmail Kul via Sharon James trying to sleep with him and then Imitaz Aslam planning to hire a call girl. In the end they didn’t have to do any of this as they managed to get Kul onside to get Ian Driscoll removed from BB as they wanted his position.
Suddenly this group of con men are cross pitching Zeek Rewards at the UK meetings and it apparently took lots of effort to get Kul to act, which makes perfect sense when you know the full picture. BB HQ eventually sent Sharon, Imitaz, Keith all cease and desist letters with the understanding that the next thing they did wrong would cause them to be removed from Banners Broker.
In-between all this Banners Broker was about to hand Lieven Van Neste the whole account management setup, which he would have people working for next to nothing whilst he creamed the big cut for overseeing all this. Eventually Lieven was removed from BB and everyone was told not to talk with him or you will be kicked out as well. No one knows why this happened but it came about later that Kul had a hand in this and used Raj to facilitate it. Eventually Banners Broker would pay off Lieven to keep him quiet after he was going to serve legals to them at the Ireland Event.
Now the Portugal event was happening, this would be the first time anyone has seen Chris Smith and Raj Dikshit. Insider info tells me Kul booked the most expensive room at the hotel and Raj/Chris got very basic ones with their families.
One day Chris/Raj went out on a family day when Kul told all the now IC’s there was a meeting, it turned out whilst Chris/Raj were out Kul invited a German MLM company (NWA ) to do a presentation to the IC’s in an effort to sign them up and buy a country position and thousands in product, which he wanted them to run alongside BB. A few IC’s went straight to Raj who then took them to Chris, Chris locked Kul’s BB account and told him to speak to him via the locked message. It turned out a few weeks previously Kul has withdrawn $60,000 from his BB account to buy into this company under his daughters name without her knowing, when Chris/Raj grilled her over this she left the event in tears, Kul vanished as well.
Then another guy from the UK appeared called Michael Young and attempted to carrying out black mail against Banners Broker as it turned out Imitaz Aslam has taken Kul to meet this guy when he visited Manchester earlier.
It turned out that Kul had sold all the IC’s that he was the owner with Chris Smith working for them as they only had contact with him. He also came to light he had given people different bank accounts and siphoned millions from all the countries (Ireland, UK, Portugal and India) to his personal offshore accounts. Take note BB/Stellarpoint’s Terry Stern recently was very happy to try and pass the blame onto Ian Driscoll for this but now the truth has come out.
The funny thing is, Chris Smith let Kul walk away with those millions and also paid him off on top of this, the big question is why, any honest business would go after him using the law and authorities, but they needed to keep him quiet.
Let me make this clear, everything Kul Josun managed to do was because of the way Chris Smith and Raj Dikshit run BB, like amateurs and allowed their staff to run wild. Any legitimate audit will bring Banners Broker, Raj and Chris to their knees as Kul took millions which they cannot explain. They have never kept detailed records or accounting from day one.
So Kul Josun is out of the picture and has been silent from then until now when the Whistler dragged his name into the fold and put all BB’s problems onto him. Kul is again trying to get BB people into several other dubious things with Kulclub ( Very Funny ) and in all probability gulible people will get ensnared.
The funny thing is despite Lieven and Kul removed, Raj Dikshit has taken the power position in running and controlling EVERYTHING, Chris Smith is a yes man who lets Raj control the entire operation through Stellarpoint.
After Portugal Kul was silent, his team mates Imitaz Aslam, Sharon James, Carol Matthews ect were not. They went around selling their stock (panels) for below BB prices and sold their multiple positions. Imitaz Aslam told everyone BB would be gone by Christmas 2012 as he was working with Kul.
Eventually Kul lead them all down the garden path getting them to pay for his medical expenses in the UK, joining Sizzle and they realised he played them. Now they tag along with Simon Stepsys and cross-pitch Empower Network which David Hooker allows them to do at UK meetings despite many complaints to him. Then they all get taken out to Canada and get a tour and time with Chris Smith, talk about amateur hour after everything that’s happened …
Whistler, I hope this has educated you and you see that Chis and BB create their own problems. BB are not a fantastic company nor are the people behind it now, they are outright liars and con men of the highest level who on a daily basis deceive their affiliates and have no regard for them, you only need to look at how many people depend on payments and BB have not made any effort to do them for 5 months now or add multiple payout options, they have limited everyone using silly rules which they change at will without informing people and instructing them to re-read and accept.
the cancer you speak of are people like
– Raj Dikshit who controls BB through Stellarpoint
– Simon Stepsys and all the other conmen selling thousands of panels for cash in hand and making excuses for BB and roping people into BB for their own pure greed
– Every BB affiliate who can’t use their head and just thinks everything is perfect and awesome
As for Kul opening his own version of BB, no he is not, he openly spoke last year about doing portfolio type setup which included Forex deals and selling land and hair brained schemes, Josun has never even succeeded in building a team. He deceived leaders all around the World that he owned BBI and that they were a legitimate company doing advertising and it only started to show all the cracks and discrepancies later, so suspicions were raised and some of those leaders started to realise they had made big mistakes and backed off. The payment crisis with BBI is now at epic proportions with affiliates all over the world being owed serious amounts of money and deeply concerned if or when they will get paid, and the limits imposed on them. So all in all its a complete mess.
[/quote]
What do you say to that ,Whistler?
Wow… the history provided above by Nourjan Nanash does not seem surprising at all.
Sounds just about right for a scam….. Question is, how was this information obtained?
@ Nourjan Nanash
I would say that is pretty much spot on lol.
Hm,
why You all ppl thnik, that scammers will start new scams?
I think, that many known people (from different, strong countries) invested their money into BB.
Thats the reason, that if BB will be a true scam – they all will go to jail (probably to rest of their lives).
If not to the rest of their lives – for many, many years.
You,ve had some examples in US last years.
Also I think, that many criminals or mafia invested their money too into BB.
So if they lose money, they will find guilty ppl for sure (maybe some ppl lose their lives soon).
So, people – please stop talk like that. Even BB is now a Ponzi scheme, I think it cen be strong company someday. I think many ppl around the world trust – they can.
If there are big problems inside BB – they need to resolve it. As soon as possible. Change some rules, go and work harder. They have cash, and they need to use it in right way. Stop panels trade definately for example.
Use faster cards processors etc.
One thing is important – BB needs to hire a lot of workers, and smart engeeners to start finally organic grow.
Also, all VIP and people who don’t build BB trully, should be banned definately from the system. Cancer must be removed – after that idea + good trade mark can be very profitable – after next few years hard, working time.
Cheers!
I just received a call from my rather distraught friend, her husband has put a large amount of money into this, and now the site is down again. Apparently it has been down for sometime. I just tried to access the site and it says Google Could Not Connect, which is different than the error I got a couple of days ago. I am so glad that when I was doing research on BB (my friends husband was really pushing for me to invest in this, his words were “I don’t understand why you just don’t do this, it’s a sure thing. If you do this this right you could more than double your money in just a few months, etc.) blog came up. I know I said this a couple of days ago, but I am very grateful to Finch and all of you for taking the time to bring this to light. I just wish more people listened to what was posted here it could have saved them a lot of grief; especially if they are like me and don’t have money they can afford to lose.
This is worth repeating as I see posters stating they invested money they couldn’t afford to lose in these scams. When being offered “new opportunities to double your money in a short time” read the following tips and see if any one of them applies to the “opportunity”.
By:
“Jeffrey S. Posta
Member of the Bankruptcy & Creditor’s Rights Group
Here are some tips to recognize or prevent these schemes:
1. Exaggerated earnings claims should be scrutinized, especially when there seems to be no real underlying product sales or investment profits. The plan could be a Ponzi scheme where money from later recruits pays off earlier ones. Eventually this program will collapse.
2. Offers of commissions for recruiting new distributors are suspect, particularly when there is no product involved or when there is a separate, up-front membership fee. At the same time, do not assume that the presence of a purported product or service removes all danger.
3. In the sale of a product or service, check to see whether its price is inflated, whether new members must buy costly inventory, or whether members make most “sales” to other members, rather than the general public. The presence of any of these conditions may indicate that the purported “sale” of the product or service hides a pyramid scheme that promotes an endless chain of recruiting and inventory loading.
4. Claims of a secret plan, overseas connection or special relationship that is difficult to verify, are suspect. Charles Ponzi claimed that he had a secret method of trading and redeeming millions of postal reply coupons. The real secret was that he stopped redeeming them and used new money to pay old investors.
5. Delays in meeting commitments while asking members to “keep the faith” are a red flag. Many pyramid schemes advertise that they are in the “pre-launch” stage, yet they never can and never do launch. Pyramid schemes can never fulfill their obligations to a majority of their participants by definition. To survive, they need to keep and attract as many members as possible. Promoters will try to appeal to a sense of community or solidarity, while criticizing outsiders or skeptics.
6. Hi-tech or newly deregulated markets are prime territory for these schemes. Every investor wants to become wealthy overnight, but most hi-tech ventures are risky and yield substantial profits only after years. Similarly, deregulated markets can offer substantial benefits to investors and consumers, but deregulation seldom means that no rules apply, and that a pyramid or Ponzi scheme is suddenly legitimate.
7. Regular field audits should be completed by a trusted, independent third party.
8. The third party should scrutinize even the most trustworthy of customers as closely as it would a suspicious person or entity.
9. Do not rely solely on records provided by a company or its so-called captive accounting firm. Independent accountants should verify the information; the added cost may save you millions.
Ponzi and pyramid schemes rely on funds from new investors to pay returns, commissions or bonuses to old investors. Both require an inexhaustible supply of new investors to be sustained, since neither has a profitable product nor an effort to make a profit through real work. They have been around a long time and show no sign of slowing down. Do not become yet another victim.”
Ken – some excellent advice there.
Common sense that could save people a lot of heartache.
thumbs up Ken nice post …. still am amazed how mindless people believe all the lies BB comes up with ….
kind regards
brenie
The biggest eye opener:
why does BB only count impressions and not banner real estate ?
a simple small banner on a high traffic site would be 200 euro / month, while a big header could be sold at least for 1000 euro / week
With BB there’s no difference, an impression is an impression so they don’t know shit about advertising.
Furthermore, if you start a campaign on the choice network to promote BB, the destination url is not http://bannersbroker.com/affiliate, but http://fake_choice_site.com/user=affiliate
So it’s all fake and nothing real or todo with advertising
The post by Nourjan Nanash is easily the most informative and genuinely newsworthy comment this year. It’s too precisely detailed to be anything other than the truth.
Unfortunately, the website has returned ‘under maintenance’. I say unfortunately because I wish that these crooks would just fuck the fuck off so that we can all forget about the losses incurred and move on.
And forget you must ‘Concerned’ because your friend’s husband will not get back one brass farthing of his stake in this sorry excuse for a business.
You’re best not getting drawn into the explanations or the fallout because the bearer of bad news is often made the scapegoat for the foolishness of those who get up to their necks in shit that has emanated from the arses of liars.
well its been down all day but now we have a new under maintenance page complete with video to tell us all about the niagra trip how very thoughtful of bb
Oh my goodness this is what is posted on their Facebook page:
Message from our very Honest and Humble CEO Mr Chris Smith; Hey everyone, Rajiv and I had a little legal problem and my phone was confiscated so the engine is down. Don’t worry, IT is on it. We are here for the long haul!
@D.Pressed I know that you are probably 100% right here, but the sad thing is they have three small children. It is a terrible thing that so many people were taken in not only by Chris Smith and his pack of thieves, but in some cases it was their friends and co-workers who put pressure on them so that they could benefit when they joined. This whole thing is a sickening mess and so many individuals are going to be affected by this, it goes deeper than just the one who made the initial “investment”
Simon Stepsys wonder why this hugely successful guy has not updated his fantastic bb page on face book since february 16th and wheres his response to be openly called a crook
Simon Stepsys is currently busy trying to sell as many panels and packages as possible for cash in hand since liquidations from BB aren’t happening for months now. He is happy to lure new people in for his greed.
David Hooker stopped him, and 4 people below him transferring 100,000 worth of panels to a new sign up 5 levels below him this week.
Regarding the Chris Smith message I’m pretty confident it’s a troll …
@concerned. That could be true for the people who came in at the beginning,(althrough ‘get rich quick schemes’ should always arouse suspicion) but recently? No. There is an abundance of info on the internet. Heaving with reports of BB being a scam and if people have been blinded by greed and refuse to see what is so obviously a scam then my sympathy over the last few weeks has now most definitely gone i’m afraid.
…have just read my last post and realise its a bit harsh.
Della Cate (on RS) posted a little while ago that she thought there were three types of people involved in BB. 1/ the criminal element 2/ the BB cult who genuinely believe that BB is REAL and 3/ the sheep that follow them. I’m on here to fight for the sheep. But for no 2 on my list, my previous comment still stands…
Just got banned from talking BB for asking questions. It’s strange how my opinion has changed over the last few months.
Mark, talkingBB is fully under the control of Stellarpoint now, Hooker and Stern have moved in and made Waters and the other guy their bitches. Quite sad that both shill and apologize for BB and the recent bad changes.
http://talkingbb.com/index.php?topic=4750.msg61717#msg61717
“Hi Guys,
Have just received $127k in a settlement from my Mum’s estate.
I want to put $100k into an existing BannersBroker account.
Could someone recommend which panels/TPs they would buy with $100k and how long would it take, to be able to withdraw $5k a week with those panels.?
Thank you in advance for any ideas.
Cheers.
Jenny.”
@ True Story
It doesn’t matter what panels you buy, pick a colour, any colour, the result will be the same. As for how long will it take to withdraw 5K a week? Well, let’s see, how old are you? If you are in your twenties, it will take you 90 years or so, slightly less if you are older.
That’s someone posting on TalkingBB. Hence the link and quotations. I bet the people over there didn’t give the girl a true evaluation of BB in it’s current form, but rather encouraged her to go ahead. Scum utter scum.
@ True Story
Yes I saw that but hit the submit button before I finished. I was going to finish with a comment stating that Jane, after all these posts, couldn’t be that gullible to still look at BB as an investment. I think it’s just someone being facetious.
@ True Story
Dude your better off buying gold, silver or a Bitcoin mining machines.
Or give the money to me:)
But whatever you do DO NOT invest in Banners. I and all my mates have lost money + confidence.
Soooo …. I have read some information that speaks to some of BB’s history. If the information presented is true, it speaks to a mixture of power play, politics, bad management, firing of greedy people at the top and other stuff. Based on this information, I see others commenting that based on their interpretation of the information, that the system is a scam.
Summary of information presented:
– There has always been fighting behind the scenes
– Chris Smith is a quiet guy who lets Raj Dixit command everything (spelling of last name corrected – if information is being presented it should be objective and accurate. Spelling names inaccurately does not lend credence to the truth of a story) .
– Kul had sold all the IC’s that he was the owner. He deceived leaders all around the World that he owned BBI.
– In Portugal, Kul booked the most expensive room at the hotel and Raj/Chris got very basic ones with their families.
– In Portugal, whilst Chris/Raj were out, Kul invited a German MLM company (NWA ) to do a presentation to the IC’s in an effort to sign them up. A few IC’s went straight to Raj who then took them to Chris, Chris locked Kul’s BB account which was quickly followed by his dismissal from the company altogether.
– Everything Kul Josun managed to do was because of ineffective management from Chris Smith and Raj Dixit. Chris Smith is a yes man who lets Raj control the entire operation through Stellarpoint.
– Kul has now exited the company.
– People have been awaiting payment for months.
Interesting stuff. Let me see how more educated posters than myself analyse the above information, if it is in fact correct.
Comments:
BBJoke: “The history provided above by Nourjan Nanash does not seem surprising at all. Sounds just about right for a scam. Question is, how was this information obtained?”
So in other words, because BB fired Kul for doing wrong, which was facilitated by weak management, the company is a scam? Hmmmmmm…. let me try to understand that again …. speaking very slowly now … BB fires Kul for doing wrong, so BB is a scam ….. Sooooo …. if this is the case, what would happen if the company DIDN’T fire Kul for wrongdoing? Would this make the company legit? … I’m sorry, I just can’t go along with that logic. Because it is taking the direction of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’. The question about the source of the information is a good one though.
Jane: “I would say that is pretty much spot on lol.”
This comment only appears to validate information, not interpret it, so is in essence neutral. Good comment Jane. How do you it is ‘spot on’ though, do you also have inside information?
Eunika: “I think it can be strong company someday…… If there are big problems inside BB – they need to resolve it. As soon as possible. Change some rules, go and work harder. They have cash, and they need to use it in right way.”
This appears to be the most balanced response to the post. There are problems that need to be resolved. But If a company has management problems that need to be resolved internally, does that make the company a scam? If this is the basis for calling a company a scam, then many corporate businesses are scams. Facebook is a scam, because there was infighting, power plays, etc. as part of its history. Microsoft is a scam, because at one point in its history, Bill Gates took a back seat and let someone else (Ballmer) run everything.
Another comment being repeatedly seen is that because there are delayed payments, the company is a scam. This follows the logic principle which essentually states:
– Scams delay payments.
– BB delays payments.
– BB is a scam.
Of course, while the first two statements have a similar situation, does this mean the end result is accurate? Let me try that.
– Theives drive cars.
– I drive a car.
– I am an thief.
From what I see, the company does have some inefficiencies and some things can be handled a little differently, such as the change control process for production systems. I will continuing to watch and see how everything plays out.
Few years ago I invested money $300 for admantrix. I lost all my money. Since it was new company for me i waited for result. I thought of investing last month. Still I waited for a month. All of the sudden ha!!!!!!!!!!!!1.
Computerguy, Raj’s original name is “Dikshit” he then changed it to “Dixit”
David Hooker mocked him in the UK back in Dec/January by calling him “Dikshit” at meetings which got me curious and everyone else and thus we found another piece of truth.
@ComputerGuy
” – Chris Smith is a quiet guy who lets Raj Dixit command everything (spelling of last name corrected – if information is being presented it should be objective and accurate. Spelling names inaccurately does not lend credence to the truth of a story)”.
Your edit is incorrect, the original Dikshit is in fact his name.
Also why did Chris Smith let Kul Josun walk away with the millions he stole to multiple offshore accounts, on top of this they paid him off as well in order to keep him quiet, just as they did with Lieven Van Neste when he was going to serve them at the Ireland event.
If Kul Josun had nothing which could harm them, they would have gone to the police/taken legal action with full force.
At every turn the company digs itself a bigger and deeper hole, by deceiving affiliates, not following their own terms and conditions and changing things constantly in their favor to delay growth and payouts from affiliate accounts.
Ultimately you just cherry picked points to argue how this possibly isn’t a scam, use all the happenings and the current ones including 2.9 and why BB cover for people like Simon Stepsys.
@ ComputerGuy
I can see where you are trying to not condemn BB as a scam by taking a couple of negative comments and analyzing them. How about taking all the comments and posts where BB’s business model has been exposed as a Ponzi scheme and analyzing that.
You can’t seriously be that naive not to see that BB sells only to its own members and therefore all its revenue is from its own affiliates (a clue that it’s a Ponzi scheme). BB doesn’t sell a single item to anyone other than BB members.
Their latest, writing blogs to increase traffic is ludicrous. It’s just another way to delay paying members what they think they have earned. Of course if you don’t want to write blogs you can also recruit more members and get paid (Ponzi scheme alert) with traffic – now how is that going to generate thousands of impressions?
Anyone with a lick of sense at this point would ask why Banners Broker is spending all its time looking for new money and worrying about blogging? If this was a real business, they would be brokering ads as they claim, nothing else. If they are so successful brokering, they would be getting out of the affiliate business, not looking for more new funds.
At this point, only hopeless dreamers think this is anything other than a sham.
Here is a clue to all of this!
Bull Shit Baffles Brains (even the best brains) and so many people believe what they want to believe.
You can see what MONEY and BULL SHIT does to even the most intelligent people 🙂
…all BB has to do to prove its NOT a scam is to produce payment details of the supposed sites they are renting for affiliates to put these banners on. Correct me if I’m wrong, but BB say that they buy in bulk at auctions for rock bottom prices? Just PROVE this, and I’ll be converted.
Hi ComputerGuy
Ask yourself: why do BB have affiliates?
As I see it, affiliates only cost BB money, because BB offer to pay them out much more than the affiliates put in. The original claim was to “double your money”.
When BB started, maybe they needed affiliate money for working capital. But according to BB, the company passed the multi-million dollar turnover stage almost 2 years ago. If they didn’t have enough money by then, they could easily have attracted venture capital far more cheaply than doubling the money of multi-thousand affiliates. And with a fraction of the admin costs.
You see, I just don’t get it. Affiliates do no “work”, they just make a few mouse-clicks. Affiliates bring in no business. In short, affiliates are useless to the company. So why is BB so keen to bring in more and more affiliates, which only cost BB money, but add nothing to the company?
Here’s the deal. One, this IS my real name. Two, your article is hilarious. But, despite that, my upline, Mark Gobhril has continued to insist this is the best business opportunity ever, LOL. Yeah, let me see…don’t get paid for two months, while money is taken out of your account for various fees, including the famous Premium members fee to ensure you get paid in 15 calendar days. Only problem, you never get paid.
So glad I got out. This turkey is done.
Anyone thinking about suing their upline/inviter/sponsor ? Upline gets 50% traffic commission but what about their responsibilities. What if the upline claims he didn’t know … my upline is a blind believer who tried to make me put even more money into BB, which off course failed as I didn’t bait. His lure goes like “do you want to sit behind a desk till your 65th birthday”. Didn’t bait and thanks to sites as these I’m better informed than what is told in the BB meetings.
I already recovered my seed money and I’m really tired of all the BS, the need to write blogs, explain all the new rules, bring new ppl into this scam. But one of my downline has only recovered 2/3 of the seed money, so how can we claim the remaining 1/3 ? My downline is family and we were both caught into the bullshit banners doubling story …
A fact, when we became BB member, we had a copy of the rules at signup. They state BB pays premium members in 7 days. You could argue that our uplines sold us a product with a faulty specification, as BB clearly pays well beyond the due date, and with the mastercard fiasco, payout seems to be very unlikely.
My mastercard withdrawala due date was end of februari, had to reverse it, and STP still not paid, so BB is one month overdue, violating it’s own terms I had to agree when I signed up:
Section C (Affiliate & Client)
Payment Conditions
I adhere to the following:
All liquidation requests made shall be honored within fifteen business days for standard subscribers and seven business days for premium subscribers to the payment amount noted in your back office.
So my upline sold me a product with a faulty specification … in some countries this would be enough to claim your money.
Some food for the thought people, I have been an affiliate for almost a year, have lived though more twists and turns than a fairground ride with no brakes, along side the cast of the Rocky Horror Show.
If you are in any doubt that this is not a ponzi, explain this.
Members are scurrying to sell off packages and panels to thier downline, to pass on to new members in return for cash that they cannot liquidate from their own accounts. Knowing full well these people will never see their money again. Nobody has been paid in the UK at all since January, so the knives are out from within.
New rule from Banners Broker, you cannot transfer packages to people who do not have enough money in their e-wallet to cover thier own fees??? What they really mean is, they need the fresh dough, the last thing they want is affiliates getting their hands on the only real cash coming into the business other than money for convention tickets!
But hey this is the best part, when the crooks are sunning their arses on a faraway beach called Banners Bloody Broker Island,it will be affiliate vs affiliate, and duels at dawn as this whole shabby circus of a company finally creaks to a grinding halt!!
Why are you guys even humoring this ComputerGuy? He is not asking questions he is just mixing the pot. He is a BB insider and is trying to shift attention away from the huge scam. If he isn’t an insider then how does he know so much about a company that guards its secrecy so strongly? hmmmm
Nearly Easter, do we think BB will rise again, or will the stone be rolled back only for the faithful to discover their messiah has scarpered with all their money?
Delays Delays Dealys… classic PONZI
Hello Everyone,
It seems that there are a large number of people wondering why panel movement isn’t working as it should, well let us explain.
As our hard working IT team diligently works to make our website better in v2.9 and building toward v3.0 it requires that certain features of the site be placed on hold. The ability to visualize panel movement is one of those features. There is no need to be alarmed however. The software is still actively recording panel traffic, and once the work on the site is at a level where the panel movement can be switched back on, you’ll see your panels as they’re supposed to be. This is an unfortunate circumstance, but a necessary one in order to ensure the stability of the site.
As you’ve no doubt noticed, the site itself has been experiencing some downtime as our IT team works on the back end of the website. This is temporary, but can’t be helped. There is nothing wrong with the site or your panels, it’s an unfortunate by-product of working on the site to make it more stable.
With regards to the BB Card and payments….
We are currently assessing other payment options, and we’re doing so cautiously but quickly. It’s our intent to put in place a solution that addresses the needs of as many affiliates as we are able. We have received all of your email with other options, and we thank you for those submissions, however, we ask that you grant us your patience as we move quickly to put new options in place.
Payments are currently proceeding through STP and Payza during this transition. Please be aware that payments are currently limited to $2,500 per request, at one per week, up-to $10,000 maximum. We are pressing forward with processing as many as we can as fast as we can, so please be patient. If you have any concerns, please contact support and they’ll address them for you.
Once again, we sincerely appreciate the patience and understanding you’ve put forth. We understand your frustrations, and are actively working to solve all situations as rapidly as we are able.
The company is strong and moving ahead. Your support and enthusiasm is greatly appreciated.
Thank You.
The Banners Broker International Team
Just got this from my upline at BB.
Hello BB affiliates
Just wanted you to know this WAS a massive Ponzi scheme. If you did not get in early you will be losing money. That’s how a Ponzi works. You can make as many service requests, panel clicks and U Tube videos as you want your money is gone!
By all means try blogging if you think it will help. We will be laughing on a warm Island, Simon with be doing a photo shoot pointing at his new car. Hooker will host one or two more seminars in third world countries, we are so greedy even staring people aren’t off limits.
But don’t worry, we have found the next real deal and will forward you an affiliate link soon. This one will help you make it all back.
Thanks and God Bless
Chris, Raj, Simon and the Gang.
BB has to be the biggest scam of all time. I got conned into this 9 months ago. Fortunately I didn’t put a lot into it and got back in withdrawals what I did put in. BUT from a P&L perspective I just did go into the black and the only reason I did is because I canceled all of my traffic pack subscriptions. Do the math:
You buy a panel for $10; it finishes and BB pays you $20. But not really because they force the re-purchase of another panel (whether you want it or not) and take back $10. Soooo -$10 +$10 -$10 = $0.0. I have to kick myself for being so stupid. LOL Add to that all of the forced fees BB rapes you for and the fact that they don’t pay. Yep! It’s a scam. I always admit when I make a mistake and BB was a colossal mistake.
BTW, has anybody notice that the web site has been “Under Maintenance” for a week now? Gee if you can’t get into your back office, you can’t make a withdrawal request.
As for David Hooker being the “Director of Compliance and Business Development”, that’s like Adolf Hitler being the “Director of Housing and Urban Development at Auschwitz.
Banners has NEVER paid out according to their agreement – NEVER!
It took me a month to get my first withdrawal request (a year ago) and it has never improved. I have literally had to fight tooth and nail to get every withdrawal request. Like I told someone we’ll call Mark, I could have a million dollars in my “Cash Available” and it doesn’t mean a damn thing if I can never get it because Banners won’t pay me. But they sure pay themselves don’t they? Auto panel re-purchase; auto (and locked in) traffic pack subscriptions; auto (and locked in) affiliate subscriptions. Now they “hold” your subscription fee for the upcoming month. Even after I cancel ALL of my TP subscriptions in an attempt to exit, they’re still charging me for a Premium affiliate subscription. Even when I told them I did NOT want to buy any more panels, they still keep forcing me to buy panels I don’t want.
Theses guys ought to be taken out and shot. AND, the Canadian regulatory agencies and officials along with them for allowing this to go on.
Thank you Scott Grigg for being so honest! Mark seems to be a bigger player in BB. I think I remember his name coming up in the video showcasing interviews with ‘top affiliates’. Anyone care to take a gander into his name?
Its Mark Ghobril, true name..and there is lots on him…google..
RE: Jane”The ability to visualize panel movement is one of those features. There is no need to be alarmed however. The software is still actively recording panel traffic, and once the work on the site is at a level where the panel movement can be switched back on, you’ll see your panels as they’re supposed to be…”
Alarmed? Of course not. Why be alarmed when members haven’t been paid in two months, right, LOL? Is that post a joke?
“Payments are currently proceeding through STP and Payza during this transition. Please be aware that payments are currently limited to $2,500 per request, at one per week, up-to $10,000 maximum>”
JANE QUESTION. HOW COME MY UPLINE, VICTORIA TOROK (REAL NAME) HAS REPEATEDLY TRIED TO OBTAIN HER MONEY FOR OVER A MONTH AND HASN’T GOTTEN ONE WITHDRAWL. YOUR POST, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT, IS PURE B.S.
Anon…Mark Ghobril isn’t a bad guy, he’s just got so much invested into it he can’t see the forest through the trees. Look, bottom line…when you don’t pay members for months, and THEN charge them to get paid, it’s a scam. Plain, pure and simple.
As someone once said, “You can’t cure stupid.”
@ Anonymous. Mark Ghobral is the best scammer/affiliate BB has. So good, in fact, he his reward was that BB gave him a job. An affiliate and employe? Isn’t that a conflict of interest? At any rate, Mark’s con was to tell you that: “You don’t need to know a thing about how this works. Just fund it, let me manage it for you and I’ll double your investment (yes he called it an INVESTMENT) every month.” Double my investment? NOT EVEN CLOSE. I just did break even. Not to mention that what precious little money I did make took me forever to get – like 30 days or more in every case.
WARNING: IF YOU SEE MARK GHOBRAL’S NAME ATTACHED TO ANY BIZ OPP – RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN.
rofl i Always love BB comment on panel movement but it keeps monitoring software is actively recodrding it 😀 the thing that they forget to mention is when you have no panel movement you have no ewallet movement if your panels dont move they don´t cap and you dont earn money again a delay tactic on behalf of BB rofl and all the BB believers don´t even question it …….
kind regards
brenie
@ brenie. Right you are! No panel movement = no eWallet movement = no cap = NO PAY! But then they don’t pay you even when you’re panels do cap and you put in a withdrawal request either.
BTW the BB believers don’t question it because they’re sheeple (people that blindly go along). LOL
Me? I say when it looks like a snake and slithers like a snake – IT’S A SNAKE!
Mark Ghobril went around telling people near the end of 2012 he could manipulate accounts to have thousands of yellows regardless of passive or recruiter, on top of this he also tried to manage people’s accounts despite this is against BB’s Terms and Conditions saying he could make them huge amounts with the “tricks” he could do.
He is scum like Stepsys. cheating people for his own gain, but he is also a cheerleader as his role requires.
First batch of executive ($500 monthly membership) liquidations are now 3 days overdue and counting, tick tock Chris. Millions overdue to people through STP already.
@Jane: Glad you agree its a ponzi and are honest enough to admit it. Didn’t have time to read the rest.
@ Scott, I’m on your side lol. Yes the post is bullshit from the Bullshiters and the bullshit Banners Brokers Team.
The alarm bells went off the very first day that Banners launched to the world.
It was promoted as “Straightline Cycler” they always dry up at some point. Google “Straightline Cycler”.
Easy Money and Greed does blind even the most intelligent people. I’m all for making lots of money. But when the writing is on the wall from day one, it is sad to see it still going.
When people are showing panels of $2 million (virtual money) and have only withdrawn $100K, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out it is all BS.
But hey, when this one goes down another one will pop up again 🙂
Here is some bullshit from one of the Skype forums… ha ha … I have one word for all these..
In my words
Wankers !!
[3/26/2013 11:14:35 PM] Pauline Atkinson: We are all waiting till site comes up again and we get a bit more info on the new version.
[3/26/2013 11:15:04 PM] Pauline Atkinson: Refer people for now is best thing to do.
(*) (*) (*) (*) (*) PLEASE NOTE THEIR ARE SEVERAL FAULTS WITH THE BB SITE, I WOULD ADVISE NO BODY DO ANYTHING WITH ANYTHINK AT THE MOMENT, TRAFFIC MISSING, ALL TRAFFIC GOING ON 1 PANEL, TRAFFIC BANKS SHOWING TRAFFIC BUT STILL CANNOT QUALIFY ANY PANELS, TO NAME A FEW. SIT TIGHT AND LET THEM GET THESE BUGS FIXED OTHERWISE YOU COULD LOOSE OUT ON TRAFFIC AND PANELS ETC. (*) (*) (*) (*) (*) (*) (*) (*) (*) THE OTHER THING TO CHECK IS ALL PANELS ARE RESETTING TO 100% EVEN THE ONES NEARING COMPLETION. WHAT I SUGGEST WHEN QUALIFYING PANELS IS LEAVE THEM ON 100% AND JUST GOTO YOUR LAST PAGE OF QUALIFIED PANELS AND SET THOSE THAT ARE NEARING COMPLETION TO 50%. I KNOW THIS IS MORE WORK BUT IT WILL ENSURE YOU STILL GET MONEY IN YOUR EWALLET. (*) (*) (*) (*) (*)
[11:14:37 AM] Dominic Mangles: Well said Lillian
[11:45:18 AM] raymond.hatfield99: Hi Dominic, see you have been doing BB 7 months, I have been on 8 months and never made a penny out of it yet. What am I doing wrong!!!!!
[11:47:14 AM] Dominic Mangles: Hard to say without going through your account
[12:12:31 PM] Phil: After 8 months you should have been very happy indeed Raymond ? something went astray that’s for sure.
[12:15:42 PM] Blue Sky Thinking (MYOB): ive been since july and im very happy with my business growth
[12:18:27 PM] Phil: BB is a business which needs to be fed aggressively at the beginning to make most strategic headway, but that’s hard when most other businesses are failing. I wish I had could re-write my start phase 🙁 I would not have taken my money out too soon and would have definitley have spent a lot more on panels too.
Banners site still “Under Maintenance”? What does this make – week now? Finally dead and just don’t have the balls to tell us?
Noone has withdrawn 100k
@BBinsider who is Noone??
i do know people who have been drawing down 5k a month with a downline of about 6 people.. but that was with the BB prepaid card..
They now say STP for the Uk.. guess what .. when you try to open an STP account it goes to error.. so in that case we are all screwed anyway for the payments..
Better look at Bank On Traffic people. I alerted ya a couple a months ago. Now They’re finally open and several of us made a bundle yesterday.
i can smell even more bullshit now 🙂
[2:47:25 PM] Joanne Thomson: Heres good and interesting pieces of info from another chatroom. [2:12:12 PM] alanesp1: [Tuesday, March 26, 2013 8:35 PM] Debi Jones:
<<< I dont know if any of you are aware of ddos issue that has been infecting the bb site and affiliate sites as well.
this is what I got from another bb chat.
DDos attack is still going on XXX had to slow the access we might have Affiliates computers infected with Dos zombies attacking BB unknown to them make all your people run superantispyware
http://superantispyware.com/
I have other antispyware and virus protection on my computer, yet I was amazed what it found on my computer!
BB has installed a shield to block it.
[2:12:56 PM] alanesp1: This is well worth a read from the BBC it explains a lot that has gone on with BB This is well worth a read http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21954636
[2:14:39 PM] greg.bannersbrokerman: hi everyone
[2:33:45 PM] John: excellent post Alan & Lynda (y)
[2:35:33 PM] John: if on a mac (does anyone still use PC's) lol mackeeper is really good, but a cost involved
[2:39:02 PM | Edited 2:42:35 PM] helenmalyon: Hi Peeps….just seen this in the forum and although its not direct from the company….
Hello dear BBers, please read the information below taken from Cyprus IC.
''Guys we have just come off of an IC webinar with Chris & Raj, they both explained in detail the reasons behind the site being down & have confirmed this has been resolved with preventative measures.
Because of the downtime Chris & Raj have agreed to postpone changes which were due on the 1st April – these will start now on the 15th April 2013.
Thanks,
Tisochritifaos''
http://talkingbb.com/index.php?topic=4779.msg62268#msg62268
Paul Davis says:
March 27, 2013 at 7:33 am
Better look at Bank On Traffic people. I alerted ya a couple a months ago. Now They’re finally open and several of us made a bundle yesterday.
Now that’s really funny, Paul. You actually have to get paid to make money. Having Banners say it’s in your account is sort of like getting one of those letters in the mail telling me I’ve won $100K…all I have to do… Good luck actually getting paid. You just proved my point.
@ Paul Davis
Sure you made a bundle, on a computer screen or cash in hand. Mind you, being at the beginning of a scam you should have made some money IF YOU CONNED OTHERS into the BB knock off. The only difference between BB and Bank on Traffic (BOT) is that the “panels” are called business packs. You don’t need a website (sound familiar?) to bring traffic to your business. They don’t pay actual cash to recruit members but get paid in traffic credits, same thing since everyone wanting to join must do so through an existing member. Again the way BOT makes money is not by selling a product but by selling overpriced traffic to existing members only, not to any outside companies. Sounds like BB all over again.
After all these posts on scams and how to detect a scam how can people still be so gullible and follow these guys.
Who owns BOT?
Their domain is registered for 2 years so maybe that’s as long as they figure on being around.
The domain name registrant is private but the phone number given belongs to lcumminsgroup.com out of Bellevue, WA. Of course there is no information anywhere on this company, even the website gives you a 404 error.
On “About Us” on BOT’s site , the “Team” looks forward to working with you, but nobody has the balls to put their name down as being part of the “Team”.
Legitimate companies, if they mention executives, have profiles of their Team executives, Management, etc. on their website.
Since this is still in its early stages now is a great time to warn people of this scam so it doesn’t get to be a BB fiasco.
scott .. bank on traffic is another business.. looks very similar to BB… i will never trust another of these online things again..
I have pretty panels to look at when I can login… OOOhh happy days I have over 14,000 dollars worth of panels.. and I cant withdraw fook all.. ha ha ha …
Internet Traffic Management S.A.
Bank on Traffic Division
207 Regent Street – 3rd Floor
London W1 3HH
United Kingdom
this is the business address of Bank on traffic… and guess what no UK phone number …
so come on paul davis .. tell us how you are making money ?
@ Paul Davis. Who are you sleeping with? I just checked my panels. They haven’t moved an iota – and haven’t in WEEKS.
And BTW, when was the last time you actually got PAID? Money sitting in your back office doesn’t mean squat.
And Ken Roklin is right as well. The ONLY profit center in BB is conning other people to come in. I have a 9 month P&L that flat out proves that without dragging other victims in you CANNOT turn a true profit in BB. No thanks! I’m a big believer in Karma.
@ BB insider I know a few people that have withdrawn in excess of $100K from Banners that was a few months back.
they can withdraw but you need to be a big player .. no sign ups no money back simples… I would nt throw BB at anybody .. so i will lose…
I made a withdrawal request for $1200 on March 20th. Let’s see if I get it in 15 calendar days (as BB states they pay Premium members). I won’t see that money for a month – if ever.
Want proof that this is a scam?
According to my eWallet, my Cash Withdrawal History is $2,421. BUT, my Total Earnings is $16,948. Where did the $14,527 difference between my withdrawals and total earnings go? IN BB’S POCKET you dumb asses that believe you’r making money.
Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid……..
@ Jane – Making a withdrawal request and actually getting that money are 2 different things in BB. I know. I’ve NEVER been paid in less than 30 days – and I had to fight to get that. And we’re talking small amounts of money. I only sponsored 1 person into this mess (and sorry I did). It took him 60 days to get $100. But we’re supposed to believe they don’t have cash flow problems. Only if you believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.
I have a red panel due out in 3 months then I will apply to withdraw that … ha ha …. total con !!
@ angp
I disagree that BB has a cash flow problem. The cash flow is flowing every month from its members into a BB bank account in Belize. No problem there at all. The only problem with the cash flow is that it is one way – members to BB and not vice versa.
You people crack me up.
Some of you think I’m talking about BB when I suggest Bank On ?Traffic as an opportunity? Classic.
Do whatever your jaded souls want. I could care less. I made a great return yesterday. THE FIRST DAY BANK ON TRAFFIC accepted funds. You can look for yourselves and make a solid decision based on your own DD. I’m just passin on the good news.
Paul davis , i had a look and it looks exactly the same as BB…
just a different rip off format for making the company money and you the muppet fook all.. ha ha … so what pack did you buy and how much did you really make ?
go on surprise me
@ Paul Davis
Last time I checked my soul wasn’t jaded. I am also not concerned about you personally but more so the people you will be conning into another scam.
Also remember that if you made a good return it wasn’t because you earned it but because you scammed somebody into signing up.
one thing for sure now.
any scam , ponzi or other will never make mega bucks like BB ..
well done finch for alerting everybody to these type of rip off scams…
Paul smith
You’re an idiot bro. Better do some real DD or just stay hear and whine while I and others make money.
I bought in at $665.00. Made $506.00 in 24 hours. I’ll just post and laugh while you rant.
so you have now drawn off 506 dollars into your bank account ?
Oh and Paul its here not hear !! Maybe you are a bit thick !! especially to be dragged into BT .. ha ha ha … lets see the real money not the BS that is in your pretend account on a scam business…
ha ha ha … you are a sucker mate and prob one of the first few hundred members of BT
Paul Smith
I guarantee you did NOT make $506.00 in 24 hours off of $665.00. Now keep in mind I’m talking PROFIT (which means you got your $506 back + the $665). That would mean you actually MADE $506.00. If all you got was $506 in 24 hours you’re -$159. This is what happens when you DO NOT understand the difference between PROFIT & LOSS and CASH AVAILABLE.
Here’s why you didn’t make what you think you made:
Let’s say you spent $600 on panels. They finish and BB pays you $1200. Sounds like you made $600, but you didn’t because BB forces the re-purchases of those same color panels,which means they take back $600.
Sooooo it looks like this: -$600 +$1200 -6$600 = A BIG FAT $00.00
Add to that what you spent for traffic packs so the panels will move say $200
Add to that your affiliate fee, say you’re a Premium – that’s $100
CONGRATULATIONS PAUL SMITH! YOU ARE NOW $300 IN THE WHOLE! LOL
And PS – Panels can’t and don’t mature in 24 hours.
And what’s this crap about? Direct from my back office. I’ll tell you what it is. It’s more monetary BB rape.
“At least 10% of all qualified panels of a specific colour must have their re-purchase setting set to 100%.”
The ONLY profit center in this BB is commission you make off of scamming other people into BB.
I started documenting my panel movement (or lack there of) with screen shots back in February. Here ya go:
February 24,25,26 – no movement
February 27 – movement
February 28, March 1,2,3 – no movement
March 4 – movement
March 5,6,7 – no movement
March 9 – 12 moved; 16 no movement
March 10,11,12,13,14,15 – no movement
March 16,17,18,19,20 – movement
March 21,22,23,24,25,26 – under maintenance
March 27 – no movement
So for ALL that time the site was down – NO MOVEMENT
Not a scam? Come on. Stop taking those stupid pills when you get up in the morning. LOL
But Angp…it’s a GREAT business opportunity, you just don’t understand it, LOL. PT Barnum was right, wasn’t he?
@ Paul Davis
“I bought in at $665.00. Made $506.00 in 24 hours. I’ll just post and laugh while you rant.”
Impossible to have made that with Bank on Traffic (BT) in 24 hours through legitimate means. The way BT describes it:
A “Business Pack” is a graphic display of your traffic account. As your allotment of traffic credits is sold, you receive the payments from these sales. Each Qualified Business Pack receives enough “traffic credits” to create earnings of 2 times the cost of the pack.
Based on the above you would have had to have sold $1,171 worth of traffic in 24 hours. How did you go about doing that? And don’t tell me that BT’s proprietary software did that for you while you were sleeping. If you actually made that then you did it my conning enough new recruits into this scam as there is no way you did it by selling a product.
davis,
have you been telling porkies ??
ha ha ha …
Please sign me up I will be your fluffer !!
@ Ken Roklin – THANK YOU!
Davis – You ought to be hung with Chris Smith, David Hooker and the rest of the BB cons. How bad is it when you flat out lie to protect this scam?
i just spent 50 minutes listening to a keith lambert video on you tube and how this video escaped the bb kull of non compliant stuff simply amazes me especially around the 20th minute where he openly tells people how him and many others are creating multiple business accounts on bb just to fund their own personal account.Also he claims to have withdrawn huge amounts of cash every week and never fails to have used his 4 withdraw requests every month.If you guys have a spare 40 mins then watch this video feel sure it will give you many hours entertainment of pulling this guy to pieces lol http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGTB5FG2rOA
Diann, Keith is Simon Stepsys’s “boy”, they are have both made a lot from BB not through withdrawing like everyone else, which BB doesn’t pay. Is that the same video where he brags he still manages 100 accounts and manipulates the system ?
It’s worth noting in 2012 BB served Keith with a cease and desist as he was cross pitching Zeek Rewards at the UK BB meetings.
They rope fresh people into BB, take their cash at UK meeetings and bankwires, then transfer them thousands of dollars in panels. Tax evasion much …
They get away with it because They are the star team in Banners Broker now, quite funny as each person in it has done so many illegal and non-compliant acts. Yet they bring fresh cows in for the slaughter.
See the FB BB ponzi page for more info on Keith and the others in their group.
Morons.
Sit back and watch. You’ll see the reports comin out on Bank On Traffic profit. For those that can’t put two and two together here’s the facts on my account. They (BOT) ran another distribution since I posted earlier today.
I bought a pack for $665.00 yesterday morning, early. we were messaged that BOT would open and I got on it early.
My earnings are now $684.82. That’s + 19.82 over my invested funds in a day and a half. My target earnings are $1500.00 on this Pro Pack ($665.00 cost). This aint Banners Broker folks. They seem to be fallin apart.
I’d advise those with a little smarts to take a look at BOT. Don’t take my word folks. Do some DD instead of readin the nonsense these nitwits post. Or don’t if you don’t want to. Anyway ya cut it, I’ll be sittin here with a big smile readin the nonsense dudes like Paul Smith writes.
Paul, take it elsewhere or start bringing info of worth to the table about BB.
@ Paul Davies. I seem to remember the same thing being said about Banners Brokers over 2 years ago, and what a mess (scam, ponzi) that is…
Bank of Traffic will go the same way, but won’t make as much for the owners like Banners has. When Zeek rewards was running many people tried to set up similar sites, they failed or were closed down.
So whether you listen or not Paul, BOT is another scam, ponzi and yes you might be making money and yes other people might be making money.
But Bank Of Traffic is still a scam that has to dupe people to pay money in to pay original members out!
But hey, if you are making money that fine, you are alright JACK!
thought this thread was for bb topics so why not just delete the BOT crap
@Paul Davis – go peddle your dirt somewhere else you scum sucker. SCAM SCAM SCAM
This tool is behind a survey-wall trying to obtain your mobile number to send you ringtones, but if the tool ever existed, this was probably how some were cheating on 1000’s of yellow panels
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTWlacH8NdM
In this video, it is shown how the tool creates panels and packages out of nothing into your BB account. Guess stepsys and the other crooks use holes in BB to create value out of nothing, and then sell it for real money.
diann says: “thought this thread was for bb topics so why not just delete the BOT crap”.
Agree 100%: delete the lot. And block the snake-oil peddling scumbag.
@ Paul Davis
“I’d advise those with a little smarts to take a look at BOT. Don’t take my word folks. Do some DD instead of readin the nonsense these nitwits post.
I take it you are referring to posters such as Paul Davis. Unfortunately there are too many posters like him that don’t care how they make money, lie, cheat and steal. Any money they receive from these scams are not from a sale of a product but from conning people into joining companies such as BB, BOT, etc., etc. They all rely on recruiting members and their only sales are to those members. If you can’t see that then read and re-read the many posts on this and other forums where they show you that they are all scams.
@ Paul Davis
“I’d advise those with a little smarts to take a look at BOT. Don’t take my word folks. Do some DD instead of readin the nonsense these nitwits post.
I take it you are referring to posters such as Paul Davis. Unfortunately there are too many posters like him that don’t care how they make money, lie, cheat and steal. Any money they receive from these scams are not from a sale of a product but from conning people into joining companies such as BB, BOT, etc., etc. They all rely on recruiting members and their only sales are to those members. If you can’t see that then read and re-read the many posts on this and other forums where they show you that they are all scams.
Read more on this ‘Worldwide DDoS Attack’….
http://gizmodo.com/5992652/that-internet-war-apocalypse-is-a-lie
(yes, gawker media… still, give it a read)
Hey Roklin
Don’t be a fool bro. All companies depend on sales. BOT is selling product, I’m buyin it, they resell for me, I send targeted visitors (BOT calls them unique) to website of my choice and I make money doing that too.
By the way smart boy. My $665.00 is now $884.00. Workin it’s way fast to my $1500 target earnings this go around and I’m sending over 100,000 visitors to my websites. So, as I told that other whinny fool “you go ahead and gripe while I post with this big ole smile on my face”
Paul Davis, how many times do I have to ban you?
Shall I remind people what little credibility you have?
Here’s the guy who posts comments under aliases just so that he can agree with his own drivel. Except he isn’t even smart enough to do it from a different IP. Last time I called him out on it, he threatened to “ruin me bro”. A few months later, Paul Davis is still a nobody preaching his sordid little scams to an audience of one, clearly going nowhere fast. Unless you count $864 as a good exchange for your pride and dignity LOL
Bank on Traffic is just a cheap rate clone of Banners Broker.
I suspect that it will attract the usual ponzi players, but what made BB different was that it won the trust of many in the wider public. I suspect those victims will be far less gullible second time round. Then again, maybe I’m overestimating the sanity of the Average Joe…
@ Paul Davis
I believe you have a math problem. A few posts back you said you made $506 or something like that in 24 hours on your $665 investment. Now you say that your $665 is worth $884.00. That would mean an increase of a mere 219.00 less your admin fees. I made more than that in an hour on the stock exchange so don’t be calling me a fool.
Yes I agree, all companies depend on sales of either a product or a service, however, BB and its knock off BOT, have neither. Send me the website URL where you have sent 100,000 visitors to along with the documentation to show that the visitors to that site were sent by you. I really doubt that you are sitting there sending anybody anywhere. I will guarantee you that you are relying on BOT to tell you that when you buy these packs that you generating traffic. That is how all scam companies work and if you were half as smart as you think you are you would see it for what it is, a scam.
If BB/BOT make all their money from selling traffic, why do they need affiliates and why pay them? Why not just hire a bunch of people and make billions like Google does.
A question from the Dublin convention to Chris: “Chris Smith was asked how’s the company’s cash flow (someone asked, is BB flush with cash?) Chris answered – yes, we are flush with cash, we have no debts and we pay out many times more than we take in.”
Now how can you be flush with cash when you are paying out more than you are taking in? Now there’s a business plan ever business should look into. Want to start a business, copy that model.
You can call me a whinny fool all you like it doesn’t change the fact that I at least am making my money the honest way and not stealing it from friends and family. I realize that there are people out there who have been conned and have signed up friends and family not knowing it was a scam and I would hope they have learned from that. However, it takes a special scumbag knowing it’s a scam but continues to con more people into scam after scam and boast about it with a “big ole smile” on his/her face.
@ Finch,
My apologies, I shall ignore Paul Davis from now on and not give him any reasons to respond.
BOT get SHOT!
And the latest excuse is …
“I hope this will help people understand why we are experiencing delays with payout transfers from our e-wallets.
Firstly, it must be understood that what is showing as “available to withdraw” in your e-wallet is NOT REAL MONEY – The figure represents your earnings that are owed to you by BB.
There is NO CASH in your e-wallet!
When BB transfers money to your STP or Payza account, they can only do so from their CASH RESERVES – which are held in their different Bank accounts around the globe.
When there is insufficient money in their cash reserves for a full transfer, then BB can only do a part transfer. Even those amounts are huge!
EXAMPLE: Say there are 200,000 affiliates expecting to receive $1,000 each. This means that BB would need to have $200,000,000 CASH sitting in their “cash reserve” accounts.
And that is not peanuts! But what if there are 300,000 affiliates, each expecting to receive
$2,500??? That is 750 million dollars that would need to go out in one hit.
Cash flow problems are common with new rapidly growing companies.”
So it turns out there are no BB millionaires and the amounts people claim to be making/made are not actually “CASH” but just numbers until BB decide to pay you, this gets better by the day.
Rofl the sad part is that affiliates will believe it …. what i don’t understand if they realy have bought and resold the addspacze like they said at a PREMIUM PRICE they shouldn’t have cash problems at all because the money would come in like they try to make us believe ….. the above can only be true because there is no addspace been brokered and they get stuck with recruiting THAT IS THE REAL problem …. rofl like you say this gets better and better every day 😀
kind regards
brenie
@ True Story – BINGO! You hit the nail right on the head. Money in your eWallet doesn’t mean a damn thing if they never pay you. And as we know, they never do.
BTW, 8 days and no movement on ANY of my panels.
Oh and how do you like the you have to keep 10% of your panels at 100%. I’ve never seen such monetary rape in my whole life. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
TERRY STERN TODAY ANNOUNCES WE JUST GOT A REPRIEVE INTENDED CHANGES NOW COMING IN 2 WEEKS LATER THAN PLANNED
(*) Just in – to give you an idea why BB has been down (*)
[5:02 AM] Terry Stern:
<<< Hello Everyone
The issue of the website being hit by the latest global DDOS attacks has surfaced over and over, and from what I'm hearing, you'd like an official statement to say when contacted by affiliates….
Chris recently told affiliates in a webinar that the website was being hit by denial of service attacks, which was the reason the website was down and being moved from one hosting company to another.
If you are asked, yes the servers the site was originally on was hit by these attacks which was the reason for the site move, and the reason BB has spent an immense amount of money putting into place firewall protection to prevent this from happening again.
The site is now up and running smoothly, and the IT staff is diligently working to correct any issues that were caused by the move as quickly as they can – placing priority on fixing issues surrounding panel display and movement, as well as traffic allocation.
Payments through STP and Payza are still being processed on time, however, once again, after the funds have been released to these companies, it's up to their timeline as to when the final release of funds will be. We can not guarantee or state dates payments will be finalized.
As to the issue of the April 1st deadline, we are currently waiting final verification that the date has been moved back to April 15th before publicly releasing that information, so please have your teams prepared once it's been made official. This is in direct response to the delays that have been faced as the result of the website downtime over the past 2 weeks.
— Terry Stern, Today 5:02 AM
all will be on the site today advising people
So BB’s official line is blame STP/Payza despite the fact BB have sent no payments out for 8/9 weeks now ..
Taking bets on how long it takes STP/Payza to drop BB.
Angp – It’s spouted that the 10% at 100% is for the good of the company, well they said the same thing about the color allowance in Jan 2012, but hey it’s another thing to hold growth and money generation back in affiliate accounts. Don’t expect any of the faithful to realize that though they think it’s awesome …
On another note, someone just showed me proof they charged him for traffic packs today, despite the system hasn’t run in around 9 days, no panel movement or payouts to the Ewallet, never mind payouts to STP/Payza.
Company is an utter joke and it’s both saddening and frustrating when you see cheerleaders who either ignore the facts or can’t think logically.
will update you all on the tps on the 30th when mine is due lol
The BB help ticket facility is now driven by a robot… emails going back to BB affiliates as follows:
Hello XXXX
Thank you for submitting a support ticket.
Please be advised that due to the system upgrading to V2.9 it may have caused some glitches such as less activity in panels , but please be aware that the activity of the panels is running smoothly at the back even if you may not be able to see the progress live, it will all appear normally in a couple of days.
We apologize for any inconvenience that this may have caused and thank you for your patience.
Regards,
BB Team
Its over guys. even BB are now admitting that they have run out of money. yep, that surprised me too!
@ BBinsider
BB hasn’t run out of money. They are still collecting over $15 mil a month on admin fees and traffic packs. They have just run out of money that they are willing to share with its members.
It’s not true that BB is collecting a lot of money from affiliates. Real cash (hard currency) comes only from new members when they buy so-called packages.
Most existing affiliates are paying their monthly fees and traffic pack fees out of their “funny money” BB currency…. So BB issues their own currency and then take it back in the form of fees.
This is why they’re bust!!! Because the recruitment drive is not working anymore…. Only 300,000 gullible people were found….
On the positive side, haha, BB is a great online “computer game”, or at best a computer simulation. Not fit for kids or MBA undergraduates.
Also on the money side…
Under money laundering regulations they can only transfer so much money at a time to Payza and Solid Trust. With the amount they need to pay out to Affiliates, it will be a long process trying the load those ewallets.
But with all Straightline Cycler’s the money at the top, is in their bank accounts and the people at the bottom will lose.
Some of the big players have and are being paid, these are the people that bring in more people, so they keep those guys happy. But with the amount of unrest, Banners is at the end of the road.
And follow on…
I use Solid Trust and Payza. The money hits the ewallet soon as the Company processes it (no delays) there is a few days delay transferring from ewallet to bank account.
So Banners blaming ewallets is total BS. The very same happened to Zeek and then that went down.
Terry Stern is the biggest bullshitter in the history of bullshit.
Ken Rolkin is usually on the money, but the e-wallet and panels money is virtual (i.e. doesn’t exist). Therefore neither does the money which BB deducts from e-wallet balances to fund packs/subscriptions.
Only those foolish enough to top up their e-wallets with new payments are losing fresh money. The vast majority (if not almost all) will have an e-wallet balance that will easily cover fees for several more months even if panels don’t move. If they do move, then the illusion can carry on indefinitely. Virtual money paying virtual fees for virtual products and services that produce more virtual profits and so on. If they don’t move, it will be because it’s game over for everyone.
That will happen eventually because as each month goes by with little or no recruitment, the real money costs of paying people to manage ‘support’ and the website, have to be met by those at the top. And they won’t want that will they?
No word from Terry Stern on telling everyone it was the UK rep/IC (aka Ian Driscoll) who took the $4 million ?
Despite we all now know it was Kul Josun who they let walk away with multiple offshore bank accounts with millions and then paid him off on top of this with a few million to keep him quiet, wonder why a legit company would do this, unless …
This company is so far down the steep slope that it’s impossible for it to stop it’s fall.
Executive payments which people have to pay $500 a month for, are now 6 days overdue.
Latest news, they are doing the bright idea of partial payments …
Request $1,000 and you get a portion of it, then more later.
Really … what a stupid F…..ing idea, they can’t organize a piss up never mind partial bloody payments.
Funny how they say doing 8 figure bank wires raises problems, really ? companies around the world seem to do it on a daily basis or is there something wrong with BB Chris …
No mention of the millions owed in backlog all the way to October 2012 either, so if people have partial payments they could be waiting till October 2013 at this rate to get money they should have received in October 2012, same applies for any requests that are overdue in 2013 or past the stated time frame.
How about get more payment methods you bloody idiot.
“Can we buy tickets through eWallet? No, only Credit Card or STP”
…
TAKEN FROM BB WITHDRAW DASHBOARD “Payza is not accepting new customers from UK. If you already have an Payza account you can use Payza as a Withdrawal option.”
is this one more way of delaying withdraw requests as payza still say there is no way to fund payza account regardless of source and have BB shot themselves in foot by publishing the above without any consultation with Payza.
I Reversed a pending STP REQUEST and opted for the payza option and already found im again at bottom of que with possible no way of getting funds into payza
Payza still do not have their own compliance issues fixed in order to operate for UK account holders, I received confirmation a week ago about this.
“Note: Certain features are currently unavailable in your country:
You cannot currently Add Funds
You cannot currently Request Funds
You are currently unable to receive funds in your account, features not related to adding or receiving funds are unaffected. ”
STP is the only UK option.
Surely these people cant get away with this, the likes of raj ,chris and terry stern are all part of an elaborate hoax to pilfer peoples money online , they are no better than common thieves. The people who joined are not to blame as these maggots have made the whole thing look so believable even the more streetwise of the bunch have been sucked in . Chris and raj have previous for this sort of thing how can they get away with it ??? there must be agencies who monitor these scumbags like the FBI otherwise anybody could set up something similar tomorrow and make a killing out of other peoples naive nature , there must be somewhere where we as a whole who have been duped can make a complaint and put these men behind bars or is it just accepted that this gos on and nothing gets done about it ?
@Kong
I agree with Kong. Justice need to be done. If legal system allows people at top of BB, such as Chris and raj and some of the extreme active promoters, get away with this illiegal ponzi scam, we as BB victims should get together do something about it.
@ Kong
I disagree that the people who joined are not to blame. If people didn’t jump into these schemes and spent as much time checking them out as they did listening to their spiel they would have realized that there is no such thing as doubling your money without doing anything for it. The guys behind these scams are not great business people, are not people that have started companies such as Facebook, Microsoft, Google, etc., but are people who are good at conning people even though they have failed over and over again starting one “get rich scam” after another.
There are millions of people who keep believing in these schemes and keep signing on even after they have been warned.
Authorities can’t do a lot because the smart ones keep their offices off shore and don’t deal directly with the affiliates but work through 3rd parties. Plus they usually only last 2 to 3 years before the number of members becomes too large for the new recruits to pay them and thus have to close up shop. In order for BB to get enough revenue in to pay 300,000 members a measly $100/m (average) they would have to sign up a minimum of 60,000 a month at $500 each and this number goes up every month. This growth rate just isn’t achievable and that is why it cannot succeed.
When you see a deal that is too good to be true it generally is and you should check it out before investing any money in it.
@ Ken, I totally agree, people are to blame. The main problem is people want to make money for doing nothing, they don’t want to do any work or build a legitimate opportunity.
So they get drawn in to these scams, yes the owners are milking it for all it is worth, but if people used common sense instead of greed, Banners wouldn’t have got off the ground.
Ian Driscoll has so called left BB but yet he has a BB account with over 3.5 million worth of panels and funds etc ..
These big players have sucked all the invested money out of it and therefore the peasants like me and others will get nothing … its so funny reading all the forums on Skype and these dickheads are still defending their beloved leaders… you have to laugh at it even though a lot of us have got our fingers burned…
Paul Smith I’m not sure which UK circles you run in, but it seems there are big problems between BB and Ian Driscoll … as it has been reported on other blogs BB have banned him from any BB meetings. It’s obvious there are issues as they have put a Stellarpoint office and manager (Sabih Abbasi from Canada) in the UK.
Lets recall Terry Stern reporting that Driscoll stole $4 million which as it turned out was actually Kul Josun who they allowed to walk away with and then on top of this paid him off a few million to keep quiet, I hear that happens every day in legit businesses who have nothing to hide. Oh and Kul Josun is back contacting BB people to get them in his new venture which I’m sure breaks any deal with BB.
Again, you have outdated info Paul.
@ jane,
BB has always insisted that you can’t join without being REFERRED. Affiliates have MOSTLY been referred by people they KNOW. Hence introducers being friends/family etc. In other words, people that they TRUST. Very devious strategy on there part…
“Mark Gobhril has continued to insist this is the best business opportunity ever, LOL. Yeah, let me see…don’t get paid for two months,”
Hey Scott you must be confused, there are no uplines and I did not sponsor you NOR did anyone in my team. You are on a completely different team and frnakly glad your out.
Ah, Mark, glad you could join us.
Tell me, WHY DOES BB HAVE AFFILIATES?
I mean, affiliates bring nothing to BB except money, and BB promise to pay back more than is put in. So affiliates do nothing but cost BB money. Why therefore have affiliates?
Mark Ghobril, any comment on the fact you used to try and get accounts from the UK to manage them when it was against BB rules, you claimed you could have them running hundreds of yellows, despite the macro limits … I’m also pretty sure I heard after Portugal you claimed to be working with BB as their USA person.
Finch, please give us exposure to help us prepare a formal complaint to the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) http://www.securities-administrators.ca and review legal options and possible class action.
Anyone who has spent and lost money (has not recovered back at least what they’ve put in) with Banners Broker please send message via Twitter https://twitter.com/BB_Scam (stating country and contact email)
If you choose to tweet comments, please use only actual factual information (not opinions) when using Twitter. Keep it short and sweet.
We’re beyond analysis and opinions. Either we do what we can to protect the gullible and innocent, or BB will have to show they are a real business, not a Ponzi scheme.
Thank you.
@bb_scam
Are you likely to follow people back on twitter so they can Direct Message you? This may get more people to take you up on your plan as it is a private means of getting the information to you rather than broadcasting everything to the world. Just a thought.
DD
@ BB_ Scam
Who do you want the Canadian Securities Commissions to go after in Canada? BB is not a Canadian corporation and has no offices in Canada. Stellar Point is a registered Ontario corporation but are only agents of BB and are there for support only. Affiliates do not sign up with Stellar but have contracts with BB. You could go after Chris personally as supposedly he is the sole owner of BB but the Canadian Securities Commission has no authority to shut down his business that is registered outside of Canada. The only thing you could maybe get him for is on a tax issue if he doesn’t declare the income he is personally making from BB.
If Stellarpoint is investigated, they are screwed Ken, Stellarpoint are BBI. Stellarpoint is not compliant for the “behind the scenes” things they officially are not supposed to do when not registered and regulated.
On a side note, it appears Kul Josun has launched a BB clone of his own and tried to keep it on the quiet. A few BB people have told me he has tried to get them to attend in person meetings with him and to join his version by contacting them via Skype which he met them through BB as a support role back in the day.
Surely this breaks the agreement of silence he has when Chris Smith/BBI paid him millions to not tell all the secrets after he already stole $4million.
Waiting to see what Hooker/Stern and Co say about this on the next webinar, will they muster their pro legal teams …, funny thing is there is competition out there (even if it’s still the same non-viable) for BB and their setup has become so amateur and relaxed. Raj and Chris must be fuming LOL.
Banners Broker (Chris Smith) and Stellarpoint (Raj Dikshit, Lorenzo Gurini, David Hooker, Terry Stern) appear to be increasingly impotent by the day.
The house of cards is crashing …
Thanks for including our message, Finch.
For all private inquiries, please direct factual (not opinion) details to BannersBrokerAlert@yahoo.com
To answer some of the comments above, we believe the only way the BB scam can continue to survive is by the owners/founders/con-men behind BB to travel around the world and host seminars. There are ways (which we will not disclose in depth here) for most countries’ authorities to prevent their entry, especially if they’re traveling on “tourist” visas to attend or do business.
The consumer protection authorities in western countries have cross border arrangements to share intelligence. For example, the Canadian Securities Commissions does talk to the USA, UK, German, French, Singaporean, Australian and other “sister” authorities.
In Australia, for example, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) http://www.asic.gov.au would be very keen to not only investigate the con-men behind BB but ALSO the Australian affiliates of BB who are promoting the scam. Each Australian affiliate of BB that talks about it to others (by way of mention, promotion, hosting seminars, etc.) is personally at risk of investigation — for promoting an illegal investment scheme. NONE of the Australian affiliates hold the required Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL) to legally promote an investment or “business” plan.
We can assure you that Chris Smith (if this is his real name) is bound to be arrested and charged as soon as he lands in the USA, UK, Australia and 4 other countries. In the very least he will not be leaving the airport but heading back home, wherever that is.
We have seen for several months — and especially with the exposure on the Finch blog — many many analysis, questions, and opportunities for BB to prove their bona-fide. All of this has come to nothing…. and we don’t blame BB (as thieves) for continuing to milk unsuspecting people. This is what con men do. They keep going until they are stopped.
The ONLY way to stop them and prevent more people losing more money is the LEGAL avenue. In our view, there are many affiliates who have already come to the conclusion that BB is a SCAM but these affiliates are hoping to at least get some of their money back. Problem is, that money could only come from monies stolen from other affiliates. Not from Chris Smith and his gang’s own pockets.
Rajiv Dixit, Kuldip Josan, and Chris Smith… if you are reading this please come forward with your real identities and addresses. Our lawyers are ready to serve you and you will see your day in court and be shut down. No amount of money you can spend on your own lawyers will prevent the legal process from shutting you down!!! And if you claim to have been defamed, all the better,… please come forward and take action. We are aware that there are several other rats in the gang… and we have engaged people to find you all.
YOUR DAY HAS COME…. this is no longer some online campaign. We are going after you.
For everyone else, please email factual details to the email address listed above. Your help will most likely stop one grandfather or grandmother waste his/her money. It’s not funny to see old people lose the little they have…. and have no opportunity to get a job to make it back.
All of the above apply to whatever the entities are called… Banners Broker, Stellarpoint… The net will close on all and sundry.
Hey, Chris Smith of Banners Broker, if you or your friends are reading this:
Terrorism and Financial Intelligence unit of U.S. Treasury investigates money laundering. Are you ready?
Are you prepared to be arrested anywhere, extradited, charged, tried then locked-up for a few years? No matter how much you can spend on lawyers to defend you.
Which countries do you think have no extradition treaties with the U.S.???????
Which airport will you arrive to next week to meet and greet your victims??????
Chris Smith: BE AFRAID. Your gang should too!
UK Serious Fraud Office http://www.sfo.gov.uk
Three men charged in Ponzi-style scheme http://www.sfo.gov.uk/press-room/latest-press-releases/press-releases-2013/three-men-charged-in-ponzi-style-scheme.aspx
Banners Broker’s time is coming very soon.
Banners Broker affiliates worldwide who promote the Banners Broker scheme are liable to be investigated. Aiding and abetting a scam is exposing you to criminal charges.
All payments made to affiliates have come from monies paid by other affiliates (new recruits). Not from any genuine business activities such as so-called online banner brokering or marketing.
Affiliates: proof that Banners Broker has made payments to you is not a proof that it’s a genuine business. Do your homework.
AND PLEASE DO NOT RECRUIT OLD PEOPLE THAT HAVE NO OTHER INCOME BUT THEIR MEAGER PENSIONS AND SMALL SAVINGS. It’s immoral, OK?
To answer a couple of inquiries: Yes, #BannersBroker has been reported to the UK Serious Fraud Office http://www.sfo.gov.uk/ More to come.
Australia: 3 men accused of operating a $30 million Ponzi scheme have been sentenced to jail http://www.asic.gov.au/asic/asic.nsf/byheadline/13-025MR+Ponzi+scheme+operators+jailed?openDocument …
#BannersBroker next?
I run a popluar website that gets approached weekly for advertising and niether me or any of my peers/competitors have heard of bannersbroker in this business. It is so obviously a Ponzi scheme. I know 3 people who are in it. 2 are mentally challenged and vulnerable but also greedy. One has even been scammed before. The 3rd who got them in is a clever scam artist. When it goes bust I believe that the 2 vulnerable fools will be able to take their upline/ scammer/pimp to the Uk small claims court for any amount under £5000. this only costs aboout £80 and can be done mostly online. If you have been conned by banners broker contact your MP, police, SFO and the press. Keep all communications from your upline and ask lots of questions in writing to keep the answers (in writing preferably) as evidence. If you are in it an try to get others involved be aware that you are liable and can be easily tracked and sued if it is under £5k.
@ True Story
I am not defending Stellar in their business, however, Stellar Point is compliant with what it states it is doing, it is a consulting company and if you check their website that is all you will see. I am not a lawyer but I think to get to Stellar Point and charge them with doing something illegal you will first have to sue BB and prove that BB is doing something illegal. You may not like what SP is doing and you may know that BB is running a Ponzi but until it is proven in court you can’t charge SP with supporting a business that is illegal until it is proven as such.
Again Ken, they say one thing but people in the know, know they are going vastly beyond support, they are Banners Broker through and through, they are the money managers, they make all the moves and the decisions.
Stellarpoint since September has been managing peoples money in the BB accounts, through the AdCo system, ZERO advertising done, that is hot water …
All SP’s “clients” are fake businesses using old BB addresses and locations. They have it all mapped out for when this goes bad:
SP
BBI
Shell company 1
Shell company 2
Update from this mornings Leaders Call….
Payza is now live in Bangladesh
news from India – more staff are now being employed to combat the growth in the country
David Hooker reports that Chris has now found the solutions for payouts – this will be implemented as soon as possible for solve payouts issues permanently
Ah good they solved it, guess we won’t be getting our –
Jan – 10k
Feb – 10k
Mar – 10k
All caught up or allowed then as we either got 1 or no payments in January and no payments in Feb + March ? nope thought not. So people will be sat around for another months with the new methods, if they have any. Before they see anything.
“Chris has now found the solutions for payouts – this will be implemented as soon as possible for solve payouts issues permanently”
Yeah, and by that he means they’ll stop paying out all together lol
“Chris has now found the solutions for payouts” he is going to **** off to Belize to collect all your money and then disappear with it.
This was sent earlier…to.. info@facebook
Dear Sir/Madam/Ms’ ATT Legal and Compliance Department…
Facebook is being used as a platform for an international PONZI scam, the name of this “Company “ is Bannersbrokers, they are not legitimate. If you Google *Bannersbrokers Ponzi scam*you will find some in depth reporting by “The Daily Mirror newspaper” a major UK tabloid.. and the Irish Examiner an Irish Newspaper.. You will also find abroad swathe of evidence from other people.. The company is currently being reported to various law enforcement agencies around the world.
By allowing them to conduct their Businesses on your site gives them an air of legitimacy that otherwise would be hard to get.. MasterCard stopped allowing them to use their prepayment cards 2 weeks ago.
Thank you for your attention…Kind Regards.. In order for Evil to succeed, (you know the rest)..
…i hope you have better luck than me then. I tried six weeks ago and they don’t even bother responding!
PEOPLE ARE SO EASILY PLEASED.OR ARE THEY JUST STUPID
posted this in his room. thought it might be helpful to post here —– Afternoon everybody. I thought I would just share this with everybody. I decided to call the new BB offices in Manchester today and got through within 2 rings and was greeting by a lovely girl called Jessica. I told her I just wanted to ask what is the situation with strange panel movement and traffic packs. She asked me my user name first (careful, they charge you $5 for each question after your first as per terms) checked who I was then told me that the problems are all due to v2.9 needing an update to v3.0 asap! They say this will rectify all problems moving forward and this might be seen in the next 3 or 4 days. Just thought it was good to speak to somebody answering the phone as “hello good afternoon, BannersBroker, Jessica speaking. Quite impressed. Today 3:17 PM
I get it, if there is a friendly receptionist then it can’t be a Ponzi scheme. Yes some people are easily impressed and those are also the most gullible which is just what illegal MLMers are looking for.
Most companies test their software before launching it. And don’t tell me that even Microsoft has bugs in their software when released, the difference being that companies using Microsoft software can still function and aren’t shut down while they fix the bugs. Their staff still gets paid, their vendors still get paid while the software gets upgraded with new releases.
Moving panels from one colour to another shouldn’t take an IT genius weeks on end.
sent to Daily Mirror..British newspaper…
Dear Mr Penman,
I read your earlier exposure on the BB scam,I have a friend who has lost some money..anyway my point is this if Facebook, which is the whole hosting platform for BB was made aware of the criminality going on, maybe they would withdraw their support..MasterCard have stopped BB using their prepayment cards..
I know some one that contacted Facebook a month or so ago telling them of this,but he did not get any form of reply..BB is still wrecking peoples lives..thank you for your time and attention..
Kind regards
Facebook Community Standards
“Violence and Threats
We also prohibit promoting, planning or celebrating any of your actions if they have, or could, result in financial harm to others, including theft and vandalism.”
“Reporting Abuse
If you see something on Facebook that you believe violates our terms, you should report it to us. Please keep in mind that reporting a piece of content does not guarantee that it will be removed from the site. ”
Maybe if enough affiliates report this then they will remove BB sites from Facebook. One or two complaints won’t do it.
It may also be worth writing to the convention centre in Niagra falls and the mayor of the city of Niagra to make them aware that they should not support the planned banners broker meeting as media from all over the world are starting to get interested.
If enough people report BB to enough agencies they will eventually have to act or be considered complicit in the scam.
Interesting to see that when Stellar Point Inc was registered in UK by Mr Dixit, the share capital was £2.
…I’d bet my last dollar that BB WON’T be hosting Niagra event. They are only selling tickets. I wonder how many stupid people have actually BROUGHT them?
Yupp Harrison even 24 hrs. is a very long time in BB land..
“Just thought it was good to speak to somebody answering the phone as “hello good afternoon, BannersBroker, Jessica speaking. Quite impressed. Today 3:17 PM”
Stellarpoint UK just screwed up … Jessica .. it’s “hello good afternoon, Stellarpoint UK” talk about footbullet.
So BB have a call centre in the UK, tax !
Had a great little conference with various agencies and Google about two weeks back.
I bought this up afterwards with a few industry friends and wow, all I can say is this PONZI became the butt of all jokes between a few of us especially after a couple of drinks.
We now think it’s a great idea for Google to sell traffic in advance, you will able to choose your nice neat “impression packs” and select your Click Through Rate along with the amount of conversions you would like.
Google are going to ditch analytics now since we can all decide our account metrics in advance, no need to optimize, select placements or raise bids.
BB offer a 100% CTR instead of “traffic boosters” and more can conversions than you can poke a stick at, diddly squat impressions required!
BB_Scam
I tried to follow this but it has been suspended apparently
“Anyone who has spent and lost money (has not recovered back at least what they’ve put in) with Banners Broker please send message via Twitter https://twitter.com/BB_Scam (stating country and contact email)”
I have been following this blog since before Xmas, mainly because someone I know was hawking BB at me and my friends and I knew from day one it was a scam. I’ve been researching it for a screenplay I’m writing
Interestingly I got this message yesterday from someone from BB and wonder if anyone else has received it
Hi xxxx Do you remember Kul? Kul Jolsun has a new opportunity and it is by invite only. Kul was one of the management in Banners Broker. He left about a year ago so he is launching his own programme in April; he’ll be bringing something special and will want to make a big impact. Not much on it at the moment but it’s worth a free registration to see what it’s all about in April. Let me know if you would be interested as well to take a look. Mxxx
For what it’s worth the person originally hawking it has obviously given up on it as now he’s plugging Neucopia which provides an “online study” programme for Internet marketeers…..
Hi all
i was alerted to BB back in Jan by a friend who has well and truly been suckered in by the ‘total earnings’ his upline guys kept showing him. In fact i nearly invested myself and was in contact with his upline and they tried the same tactic with me, kept sending me screenshots showing 1million some 2 or 3 million in earnings but i noticed that total they had withdrawn less than 10% of it and available to withdraw amounts where miniscule also, this got my alarm bells ringing so i did some research and found numerous blogs such as this one which saved me from investing so thank you Finch for the work you have done on it.
The problem is he supposedly making money though has not withdrawn or attempted to withdraw anything yet as he wants to maximise his profits. I have advised him to try and get his money out and told him of all the problems people are having (he’s a bit older than me so doesn’t keep his eye on things and just allows his upline to sort it all for him and believes all the lies he’s told about the company) I suppose the only good bit of news is he isn’t too bothered about the amounts he has invested as he doesnt really need the money.
Just wanted to thank all the bloggers out there for exposing this scam, it really does astound me that BB are blaming you guys for their problems and people believe it!
lastly, on reading around other sites i have seen someone reccommending Pure Leverage (http://pureleverage.org/) as a legitimnate was to make money online, i have never done anything like this before so i have no idea but when i looked into it, it seems like exactly the same thing as BB just without as much initial investment needed. Can anyone with more experience look into this and see if it is what it says it is and above board, my gf doesn’t work so i want to get her involved in something she can make money from at home. Is this the normal way MLM businesses operate and it’s just BB has manipulated this and used it for their scam ??
sorry for the long message and thanks again to all
sorry for the typos but my computer at work is about 500 years old and can’t keep up with my speedy fingers!
hopefully you can work out what i’m saying
@ a lucky escape says
PureLeverage is just another in the long list of scams. Why would any company start a business with a product that retails for $300 (or any other amount) and pay 100% commissions plus 50% on sales that a person you sign up makes. What does the company use to pay its overhead, rent, staff, etc., if all money coming in is paid back out and then some? How does the company make money to be able to pay anybody?
The question to ask is would the company be profitable if it didn’t rely on people recruiting new members. This company is no different than most MLMs where the payouts to its affiliates is more than what the company earns on the actual sale of the PRODUCT. If the company exists due to the recruitment of new members then its a Ponzi scheme as it needs the new members cash to pay the existing members.
@ Ken Roklin
Thanks, this is what i thought, i just wanted to clarify my doubts… what doesn’t help matters is on another site reviewing BB the administrator of the site who agrees BB is a scam and is trying to expose it is the one plugging this PL to all the readers, it’s quite astonishing really considering all the comments that he has come out and said this.
see for yourselves if you haven’t already
http://www.moneymakingexperts.org/f7/banners-broker-scam-rare-honest-review-288/index11.html
funny thing is people will probably fall for this, no doubt even some who have been burnt by BB!!
OK THE VERY LATEST NOTICE OF YET EVEN MORE DELAY TACTICS FROM THE NOW INFAMOUS BANNERS BROKER.
NEW NOTICE POSTED ON THE WITHDRAW SECTION 4/4/2013
“Payza is no longer accepting any requests from the UK. We apologise for the inconvenience”. NOTE THEY SAY NOTHING ABOUT REQUESTS ALREADY PENDING TO PAYZA
STORY SO FAR THIS YEAR
Original withdraw request 2013-02-06 TBD 310 Cancelled DUE TO BB CARD BEING WITHDRAWN on the 27th feb .
PAYMENT SHOULD HAVE OCCURRED 28TH OF FEB.
BB then offered only STP as alternative even tho they knew of the so called back log with stp payments dating back to December, and many [myself included]didn’t have STP accounts,
Therefore forcing UK members TO a further delay by waiting for STP to respond [STILL WAITING BY THE WAY]
A little annoyed reluctantly decided to withdraw to STP even tho it didn’t fit any of my individual needs of a processor, and because I HAD GOT LUCKY AND HAD A FEW HIGHER PANELS CAP, upped the withdraw amount
2013-03-26 $ 1,000 Withdrawal to STP: $1000 OF COURSE THE FAMOUS PENDING WAS THEN SEEN. 2 DAYS LATER a new notice appeared on the BB site STATING ” “Payza is not accepting new customers from UK. If you already have an Payza account you can use Payza as a Withdrawal option.” WOW BB HAD DONE SOMETHING RIGHT [FOR A CHANGE] or so i thought. Instantly REVERSED THE PENDING REQUEST to STP and clicked the live PAYZA BUTTON. SAFE IN THE KNOWLEDGE that my account with payza was verified and had no issues in the past.
I was AWARE of the problems Payza WAS EXPERIENCING WITH UK ACCOUNTS,and figured MAYBE BB had some SPECIAL arrangement with Payza for its UK MEMBERS to get paid and ease the back log on STP.I also realized my actions would drop me to the bottom of the pending que, but at the time seemed the only way to ever get the money owed to myself and others, that had already decided to change to the more trusted processor
2013-03-28 $ 1,000 Withdrawal to Payza: $1000 pending [of course]
NOW TODAY 4/4/2013 the new notice “Payza is no longer accepting any requests from the UK. We apologise for the inconvenience”.
Nothing from BB about current pending requests so now my 3rd reversal looks inevitable, and delays payment even longer.NOW forced to use stp that does not fit my needs,YET again forced to bottom of PENDING que,and because of the withdraw floor limit will probably not even allow the transaction to even take place.
On another note but still relevant, no panel movement for over 7 days [i know there is no such thing ] The blind leaders of the various bb rooms on skype are now not interested in panels capping , just making noises about the monopoly money [COMMONLY KNOWN AS TOTAL EARNINGS] that seems to grow in huge numbers with out any panel caps, but they are secure in the knowledge that bb is actually moving forward and longevity is assured. All will be resolved by the announcement on the 15/4/2013 on the new vastly more efficient version 3. [I WILL LEAVE YOU GUYS TO DISCOVER THE AWESOME CHANGES] I JUST KNOW YOU WILL LOVE THEM
BB still works fine when 8 traffic packs date to pay become due, on the nose $400 extracted from e wallet [quite painlessly]
SORRY FOR THE LENGTH OF POST
Diann, if you can, name the leaders who are still shilling despite all the problems.
Can anyone also confirm who is the “leadership” over on talkingbb and enforcing no complaining even if it’s valid and pretty much trying to make out everything is perfect with BB.
iansherrif is the asshole that runs talkingBB the slightest thing you mention or dear to ask or just question they delete it and ban you from the forum 😀 “only possitive input allowed …and we are going strong … we are here to stay and more of that shit …. these morrons will believe ANY STORY that our friends in canada would sell them 🙂 ….
Kind regards
brenie
Our @BB_Scam account on Twitter has been frozen pending investigation by Twitter. We have no idea why that is, other than a Twitter help note saying accounts are frozen if there are multiple false attempts to login. Now, we know our own password so we don’t try false logins!! Wonder who is trying to break-in.
No problem…. We have good news for Mr Chris Smith and his team of con-men. Authorities in Canada, the UK, Ireland and Australia are on the case 🙂 It will take them a bit of time to close in, but it will HAPPEN.
What we’re doing is also chasing the promoters of BB… those super affiliates that seduced naive mums and dads to “invest” in BB. If you have an online blog, YouTube video or any online presence promoting BB, we’re after you too 🙂 Deceptive and misleading conduct is a crime….. You are not a victim if you induce others to lose their money…. Be afraid…. Be very afraid…. because you’re much easier to track down than the Belize brigade…. and track down it will be done!
If you are hosting an information event, the local police will show up and ask questions… as the very first step. Summons will follow.
Our lawyers tell us all the money is already lost. Hidden away in secret places. What the authorities will do is ban BB and its rats from operating. Of course this is NOT bad news for Chris Smith and his team of con-men… because, like other thieves, they knew all along that with each scheme there is an expiry date… and in the meantime, they collect as much cash as they can.
No one is getting paid…. and anyone lying about getting paid in the last 3 months should post their bank statement…. it’s all BS.
UK – Manchester
Training Information Session
April 3, 2013
April 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th, 17th, 18th, 24th, 25th
6:00pm – 7:00pm
Furness House
Furness Quays, Salford Quays
Manchester
M503XZ
https://events.bannersbroker.com/?epl_event=united-kingdom-manchester
@BB_scam most important thing about scam busting is to stay with the facts. After allowing myself to be fooled, I now do my best to educate people and stop this BB cancer from claiming more victims. But I have to state that I received my one and only payment about 7 weeks ago, and my up line about a week after me. This does not make BB legit of course, but is rather part of the strategy to keep people hoping.
There are many people on the fence, reading pro and con forums and those ones like me who have been paid recently or really know some one who has, will immediately discredit every thing else too.
Jo Spencer of BBDealer is still actively recruiting, she’s still telling people on the 4networking site that BB are endorsed and working with MasterCard:
http://www.4networking.biz/Members/Details/24655
She knows this is not true but doesn’t seem to care as long as the money keeps coming. Broken Moral Compass!
Some more morale for the sheep to digest, picked up from a skype conversation. Popcorn at the ready.
<<< To bring you up to c, the upgraded version 2.9 turned into a little beast as parts of the platform weren't playing nicely with the other parts – so the IT people had to disconnect certain sections which though annoying for all, was understandable. This including some of our panel reporting systems and eWallet. As they were fixing it, the host server company pulled the plug when BB came under attack from a "Denial of Service" – whereby hackers jam hundreds of thousands of computers to go to BB's front door every second and thus deny anyone else access. Why? Because we're now in the Top 450 websites on the planet and we're on their radar. Nothing to do with anything else you may read. It's just those fools having their day of what they call "fun". Happens to all those popular and government sites daily. So we've now got a new server company, who has backed us up with defenses etc and can handle those idiots – and BB has moved the whole site over, which is a massive undertaking in itself.
However, once done, it has to be tested, and no matter how much virtual testing is done, there's nothing like the real world to show where the leaks and errors truly are. Which is why things like the Panels not moving is happening. They are in fact moving very well, in the real world, it's just that on our end, the visual reporting system on our back office is offline until they get all the parts working in sync.
With the TP's coming out, it's the old rule, if it isn't broken, don't fix it… you have to remember that as this is proprietary information, including all the coding of the website's mathematics, everything is done in-house. No outsourcing for risk of loosing business secrets (there are many companies who would love what Chris Smith, CEO, has created!).
So rest assured sir, and the rest of you, that when time comes that all is re-engaged, you'll be panel dancing once again…
From your dashboard:
Panel Movement
April 4, 2013, 11:44 pm
We have noticed that since we have moved to our new servers only new panels have shown activity and the old ones do not. This is a glitch that we are working on, and it is not intentional. Keep in mind that all panel information is being recorded as per normal, and it's only the display of that information that is being delayed right now. Everything will go back to normal soon. We're just fine-tuning the patching right now.
After having just checked Alexa, I can't seem to find them in the top 450, probably because they are 486 in the list.
http://www.alexa.com/topsites/global;19
@ Metoo
The affiliates just don’t get it. IT’S OVER! All these reasons for the delay, none of them add up, are nothing more than delay tactics while BB tries to squeeze more money from their faithful before they close up shop.
I just can’t believe that after all the forums out there showing them that BB is nothing than a scam that people continue to think it’s the next Google and are trying to steal money from anybody that will give them the time of day.
New page http://www.thebbtv.com/
Chris Smith speaking, David Hooker speaking
According to them everything is fine.
They can’t get new money, so they have to convince the gullible 300,000 odd that they are still alive and kicking so they can screw a bit more out of them. Sell them $500 tickets to ‘Niagra’ that the blind faithful will buy. Make them watch propaganda TV (!) And make sure they keep pumping in there sub money. Its heart breaking really…
@BB_Scam account is back alive and well at Twitter.
We hope the con-men of Banners Broker and their deceptive and misleading affiliates see we cannot be shut down!!
Ponzi scheme operators often get arrested
Multi-million Ponzi fraudster ordered to pay £1 compensation
http://www.lovemoney.com/blogs/scams-and-rip-offs/scams/20379/nick-levene-ponzi-fraudster-one-pound-compensation?source=1000421?source=1000693
Are you reading this, Chris Smith? 🙂
Do anyone believe this?
PAYOUTS –
I did promise last week that we were going to start doing partial payouts. The unfortunate part is that we have not received the bank wires yet. We are moving money from country to country so that we can do the STP payout. One reason for the delay was the Easter weekend and banks closed. The money has left the source bank and should be to us any time. As soon as this wire arrives, then we will do payout over the weekend. I really appreciate the patience. I want to be open and honest with you. We will get it done as soon as humanly possible.
Chris Smith
This is for the newer readers of this site who maybe haven’t read the warnings in the previous 400+ pages.
Good blog by A.Jangbar
“One of the problems with Ponzi Schemes is that they work very well for a while until they start getting bigger. That’s when it is harder and harder for the Ponzi Scheme Company to keep up. They eventually collapse because they can’t keep up with returns their members expect every day.
Recognizing a Ponzi Scheme is extremely easy, but you have to be willing to accept the facts and not judge it based on you on your emotions, or need to make money and worse how nice and professional the owners are. Look for these things:
1. Ponzi Schemes will promote giving you back more than what you invested. For instance, if you put in $100, they will promote that you will have back say $200 in 30 days or 90 days or whatever time frame they use.
2. They will advise you to keep most of the money in the system and take out only a little bit especially in the beginning. Hello! You don’t have to be very smart to see what’s going on here!
3. You don’t get REAL value for you money. How can they? When they are providing such high returns, there is no room to provide real value.”
BB is now at the point where they cannot keep up with the members request for payments promised and owed them according to their so called BB account. However, BB will pay some members to keep the dream alive but delay payment to the majority of its members while at the same time trying to squeeze more funds from its members by holding conventions and introducing new programs. The fact is, BB with 300,000 members cannot bring in enough money to pay even 10% of its affiliates the money’s owed them.
BB needs new money and would have to sign up a minimum of 60,000 members this month at $500 just to pay their current members an average of $100/m. The next month this jumps up to 72,000 @ 500 and it just keeps increasing. There is no way BB or any other scheme relying on signing up members can survive such a growth rate. BB was built to last for no more than 200,000 to 300,000 members. It has reached it’s goal.
The above goes for any “business opportunity” including Bank on Traffic, Pure Leverage, etc., etc.
Ken Roklin
yours is the general description of the general ponzi
unfortunately noone has real proofs, if is real or not….
Of course there is a very high % that it is a big ponzi, but only for probability according to me
It’s funny Chris is waiting for the source money, every other company at max waits 4 days, why does BB end up waiting since November, that’s how long STP’s are overdue by millions ..
Chris Smith is a liar and fraud.
BB TV .. great another shit and useless “product”, I say it like that because it’s not a product, BB have no products. But anything to get the cult happy and excited …
Why haven’t they fixed the macro, every time you qualify a panel now it’s doesn’t give you 2 allowance, that is seriously screwing passive people.
Panel transfer not fixed, panels going missing.
The UK Manchester office has told people on Friday th April who called in that liquidations would be done this weekend and to be patient. If anyone from that office is reading, you need to get out now before it gets dangerous, there are hundreds of extremely angry people in the UK who are beyond the point of no return thanks to non-payments and crippling changes/screw ups by BB and they depended on that money due to retirement, jobless, all their money invested.
Your boss Sahbi is a puppet of Raj and another wing of his “not Banners Broker” monopoly. You do not need to face what is coming to her, Raj and Chris. Get out now and speak up. But continue to tell lies and con people like you are, and the consequences will ruin any career you think you might have.
I heard someone in the AdCo system has their account crashed so they have engaged in legal action over in the US, fun times ahead. Another person in the UK is in talks with his friend from the FSA, due to the mismanagement of his MONEY and NO advertising done in his account which means Stellarpoint is managing money without regulation.
Panel movement/completion means ZERO NOTHING if you are not getting any and all liquidations into your STP/Bank/pocket, the latter is not happening for months now.
I heard today from the vine that one of the current IC’s reached out to someone looking for a plan B, they don’t sound very confident …
Which IC are we talking about?