Esoteric Investments, LLC (up to 1% earnings)

[Phantom Trader]

Company statement for pool closing procedure to take place over the next two weeks.
https://esotericinvestments.com/close.pdf

We will be active on the site's chat for further questions from invested parties.

[Phildo]

Quite amazing how they were able to pay profits every day even holding some altcoins at a loss. I'm not sure how great minds that could pay out profits while holding coins at a loss aren't going to be able to wind this down without making everyone whole, but I guess that's why I'm not running a ponzi scheme investment firm.

[Puppet]

What profits? There were no profits even by their own admission. Check the chat log on their website:

"(21:20:23 PM)  Phantom: yes that is the purpose we hope our statement will serve. so you all know what to expect you will be receiving back. We are hoping to return the total deposited amounts with previous withdraws and payouts being included making this sadly a zero gain in bitcoin for everyone however it is also a zero loss

(22:19:34 PM)  Phantom: We havent taken any pay this whole time the collected profits were never large enough for us to feel safe in taking our cut so all expenses we inured during this were out of our pocket so this whole thing has been a large loss for us. clients getting out with no loss and no gain is better than we faired."

So whatever "gains" have already been paid out are being clawed back, and quite possibly more than that according to the PDF:

Once our auditing process is over the zero gain or loss shall be applied to all accounts

https://esotericinvestments.com/close.pdf

they claim not to have made a satoshi for themselves. Yet if you add up the published trading profits, you get +15.7% over the past 5 weeks (not compounded). And somehow if you put the two together, no one made any profits and somehow there is probably even a net loss.

Rrrrrrrrrrright. Esoteric was no ponzi, and this is a real mammography unit:



BTW, if you think its gonna fly with the bureau that you pay back less than the principal  or that funds not withdrawn after 30 days are forfeited, you are in for another surprise.

[Aahzman]

(14:52:07 PM)  Maxx: "If there is not enough bitcoin after liquidation to refund the total amount deposited into the pool; the ratio of bitcoin after liquidation to the total deposited amount shall be taken and applied to each account. " Not sure I understand this line. So we might not get our entire deposited amount back?
(17:09:09 PM)  Phantom: when a trade ends from the time we bought in to the time we sold off. that profit or loss is put to a profits pool to do payouts over time. this profits pool was always positive.
(17:13:18 PM)  Phantom: all the trades that were bought in but not sold out of are losses right now. We had a stop loss point that if all investments caused the estimated pool value to fall below 40% we'd get out of all coins and stop our losses.
(17:13:49 PM)  Phantom: this didnt happen we are stopping for other reasons
(17:15:18 PM)  Phantom: but until a trade is ended it isnt factored into payouts. you can move in and out of coins with thousands daily. its a misconception of the pool from the start from many people.
(17:18:39 PM)  Phantom: you might not but as some of the liquidations were decent losses. though we really want to leave this on a good note to not leave a negative feeling for flirtcoin or new project.
(17:21:29 PM)  Phantom: So we will find anyway possibly to pay back the full deposited amount regardless of losses. Further costs out of our own pocket and in multiple installations if neccesary. This is to all be worked out fully still.
(17:23:17 PM)  Phantom: for one of my last messages: cant* move in and out of coin with thousand
(17:30:54 PM)  Phantom: Fact of the matter is at absolute worst this is not a total loss. It was a risk not a guarenteed thing, we always said this. And bitcoin is going to be returned month(s) before any terms were expred. So we are exceding all obligations of us. We're not going to do much more than that for your happiness if you arent satisfied with that situation.

Translation: "You'll get what we decide to give you, and if that's not good enough, too fucking bad."

So, basically they went from saying all investor funds would be withdrawable (earnings+principle), to users will get their principal back FOR SURE, to "now we're not sure we'll be able to cover everybody's deposits, so we'll justify it by saying it was all a risk", and telling investors that if they don't like it, too bad.

I signed up to determine if they were related at all to bitcoin-trader.biz ...

[Puppet]

Anyone who doesnt get his principal back to the last satoshi, please contact
Arlene.Ferris-Waks at lps.state.nj.us
Director of Investor Outreach at the NJ bureau of securities.
She is well aware of this scam.

[Aahzman]

I did enjoy the tale of how the compliance and regulatory licenses, etc, caught them completely by surprise.  Yeah, cuz nobody thought to...ya know..google that shit BEFORE opening business up to investors?

"Hey, we're gonna be handling potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crypto here. Maybe one of us should spend 5 minutes researching what we need to do to be legal..........naaaaah, let's just wing it. What could possibly go wrong?"

That, people, is called "half-assing it".

Glad I didn't invest in this mickey-mouse op.  

[Aahzman]

Why would it take so long to liquidate the funds? they had people trading 24/7 and never lost money, it should be ridiculously easy to get all that money back to send back out.

Because, apparently, they're doing their investors a favor by returning their deposits early at ALL, instead of making them wait the full 90 days for shares to mature. As soon as they were informed they were in fact operating in violation of the Securities Act, they should have immediately cancelled all shares and credited the investors back.  The fact that they feel the need to go through some sham of having to "liquidate" assets suggests they haven't got the capital to cover deposits. And of course, anybody calling them on this bullshit is being insulted and abused. Because that's the way to endear yourself to people who gave you money to play with and whom you might want to support your new fly-by-night shitcoin. TwerkCoin? TwatCoin? FleekCoin?

[Aahzman]

"wish they had as much bitcoin as we do to trade in the markets"

this would imply you had significant BTC holdings beyond what your victims deposited.  That should make it easy to guarantee that all your investors will get their full deposits back ASAP.

Is this where you now post blockchain links to addresses showing depleted BTC stores, or do you feel the need to brag again and post a blockchain link to some fat wallet  that may or may not even belong to you or your partners?

[tmfp]

From PimpCoin, glad to see someone's confident about the outcome of their Esoteric Experience..

They are returning my invested BTC.
No losses here  

[roparker2014]

So hopefully everyone learned their lesson from bitcoin-trader, and steered well clear of this? At least I guess so as no one seems to be saying they lost anything in this thread.

that's because eso is actually refunding people. they issued an official statement on the site.

we'll be able to request our withdrawals and they will be processed. just keep an eye out for the notice for when we can issue the withdrawals.

so relax. its not another BT.

Lol. You mean they are saying they are going to refund people. Has anyone actually received a penny back yet?
This is standard practice with Ponzis. Although the ship has sunk, the captain tries to persuade that everything is going to be fine, for as long as he can possibly have any hope of getting away with it.
Why? To buy themselves some time - the longer it takes for the complaints to start hitting law enforcement agencies en masse, the more time they have to cover their tracks and hopefully make a clean getaway with as much of the loot as they can stash in their pockets.

These guys will not hand over a single penny voluntarily, I guarantee it. The only way investors will get anything back is if they are brought to justice by law enforcement or the courts.

[Seretonin]

From PimpCoin, glad to see someone's confident about the outcome of their Esoteric Experience..

They are returning my invested BTC.
No losses here  

Digi doesn't even seem worried about the closure judging by his latest comment on the chat box:

(06:07:12 AM)  Digicoinz: can't wait to see this place come back and bigger and badder then ever

[kassadin]

i like how its a bunch of words put together, and no website. also other way further details.

[Phildo]

When you try this next time, go through the trouble to actually fake the trade histories.

These guys

 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-13/forex-investors-may-face-1-billion-loss-as-trade-site-vanishes.html?hootPostID=30ceb1967be98ed871bb8c50375b9e96

apparently got away with a billion dollars by faking the trade histories. A little more effort and you could have conned a lot more, better luck next time.

[fingertoe11]

Anyone get any money back yet?  Says update on 11/10 but nothing seems to be posted on the website.. 

[rammy2k2]

Anyone get any money back yet?  Says update on 11/10 but nothing seems to be posted on the website.. 

ROFL

[roparker2014]

Does there need to be a concrete effort to raise awareness of HYIPs in the Bitcoin/Crypto community? It seems people who regularly operate these sort of scams are moving into the field, perhaps because they thought it would be full of credulous idiots. Sadly it seems they were right! I know it isn't that new (was there another big bitcoin HYIP scam before Bitcoin-trader?) but the danger is still there, and people are still falling for it - presumably because a lot of us in the bitcoin/crypto community haven't come across HYIPs before?

[rammy2k2]

Does there need to be a concrete effort to raise awareness of HYIPs in the Bitcoin/Crypto community? It seems people who regularly operate these sort of scams are moving into the field, perhaps because they thought it would be full of credulous idiots. Sadly it seems they were right! I know it isn't that new (was there another big bitcoin HYIP scam before Bitcoin-trader?) but the danger is still there, and people are still falling for it - presumably because a lot of us in the bitcoin/crypto community haven't come across HYIPs before?

ALL HYIP are SCAMS , none LEGIT ... fools still thinks they found golden egg ...

[Puppet]

Problem is that most people know full well its a ponzi, but invest nonetheless hoping to get out in time and/or profit by collecting referral rewards.
So you get hordes of cheerleaders pretending they believe its genuine, ie, lying and deceiving others for their own profit.

[fingertoe11]

I think what Bitcoin Trader had going for it was a 'Degree of plausibility'   When you looked at it at first glance, you would think "I can see how that could work"  Particularly back in the days when MT Gox  was trading 100 dollars above everyone else.. 

If you built a spreadsheet and tried to work out how the arbitrage would work - it didn't add up -- but who does that?Once you are in, you want to believe what you want to believe, and many people would lie to themselves and everybody else at least long enough to get their money out..

Esoteric came in and pretended to be a legit BT --  I don't think many believed them -- thus the short lifespan..  Hopefully everyone has learned their lesson.  I think several of the "Cloud Hashing" services are also HYIP..  So there will be at least one more round of "Where's all our money"  Hopefully by then most will have learned their lesson and will be ready to pass along their advice to most anyone who asks..

[lissandra]

Its a shame if anyone lost a significant amount.

I mean I really they dont even have a website? or atleast its not posted as I can tell..like 

But the securityinvestment site on the bloomberg story, is prob crazier then mt gox. $1 billion loss is way too much.