Issues to be addressed:
1. (new) Conversion of funds from the monthly to the Premium Plan
2. Sequence and Order of Payments to be Made Feb. 01, 2010
3. Charitable Giving - Holidays, 2009
4. Issues with StrictPay.
5. Adding of new payment processor: Global Digital Pay
Greetings Once Again Loyal Friends & Associates of GNI:
In our ongoing effort to keep all of you informed we give to you our fourth Newsletter of the Calendar year 2010. What an exciting, certainly eventful, year it is appearing to be....
1. Converting Members Deposits from the Monthly to the Premium Plan(s)
As all of you should know, I have spent a great deal of time over the last couple weeks in the forum, reading emails and as much as possible, responding to the questions and issues that many of you have. These questions range from the mundane to the unattainable, along with everything else thrown in the mix. The issue which stands out amongst all the rest is member's desires to monetize their current (and new) holdings into the premium plan which will allow them to earn the higher interest rate characteristic of the better plan.
Therefore, those customers whose aggregate total exceeds $21,000, whether it is the result of one deposit or a successive series of deposits comprised of new money, interest payments or previously rec'd referral commission, will begin receiving the higher rate on ALL deposits made after the script recognizes the deposit. The script will recognize a deposit for consideration into the higher plan following a payment of interest. While this may appear complicated, it's not.
I will give a couple of examples:
Example A - Customer Lam
Customer Lam has four active deposits; three in the monthly plan (a deposit for $5000, one for $10,000 and one for $15,000) and one in the premium plan ($21,000). In Feb, Lam receives 16% on his three deposits which did not, individually, exceed $21,000, but will (the higher 20% interest) on his single deposit for $21,000.
As a result of our recent decision, beginning in March, Lam will receive, because his deposits, collectively exceeded 21k, the higher rate of interest on all his deposits and on any subsequent deposits including interest payments until his 14 months has expired on his 21K deposit which would bring his cumulative total back under 21k, reducing his remaining deposits to the lower 16% for the remainder of his active deposits, unless he added to his account bringing it back up over the $21,000 mark.
Example B - Hausfrau
Hausfrau isn't as financially savvy as Lam but has nevertheless, three deposits and wants to make a new one. Her current deposits are each $5000 with interest being awarded on Feb. 17th, 18th and 19th - collectively totaling $15,000; she has not added her new deposit (after having found lots of nickels, dimes and quarters in the laundry) of another $5000 because she's blond and forgot to do this (she was working on her taxes she forgot to do over the last 3 years, instead). In February, Hausfrau will earn 16% on each of her three $5000 deposits; ($800 on the 16th, again on the 17th and finally $800 on the 18th - 30 days after the recorded date of the deposit).
GNI Hausfrau now has $17,400 in her GNI account (3x $5000 principal + 3x $800 interest). All of these funds continue to earn at the 16% rate. GNI Hausfrau looses her blond hair and remembers to deposit her nickels and dimes with her favorite PP, $5000 with SP who successfully adds this to her GNI account. Hausfrau would begin earning 20% on this deposit. She would not earn 20% on her other deposits because the script, as previously stated will not recognize a deposit for consideration into the higher plan until AFTER the next interest is paid.
GNI Hausfrau's three $5000 deposits would begin to start earning the higher rate of interest as soon as the interest is awarded on the 15th, 16th and 17th.
All subsequent deposits would earn at the higher rate (20%) as well, until the deposits began to expire (following the 14th month / cycle). Once the aggregate total amount of deposits fell below $21,000, she would then earn the lower rate of returns.
NOTE: the resemblance of these examples to any known GNI staff person is purely coincidental :)
We are currently implementing this new feature and as from mid next week new deposits (incl. reinvestments of interest) will automatically added to the 20% plan, if the total deposits equals or exceeds $21K
2. Schedule for Payment Requests and Payments for February, 2010
While it had originally been our intention to pay members on a first-come, first-serve basis; this is seemingly unfair to many members while lending itself to the very real possibility of a server overload / crash and less than desirable ramifications including the inability to get anyone paid; a distraction we neither want or need.
Therefore, we have decided to modify the original plan and in its place provide the means and method to select the particular GNI payee based on a random selection of GNI account IDs.
We will be using a random number generator to select the payment date of your interest payment.
A random number generator is a computational algorithm tasked with generating a group or sequence of characters lacking any discernable pattern.
In other words, you will be paid at some point between the 8th and 28th of February. When you make your withdraw request has NO impact nor will it influence in any way when you will actually receive your funds.
The procedure to withdraw your funds is no different than it was prior to the reorganization, therefore no explanation is warranted in this Newsletter.
3. Final Totals for the Charitable Recipients - 2009
Uganda4Life
$43,158.48 with 387 donations
Kids4Life
(some additional due diligence is being conducted prior to the release of funds)
A couple comments are appropriate as some of our client base truly stepped up in support of the effort these charities and their participants give trying to help those persons who are least able to help themselves, orphaned and / or sick children.
a. GNI has roughly 11,000 funded accounts.
b. A total of 971 separate donations were made.
c. Assuming no member made more than one donation (which is patently erroneous, every member that I am aware of made multiple donations to both charities), roughly 8.8% (call it 9%) of our customer base contributed to the survival of children in parts of the world that are subjected to conditions we couldn't even pretend to fathom.
To those 9% who sought to help the helpless by donating we embrace you and your efforts; are proud to help you achieve some of your monetary goals you have set for yourselves prior to joining GNI.
To the 91% of the GNI membership who chose NOT to participate, we are confident you have found a charitable organization better suited to your tastes and interests. We, likewise, are proud to help you achieve your monetary goals you have established before coming to our project.
Consistent with our reorganization plan which, out of necessity demands the program is restored to its previous financial strength, a decision encumbered on monetary health of the program, fairness to the customer base, the intent of the donors and the needs of the charities was reached to ascertain the most practical way to distribute the funds to these fine causes.
Uganda4Life will be receiving 4 payments of equal amounts spread over four months beginning the first week of February and concluding the first week of May, 2010; predicated by the total amount reflected above.
These payments will be made to the account of their choice as determined by the appropriate person with authority to make this decision. All transfer information will be made available to those individuals who have a vested interest in either the payment process or that charity in particular.
4. Issues Currently Affecting StrictPay
The following update has been provided by Strictpay to and for its clients:
Customers
Our support staffs have been contacted numerous times asking if we are having "money problems" or "cash flow issues". We are not having any money problems at all, but we have recently had to move very large amounts of funds to different bank accounts. When moving large amounts of funds to the new bank accounts, they have put a hold on the funds for a certain time frame, and this has caused us major delays as these holds can last 15 to 20 business days. We thought it would be best to send an update to all customers, even though it will be lengthy. Please take the time to read this entire message carefully, as we believe it will answer some questions you may have.
Banks in the United States do not like doing business with any type of company that they feel are processing payments as a third party processor, or are acting like a bank in their eyes. This issue, as well as numerous other over-regulatory and intrusive U.S. banking issues, has caused problems for our contracted agents. This has become an increasingly problematic issue over the last few years as we are sure many of you know, and thus has made all U.S. dealings that much more difficult to deal with. This of course affects some aspects of our business, with the most obvious example being the ability to do ACH transactions for our U.S. customers.
These U.S. related issues were why we recently made one of the banks we have been dealing with for a couple of years a public option to withdraw and deposit funds for our customers. We thought this would be a rather quick solution, but very soon realized that they could not handle the mass volume of daily transactions that our customers complete within the time frames that we have promised in the past. We also had some customers tell us that their bank wire instructions are far too complicated. This issue caused many of the wires to be completed incorrectly by some customers or their banks, and these funds would then be sent back to the sender after a 7 to 10 day hold. These issues, as well as others, made us realize that we needed to find completely new banking options that could handle both the high volume and the processing time frames our customers had become accustomed to.
Having then changed to another bank caused us more delays, as we again had to move a very large amount of funds that were subject to their hold times. Once these funds started getting released to us, you could see that our outgoing wire time frames got much better again, and are now in the 2 to 4 business day range. These 2 to 4 business days will now be our normal time frame for bank wire withdraws. Incoming bank wires are also getting to us much quicker now with this new bank, and we have been told by many customers that the new bank wire instructions are much easier to understand as well. With the difference in time zones, and also the varying locations and banks that the funds are being sent from, a bank wire can take 1 to 5 business days to reach us. We are seeing that in most cases they will reach us within 2 business days, but we must state the time frame for bank wire deposits as 1 to 5 business days to cover all situations.
We have also recently had the first loading delays ever with our debit card platform since it was setup in June 2009. The new bank that we are sending the debit card funds from is having an issue that they need to get worked out with the receiving bank, and once they get this issue taken care of we will then start loading major funds to that account so that you can get your funds in the proper time frames once again.
Our number one objective is to make sure that your money is safe, and this is why we will take very calculated steps before we offer any new funding or withdraw options. We have many things that we are working on behind the scenes to make sure we can once again offer many different funding and withdraw options, but these things will likely take many months to complete. We have other banks that we have held accounts with for years, and we are also looking into what services they may offer us in regards to more of a public account with them. Keeping our customers funds and information secure and private is always of the utmost importance for us.
We are also working on a short term solution to allow check withdraws again, and we hope to have more information on this issue in the coming weeks. Unfortunately the fees may be slightly higher, and there will be some limits in place, but we feel it is important to at least give some of our customers an option to withdraw by check until we have a long term solution in place.
We know these delays have been frustrating to all of you, and they have been to us as well. As a way of saying thank you for continuing to choose StrictPay as your payment option through these trying times, we will be lowering the receiving fee on funds transferred from 2% to 1.5% until 2-28-2010. We appreciate your understanding and patience during this trying time, and we promise to continue to work hard to find long term options of deposit and withdraw that will continue to make us the best payment option available today.
Team StrictPay
There have been many questions being asked on behalf of Strictpay.
5. Global Digital Pay
Given the persistent and on-going challenges that seem to be an on-going battle and on request of many members, we have decided to introduce a new PP called Global Digital Pay. They are similar to LR in price and fees (reasonable) but have chosen to respect common laws and decency.
We encourage you to check them out and consider using this in your future on-line business transactions: https://www.globaldigitalpay.com
The Global Digital Pay payment interface will be implement during the course of next week.
Any feedback would be appreciated!
With best regards,
Robert and your GNI Team
15/01 Newsletter
I have received the following very important newsletter from Gold Nugget Invest admin. You may recall that I recently had a problem with my account which was successfully resolved - read about it here.
Dear Friends & Associates of GNI
As we welcomed Year 2010, we (Principals, Staff and Associates) felt the need to reflect on the challenges GNI faced and were able to overcome; and what if anything, we could learn from having faced these challenges.
These challenges were broad in scope - which included catastrophic script failure(s) to potentially catastrophic hackers; from being flush with cash when we shouldn't have been and devoid of funds when we should have (had ample amounts). Despite these hardships, and in contravention to those who wish nothing but our demise, never did we consider abandoning our friends and associates without whom we never would have experienced, learned and grew with the project uniquely known as GNI.
The last quarter of 2009, however, placed significant obstacles in our pursuit of success, each having the capability of wiping out any well-managed program, anywhere!
During the Christmas / New Year Holiday, needing a crystal clear vision of our financial vortex, I met with Jurgen and others to obtain their trading reports and declare our Profit / Loss position to the Principals of GNI. With Arthur leading the way, we were able to evaluate with no uncertainty, our financial, technical and situational oversight in preparation for year 2010.
Specifically, we looked at:
1. Yesilada Bank. That entity having the most significant impact is / was the freezing of assets by the German Authorities, of Yesilada's Correspondent Bank. This particular frozen account contains all of Yesilada's client's foreign exchange funds. There are dozens of legitimate clients, along with GNI, whose lives have been put on hold pending the resolution of an investigation which has NOTHING to do with GNI. It's a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong. time.
Twenty-three weeks without the availability of OUR (and some of our best clients) funds, while continuing to honor our obligation of paying interest on those funds becomes a loss ranging from 10% - 12.5% a week. We arrive at those numbers simply by adding the percentage we could have received (which fluctuates based on the traders success) had they not been frozen, with that percentage we would have otherwise not had to pay out; over a twenty-three (23) week period. If we released the actual dollar amount that is involved, the numbers become staggering if not overwhelming.
As significant as this amount became, it was a manageable scenario using reserves and our favorable Forex positions. In defiance of all economic logic, the dollar began and continues to this day to gather strength against the Euro; weakening our positions considerably.
2. New Competition. About the same time (late September, early October) several well-managed, aggressive and unique Sports Arbitrage programs came on-line decreasing our market share, not in terms of investment dollars, more so for viable arbs.
Arbs which were earning consistent 4% - 8% returns during 2008 - 2009, our traders were now earning between 1.75% - 5.50%.
Our competition has taken advantage of technology and formed marketing partnerships which allow for clients to engage in arbitration activities without having to obtain accounts and relationships with bookies that has taken us years to develop. We were caught unprepared, but weren't discouraged.
What this meant:
For GNI to earn returns at the level of last year, demanded twice the amount (proportionate) of capital funds. Whether this is a one-time phenomenon or a new state of affairs in the world of Sports Arbitrage, we cannot say. We hope its the former!!!
2(a) Untimely Customer Requests for Payout of Principal. This, the first full year availing GNI to the world at-large, the percentage of client- requests for principals quadrupled (in proportional comparison to our last 3 years. I have my suspicions why, but cannot back this with any empirical data. It hurt us by forcing us out of arbs (becomes a complete loss on both ends) and missed many good ones during Christmas and the New Year celebration, largely in the US.
3. Fraud / Hacking Activities. Further compounding matters are the uninvited guests who pleasure themselves by hacking into client computers, then invade the GNI script. They have had some limited success redirecting Liberty Reserve deposits and to a much lesser extent, Strict Pay deposits causing untold amounts of additional work and further depletion of assets. Has this intruder caused us harm? Yes. Have we eliminated the threat? We hope so, but we're not entirely sure. What we do know, our customers are NOT taking the requisite steps to keep their computers free from hackers. How many of you use a US Social Security number for your password; or some other parenthetically easy conflagration any experienced hacker can guess. All told, this has cost us, in real dollars, well into the six figures and has contributed SIGNIFICANTLY towards our "situation."
4. Referral Program Abuse. When developing the business model to run and grow this project, included was a percentage to reward those who introduced GNI to prospective members (The Referral Plan). The abuse and fraud perpetrated by members who have become wealthy resulting from their participation in this program, at the expense of non-abusing members, the Principals and staff. who played by the rules, is disturbing!! The outlay of funds for payment of ill-gotten commissions is sufficient to end any well-meaning program!!
A very typical scenario relates to some customers we have who reside in the Eastern part of Europe. These clients held deposits of $100,000 (there were three participants). They staggered their deposits in a way that was clandestine avoiding detection by us. Every 7-10 days an amount between 21k and 35k was being deposited by one of the participants while a similar amount was being withdrawn. After absorbing fees and paying the undeserved commission, this amounted to well over $5000 per month.
Todd has gone through many GNI accounts. He estimates that somewhere between 45% and 60% of all active GNI accounts have received unearned commission (money that should not have been paid). There is no possible way to reverse these at this point. Unfortunately, the entire GNI membership will have to pay this in the form of a restructured program.
There is no justifiable excuse we can make other than we failed to implement adequate oversight.
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We have determined we have but two options: Restructure the organization or liquidate and close up shop!
Option I - Restructuring of the project (GNI) - The following depicts the highlite's of the "New GNI" as we currently envision. The changes are drastic, but still provide for customer's to make profits that dwarf any conventional investment program. Further, it is subject to change as new facts, information and level of capital is made available. It's nothing that any of us take pleasure in implementing, but it is what is necessary to regain our viability and operational capacity in the next decade. With that being said, I give to you the "New GNI" program.
Highlights of the "New GNI" Payment Plans
Much thought was put into the type of plan(s) we could offer. If our membership subscribes to the notion this new "monthly" plan was created having both the customer as well as the program in mind, remaining as revenue neutral as possible while recognizing the returns fall well short of what were able to offer previously. Nevertheless - we want to first introduce the new and now replaced Weekly Fixed Plan with the GNI Monthly plan as follows:
1 (A) The GNI Monthly Plan, has a target subscriber base of those wishing to invest $50 - $20,000. The rate of return will be 16% per month for 14 months. Those of you GNI clients who were in the Weekly Plan will have been rolled over into the Monthly plan.
1(B) The new rate of return will be 20% per month for the Premium Plan which will become effective immediately and will be paid at the above specified rate for 14 months. There will no longer be a cap on level of deposits unless specifically mentioned to you by Todd or myself.
2. Each deposit with have a life-span of 14 months. THE MONTHLY INTEREST PAYMENT INCLUDES THE RETURN OF YOUR PRINCIPAL.
Comment: A common question that has arisen - If the funds are in trade and earning GNI reasonable returns why would GNI need to keep the Investment Principal? The answer to this question is a complex one. Having an established end to the life-cycle of the the investment term, we will have established strong, internal management controls over the flow of currency, something we do NOT have at this point.
(Please Keep in mind, this is a "RECOVERY PLAN," not an operational plan. It can be modified one way or another to ensure the health and longevity of the plan as a whole. Despite the drastic steps we are taking, we are still paying interest at the 150% level (interest). We cannot find any mainstream investment paying anywhere close to this.
3. Consistent with the above, there is no longer a "lock-in" period as all investment cycles are 14 months. No early withdrawals (of principal) are permitted, no exceptions.
4. Outstanding withdrawal requests:
Currently, there is a large number of outstanding withdrawal requests that have not been processed. We know all of you, despite our incessant admonitions that GNI was to be a SECOND INCOME, NEVER wanting or asking to be anyone's primary source of income and encouraging EVERYONE to withdrawal from their accounts on a regular basis, have dire needs for those funds NOW.
There are / were two viable options and two only. The first option (A) is / was as follows:
(A) Those members having outstanding withdrawals may elect to keep them outstanding; and will be the first to receive interest payments when they resume in March. There will not be earnings or interest paid on those pending withdrawals;
On the other hand, those of you who elect to re-deposit those currently pending withdrawal requests,will earn interest starting at the time of re-deposit.
The second option allows for the least disruption and reduced impact on the customer base.
(B) Specifically, it permits the redressing of the withdrawal function starting on Feb. 01, instead of the inflated down time which would not have seen the first withdrawal until the following month, March 01, 2010.
* All pending withdrawals will be cancelled effective January 15th; reverted back to Customer's wallet then deposited (automatically) into either the Monthly or the Premium plan.
* No amount of funds exceeding $49.99 in any one currency will be permitted to remain in either client's wallet or cash balance up to and until this first "cycle" of payments has been completed.
* All requests for withdrawals must be made between the 1st and 7th of each month.
* GNI will fund customer's PP acc't with the agreed to amount between the 8th and 28th of that same month.
Note:
We have been able to change (escalate) the unlocking of the withdrawal feature a full thirty days earlier than originally scheduled . This resulted as a consequence of those members who, either voluntarily or out of necessity, had their withdrawals delayed allowing us to place those funds into trade and essentially reducing the withdrawal "time-out" by a full month. I only wish all of you can appreciate those who were not able to withdrawal during the holidays and the tremendous step forward this enabled our recovery to make.
6(a). New withdrawal requests will be received between the first (1st) and the seventh (7th) of each successive month beginning Feb. 01, 2010. The withdrawal requests received AFTER 11:59pm (server time) on the seventh of each will not be received and payment will not be made for that month.
If the seventh of the month falls on a Saturday or Sunday and your request was timely, it will be honored.
6. Payments will be made between the eighth (8th) and last business day of each month.
7. One withdrawal request per Payment Processor (PP), per month. Minimum withdrawal amount for any one processor = $10.00. If you have deposits in four different processors, you would be entitled to request one withdrawal for each PP accordingly.
8. Fees charged by the PP to transfer funds to GNI can no longer be absorbed by GNI. As an example: Customer sends 100.00 via Strictpay to GNI; GNI receives 98.00 (100.00 less 2.00 charged by SP for transfer, client will be credited 98.00)
9. Referral Program. The referral program and the abuse thereof, will stop. Conversely, we cannot abandon our marketing partners nor those who legitimately introduced the program to OUTSIDERS. Those of you who referred to yourself or to those who already were familiar with the program, along with those of you who withdrew your funds only to re-deposit immediately after you received your payout, you may take credit for contributing to the need for us to restructure. There are times when we needed for our customers to act in a way that showed gratitude, not greed!
Regretfully, the populace being what it is, couldn't resist giving themselves an extra bonus. They did so at the expense of our most honest customers and to those, on behalf of the ones who engaged in Referral Program abuse, we sincerely apologize.
That being said, the "New Referral Program" will work as follows:
Up-lines will, in lieu of the five (5) % punch at the onset of an invested deposit, receive 5% of their downline's interest payment for the life of the investment.
For example. Customer makes a $1000.00 purchase into the Monthly plan. Referrer would NOT receive 50.00 as they otherwise would (at the onset). What they would receive is $8 per month for 14 months or 112.00. This is calculated as follows: ($1000 = customers invested principal)($160 = the monthly interest received by customer for one month)(.05 or 5% = the declared rate of return for referral commission)=8(14 = the number of months invested) // $112.00.
The rate of commission would be slightly higher if your downline invests in the Premium Plan.
Option II - Liquidation of the GNI Project.
It is a fact, nobody wants to modify their program if it has shown the potential for success. Likewise, until a program is up and functional, there is no way to anticipate ALL of the needs, ALL of the problems or the true level of success or failure the program may potentially yield until you take that plunge or go forward. GNI was no exception. Never did we anticipate, nor could we have, the actions taken by the German Banking Administration to freeze Yesilada Bank's assets and those of our best clients, all merely caught up in unrelated investigation of some fraudster on a different continent. Unfortunately life, being what it is, has twists and turns - some of which you can plan, others you cannot.
For us to deny responsibility, as many, many others would, proclaiming "it's not our fault" is failing to accept the responsibility for that which is yours.
We chose Yesilada Bank to be our partners as they offered favorable rates, convenience, accessibility, wire transfer capabilities and other features we felt were important to the successful operations of GNI as well as to those customers who were compelled to utilize their services. We had secured personal assurances for the appropriate managers and service level administrators; with the end result being nothing more than what we are forced to face head-on.
There is never a convenient time to implement the kind and scope of changes we are insisting you, our customers, we the administrators and certainly our employees, to have to take. (Employees of GNI will be taking a 25% REDUCTION in payments and salaries as their contribution towards the successful recovery of the program).
Before going over the less attractive Option, please keep in mind the Terms of Service all of you who are participating in GNI, agreed to accept.
Terms of Agreement
Below are the terms of agreement and use for this site:
...We reserve the right to change the commissions and rates of the program at any time and at our sole discretion without notice, especially in order to respect the integrity and security of our members' interests. You agree that it is your sole responsibility to review the current terms...
There's a couple ways of liquidating GNI. If it goes through governmental regulators, the assets would be placed in receivership. A Court of Competent Jurisdiction would assign a Trustee, who would hire a team of lawyers, paralegals, accountants and bookkeepers, making anywhere between 100.00 - 700.00 per hour, all of which would come out of.....your (GNI Customer's) funds. It would take between 2-5 years to complete and assuming you have not recv'd ANY funds in the form of a payment; could get between 5 & 10 cents for every dollar invested.
The second option is to have Counsel retained by GNI to take the remaining assets and divide it amongst those of you who HAVE NOT received 100% of your invested dollars. It would be paid out on a pro-rata basis.
Conclusion:
While these are some trying times for everyone, we have devised and orchestrated a comprehensive plan we feel is workable. If circumstances change, we will modify the program accordingly.
How many of our loyal customers will we lose to attrition? We shouldn't loose any, but we will. We'll also loose some "fear weather friends."
Because we don't have a Crystal Ball, we can't predict the future. What we do know is we're honest, our team is honest and we want to succeed where others haven't. With that, along with mentioning we are lifting all caps on investments. We have, per deposit, a total 14 month commitment with each of you (Hopefully much, much longer). We not only have the additional capacity, we need to rebuild our position as the leader in Global Sports Arbitrage World.
We wish at this time to thank you for your support. We are confident this will be nothing more than a hiccup in the life of our program..
Thank you,
Robert, Jurgen and Team
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