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Did you lose money in FrancSwiss?

Earlier last week, a news reporter from a major TV channel emailed Pinoy Money Talk and asked if we can recommend people who would be willing to sit for an interview to talk about their losses in the online investment program FrancSwiss.

Our reply, at that time, was that it might be difficult to find those people because FrancSwiss is technically still not a scam because it has not stopped paying yet. Our opinion was that investors would not badmouth a program they think has not done anything wrong.

Fast forward several days later, and FrancSwiss was declared a Ponzi and a scam-waiting-to-unfold by the Philippine SEC, BSP, and media channels. No sooner than that, all FrancSwiss websites went down, the operators were nowhere to be found, and no investor received payment in the last few days.

FrancSwiss being officially declared a scam is now starting to sink in to most people. Investors have started telling their own FrancSwiss stories — including stories of financial losses, of distrust in the people who referred them to the program, and of deception, hopelessness, and confusion.

Here are some of these stories, taken from the Comments section of the article Is FrancSwiss a scam? and the HYIP: FrancSwiss discussion thread. True or not, these stories are surely something FrancSwiss investors can relate to.

Read on.

3 Types of HYIP investors — Which one are you?

PinoyMoneyTalk.com started in 2005, initially with the aim of providing Filipinos with an objective guide to successful investing in High-Yield Investment Programs (HYIP). In our more than two years of experience in the HYIP industry, we have seen different types of investors come and go.

In this article, we present to you what we think are the three basic groupings of HYIP investors: the Cheerleader, the Naive Player and the Informed Gambler.

Which one are you?

Is FrancSwiss a scam?

It seems the newest craze in town is not anymore Koreanovelas, Pinoy Big Brother, or celebrity video scandals, but an HYIP “pretending to be a genuine investment program” called FrancSwiss.

The buzz is that even actors like Raymart Santiago and Claudine Barretto and TV broadcaster Korina Sanchez have “invested” in the program. With a 4.5% promised return per day, who could resist this kind of offer?

Without a doubt, hundreds of investors have already made big profits during the past months. But would thousands cry and wail once the program is gone and has stopped paying?

12DailyPro: Overview of an Autosurf Program-turned-Scam

In mid-2005, Charis Johnson began operating 12DailyPro (www.12dailypro.com). 12DailyPro or 12DP, as investors called it, was an an autosurf program wherein investors were promised 12% return on their invested funds every day for twelve days. In order to receive the daily earnings, members were to run a program on their computer that would automatically view certain websites and thereby purportedly generate advertising revenue.

Ms. Johnson was extremely successful in attracting investors and raised approximately $500 million in less than nine months. Investors’ money was handled not by 12DP itself but by third party Internet payment processors such as Stormpay, EMO, and e-gold.

12DailyPro refunds FAQ

The latest breakthrough 12DailyPro news came in November 2006 but recently, however, there still are no major updates regarding the receivership status of 12DailyPro or the possibility of refunds.

We might hear some 12DailyPro updates in April 2007, though, once the Receiver submits a 2nd Interim Report to the Court.

While waiting for the report, let's recap some Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about 12DailyPro and 12DP refunds, as posted in the website of Thomas F. Lennon, the Court-appointed receiver.