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What's Next For TelexFree Victims?

JORDAN D. MAGLICH 

Last week was a busy week for TelexFree.  After filing for bankruptcy protection on Monday in a Nevada bankruptcy court, state and federal securities regulators filed civil actions accusing the company of operating a massive pyramid and Ponzi scheme that, by one estimate, may have raised $1 billion from investors worldwide.  That same day, federal agents from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security raided the company's headquarters in Marlborough, Massachusetts, which later drew headlines after authorities discovered TelexFree's Chief Financial Officer attempting to remove $38 million in cashier's checks from the offices. (The company later claimed there was no nefarious purpose behind this effort.)  Now, one week after TelexFree's bankruptcy filing and as reality begins to set in to an estimated 700,000 company "affiliates," the focus turns to the next steps.  This includes not only the various pending court and regulatory proceedings, but also the future of those "affiliates" that made substantial investments based on promises of extravagant returns.  

READ ALL THIS IMPORTANT REPORT AT: http://www.ponzitracker.com/main/2014/4/20/whats-next-for-telexfree-victims.html

Eminem - The Monster ft. Rihanna (Official MattyBRaps Cover ft Skylar St...

MattyB's YouTube channel is a huge success by any standard. He's amassed over 2 million subscribers and has published over 140 videos that include musical covers of Jason Derulo, Eminem, and Ke$ha. However, last week, MattyB uploaded a cover of the Notorious B.I.G.'s "Juicy." And the reviews are mixed.

Google Smart Contact Lenses Move Closer to Reality

Google's Smart Contact Lens is like your 

contact lens,except it's a whole lot smarter.

BY LANCE ULANOFF

Google’s plan to bring smart contact lenses to diabetes sufferers inched closer to reality as the company secured two patents last week for the cutting edge, biometric sensor technology.

Known among scientists as “Ophthalmic Electrochemical Sensors,” these contact lenses will feature flexible electronics that include sensors and an antenna. The sensors are designed to read chemicals in the tear fluid of the wearer’s eye and alert her, possibly through a little embedded LED light, when her blood sugar falls to dangerous levels.

SEE ALSO: 7 Incognito Wearables You'd Never Guess Were Gadgets

According to the patent:

“Human tear fluid contains a variety of inorganic electrolytes (e.g., Ca.sup.2+, Mg.sup.2+, Cl.sup.-), organic solutes (e.g., glucose, lactate, etc.), proteins, and lipids. A contact lens with one or more sensors that can measure one or more of these components provides a convenient, non-invasive platform to diagnose or monitor health related problems. An example is a glucose sensing contact lens that can potentially be used for diabetic patients to monitor and control their blood glucose level.

Google’s project is one of a number of in-eye wearable sensor technologiescurrently under development at universities and research facilities around the country. However, with two patents in hand Google’s project may have a leg up on the competition.

This side view of the smart lens show the
polymeric material and the embedded substrate (230).

IMAGE: GOOGLE

The patents also offer a rare opportunity to see how Google and its research partners envision the Smart Contact lens fitting on the human eye.

For example, Google intends to both communicate and power the electronics-embedded contact lens with a pair of antennas, though the patent notes that these two functions could be embedded within one antenna.

These images show how the lens would sit on the human eye (10) and how the eyelids (30 and 32) would close over it. When the lids distribute tears over the eye, they will also, by design, coat both the convex and concave surface of the smart lens.

IMAGE: GOOGLE

As for how the eye can see past the thinner-than-a-strand-of-hair electronics, the patent notes that the substrate is too close to the eye to be in focus and it’s positioned away from the center of the eye and, thereby, away from where light is transmitted to the retina. It also notes that the substrate can be made of transparent (read: “see-through”) materials.

Google, which announced the project in January, still has to get FDA approval before anyone starts wearing smart contact lenses. Still, it’s clear that glucose level detection is merely scratching the surface of the potential for these lenses. If Google can effectively build free-standing, communication-ready electronics in a transparent device roughly the size of a standard contact lens, there’s no telling what other kinds of smarts the lens will eventually be able to support. CouldGoogle Glass Contact Lenses be far behind?

It's still unclear how long before Google plans on commercializing the smart contact lens research project. Mashable has contacted Google and will update this story with its comments.

Project Ara: our best look yet at Google's new modular smartphone

This week in Mountain View, Google held its first-ever developer conference for Project Ara. Developed by a small team within the company called ATAP staffed with ex-DARPA engineers and some of the brightest minds at Google, Ara is a mission to make a modular smartphone. It'd be the last phone you ever needed to buy, because you'd be able to swap out everything from the camera to the display to the battery, in order to always have the exact phone you want.

For ATAP and Google, the goal is to build a device that will make the smartphone accessible to the billions of people who can't afford iPhones and Galaxy S5s. There are huge obstacles everywhere you look, and ATAP is working on an incredibly fast timeline to turn Ara into a product people can buy — there's barely a year left to make it real. But if Project Ara works, if modular smartphones are more than just a Lego-lover's pipe dream, it could change the industry forever. New types of manufacturing, new ways of buying and selling phones, and new ways for consumers to interact with their most personal and most intimate devices.

The project is still in its infancy, but ATAP is finally showing what Ara might be. This is what it looks like.

FOR MORE, CHECK OUT OUR EXCLUSIVE REPORT ON PROJECT ARA'S HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT

Photos by Dieter Bohn

SEC Charges TelexFree With Fraud, Alleges $1.1 Billion Pyramid Scheme

Forbes

The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced it filed civil fraud charges on April 15, 2014, accusing multiple companies under the TelexFree umbrella, as well as officers and promoters, of orchestrating a massive pyramid scheme that targeted Dominican and Brazilian immigrants and took in at least several hundred million dollars from investors worldwide. In addition to the TelexFree entities, the Commission also named eight TelexFree officers and promoters: James M. Merrill, Carlos N. Wanzeler, Steven M. Labriola, Joseph H. Craft, Sanderley Rodrigues de Vasconcelos, Santiago de la Rosa, Randy N. Crosby, and Faith R. Sloan (collectively, “Defendants”). Each has been charged with multiple violations of federal securities laws. In addition to the charges, the Commission also announced it had obtained an asset freeze securing millions of dollars in funds.   According to the Commission, while investors continue to enroll every day, “it is clear the pyramid has collapsed.”

The unsealing of the charges come days after TelexFree declared bankruptcy in a Nevada federal court and was subsequently the target of an administrative action by Massachusetts securities regulators accusing the company of being a massive $1.1 billion pyramid and Ponzi scheme.  According to authorities, TelexFree advertised itself as a substitute to landline phone services through the sale of its voice over internet protocol (“VoIP”) program, 99TelexFREE.  In addition, the company also sought participants for a passive income program that promised outsized returns through either a $289 or $1,375 investment (as well as a $50 administrative fee).  Investors were able to invest by credit card.  The $289 program offers one advertisement kit and ten VoIP Programs, while the $1,375 option allows the purchaser to receive five advertisement kits and fifty VoIP Programs.  By using the so-called advertisement kits, which is an “effortless” process consisting of several minutes of work per advertisement, participants are purportedly able to generate extensive returns without the need for any VoIP Program sales.  In addition, participants received an additional VoIP Program for posting a daily advertisement, which they were then able to sell to TelexFree for $20.

Through these efforts, participants in either program were promised astronomical returns.  For example, a participant investing $289 that simply placed one advertisement per day could receive an annual profit of at least $681 – a return exceeding 200%.  Similarly, a participant investing $1,375 and placing five advertisements daily could receive profit of $3,675 – a return over 250%.  Not surprisingly, these large returns spurred the participation by many thousands of investors worldwide.

TelexFree also paid handsome commissions to promoters, including bonuses of up to $100 per member recruited and further incentives for direct and indirect participants in their “network.”  Additionally, promoters were promised 2% of all payments to each participant in their network that had at least one active VoIP customer.  According to the Commission, Defendants Vasconcelos, De La Rosa, Crosby, and Sloan were among “the most successful promoters of TelexFree.”

The Commission accused TelexFree of multiple material misrepresentations and omissions to investors, including but not limited to:

• Advertising that Merrill had a B.A. in Economics from Westfield State University when he had only attended the university for two years before dropping out;
• Including a photo of Merrill in front of a three-story building purportedly owned by TelexFree when in fact the company only occupied a single suite in the building; and
• Representing the company had been in the “VOIP telecommunications” business for a decade

Seal of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the Commission, TelexFree’s VoIP sales revenue from August 2012 to March 2014 was approximately $1.3 million – barely one percent of the more than $1.1 billion accumulated by participants.  As a result, TelexFree was accused of operating as a classic pyramid scheme – by paying earlier investors not through ongoing operations but from funds from new investors.  Despite the approximately $1.3 million, the Commission also alleges that more than $30 million of investor funds was transferred to TelexFree affiliates or Defendants.

In addition to the Defendants, the Commission also charged several related entities as Relief Defendants, alleging they had received proceeds from the scheme.  According to the Commission, nearly $7 million was loaned or transferred to TelexFree Financial, Inc., TelexElectric, LLLP, and Telex MobileHoldings, Inc.

The Commission is seeking permanent injunctive relief, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, and civil monetary penalties.  Notably, the Commission is not seeking the appointment of a receiver.  Rather, it appears that future efforts to secure and marshal assets for the benefit of TelexFree victims will come through the efforts of the court-appointed bankruptcy trustee.

At this point, TelexFree has faced charges from solely civil regulators, despite recent news that criminal authorities from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security recently raided the company’s Boston headquarters.  The Boston Globe also reported that TelexFree has retained criminal defense counsel from a high-powered law firm.  

Updates Will Follow. 

Jordan Maglich is a securities law attorney in Tampa, Florida.  Follow Jordan on Twitter at@Ponzitracker or visit Ponzitracker. 

READ MORE AT:  http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanmaglich/2014/04/17/sec-halts-telexfree-pyramid-scheme/