Shyam
As we have previously stated on Corporate Frauds Watch, the bosses of the US-based criminogenic organization known as 'Club Asteria' have used the trusted name of the 'World Bank' to promote a self-perpetuating closed-market swindle dissimulated as an 'Income Opportunity.' Months ago I took the trouble to report this alarming situation to senior officials at the World Bank in Washington DC, to FBI agents and to various, interested third-parties whose legitimate businesses have also appeared on the illegitimate 'Club Asteria' Website.
In brief, the instigators of the 'Club Asteria' swindle (including Andrea Lucas, a former employee of the World Bank) have been cheating a growing number of ill-informed and vulnerable individuals (particularly, African and Asian immigrants to the USA and Europe) by persuading them that, simply by buying around $20 of products, and/or services, each month from 'Club Asteria,' and recruiting more and more persons to do the same, eventually all members can achieve 'financial freedom.' The bosses of 'Club Asteria' already claim to have 300 000 members, and their reality-inverting propaganda has been posted all over the Net. This has been aimed at convincing the world that 'Club Asteria' is a purely philanthropic organization run by financially competent and ethical persons who are associated with international companies and major financial institutions. Sadly, 'Club Asteria' (exactly like 'Amway' and its many copy-cats) is the unoriginal creation of an absurd gang of exceedingly greedy, but otherwise mediocre, little racketeers who most-probably suffer from severe and inflexible Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
It has recently been reported that PayPal (one of the trusted names that has featured prominently on the 'Club Asteria' Website) has frozen the funds of 'Club Asteria'. Although it has not been revealed how much cash this involves, tens of thousands of people are known to have been giving 'Club Asteria' around $20 per month via PayPal in exchange for wampum.
According to the company's terms and conditions, PayPal ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
David Brear (copyright 2011)
4 comments:
Greetings Shyam,
I just found your blog today and want to thank you for your efforts. I've been following Club Asteria for several months now and find it to be a very evolved example of an internet ponzi scheme. I've been observing such schemes for several years and am sure many of the individual "innovations" C-A added to the existing ponzi play book will be widely copied by imitators.
The "passive income" portion of the program is a pure ponzi scheme and that is far from unique. But ponzi schemes only last as long as more money is coming in that they are paying out, that's where C-A really improved on the old script.
Club Asteria built a recruiting pyramid scheme on top of it's ponzi program. The most you could ever theoretically earn in C-A was $400 a month if you never recruited anyone else (and their money) into the program. As the clubs members are finding out, much to their dismay even that $400 figure is no longer possible. BUT, C-A pays you handsomely for bringing other peoples money into the program.
Even in these days were the passive income C-A affords is dropping to dispiriting levels the hyper promoters are still earning more than $1,000 each week. but they wont be doing so for very long, C-A is dying and even they lying promoters know it.
I'm glad to see you post a link to my friend Patrick Pretty's excellent blog. Patrick is perhaps my favorite blogger and he's a brilliant investigative reporter. I beg your indulgence for my mentioning my own web forum, RealScam dot com. We have a running discussion thread about Club Asteria and several of the people contributing to that discussion have years of experience in identifying frauds like this one. And if i might impose upon you to post to our MLM area I know we have several members who would enjoy hearing what you have to say about Amway India.
Thank you again sir for and excellent blog.
GeorgeD,
Amway India is mother of all scams. Its business model is illegal as far as India is concerned. After examining the writ petition filed by Amway India to declare its business model is legal, the Honourable High Court of Andhra Pradesh, one of the States of Indian Union, has declared that its business model is illegal and criminal cases could be filed against it. Corporate Frauds Watch has filed four criminal cases against Amway India and they are being investigated into. Kindly go to the older posts to find excellent discussions on this fraudulent company.
If anybody wants the full judgement of Andhra Pradesh High Court would be forwarded.
Thanks for your comments.
How to stop this club so as not to add victims throughout the world, I was also a victim of this club because of being lied by a world figure named ANDREA LUCAS ... !!!
Greetings Oking,
As I mentioned in my previous post I find Club Asteria to be an "innovative" scam. Nothing they are doing is in any sense unique but the combination of elements made it a highly evolved example of fraud.
Perhaps the most cynical aspect of the program is how it marketed it's self to people in developing nations. The English speaking internet world is a fairly saturated market for this kind of scam so by design C-A pitched it's self to people less likely to have ever seen this type of "too good to be true" program.
The thing that offends me is how unlikely it is that Andrea Lucas and Hank Needham will face any criminal penalty. It's very likely that as C-A crashes and burns Andrea and Hank will just ride off into the sunset with their pockets filled with other people's money.
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