[NELUNS is a scam]

I normally write up my Scam Accusations better than this, but I want to get it out there and the link below pretty much summarizes my research so far.
My interest in NELUNS was triggered by their [ANN] thread, an echo chamber of paid for posts.
The scammers managed to create a superficially convincing micro environment of NELUN's existence, but the closer I looked the more brittle it became.
I think the expression on their "Marketing Manager"s face says it all, but I'll repeat it anyway

NELUNS is a scam

Here's the link (Russian), I agree with the research and the conclusion;  https://ttrcoin.com/threads/neluns-io-scam.2796/







One part of the jigsaw is missing at the moment: if anyone sent any of their BTC to buy these tokens, I'd be grateful of NELUNS' Bitcoin address.
Tia.

[Genesis]

Wattum.io, to be exact.



That's got us off on the wrong foot.
The domain .io covers a post colonial area called the British Indian Ocean territory, particularly the Chagos Islands.
They were popular addresses for tech and startups (and also scams) from the start, but their popularity plummeted with companies that had any social awareness because of the ethnic cleansing carried out in that area by the British Government.
Like many domains, anyone can buy a .io address, including kiddiePr0nnners.

Anyways, that's no reason to draw any hasty conclusions, I'm sure there's thousands of totally legit .io businesses about.


As I research and do due dilligence on investment opportunities in the crypto field, it's often difficult to conclusively find proof of courtroom standard that such and such a scheme is definitely a scam, but it is fairly easy to look for signs in their behavior that indicate that extra skepticism is prudent, including the telling of falsehoods.
There are two basic reasons not to deal with liars.
One is that liars are unpleasant people generally and I don't want to reward their behavior by investing with them.
Two is that liars don't stop lying. If you find something innocuous but provably and deliberately a falsehood - lie - then there's a temptation to say "Oh, it's not important" and let it go. I don't think that's wise. If someone lies or misleads others on the small things, then surely the impulse to lie would be increased as the reward for doing so grows.

Anyway again, this pre amble is relevant.
For some reason I get notifications on a couple of those generic threads much loved of spammers, about Cloud Mining and saw this one

Hi, miners!
I am looking for cloud mining reviews, ROI, payouts and more information about cloud mining, please give your honest reviews and reasoned advice about legal cloud mining service...

That's bot/spammer grammar, so I looked at "Jack"s recent posts.
Strange.
On the same day he was looking for cloud mining advice, he was busy posting this everywhere...



He was also being answered by another 'Peterson' account, registered at the same time

I mine for 2 years and mining now, so in my personal rating of legal, profitable mining services with advanced equipment, high-quality service with daily payments:
Genesis (new mining farms, promo codes, but sometimes they have some problems with payments)
Wattum.io (most profitable offer for mining btc and altcoins, data-centers located at USA and Canada)

This post has since been deleted in a cleanup of that account, a day after I posted the first of a few warnings about the two accounts and another two, MelisaMoris and DavidStone which were also "echochambering" Wattum endorsement in the same way.
The pairing of Genesis and Wattum in their shilling is a common tactic of "credit by association" i.e. Genesis are seen to be legit cloud mining market leaders (by the unenlightened lol) so by linking the two names in the reader's comprehension, Wattum receives vicarious credibility.

"No Big Deal", you say, "Alt accounts are doing this all the time".
Yeah, probably, but by dismissing it as such you fall into the "accepting the little lie" syndrome I mention above.

It prompted me to have a look at Wattum.
They have a pretty standard website, full of standard unverified claims in broken English

The USA and Canada are TOP countries to invest in, which ensures the high reliability of Wattum company.

With our expertise, we are able to reduce energy consumption, while increasing the hashing power of Mining Rigs. Our contracts for electricity are below average market prices.

While we keep the exact locations private as a security precaution, the bulk of our mining is split between our data centers in Miami (USA) and Winnipeg (Canada).

Their pricing is standard, for BTC $89 per Th/s. They charge a maintenance fee, (variously and on the same page??) quoted as $0.319 Ths/day and $0.35 per day. Currently 1 Th/s will return about $0.40 mined per day, so at a cumulative net income of $0.05 per day that looks like 20 days to earn a dollar, or 4.8+ years to ROI. Of course, they also have a minimum withdrawal amout of 0.004BTC, around $33, so small investors will have to wait years to get their dust).
But at least Wattum can't be accused of fanciful ROI claiming, unlike the Kazakh Kave Kompany....

Wattum claim to be in serviced offices in NY. That's in America, where they can't sell their passive investment plans to the locals.
Yeah, but they have lots of people, including PR specialists and media specialists.
Back to the "little lie" concept.
These pushy and ambitious sales/media persons have lots of time and nous to be creative in their attempts to establish a solid perception of Wattum, the more likely to attract investment.
For example, they have a scrolling "REVIEWS" section on their landing page, featuring happy, contented customers.
These customers are called Ali Moani and Terry Gramm.
(Just a small diversion here.
I have experience of scam operations firsthand, including "boiler room" selling of fictitious investment programs.
You need a certain psychological makeup to lie to people on a deliberate, ongoing basis.
You dehumanise the "marks", the victims, and convince yourself that they deserve to get ripped off because of their stupidity.
You become contemptuous of them. In one particular Gold shares scam that I knew intimately the cold calling boiler room guys would have a weekly competiton amongst themselves (with a $10k sweepstake prize) for the most pisstaking but successful completion, containing the most outrageous lies and jokes..)
Anyway, Ali Moani = Alimony phonetically. Good joke.
And Ali Moani, the satisfied Wattum German investor, only exists in the imagination of Wattum's PR department (and Columbia).







And "Terry Gramm" from Canada, satisfied customer of Wattum



is actually HAPPY CUTE CAUCASIAN MAN from Shutterstock




It's the "little lies", see.

MTF.

Screenshot from phillipma1957 posted here


Both phillipma1957 and I got this screen when attempting to post (negatively) in a self moderated thread here. Look here for the reasons for the attempted posting.

What's going on? No other page access was affected.

Allowing newbies self moderated threads has got to stop, it's a fucking joke.

A "new manufacturer" of super efficient (23 TH/s-1185 w) ASIC bitcoin mining machines popped up with a one post newbie account today here and a self moderated thread.

A quick look at their website "about us" revealed a strange anomaly, in as much as at least one of their core staff is not who he is said to be.

They deleted the post where I pointed this out, so, being a man of my word....

A reply of yours, quoted below, was deleted by the starter of a self-moderated topic. There are no rules of self-moderation, so this deletion cannot be appealed. Do not continue posting in this topic if the topic-starter has requested that you leave.

You can create a new topic if you are unsatisfied with this one. If the topic-starter is scamming, post about it in Scam Accusations.

From your website, "Josef" Head of Sales




From the interwebzzz



A new account posting "self moderated".  
Unsatisfactory answer to the above identity crisis (or deletion of this post) will result in re-posting in "Scam Accusations".
Your move.

[Moderator's note]

http://www.bitswiss.ch/

...or photocopier?

A unique patent in the market
Our chip is made up of tens of thousands of interconnected transistors linked by different horizontal planes. These links are both encrypted and rendered unrecognizable by approximately 120,000 binary codes and passwords generated by them.
The calculated data can only be decrypted and processed with our specially developed software. Our ASIC processor is an electronic circuit. This is permanently integrated in the circuit, so that the function of the chip can not be changed.
If an attempt were made to copy or decode these codes, the charge in the chip would be altered, which would lead to the connections becoming burnt.

4284 miners can be replaced by 12 machines, these offer a computing power of 60,000 TH / s.

Their CEO, Vladislav Lozhizky shows up thus on a search




Moderator's note: This post was edited by frodocooper to reduce the size of the embedded images.

Would be handy to have that expressed in a simple line chart (x axis=time) viewed by hovering the title.

As the scam promoters have taken advantage of self moderating their thread here to avoid being called out, and are actively deleting any criticism of this unsustainable Ponzi, here's some background to it.

Same cheesy robot theme site, same absurd claims to magically return 3% forever, Larawith.me admin ran off with a considerable amount of BTC after being shut down by Telegram, who they were using for auto payments.
The admin promised to come back (once they'd seen how easy it was to scam kiddies who like robot graphics) and they have, with this decenter reboot.
The same thing will happen to decenter.me as Lara, whether or not Telegram get their ass in gear.
Currently being pimped by users like GlassICE and kelevra, decenter.me is just another Ponzi scam with new investors financing returns to older ones, until there aren't any more new investors.


Mods, please don't move this, it is not a Scam Accusation per se, it needs to stay in Investor Games to provide an antidote to the pimps' "withdrawals going great" posts in the other thread here.
What possible reason there can be for allowing scammers to use self moderation escapes me.

A BTC friend is visiting Goa for a Christmas holiday.
As the rupee situation is still shall we say uncertain, would there be any Bitcoin buyers in Goa who would meet him (at Dabolim airport possibly) for a P2P exchange, 1 BTC for mixed denomination new rupees at an agreed price?

People in the habit of using their brain often laugh at poorly specified, horrendously designed, shoddily implemented altcoins, and for good reason - there's apparently no shortage of these end products of an ambitious process which included no thinking whatsoever.
Credit cards are perhaps the most egregious example of them all.

A credit card is a paper wallet which may contain one single address. The address is composed of 16 numeric digits, which are usually formatted with three dashes, and it is secured by a "secret" private key which is... four digits long. To further securitize this secure security, a three digit super-key is printed on the back of the paper wallet in question, and that's it, you're good to go!
How is this abomination to be used in practice ?
Oh, that's simple - just like its users. For instance you can walk up to a machine, stick your paper wallet into it, and then type the private key. Yeah, that's right, you type your private key into a big box you don't own, nor control in any way, and can't inspect. What protects you from the owner of the machine selectively scamming ?
A shoddy, slow, bug ridden, unauditable, ad-hoc reimplementation of the common WoT.
And if the operator decides to charge your card twice, or fifty billiard times, the best you can do is call an Indian. They'll be thrilled to listen and eagerly try to help! Have you tried rebooting your credit card wallet sir ?

From: The Thoughts of Chairman Mircea.

The special streamlined identity verification process for Credit Card Altcoin businesses

[three 'bitcoins']

An excellent example of

Poor reporting
Scaremongering
Ignorance

Locked screens displayed a sinister message demanding three 'bitcoins' in return for the safety of some files.
But the centre's CEO, Maragret McMahon, said they had a "lucky escape".
"We refused to pay the money, which we have been told would equal about £13,000 and reported the hack to the police," Ms McMahon said.
 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-37660657

A friend wants to accept Bitcoin in her small UK cafe. She has an Android phone, is non tech but not stupid, and would want to run it solely off that.
Amounts will be small, £5 ish per transaction and she would want to transfer periodically to a cold wallet.
It must be non centralized with private keys private to her.
Recommendations please?
EDIT
I should have made clear that there will be only one point of payment, at the counter when orders are placed with the owner, so no necessity for involvement of any staff in the process. Pure 1P to 1P.
We're thinking simple and easy here, minimalist but obviously secure.







Self moderated because I hate sig spam and will delete anything I think falls into that category.

[Everything is done for you!]

That's virus as in contagious and dangerous scamming methods, not as in malware on your hard disk.

The Onecoin model of bullshit "cryptocurrency" married to a hard sell MLM pyramid is attracting several copycats, Leocoin, Capricoin, Swisscoin and Swiscoin amongst many others.
These have notional products, for example "Education Packages" which are neccessary purchases to become involved in the MLM pyramid, and receive commissions based on the number of people you recruit into the scheme after you.
This type of marketing has been around for years, but the crypto angle which is now being exploited involves a centrally administered "coin" being produced by the scammers and hyped to be "The Bitcoin Killer" or other such nonsense. These coins invariably can only be traded in a scheme back office, or on a rigidly controlled basis (usually huge pre-mine) on shit exchanges.
Gullible real "investors" soon realise they are locked into the scheme and all they have bought is promises of Da Moon from chronic MLM promoters like J Ryan Conley and the Onecoin Mafia.

The latest in this shower of shit is DAScoin, operated by Coinleaders, a Singapore/Dubai/Hong Kong based collection of MLM veterans.
My good friend Oz at BehindMLM.com has posted an accurate review of this scheme, of which I quote an edited version below

The Coin Leaders website states that the company is operated by CL Singapore Pte. Ltd., which is based in Singapore.
CL Singapore is wholly owned by Coin Leadership Limited, based in Dubai.

John Pretto (nice teeth) is identified as Chairman of Coin Leaders.

John Pretto is an accomplished, innovative and entrepreneurial technologist with over 20 years of senior management experience in information technology, marketing and operations.

Past positions include serving as Chief Technology Officer for R66T (enterprise Wi-Fi), Chief Operating Officer for ComF5 (formerly DigitalFX – digital media marketing platform), CTO and Co-founder of HelloNetwork (streaming media technology), and VP of Technology for SmartConnect (video surveillance for gaming).

On the MLM side of things John Pretto was actively promoting the OneCoin Ponzi scheme last year. Before OneCoin Pretto was promoting Nuverus (nutrition). Pretto appears to have gotten involved in OneCoin in early to mid 2015.

Coin Leaders has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market Coin Leaders affiliate membership itself.
Coin Leaders affiliates invest up to €25,000 in DasCoin, a “hybrid cryptocurrency” run by Hong Kong based DasCoin Limited, in exchange for their investment, Coin Leaders affiliates receive a “software license”.

These software licenses makes it easy for anyone to receive cryptocurrency – directly from the source.
There’s no need to buy coins on a currency exchange, or get involved with the complexities and hassles of a cryptocurrency “mining” process.
Instead, CoinLeader software enables you to help build the distributed network (on which DasCoin operates) and receive DasCoins in return.

Everything is done for you!

The more funds invested into software licenses, the higher the assigned value to DasCoin.
Through their software "license", Coin Leaders affiliates receive DasCoins via “cycles”.

As an incentive for providing Cycles to the network, each licensee is rewarded with an amount of DasCoin calibrated to the level of the licensee’s contribution.

In a nutshell, the more a Coin Leaders affiliate invests the more DasCoin they receive.

Standard – invest €100 EUR and receive 1265 cycles and 1 upgrade
Manager – invest €500 EUR and receive 6325 cycles and 1 upgrade
Pro – invest €2000 EUR and receive 27,600 cycles and 1 upgrade
Executive – invest €5000 EUR and receive 74,750 cycles and 2 upgrades
President – invest €25,000 EUR and receive 373,750 cycles and 3 upgrades
An upgrade is triggered when the rate of cycles converted into DasCoins drops below 50% efficiency (from a starting point of 100 efficiency).

When an upgrade is triggered Coin Leaders affiliate cycles that have not yet been converted into DasCoins are doubled.
Coin Leaders affiliate membership is tied to an initial investment of between €100 and €25,000 EUR.

Coin Leaders is pretty much John Pretto’s attempt at the OneCoin Ponzi business model.

Affiliates invest in “cycles” (OneCoin tokens), which are converted into DasCoin (OneCoins), which are assigned an arbitrary value by DasCoin, a centralized authority.

DasCoin itself is not publicly tradeable and can only be acquired through Coin Leaders investment.
The Coin Leaders website identifies the CEO of DasCoin Limited as Michael Mathias, surprise surprise, Mathias is/was also a OneCoin affiliate.

Coin Leaders and DasCoin present the usual comparisons to legitimate cryptocurrencies and crap about external use of the coin through a merchant network.
The reality however is that Coin Leaders and DasCoin offer up nothing more than a Ponzi pyramid hybrid.

SOP means that purchase at the most expensive entry point is heavily encouraged by impossible maths

Our premiere license … provides an unparalleled combination of benefits and yields rewards that are a 10x magnitude greater than even the Executive License!

The Ponzi element of Coin Leaders is the investment of funds which are converted into DasCoins. The value of DasCoin is assigned by DasCoin Limited, the company running the point-generation script that spits out DasCoins.
The value of DasCoins is pegged to nothing more than the rate of investment from Coin Leaders affiliates.
Affiliates cash DasCoins through Coin Leaders, who use newly invested funds to pay off existing investors.
Albeit convoluted in an attempt to pose as a legitimate cryptocurrency, this is nonetheless the definition of a Ponzi scheme.

Coin Leaders’ pyramid layer is found in its referral commissions, wherein affiliates are paid to recruit new affiliate investors.
Referral commissions are paid out of funds invested by newly recruited affiliates.

As with all Ponzi schemes, once recruitment of new affiliate investors dries up Coin Leaders will collapse.


Why should I waste time and effort writing about this crap, it's not "real" crypto? I hear you ask.
Very true, but that's why I think it's important to distance genuine efforts at an alternative financial system based on cryptocurrency, from the Old World MLM scammers using this "New Opportunity" to rip people off.
Also some say, "You're giving them publicity."
Possibly true, but hits for these scam analyses on BCT usually hit page one on Google searches....

Also importantly in my view, shit sticks.
Every time someone gets ripped off by something thought to be in the cryptosphere, some know nothing regulator or authority will get it into their head that "These things must be controlled/outlawed" and they start with the most visible, Bitcoin.

Where's Sergei..?

Anyone think that scamming is a game?
Sergei Mavrodi, the inventor of the biggest scam ever (probably) MMM, has been missing since March.

(Bitcoin relevance, MMM Global was/is Bitcoin based and arguably influential in its price movement in 2015).

http://kiev.segodnya.ua/kaccidents/podrobnosti-derzkogo-ubiystva-v-bolnice-pogib-odin-iz-osnovateley-mmm-749635.html

What is Kulkarni's reputation like in India?
I know he's U.S. born but he seems to be active in India.
I read that he is a "serial entrepreneur", etc.etc. and then I find him writing complete nonsense about Bitcoin and the Onecoin Scam here.

 http://www.inc.com/chirag-kulkarni/how-the-state-of-bitcoin-will-have-major-effects-on-society.html

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/33d5b3fc-4767-11e6-b387-64ab0a67014c.html#axzz4EDYOMWnK

[SCAMS RUN BY SCAMMERS IN SHINY SUITS]

Multi Level Marketing is enjoying a renaissance courtesy of cryptocurrency, and India seems to be as enthusiastic as anywhere about this concept of "passive income".

When this potent idea, i.e. you pay some money and then, with little effort (apart from selling on this concept to anyone and everyone) the money rolls in and you live Happily Ever After, is allied by the presenters to cryptocurrency, then it all develops another appealing angle,  "the System is Corrupt" etc.etc.
This was also the message with MMM, which also made a lot of converts around the world and resulted in a huge cash gifting scam which is causing a lot of misery, as 'investors' or "providers of help" learn the painful lesson that 2+2=4.

Anyway now the scammer's Flavor of 2016 is perfectly summed up by Powerhashing.com, which I've started writing about here

An MLM structure where money goes to the top, a vaguely described "mining" operation to fund it all and lots of trite Motivational Slogans add up to

SCAMS RUN BY SCAMMERS IN SHINY SUITS

[S-C-A-M]

Before we have a look at Powerhashing, a brief explanation of MLM.
MLM is a predatory system of commission payments which is attaching itself to the promotion of crypto schemes.

MLM = multi level marketing.
An American idea, recruit a 'downline' to market a product or service and get paid for it. Time and time again.
The product can suck, not exist or be barely profitable, it doesn't matter. MLM is about selling a dream to the suckers, using lots of motivational type language and as few details as possible about the actual product.
And getting paid thru the matrix. No, not Neo's, a multi level money making machine
like so



There are many different forms of this, add-ons with silly names and quite anal refinements, but they all have the same goal: money rises to the top of the matrix in a pyramid fashion.
Hence Pyramid Scheme.
They are sort of illegal in a lot of countries, but generally don't get too high on policing priorities as investigating is quite labor intensive and the schemes, especially Bitcoin ones, are global.
The rewards for the <1% Inner Circle can be huge, so they have access to lawyers and offshore structures to help prolong the life of these scams, and the arrival of Bitcoin has given them a whole new ball game to play.

But, apart from the admins, everybody else is a sucker



So, there's MLM 101 for you.
Put it together with the core business being "Bitcoin mining" offering impossible ROI and what have you got?

S-C-A-M

Powerhashing.com.

Let's have a look at their website. Registered with that slag Bob Parsons, so no whois details, but we know who they are. (later)

Landing page

A Global Wealth Building Company for the Digital Currency Market

and a really impressive shot of server racking (maybe even Bitcoin miners to a newbie)

 

stolen from Nutanix tho



But hey, everyone steals photos of other people's operations right? Means nothing, right?


About us

Power Hashing Solutions Pvt. Ltd. are a team of crypto currency experts, entrepreneurs, business professionals, network marketers, and programming developers who have unite to offer a very simple business model around a very complex industry.

More on the actual company later, but I've heard that spiel somewhere before.....

we are a team of experts, entrepreneurs, professionals, network marketers, and programming geeks who have all come to together to launch a very simple business around a very complex industry.

and, come to that

A Global Wealth Building Company for the Digital Currency Market

BitClub Network....I guess is the MLM/Bitcoin pioneer, and still going, still enriching the Chosen Few...

What we do
We have combined the strength of crowd funding and bitcoin mining to bring you a very unique opportunity in the Bitcoin industry. By using expertise of our team we are able to provide a profitable mining operation

This pisses me. Crowd funding has nothing to do with MLM. It's a buzzword they latch onto for credibility, nothing else. Legit crowdfunding ventures  (the few that come to anything) will pay benefits back to angels, but do not come with a matrix affiliate system attached.

a profitable mining operation

Yeah, that's what we want. So where is it? What is it? How many Ph/s?
No details there tho, so onto the next page

OPPORTUNITY
Earn Passive Income

"Passive income" is an MLM/scammer's favorite buzz phrase, usually accompanied by pics of swimming pools. Just think about it, it's what we all want right? Just sit on our asses and watch the money roll in, looking out over the HashOcean...

But mining, we want to know about the mining!
All we get are more generalities...

Thanks to some great partnerships we have established with hardware providers, as well as to our bulk purchases, we get the best price on our employed technology. This means we get the hardware cheaper than the normal market price. What also bears great importance, considering the maintenance costs, is the storage of the miners: we have several farms and each location was chosen to fulfill two important criteria: cheap electricity supply and little or no need for cooling.

Bulk purchases, special relationships, cheap hardware. Sounding goood....
Several farms, sound like they're in Iceland I guess. Sounding greeeat...

But that's it, no details, just a couple of crappy Fiverrrr vids and that's that page done.

Onto
FAQs

Not one Q/A about miners, pools, hashrate, halving effect, nothing, just generic bullshit about accounts.

Next page
CONTACT

Blank enquiry form.
And a map.
A map of 1500 Gateway Blvd #220, Boynton Beach Florida....WTF? I thought Powerhashing was in India???


and the last tab
START MINING TODAY

CREATE YOUR FREE ACCOUNT, START MINING TODAY and a form to fill in, with your sponsor ID already filled in. Who is he and why?


So, we've been thru the whole Powerhashing website and no details of anything to do with Bitcoin mining apart from generalizations, very disappointing.
Let's have a quick look at T&C's while we're here

Looks like a standard HYIP? type set of terms, but then we get to

CRYPTO CURRENCY ARBITRAGE NETWORK reserves the right to accept or decline any member for membership without explanation.

Who?
CRYPTO CURRENCY ARBITRAGE NETWORK....let's Google that.
Top result is moneymakersgroup, the scammers reference site for all things bent, impossible and just plain shit.
CCAN is listed under "Closed, Inactive & Offline HYIPs", some bullshit scam that closed down and the admin ran off after a few months.



What's that got to do with Bitcoin Mining in India?


Next installment soon: how much will we earn, how will we earn it, and who are these three sharp dudes?

There is a clone of the Hashocean scam cloud miner going by the name of Gainbitcoin, being promoted on Roger Ver's dead forum as an Indian service, hence my post here.

I call it a clone because when you follow Gainbitcoin Mining FAQ links, they go straight to the HashOcean site.
I call HashOcean a scam because obvious.

The main promoter of this thing is a crap referral site 1bitcoindaily.com. This site resolves to Kshitij Mehrotra, who seems to organize the Dehli branch of BitcoinIndia and authored the Bitcoin referral post.
Anyhow, he is claiming that Amit Bhardwaj/Kumar of 2014 HighKart.com fame is "the owner of Gainbitcoin". Does Amit also own HashOcean too, or just steal bits of their website? Or what?
Is he available for a comment?
I'm sure it's all a clerical error. Or something.

So, there's a set up in Iceland with over 40 PH/s of hash, a mix of S7's and other similarly efficient equipment.
In a month it mines 150 blocks and total costs (power, site overhead, rolling equipment renewal, everything) are said to be around $390,000.
This equates to a total cost per coin around $105.
What's it worth?

Up till now, Russia had a pretty laissez faire towards Ponzi and pyramid schemes, but a new law just introduced makes running one a criminal offence in itself for the first time.
Maybe not entirely unconnected with the disappearance of Russian Ponzi Superstar Sergey Mavrodi and the abrupt shutdown of MMMGlobal "Republic of Bitcoin", which was mainly administered out of Russia.

http://www.rapsinews.com/legislation_news/20160330/275727532.html