(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission is warning investors to beware online \u201cpaid-to-click\u201d scams that promise an easy payday by merely purchasing a membership or an advertising product up front and then clicking on a certain number of online ads each day.<\/p>\n
The SEC\u2019s investor alert explains that these online advertising programs may have little to no revenues besides membership fees or sales of \u201cad packs\u201d and may be nothing more than a Ponzi scheme. The SEC filed an enforcement case that was unsealed last week in federal court in Florida, alleging that roughly 99 percent of the purported \u201cprofits\u201d paid to earlier investors came directly from the buy-in fees collected from newer investors. Meanwhile, according to the SEC\u2019s complaint, the alleged perpetrator siphoned several million dollars out of investor funds to purchase a luxury home, automobiles, and private plane charters while also using the money to fund his other businesses.<\/p>\n
According to the SEC\u2019s investor alert, online advertising programs also can target those with something to advertise, promising to display a company\u2019s ads on their network or guaranteeing traffic to a website by simply paying a membership fee or buying ad packs.<\/p>\n
\u201cBe skeptical if you are offered high returns for buying advertising products or clicking on online ads,\u201d said Lori Schock, Director of the SEC\u2019s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy. \u201cSome paid-to-click programs are actually Ponzi schemes.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to the SEC\u2019s complaint filed against Miami-based Pedro Fort Berbel and his company Fort Marketing Group, they operated fraudulent internet advertising businesses under such names as Fort Ad Pays, The Business Shop, and MLM Shop. They allegedly solicited investors through online posts and videos claiming they could share in the companies\u2019 profits and earn investment returns as high as 120 percent by purchasing an ad pack for as little as a dollar and clicking on four banner ads per day. The SEC alleges that Berbel and Fort Marketing Group raised more than $38 million from at least 150,000 investors.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs alleged in our complaint, these companies had no viable source of revenue besides income from investor membership fees and the sale of ad packs, so this boiled down to an ad packs Ponzi scheme in which the promised investment returns to earlier investors were not possible without using funds from new investors,\u201d said Eric I. Bustillo, Director of the SEC\u2019s Miami Regional Office.<\/p>\n
The SEC\u2019s complaint charges Berbel and Fort Marketing Group with violating Sections 5(a), 5(c), and 17(a) of the Securities Act and Section 10(b) and Rule 10b-5 of the Securities Exchange Act. They\u2019re also charged with selling investments that are not registered with the SEC as required under the federal securities laws. The SEC encourages investors to check the backgrounds of people selling them investments. A quick search on the SEC\u2019s investor.gov website shows that Berbel and Fort Marketing Group are not registered to sell investments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission is warning investors to beware online \u201cpaid-to-click\u201d scams that promise an easy payday by merely purchasing a membership or an advertising product up front and then clicking on a certain number of online ads […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,3,16048],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hedgeco-networks-press-releases","category-hedgeco-news","category-hedgecovest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60858"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60858\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60859,"href":"https:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60858\/revisions\/60859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}