You can read the last news in E-gold Blog:

April 21, 2008

Yesterday I read in a Spanish newspaper (El Mundo) a warning from CNMV (National Securities Market Commission, it´s the organism who regulates financial markets in Spain) about “Finanzas Forex” (commercial name) or “Evolution Market Group”:

- His owner: German Cardona Soler, was involved before in some different businesses since 2002,  with great losses to many people, these businesses were about telephony, betting, games…

-  This program offers to their promoters good comissions to attract new investors, even with bonds in the form of luxury cars and some helps to buy a house (60.000 eur). With this referral program the company is getting 600 investors/1.200.000 eur daily. 

- The profit they supposedly get trading in the Forex market is not realistic in a long term or constantly: from 10% to 21% monthly.

- The company has got about 18.500 clients, managing a patrimony of 77 million of eur. This income is transferred to an American Company called Crowne Gold, and from this last company the funds are “supposedly” transferred to Dukascopy broker.

- One of the most active promoters is Santiago Fuentes, who posted in his website that they were in the process to be regulated by CNMV, but this organism denies it.

Source in Spanish language:

ElMundo newspaper 

According to this post, Global Pension Plan could be involved in some kind of investigation or fraud:

Feds seize more than $1M from Norfolk pastor

Posted to: Crime News NorfolkBy Tim McGlone

The Virginian-Pilot© April 4, 2008

Federal agents seized more than $1.1 million from a self-proclaimed pastor in Norfolk who is under investigation in an international investment fraud scheme, according to court filings unsealed this week. Benjamin Seigler of Pall Mall Street has not been charged but is the focus of an ongoing inquiry into several of his investment programs, says an affidavit filed in federal court this week by U.S. postal inspectors.

More than 4,000 individuals in this country and abroad placed investments with Seigler, but none has seen any returns, the affidavit says. “Seigler is defrauding individuals by selling fraudulent insurance and securities products” says the affidavit, filed by postal inspector Eric Brown. “This scheme is ongoing.”

Postal inspectors have been investigating Seigler since November, when managers at the Norview post office, near Seigler’s apartment, noticed he was receiving more than 50 letters a day containing money orders made out to him in amounts ranging from $44 to $1,000, which Seigler cashed at various post offices around the city, the affidavit says.

The mail originated from states across the country as well as from Canada, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Many of the money orders noted they were payment to the “Global Pension Investment Trust” or some variation. Further investigation discovered that Seigler had deposited, from October to March, more than $900,000 in cash in a Chartway Federal Credit Union account, Brown said in his affidavit.

The inspectors obtained warrants to listen in on Seigler’s phone calls. During daily conference calls with investors, Seigler said his investments would yield greater returns than traditional bank accounts or stock programs, Brown wrote.

For example, an investment for as little as $42.62 in an insurance contract would yield $3,000, $79,000 or as much as $154,000, Brown’s affidavit says.

The investments were purportedly to be made through an online entity called Global Pension Plan, which has a Web site with no phone number, address or contact information, nor does it identify exactly what insurance program funds are invested with.

“Because we want to succeed in this business, we need to protect the privacy of all our partners. This may sound confusing and shady, but please try to take another perspective,” Global Pension Plan says on its Web site.

Postal inspectors interviewed a number of people, mainly in Arizona and Louisiana, who invested with Seigler but have not received any returns. Those investors were not identified in the court filings. Postal inspectors did not return calls for comment. Officials in the U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.

Messages left for Seigler at his home were not returned. Over the past several months, about 15 people who invested with Seigler signed an online petition stating that Seigler “has caused great consternation among some in the group” by not investing in the Global Pension Fund. The petition signatures are collected at ipetitions.com, an independent Web site. The petition asks that officials at Global Pension Fund “take appropriate action” to divorce Seigler from the program.

Postal inspectors say they believe Seigler used some of the investors’ money to pay for his own investments, but largely had stocked the money in his Chartway account, according to the court records. Last month, the inspectors took more than $1 million from Seigler’s credit union account plus another $150,000 in cash from his home as well as 27 boxes of documents, two computers and a handgun, according to a federal search warrant unsealed this week.

Agents also seized three brand-new vehicles Seigler purchased recently: twoChevy Malibus and a Chevy Trailblazer. When he purchased the vehicles, Seigler identified himself as a pastor with a church called “Talking by Faith Global Deliverance Anointed,” according to Brown’s affidavit.

Public records show that Seigler held a Virginia home improvement contractor’s license from 2000 to 2004 and that he lived in Virginia Beach at the time. In 1996, Seigler and his wife filed for bankruptcy in Pennsylvania and emerged with their debts discharged, according to court records.

Tim McGlone, (757) 446-2343, tim.mcglone@pilotonline.com

The National Bureau of Investigation, Finland’s central criminal police, has started an investigation into the activities of the WinClub “investment club”. The NBI says that up to 10,000 people had made on-line investments in the club. The total value of the investments exceeds EUR 50 million. 

Individual investors may have lost thousands and even tens of thousands of euros in investments. The website of the on-line investment community was shut down at the beginning of this month. Only a few criminal complaints have been made so far. 

The “investment club” operated for several years, and at least a few of the investors actually made a profit.

The NBI says that it has reason to suspect that a number of crimes were committed in connection with WinClub, and its successor WinCapita. The aim of the ongoing investigation is to establish whether or not the activities constitute a pyramid scheme. 

The authorities are asking that people who feel that they have been the victim of a crime after investing in WinCapita to report their suspicions to the local police.

Some more information in this website

You can also read what wikipedia has posted about Wincapita:

Wincapita, previously Winclub, was an Internet based investment and multi-level marketing company that is alleged to be a Ponzi scheme. It operated on Finnish market. 

The company presented itself as an invitation-only investment club that required an initial investment of several thousand Euros, while promising up to 400% returns in investment initial. 

The investment company has been in operation since 2005. The web site of the company was abruptly closed in March 2008. 

According to Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, who began investigating the activities of the company in late March 2008, approximately 10.000 people lost their investment. The total amount of money lost is over 50 million Euros.  

In the early part of the operations, the returns were paid normally, in order to draw in more investors. The company itself was registered in Panama.

Mr. Darling, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, has announced that the widely criticized new taxes for Non Doms (foreigners) living in the UK, would become effective in April 2008.

Many had hoped that the UK would consider more carefully the serious implications that such new taxes might present for the UK economy. Various groups and organizations had predicted a flight of companies and high net worth individuals to other countries, particular Switzerland.

John Riches, Deputy Chairman of STEP, stated that, “In the absence of such a postponement (of the tax proposal), we are still fearful that the flight of individuals and capital will continue”.

The principal tax matter is the imposition of a charge of GBP 30,000 per year for Non-Doms using the remittance system of taxes, who have been resident in the UK for 7 of the past 10 years.

The new provisions going into effect in April, 2008 confirm the above tax measure but suggest that the GBP charge should be deductible from foreign tax owed. The previous position of Revenue was that this was a matter for the various tax treaties and not of concern to Revenue. It remains to be seen however, as to whether this position has really changed.

The other concern is whether, now that the old Non-Dom regime has finally been breached, more tax changes may be in the offering for the next and following years. Fears abound; already, there are reports of major re-locations of Hedge Funds from London to Switzerland and more are following. These funds employ large numbers of foreign specialists who would be impacted seriously by the tax increases, and who knows whether these are the last.

According to the Financial Times, David Butler, a founding member of Kinetic, an investment management company, stated that up to two-thirds of his Hedge Fund clients have already moved their operations to Switzerland. And of course, readers may be aware of the recent Yahoo announcement that it intends to move its European operations from London to Switzerland.

While the investment community in London is reeling from the changes, it is still uncertain what impact this will have on the high net worth foreign community in London. Some may consider the GBP 30,000 charge of little significance but others less wealthy may begin to re-consider residency in London. After all, there are may other attractive locations in the world, particularly for the high net worth retiree. Of course, for the Middle Eastern wealthy, Dubai and other countries are spending very large sums of money on infrastructure, such as hotels and recreational/entertainment complexes, to attract just such wealthy Middle Eastern UK residents, as well as high end European and US nationals.

At the moment Switzerland is the country of choice for Non-Doms re-locating from London. It has a very attractive tax regime and the canton system makes it possible to negotiate a flat annual tax, providing stability in tax planning.

Offshore Trusts

In this area, Revenue has made some concessions. Income and gains by offshore trusts with assets in the UK will only be taxed if they are remitted to the UK.

Capital Gains

The new 18% flat tax on capital gains will come into effect in April 2008.

Offshore Income

Mr. Darling confirmed that the Government would “not seek to charge UK tax on offshore income or capital gains that is not brought into the UK.”

Source: Maritime International Ltd 

The SEC as well as the EU’s top market regulator have been exploring how to build a barrier-free transatlantic securities market that could ultimately give investors more choice.

“The steps we are announcing today are designed to better coordinate SEC regulation of the U.S. capital markets with our counterparts’ regulation in the larger global marketplace,” SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said in a statement.

The SEC’s plan includes exploring initial agreements with the agency’s foreign counterparts and potentially reforming rules to make it easier for U.S. investors to access foreign broker dealers. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA), a Wall Street trade group, urged the SEC to reform broker dealer rules immediately. “Firms are forced to meet Byzantine requirements written at a time when fax machines were the leading telecommunications tool,” the group said.

Rules need “to be rewritten to reflect the cross-border capabilities of the industry, and the global product demands of its customers,” it said.The concept of allowing foreign banks, brokers and exchanges to operate under their home country’s rules is also known as “mutual recognition”.”If regulators are able reach a “mutual recognition” agreement, it would mark a radical shift in how markets are overseen.

The SEC currently requires foreign trading firms to comply with its rules even though they are fully supervised in their home market. The plan includes adopting a formal process for discussing “mutual recognition” with other regulators. “By beginning to build a sturdy basis for cooperation among securities regulators who share the same concerns, we can greatly improve investor protection and market efficiency worldwide,” Cox added.

I recommend you to read this interesting article from Bankaholic Blog and the FED:

http://www.bankaholic.com/2008/federal-reserve-is-failure/

I am also worried about the USA dollar situation and what will happen in the recent future in the worldwide economy, maybe it´s too late to save USA from a recession.

I am also shocked reading the last email from Felix Homogratus and what his attorney specialized in US tax law sent to him, you can find it here, some words about this post:

“I thought you would find this interesting: UBS is no longer accepting US clients…current accounts will remain, but no new accounts. This is an amazing development. There are other options, but most require large deposits ($3m+) from US clients.”

What´s your opinion?

Here is another search engine, but this is different from others. The main difference between SearchMe and other search engines is that it returns results primarily in a visual format, via an image of the result site. The results are displayed in a way that is similar to browsing through albums in iTunes or like coverflow in macintosh machines.

It´s not finished yet but you can request an invitation to prove it.

In this link you can see some videos with “SearchMe” working:

Search me videos 

Do you like it?

Update from Milbay Finance S.A.:

This month our office in Uruguay will send to this Government the annual presentation of the Milbay Finance´s tax return by the finalized exercise in 30-November-2007, and we will also update and pay the annual fee for the SAFI.

Regards

It seems that reliable investment programs are dissapearing or moving to a new different venture. As you can read in my last post Infinity Shares is closing their doors too.

There are some problems now and many people are angry and waiting to be refunded by Dan (Life Holdings´ Admin) but he promises to refund all investors and moving to a different venture.

You can read some more information in Jude´s Forum:

http://nobsnetwork.net/specific-hyip-discussion/404-life-holdings.html

In his last words, Jude (who is in contact with Dan) posted this news:

The refunds for everyone will come.

I have yet to receive my wire, (no i haven’t pull out, just a small withdrawal for something very important at home), but I’ll update in due course.

Also, for those who doesn’t want to pull out of LH, there’s probably no chance for that. Your money will be refunded too, I’ve adviced Dan to do this for everyone.

He’ll come up with something new, legalized so that everyone can be reassured in case he screws up (like this time with the withdrawals and all)

If he pulls something, rest assure I’ll be on it.