How to turn £8,000 into £4million: run a pyramid scam like Traffic
Monsoon
Imy Aslam and Sharon James from the UK cited as leaders
who must return illegal profits from Ponzi scheme
Traffic Monsoon billed itself as a way of making money
from the internet by generating traffic to websites and getting paid for clicks
on adverts.
The truth is that there was virtually no source of
revenue other than the money paid by people who joined it. This money was then
shared among the parasites at the top of the pyramid.
I’ve previously told how the US regulator the Securities
and Exchange Commission has frozen its assets, stating: “Traffic Monsoon’s
advertising business is an illusion designed to obscure the fact that
it is offering and selling a pure Ponzi scheme.”
The SEC has also launched legal action against Traffic
Monsoon’s founder, Charles Scoville of Utah.
Now the court-appointed receiver has filed a class action
detailing the individuals who milked Traffic Monsoon for the most money,
launching action for the recovery of “their ill-gotten profits”.
At the top of the list is Imtiaz Aslam from Manchester,
also known as Imy or Immy, who is variously described at Companies House as a
property developer and driving instructor.
He made not far short of £4million from the scheme, an
incredible sum considering that he only paid around £8,400 into it and was
active for just over two years.
The 48-year-old held sessions with Scoville to drum up
recruits in the UK and boasted on online videos of a network of members
spanning 17 countries.
“Charles Scoville is a genius,” he declared in one video.
Charles Scoville and Immy Aslam
“You are literally making money over night, you are
making money 24 hours, round the clock. Don't forget, the internet never
sleeps.”
In another video, from 2016, he boasted: “I’ve been in
just over a year now and I’m making money I’ve never made before, several
thousand dollars a day with this opportunity, and anybody can do it.”
Sharon James and Charles Scoville
Another name on the court receiver’s list is well-known
to me – Sharon James.
She was also a recruiter for a failed Bitcoin trading
scheme called USI-Tech, a disaster that I’ve reported on several times. According
to the Utah court papers, she put around £1,500 into Traffic Monsoon and got
back approximately £190,00 As the scheme began to collapse with members
complaining that they couldn’t withdraw their investments she posted: “I don’t
want to be around negative people, it’s not my thing, so if there is any
negativity around, I’m not interested, you can post negativity on here, I won’t
read it, I’ll just delete you.”
She bragged online of being the highest female earner in
Traffic Monsoon and said of Charles Scoville: “He’s just an amazing guy, he
really has got our backs, so trust in the man.”
Tragically around 160,000 people worldwide did just that
and have nothing to show for it apart from the knowledge that they helped line
the pockets of the people who got commission for recruiting them.
Traffic Monsoon raked in £132m, and there was another
£535m of supposed profit that members never saw after reinvesting it back into
the scheme.
Now the receiver, Peggy Hunt of US law firm Dorsey &
Whitney , says she will fight for the return of the money.
“Net winners are not entitled to retain profits that they
received from this unlawful Ponzi scheme, and must return them to the receiver
for the benefit of the receivership estate to be distributed to victims of the
Traffic Monsoon fraudulent enterprise,” she told the court.
Her class action complaint rips apart the claims by
Traffic Monsoon to have had a viable business selling "Adpacks" that
would turn a profit through web traffic.
"Prior to the commencement of the SEC action,
Traffic Monsoon had in fact delivered only 1.6 billion website visits, and
therefore during this time it delivered only 10% of the web traffic purchased
by members through the sale of AdPacks," it states.
"It would cost Traffic Monsoon tens of millions of
dollars to acquire and deliver the billions of web visits it owes to its
members. Yet, based on its business model and the way the acquisition of
AdPacks could be 'funded', it would have been nearly impossible to generate
these funds."
The scheme could not meet its obligations to existing
members, and those obligations kept increasing as new members were recruited,
and old members rolled over profits into purchases of more AdPacks. Put simply,
Peggy Hunt states: "At all times relevant hereto, Traffic Monsoon was
insolvent."Sharon James and Imtiaz Aslam have not replied to my emails
inviting them to comment.
Other UK defendants named in the class action are
Mohammed Yasin, whose profit was £260,000, Adil Khan who made £242,000,
Javediqbal Naeem who made £221,000, and the partnership Limited By Invitation
which made £194,000.
Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk
