slappy

You say the following:

It's just common courtesy not to say things like that to be honest, especially in an international forum. People may take offence to things you never intended to be offensive. HeyJude's opinion is just as valid as yours at the end of the day, regardless of the owner's reputation.


I would contend that it is common courtesy to not say things like a person is defaming another, or abusing another when those statements are completely false. She was talking about the law and lawsuits. I happen to know a little bit about both due to working in the system and when people spout off about things like defamation without really knowing what they're talking about, it is an insult to my intelligence. If someone speaks intelligently and is knowledgable about what they're speaking about, they will get all the "common courtesy" they deserve. On the other hand, if they write something that is completely false(like saying I defamed "Andy"), again, that is an insult to my intelligence. I'm sorry some people aren't use to hearing the blunt truth, but that is my style, like it or not.

Andy

I do not do law suits.. I am more about personal responsibility and if there are some that do not like that as someone said "sorry some people aren't use to hearing the blunt truth, but that is my style, like it or not."

The following link may be of interest

Slander and libel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

andrewunknown

Ah, NoBS...I've been gone too long, returning to find that one of my favorite HYIP/AS-related topics - Andy - is the subject of lively discussion.

I wrote the following article in April for a project elsewhere and posted an incomplete and significantly less developed version of it here previously. It could stand further editing and doesn't reflect the most recent developments in the Andy saga, but makes a decent case for the unyielding and amply justified vote of "no confidence" that most here express. Be warned that it is somewhat long....


Post-Mortem of a Zombie Admin
April 20, 2007
By: Andrew Unknown


Consistency?

In a milieu so absurdly dynamic as the HYIP/autosurf arena, the word consistency seems a noun ill-fit to do the work of describing it. Perhaps “variable”, “unstable”, “wildly speculative” or even “criminal” would be more apt, but certainly no word associated with regularity or reliability. Nevertheless, counter-intuitive as it may first appear, consistency is a very suitable characterization.
Foremost among those things that are consistent about the industry is the ongoing, virtually unopposed perpetration of scams. This – the who, what, where, when, why and how of a scam – is incredibly interesting because of the insight it provides on the question of what the driving forces behind the industry are. Here, though, I’m going to do something a little different; something which there is occasion to do very rarely: focus on the non-person of a Zombie Admin.

To begin, though, focus briefly on the all-too-familiar reaction of the scammed. Angst, grief, a sense of violation, abject misery as a result of the knowledge that you just lost your home’s positive equity because you leveraged it to gamble away an additional $20k in a program and your spouse is going to divorce you as a result? All of these are commonplace; but at least as consistent (there’s that word again) is an intense yearning for information, assessment, evaluation: what happened and why? In other words, we conduct what can be described in forensic terms as a post-mortem. It’s the mental writhing around done over program administrator’s activity (or inactivity) after a program dies.

In a moment we’ll discuss the desiccated corpse of a dead admin playacting as a viable individual. But before we exhume that topic: what events precede the post-mortem? It’s a well-rehearsed scenario practiced by the more (but not usually the most) accomplished scammers: 1) begin a program, 2) advertise widely, 3) relay a consistent and not easily refutable back story, 4) offer attractive but not outrageous returns and 5) a generous referral commission rate, 6) center the program around the persona of the Admin, 7) convey a sense of unbridled optimism about the fictitious company’s activities (see #3), 8) engage in ceaseless polemics on public forums against detractors, simultaneously feeding the enthusiasm of supporters and then 9) when the rising equity curve is about to lose momentum (because of your optimism, observers are fooled into thinking the program still has nearly limitless room to grow), initiation of a clever exit strategy (no flimsy, untenable “we left the trading robot on, went out for a peanut butter milkshake and had a catastrophic car accident on the way, coming back to a 99% drawdown of our brokerage account” type explanations allowed), and 10) purchase of a seaside villa on the Adriatic coast. Voila – the Idiot’s Guide to HYIP scam perpetration.


The Making of a Zombie

All business as usual for those who are serially scammed – consistency again. But what happens in the improbable event that a scammer returns? That is, if a program dies, what happens when the admin comes back, as if from the dead? Now that would be remarkably inconsistent with the prevailing trend. But, that seems to be the case with “Andy”, who in his former life was admin of the HYIP The Finer Things (TFT) and the autosurf XLO and is, to my recollection, the only bona fide Zombie Admin of a former top-tier program in recent memory. The closest pop-culture figure I can dredge up to liken the Zombie admin phenomenon to is Bruce Willis’s character from The Sixth Sense. I guess that makes me that Haley Joel Osment kid, then. Yes, I see dead people, but only HYIP and autosurf program admins.

In brief, “Andy” launched and ran the long-running, low ROI autosurf XLO for over a year, as well as the high ROI GoldenRocks-inspired The Finer Things (TFT). As a result of some mysterious misadventures in “trading” that have not and will probably never be aired in the public square – other than the concession that TFT’s capital flow structure was altered into a ponzi late in its life - 97% of the funds under management in TFT were lost. TFT officially gave up the ghost in early January 2007 after a few days in the ICU. Not many days afterward (within a week), “Andy” placed XLO into “holiday mode” until the end of the month in order to stage a recovery or at least an equitable settlement of TFT’s accounts. Some took “Andy’s” announcement as a recommendation to go skiing (“holiday mode”-> January -> snow -> skiing), while others saw the ostensibly innocuous change as a harbinger of the end for that program as well. In a true testament to his business savvy – or instinct for self-preservation - “Andy” sold XLO to Bob Krimm, would-be legitimate businessman and CEO of Tri-Star Media Group for $25,000 USD. Apparently, XLO’s cadaver is still in-residence in Bob’s guest room at home. The chatter that had been ongoing for some time about a means of recovery for those in TFT, perhaps in a new program, subsided, and “Andy’s” slow act of administrative suicide was complete. Well, until the announcement of a new program on April 15 (The FX Offer).

Now, what is all this zombie and death talk? With reference to #6 in the scammer cookbook I laid out above (“center the program around the persona of the Admin”), the most successful administrators (just those who will later reveal themselves as scammers) foster the growth of a cult of personality in which the program member’s desire for wealth generation becomes intermixed with and utterly dependent on the person of the admin such that any criticism of that admin is regarded as a threat to their own fortunes. In other words, such an admin is Lady Luck personified. Any assertion that challenges the integrity of this conceptualization is – sometimes viciously – attacked and discarded as senseless antagonistic tripe. When it becomes obvious that the program is dead – or rather, has been killed – then the persona the admin has adopted dies along with it in an act of ritual suicide. The integrity they’ve demonstrated is eviscerated, the trust they’ve earned is decapitated, the living vessel of hope they had been transfigured into by their followers, er, members is incinerated and the ashes of the promise they embodied is scattered to the four winds. The admin reveals itself (yes, the undead are neutered) as a zombie when it returns under the same identity or persona with the gross presumption that the cult of personality that had grown up about them previously was of such durability that it survived program death unscathed. Sadly, the Admin has limited to no awareness that they’re dead, but walk about masquerading as a member of the living.

(Continued)

andrewunknown

In Place of a Eulogy

Moving on from the zombie analogy, it is no doubt a contentious thing to say, but I don't think that Andy is an out-and-out scammer. Instead he was and is well-intentioned, despite his obvious flaws (being dead without knowing it paramount among them); but, when he found himself in a lose-lose scenario where much of his own time and money would be required to stage a slow-but-sure recovery for TFT (and perhaps XLO, as well), he opted after a couple of twists-and-turns to cut all ties, quelling any sense of personal moral responsibility or obligation by a to-the-letter appeal to the terms of the program. Now that some dust has settled on the TFT and XLO threads - which coincided with time spent locating, researching and testing what appears to be a promising forex system - it must seem a good time to renew his serially abortive attempt to come up with a viable plan B.

In a way, then, I think Andy is trying to make good (and this part is kind of like The Crow or any other film where the dead protagonist cannot rest in the grave because an injustice is not yet rectified - and there's always the profit motive if no other reason can be found to stage a resurrection) on what he spoke so often about after TFT fell apart. Sending an email to those in TFT who expressed interest previously about a follow-up program seems to support that view. But then, as usual, things aren't that simple. If this were a real and equitable attempt at providing a means of recovery for those in TFT, that e-mail would've gone out to the entire former TFT membership; a list that was, inexplicably, but perhaps conveniently, deleted: "I emailed nowhere near everyone who had asked previously [about a new opportunity] - not because I had anything against you - but more because the db was deleted and email addresses were lost" (per Andy at the new program’s forum).

Whatever the conscious motive or half-conscious negligence behind jettisoning the database - and note that I am not presuming one way or the other - Andy is plainly concerned with establishing a clean break between TFT and the new program, stating that he will tolerate very little discussion of TFT and making no systematic effort at restitution through the new program for those who lost in the former. But zombies don’t change bodies, so there’s little chance of anyone forgetting who he was and how he ended up in the condition he is now, an undead trader hawking a semi-private forex pool.
Sure, there was the letter of the terms in TFT, but when it came down to it, most everyone sets the terms aside for the technicality they are always viewed as, counting instead on the spirit of the program, which was the heretofore unblemished integrity of Andy himself, operator of an autosurf known for its longevity and…consistency. Andy used the integrity part to his advantage during the program’s honeymooning period, while hedging his position, staving off death, should it come calling, with the occasional token admonition to the obviously heedless, starry-eyed membership about remembering that "there are no guarantees". Then, when the bottom was falling out (or was depicted as falling out), Andy bailed on the integrity part out of apparent necessity, violating the spirit of the program to take refuge in the letter of the terms. Well, nothing new there. Herein lies the source of his zombie-ism – that he assumes this violation was not a fatal decision. With it, the decisive nail in the proverbial coffin was driven, until he thought it worthwhile to dig himself up again. TFT’s membership, having transferred their – in some cases – grandiose vision from GR to “Andy’s” program were speedily brought back to earth, their account balances burning in a descent that culminated in the landing of a dismembered husk of the total program equity, all-but-DOA at 3%. The sole source for the preceding figure should be obvious.

All muddied, blood-tinged water under the bridge, one might say - at least it was until the guy who had sent the TFT spaceship screaming to the ground, had sold his autosurf down the river to a two-bit hack of a businessman (nothing personal, Bob) while pocketing a pretty penny on the deal, had hemmed and hawed over staging a comeback for his forlorn membership and then blinked off of the HYIP grid returns with a semi-private program - backed by his own wet-behind-the-ears trading activity, no less - that makes no provision for resolving the loose ends with TFT and has a forum where "little (no) patience" will be extended to those who want to discuss those loose ends.

Sweet memories of TFT and XLO in 2006 cannot – and will not, among the sensible - run that gauntlet and come out alive. On balance, Andy did quite well running XLO, which may have been fine - or crumbling - before the infamous sale. But, real success in this alternative moneymaking arena, historically, has been contingent on and based, again, in the Admin’s creation and maintenance of a cult of personality. Andy did that and did it well and effortlessly; but in the end, he tore down the altars and high places built in his honor by conducting himself as a common scammer with only a modicum of conscience would. The mystique is gone, Andy the heir apparent to the HYIP high priesthood defrocked. Whatever the appearance, the incontrovertible proof is that he – as far as any career as “Andy” the admin - is dead. An older, wiser “Andy” refined in the crucible of experience may now realize that a small-scale, low-profile program offering realistic returns is the Fountain of Youth. So, here’s a tear shed for missed chances and misspent life. All the same, what is done is done, and the dead don’t drink new life. Those in profit, those who enjoy a sordid game of chance and those without frontal lobes (like R.P. McMurphy at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) will look past this, but for most, the damage done is irreparable. Too bad Andy didn't have the foresight or the innate craftiness to create an alter-ego and start up another TFT-like program; "investors" are always suckers for charismatic admins and the monetary panaceas they boast of creating. As it turns out, his conscience killed him in the end.

slappy

Although I do not need your link because I have a dictionary of criminal terms sitting on my book shelf, I'm glad you posted it for everyone else to see. You might want to pay special attention to that first statement about making a "false claim that may harm the reputation of an individual." I hate to tell you Andy, but your reputation is that of a scammer, therefore my comments certainly do nothing to harm your already horrible reputation.

Secondly, you've provided not one ounce of proof that anything I've said is false. Your comment about being a person of responsibilty is laughable, because nothing could be further from the truth. You did not comply with your contracts in either of your previous 2 programs. You call that personal responsibilty? You might want to read up on what the SEC is doing with the CEP group. I don't know if you're in the US or not, however no matter where you are, you're not untouchable.

slappy

Andrew, what a great and entertaining read. I would only add one thing. Your last sentence is: "As it turns out, his conscience killed him in the end."

I would disagree in that I don't believe it was his conscience that made him decide to stay under the name "Andy", rather his arrogance. I don't think he thought there would be this much criticism from this many people 6 months after he closed the other programs. I believe he felt the fire would have gone out by now and there would only be a small handful of people calling him out and he would be able to deal with them, much like he dealt with you and I six months ago when he was asked for proof of the so called "losses." The way he dealt with us then was much the same he is dealing with people now; a lot of double talk and going in circles, never directly answering the important questions and certainly never providing proof of anything.

At any rate, your post was very entertaining and as usual, your style of writing is to be commended.

Dolphin

I've stayed out of this debate for the most part ... but decided I'm now going to put in a few of my own thoughts ...

Andrew, for as long as I've been aware of your articles/posts, I too have enjoyed your writing style ...

That aside ... Andy has obviously hidden himself well given his stance on privacy .. no one can really claim to know him, his mind, or his conscience ...

Obviously there are a lot of strong opinions on this subject. Many support Andy because the reality is, he did pay via XLO for 12 months. I was one of the unlucky ones to get into it later in the game .. same as TFT ...

Also obviously, I was very outspoken on disagreeing with Andy selling to Krimm ... but throughout all of our debates on it, Andy respected my views, didn't try to change them, and understood what and why I was saying whatever I was saying ...

Unlike a lot of Admins, he has continued to put himself out there, debating, agreeing/disagreeing, whatever ... and does not shy away from that. He knows and understands, as well as all of us, that there's not going to be a 100% happy happy joy joy feeling or support here for him and/or his programs ...

I think it's been made clear by a lot of people how they feel and what they think lol. That doesn't stop Andy though. And that also doesn't stop people from either supporting him by participating in his programs, or not by choosing to stay away.

What my babbling about a whole lot of nothing comes down to is this ... ponzi or no ponzi, proven outside income or not, people have free will and they will spend their money wherever they wish. They know the risks. Many would rather take another chance on someone like Andy who has a history of paying over a year, than on someone new who may run off within a cycle or two.

Responsibility lies with the people parting with their money. Andy has admitted his mistakes. Whether or not that's the whole story and whether or not he has shirked any responsibilities from before or not, one can only go by his word and again, engage in free will as to what their next steps will be ...

Just my bumbling random thoughts from the void ;-)

Dolphin

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opie999

Fascinating post, andrew.

At the risk of venturing briefly into OT territory, I'd like to mention one other admin who fits your description of Zombietude very closely.

He's widely known as "Richard O'Neill" and it just so happens the thread honoring his resurrection (in which I awkwardly but unambiguously voice my opinion of his communication skills) resides in a sub-folder immediately adjacent to this one.

www.investment96.com ---- Richard is back (JP-Daily)

The parallels are too numerous to elaborate on so I'll simply mention the most striking contrast. Andy is renowned for his polite and respectful demeanor. Richard is crude, boorish, and fond of profanity. I find it interesting how cults can spring up around such wildly dissimilar personalities.

andrew, you really should drop by the 'hood more often yo.

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Andy

Interesting analysis Andrew ... not 100% accurate but not a bad read.

Now once more - for the detractors here.

Not one of you has proven your accusations.. and none of you has provided anything to say that anything I have said is false.

Most of you have not even bothered to look at the ATM.

So let's see if this approach sinks through your one eyed postings.

We are all pretty aware that I ballsed up TFT. We are all aware I used incoming to pay outgoing, for a while. You know this because I told you this. It's called admitting mistakes.

Everything any detractor here has posted about XLO is complete and utter rubbish. I take absolutely NO responsibility for Bob's failure to deliver. Anyone who thinks I should is completely and utterly wrong. Deal with it.

Now having mad a rather large mess of tft.. I needed to regroup and rethink. And as we know e-gold now has issues.

Are any of you e-currency experts? Anyone? Hold up your hand. Has anyone been through osgold evocash etc.. up to the current sitiuation?

If you have then you know damn well that sending money to a central location is perhaps not the wisest move. You would also be aware that right now your every transaction is being examined by federal agents. Are you 100% happy with this?

A solution was called for and rather than do nothing.. I went back a few years and revisted Loom. The idea is sound - I could see some problems with the system I called the owner we discussed etc.. I ran some ideas past him and CSATM was born..

Provision of a safe e-currency safe from hackers, safe from rampaging admins safe from freezing accounts safe from prying eyes. Something that is of huge value to a free market.

Legal issues were looked at - discussed examined.. and met. EVERY LEGAL REQUIREMENT IN TERMS OF KYC AND AML IS MET. Every licence is met. The business model is extremely sound.

And guess what. If it is a success then I have the capability for make some retribution. Am I going to promise this - hell no not at all. Why promise or get hopes up or anything of that nature.. if it does not work then I look ten times stupider.

However, I know that what I have worked bloody hard on for a few months is a worthwhile and neccesssary item.

What better way to demonstrate it than to use it..

Now.. for every detractor here has it not crossed your mind that I might be feeling not 100% about mistakes I have made.? And would like to be able to do something about it. And am doing something about it.

Ah no you have not even examined the model. Your close mindedness has stopped you from even doing that.

Am I making promises? Nope. Am I sure the ATM will be accepted? Nope

Am I certain it is a viable business model? Yep

I am sure.. hell I am certain that some are going to say hey Andy is full of BS. Go right ahead. I am not interested in your peurile opinions. I am doing something that I know could be of enourmous benefit to a whole helluva lot of people, and the fact that you have not bothered to look at the facts of what is on offer, and yet feel free to criticise, speaks only to the attitudes that you bring to your everyday life. I for one am glad that I have nothing to do with you, for I cannot countenance such a "me" attitude..

I have answered the questions that have been asked of me. Apparently you do not like the answers. Because you do not like them does not mean they are not answered.

In closing, the above lays out very clearly a business plan and a business model. You can choose not to like the model. You can choose to like it. You can choose not to bother to even look at it and mindlessly criticise. Sadly that is what the detractors have done.

If you have questions of the current program then ask. Anything and everything related to past events will be totally ignored..

slappy

The following from your post is exactly how you've attempted to skirt questions in the past and probably the future:

" Anything and everything related to past events will be totally ignored.."

In other words, you've not answered anything of importance. You also make claims about people having a negative and a "me" attitude toward life. While you should be talking about yourself when it comes to the "me" attitude, most on here have a very positive outlook on life, contrary to your statement. It is you and what you've done that the negativity is focused on, not life in general.

Now, if you can provide any proof what so ever that what anyone on here has said is false, maybe, just maybe you'll have a little bit of credibility. Therein lies the problem with pretty much anything you say Andy. You don't provide proof of anything. No proof of the losses or earnings in your past programs. No proof of your identity. No proof that your current program is earning 50% on members money every 75 days. No proof of anything. Not good enough, not by any stretch of the imagination and certainly not here in this forum where people are looking for real opportunities.