Lies and more lies at Private Investors Union
January 30, 2007
Do you believe Private Investors Union (PIU) lied to its investors about the actual status of the program?
In their 47-page PDF report, PIU claimed their death was caused by Financia Investing denying them their US$1.5 million withdrawal request in November 2006. Reports have shown, however, that Financia Investing already collapsed a year earlier, around November or December 2005, as proven by Fair Share Investing and other investment pool programs.
Wanna hear some more lies from PIU?
Is Private Investors Union (PIU) lying?
January 27, 2007
If Private Investors Union (PIU)'s story is to be believed, it took them one year to discover what Fair Share Investing (FSI) and other investment pool programs have already known for so long.
Like PIU, FSI is a private pool program that invested in Wanda Lee Newby's forex trading corporation, Financia Investing. But unlike PIU, FSI knew the company was in trouble ever since December 2005.
FSI used to be part of FeederFund's portfolio, offering investors 7-8% monthly gross return. But in May 2006, Feederfund closed FSI to new membership after the latter ascertained that Financia Investing wasn't anymore paying as scheduled.
The FSI admin shared via email that he and the admins of other pool programs invested in Financia Investing knew since December 2005 that the company was in trouble.
All her other investors that I know of, stopped receiving money in Dec 2005. Actually Nov 2005 was last payment and Dec 2005 was missed payment and first sign of trouble.
- Fair Share Investing admin
HYIP News: Private Investors Union (PIU) is dead
January 24, 2007
Backed by a 47-page PDF report, the PIU admins announced last week the death of Private Investors Union.
This is their version of the story:
In 2004 we found an investment company called Financia Investing Inc., located in San Jose, California. The company is openly registered, no Delaware kind of company. We decided to make our test investment there and signed a contract with them which was quite flexible as we wanted to test their abilities and response to withdrawals.
We made a first withdrawal of interest gains after 3 months of investment, then again after 9 months of initial investment and lastly after 12 months when we requested all our funds back also.
During this time also we were building our trust and association with the company, they would show us extra-official details of their operation and it was clear they were generating profits. We were so happy and so sure that this would be a great opportunity that some of us thought that maybe we can help other people reach their goals too at that moment we thought of our neighbors and friends that do not have too much money for an initial investment but would like to have a retirement opportunity in the future.
Our initial test ended at around December 2004, and at that moment we decided that if we would have other people interested in this we would need to go even further with due diligence.
We asked the company Financia Investing INC, to give us reference letters of other clients of them, we asked for personal reference letters and for bank reference letters. All showed good signs, the bank Washington Mutual was extremely happy with them (no wonder why) and they got a great reference letter for them.
On another try to find out more, we tried to ask them about how the money was generated, how us some live trading and other details, this request was denied on protection of their trading methods. This was just a try to find out more, it is a normal standard that a company will protect their main “secret” in order to protect their business, but at least we tried.
After having all our due diligence covered , we took our decision. It is very important that one of the reasons why we felt even more secure about this opportunity was because it had its location in the USA, the USA have always controlled such kind of investment companies and audited them yearly or even quarterly depending on its size in order to avoid PONZIs, SCAMS, or FRAUD. In some sense this would give us some extra "security".
On February 2005, the program was born.
At that point, we created our private website and that is what it was meant, just an union of private investors, friends and neighbors that would have liked to start or make their test investment.
At that point in time we were not aware of the whole jungle that was called the HYIP arena, we were amazed at how fast they found out our website and started to put them in so called "HYIP monitors".
For around 7 months, the test would continue and the demand for our program would grow. We were always able to honor our financial duties no matter what the situation was.
At that point we were holding an investment capital plus interest at Financia Investing Inc. of close to 1 million dollars (to be exact 984.970,00). Our initial investment have grown a lot and we were able to cover all the funds that were being accumulated in the program which were no more than 30.000 USD before September 2005.
During August 2006, the decision was made to lower the interest earnings in order to give more safety to the program, to protect your funds and avoid any problems, there were also more costs associated with the whole program not only because of us but because of other direct clients of Financia Investing Inc., the number of traders which was 2 at the beginning would have grown to 5 and they would have to be paid following industry standards of around 20% of profits generated.
During December the 1st in our monthly conference call, Mr Gregory Dixon, expressed the need of the traders to have a "Holiday Break", this break was made on Wanda Lee Newby's wish since they were working too much and they needed a break.
On the first days of November 2006, we did request a withdrawal of funds of around 1.500.000usd, Wanda Lee Newby acknowledged reception of information and transfers was supposed to be received during December as expressed in the contract.
We called during December 13th, and we managed to communicate with Mr Gregory Dixon, he told us that he everything was ok and that Wanda Lee Newby was near Los Angeles visiting her friend "Cristabel". We asked about our withdrawal request and we were told that they have done that already on December the 8th, and that it should be about to arrive. We kept trying to contact anyone at Financia Investing Inc. during all the days of the December with no exception without any luck to confirm.
To our surprise in January 1st, we are informed by local friends made during our many visits to Financia Investing Inc, that Wanda Lee Newby had passed away… this was then confirmed by an obituary posted on the San Jose Mercury news on December the 29th.
It states that she passed away on December 14th, after 6 years of breast cancer.
IMPORTANT NOTE: WE WERE NOT INFORMED THAT SHE HAD BREAST CANCER OR ANY KIND OF DISEASES.
AS SOON AS THIS ALL HAPPENED, we immediately started to contact close persons to Financia Investing Inc, to find out about the actual situation this is the information we have up to the day of this report on January 15th 2007.
Wanda Lee Newby was deathly ill, she entered the hospital in late October, she basically went brain dead the last week of November. She died on December 14, 2006.
Up to this day, we were not able to communicate with anyone at Financia Investing Inc. anymore, telephones are disconnected, there is no one at the office or at home, no one is returning calls to any of us.
We kindly ask you to please for a moment think about our situation too, we were also cheated, misinformed and given false information at some point during Financia Investing Inc. We have no power over any bank account of Financia Investing Inc. We only have contracts which express our INVESTOR type of relation with Financia Investing Inc. We are also a VICTIM of this problem.
- Excerpts from PIU's 47-page PDF report
We have reasons to believe that the administrators of the program Private Investors Union (PIU) are lying. Read the results of our investigation here: Is Private Investors Union (PIU) lying?
Discuss the death of PIU in the Private Investors Union thread in the PMT Forum (login required).
