FriendlyPay - Getting Away With Users Money?

Source: http://www.digitalmoneyworld.com/friendlypay-getting-away-with-users-money/

Remember FriendlyPay?

Months back, Mark conducted an interview with Timothy Thomas and James Holland. It was suppose to be a digital currency established in 2003 and had great track records with businesses on the low fees as well as their unique escrow function which allows consumers and merchants to transact with greater peace of mind.

In August 2007, Friendlypay suddenly disappears, with an excuse when the site was still up on an administration change with a downtime of 2 to 4 weeks, but we never seen anything since from them.

Timothy Thomas and James Holland vanished into thin air without further explanation on what’s going on in Friendlypay, seemingly convincing that they have absconded with their customers money.

There was a investment program that I remember mentioned on Jude’s nobsHYIP blog that deals with Friendlypay because of its escrow system and because it’s a real estate form of program, the amounts that they deal with must be some substantial amount. PPRei was the name, and the site still exists. I’ve tried contacting Rupert, who runs the firm, but there was no response.

The Little Investigation Work

The funny and weird thing about this payment processor is that we don’t get a huge response from the users asking where they went and people seeking help from the authorities. Usual googling of any scams will get you into a discussion board on what’s going on and how are the victims dealing with it. As for FriendlyPay’s case, try googling ‘Friendlypay’, ‘Timothy Thomas’ and ‘James Holland’ all in different combinations, all you can find are the interviews done by Mark with them, some forum discussions which back dates very long time ago discussing on the potential upsides of Friendlypay and nothing else.

There’s even slim chance that ‘Timothy Thomas’ and ‘James Holland’ doesn’t exist in the first place; the names are too common for you to search. A search in Wayback Machine also tells you that the site was created in December 03, and if you try to hit the contact us page, no address information were written at all. The only 3 emails were provided as contacts are friendlypay, members and payments AT friendlypay.net

Can They Hide?

Chances of them getting away is really slim. I’m seeking some advices from the current few working payment processors on the relevant departments to report to, but at the same time, since I’m not a victim, I would like to extend anyone to leave me a comment of your contacts and I would have the relevant details displayed here on this blog.

There’re too many traces, and even if they changed the details now, the traces will still be there; unless they are really that clean of a scammer. Let me give you examples: The web services they have engaged all over the years, Government pressures on the registrar to release more information, merchant accounts that they have established with E-gold, E-bullion, Pecunix, and even the desynfunct Intgold, 1mDc. FriendlyPay was also once a GDCA member, don’t they require some sort of verification?

If you are a victim, feel free to leave a message and lets see what we can do to combat such fraud.