This is the second TV report on May 3rd at Fox 43 NEWS. There will be another report on May 4th.
The first report was in the morning at Fox 43 News on May 3rd which I posted on this discussion board yesterday.
AndersonsInfo
JoinedPosts by AndersonsInfo
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Evening TV Fox 43 NEWS-2nd Report-May 3rd-WITNESS TO WICKED:THE PRIVILEGE TO REPORT
by AndersonsInfo inhttps://youtu.be/suigllm2h8g.
this is the second tv report on may 3rd at fox 43 news.
there will be another report on may 4th.
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AndersonsInfo
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TV report-May 3, 2023-The Pa. grand jury investigation into alleged cover-up of child sex abuse within Jehovah's Witnesses
by AndersonsInfo inhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds3q289vwok.
the link is to the tv report - may 3, 2023. .
below is a transcript of the tv report.. a pennsylvania grand jury has recently brought child sexual abuse charges against nine men—all jehovah’s witnesses—in what some are calling the most extensive investigation into the group in history.
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AndersonsInfo
The link is to the TV Report - May 3, 2023Below is a transcript of the TV report.A Pennsylvania grand jury has recently brought child sexual abuse charges against nine men—all Jehovah’s Witnesses—in what some are calling the most extensive investigation into the group in history. According to multiple sources familiar with the investigation, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office could soon release a report of the grand jury’s findings, which could bring major consequences for the Jehovah’s Witnesses organization. The first time was a Wednesday morning, recalled Martin Haugh, 46, sitting on his couch in York Haven. Following generations of his family, Haugh was a devout member of Jehovah’s Witnesses. In October 2005, he was a ministerial servant—equivalent to a Catholic deacon—who helped with routine work around the Red Lion Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation. Jehovah's Witnesses, also known as the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, has 8.7 million members worldwide, including 1.2 million in the U.S. and 83,000 in Pennsylvania. The religion was founded in Pittsburgh in the 1870s, breaking with orthodox Christianity over its focus on Armageddon and separation from the world. At 9 a.m. that Wednesday morning, Haugh was at the Kingdom Hall for the “meeting for field service,” when Jehovah’s Witnesses pair up to go door-knocking in search of converts. As he was assigning door-knocking routes, he saw a teenage member slip inside the Kingdom Hall—along with his 4-year-old daughter. Confused, he followed them inside and into the coat room. He didn’t believe his own eyes. Read the full article here: https://www.fox43.com/article/news/lo... -
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AP NEWS - Charges put focus on Jehovah’s Witnesses’ handling of abuse
by AndersonsInfo inhttps://apnews.com/article/jehovahs-witnesses-child-abuse-pennsylvania-investigation-01660ed00de1f2a02f87c0597c9ae0af?fbclid=iwar0f8whtbzsjnyzze0p3xg8t1qcprtvjh9wfe2zzryv1pnr-ospnejxri0o.
charges put focus on jehovah’s witnesses’ handling of abuse.
by mark scolforo and peter smith - yesterday.
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AndersonsInfo
Charges put focus on Jehovah’s Witnesses’ handling of abuse
By MARK SCOLFORO and PETER SMITH - Yesterday
YORK HAVEN, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania grand jury in recent months accused nine men with connections to the Jehovah’s Witnesses of child sexual abuse in what some consider the nation’s most comprehensive investigation yet into abuse within the faith.
The sets of charges filed in October and February have fueled speculation the jury may make public more about what it has uncovered from a four-year investigation.
A similar grand jury investigation into child sexual abuse by Catholic priests culminated in a lengthy 2018 report that concluded hundreds of priests had abused children in Pennsylvania over seven decades and church officials had covered it up, and more recently a similar report was issued in Maryland.
But documents made public so far include nothing about what critics have long maintained has been a systemic cover-up and mishandling of child molestation within the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry, at a news conference in February announcing charges, said some of the defendants “even used their faith communities to prey upon the victims.”
Asked whether her office was looking into the Jehovah’s Witnesses as an organization, Henry replied it was an ongoing investigation.
Critics say church elders have treated child sexual abuse as a sin rather than a crime, carefully documenting cases in internal files but not reporting allegations to authorities and sometimes letting the accused remain active in their congregations with access to children from unsuspecting families. Critics also say the church has often required a second witness for complaints, a standard that can be impossible to meet in cases of molestation.
Church spokesman Jarrod Lopes said otherwise — that the church does recognize abuse as a crime and that members have the right to report sexual assault to authorities. He said the second-witness rule applies only to internal church discipline and that elders comply with reporting laws, even when there is not a second witness.
The grand jury probe began with a referral from a county district attorney who believed the state’s greater resources were needed. Dozens of witnesses have testified before the secret grand jury in Harrisburg or provided information to the attorney general’s office, and some report that investigators have exhibited keen interest in how the church has responded to molestation allegations.
“They were very interested in not only individual cases but in systemic concerns regarding the reporting of child abuse,” said Mark O’Donnell of Parkville, Maryland, a former church member who said he appeared twice before the grand jury.
Martin Haugh of York Haven, Pennsylvania, a former elder who left the church in 2016, said he has spoken for hours to investigators, both inside and outside of the grand jury proceedings, about the structure of the denomination and how it handles cases of child abuse.
Haugh said he also testified about how his daughter was molested at his congregation in 2005 — and that he later learned that elders knew the perpetrator had a history of abuse when he joined the congregation but didn’t warn parents. He said he didn’t report the abuse to authorities. Haugh said elders told him he could report it but asked, “Do you really want to bring reproach on Jehovah’s name?” When Haugh became an elder, he said, he learned of four other cases in his congregation that members weren’t alerted about.
Haugh said to his knowledge, this is the first time an investigation of Jehovah’s Witnesses has been done on this scale in any U.S. state. Haugh said he’s been in regular contact with investigators from Henry’s office, most recently in March.
Attorney Matt Haverstick confirmed recently that his law firm is representing Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations around Pennsylvania on unspecified matters that are “very active right now.”
“I would say if the only place you’re looking for records of child sexual abuse is with one organization, then of course all the prosecutions that come are going to be about that one organization,” Haverstick said.
“There’s nothing unique or particular about this faith that makes it prone to any kind of misconduct,” he said.
The international Christian denomination, founded in the Pittsburgh area more than a century ago and headquartered in New York state, claims 8.7 million members worldwide, including 1.2 million in the United States.
Members will not bear arms, salute a national flag or participate in secular politics. Believers are known for their evangelistic efforts, including knocking on doors and distributing literature in public spaces.
In the Pennsylvania cases, court records state all nine defendants have ties to the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith, although in some cases it’s unclear how that might relate to the criminal allegations.
Defense lawyer Dan Kiss of Altoona, Pennsylvania, said his client, Robert Ostrander, 57, of Windsor, New York, knew nothing about the investigation before he was charged in October with indecent assault, corruption of minors and other offenses. The grand jury presentment accused him of abusing two girls in the Johnstown, Pennsylvania, area, by groping them, sometimes in the guise of wrestling. He spent more than a month in jail before making bail.
Kiss said Ostrander denies all the allegations.
“Honestly, this appears to be some sort of attack on their religion,” Kiss said. “You have all these Jehovah’s Witnesses getting charged with some sort of inappropriate behavior. I’m hoping that this is not the attorney general’s office piling on due to their religious beliefs.”
In response, Brett Hambright, a spokesperson for the state attorney general’s office, said the charging documents “articulate incidents where defendants used their positions of authority within Jehovah’s Witnesses congregations to build trust with children who they later abused.”
Current Pennsylvania law mandates that clergy and other spiritual leaders report suspicions of child abuse that arise in the course of their work. But the law also provides for exceptions when spiritual leaders learn about abuse through confidential communications, such as confession to a Catholic priest. Defining when such exceptions apply has been a matter of dispute, particularly when more than one spiritual leader is involved.
Under the structure of the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith, all baptized members are considered “ordained ministers.” Groups of a half-dozen or more elders make many decisions, and elders field confessions of sin at the local congregation level.
Jehovah’s Witnesses have long expressed concerns about the evolving legal standards for reporting child abuse in Pennsylvania. In 1998, a lawyer with the church’s national headquarters wrote the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office, asking if there was legal duty to report if the victim is a mentally incompetent adult, an adult who was a child when abuse took place, a minor who was married at the time of the abuse or a now-married minor who was not married when victimized.
The church’s lawyer also wanted to know if ministers have to report if a victim comes to them in confidence, when a relative of the abuser or victim confides to the minister or when the person telling a minister about abuse is not related to the victim or abuser. A lawyer in the attorney general’s office wrote back to say it can only give legal advice to the governor or an agency head.
More recently, after an Amish bishop in Lancaster County was charged with misdemeanor counts of failing to properly report suspected abuse — allegations for which he subsequently entered a program for first-time, nonviolent offenders — a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation in Philadelphia hired Haverstick’s law firm to seek clarity about its elders’ legal obligations.
The 140-member Ivy Hill congregation sued Pennsylvania’s Department of Human Services, asking Commonwealth Court to clarify whether elders are mandated reporters if they learn of child abuse through a confidential confession. Human Services runs the state’s ChildLine abuse hotline.
Only elders can hear confessions of serious sins, and breaking the secrecy of a confession could result in their removal as an elder and undermine their relationship with God and credibility within the congregation, the Ivy Hill congregation argued in appealing the case’s dismissal to the state Supreme Court. Haverstick said Ivy Hill’s concerns were not prompted by any unreported abuse within the congregation.
“In all 50 states, the Jehovah’s Witnesses have gone to their relevant attorney general’s offices to ask for clarification for the reporting obligations for ministers of the faith, their elders,” Haverstick said. “For the most part, like in Pennsylvania, they can’t get a straight answer.”
One of the nine Pennsylvania suspects accused by the grand jury, a man accused of sexually molesting his daughter as a form of of discipline when she was a child, killed himself when police sought to arrest him on rape and other charges in October. Charges remain pending against the other eight.
The prospect that Pennsylvania’s grand jury investigation may have uncovered secret church documents about how child sexual abuse matters have been handled has arisen as some lawyers for those harmed years ago are hoping they may soon be able to file new cases. That depends on whether state lawmakers establish a special two-year period to allow otherwise outdated child sexual abuse lawsuits.
The church has faced multiple lawsuits around the country in the past two decades, alleging cover-ups of abuse.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that a grand jury is fully needed,” said Marci Hamilton, chief executive of the Philadelphia-based advocacy group Child USA.
Barbara Anderson of Tennessee worked for a decade at the denomination’s central offices in New York and spoke with investigators with the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office after calling for an investigation into the organization’s handling of abuse. She said she was gratified to see the state taking action. Anderson was excommunicated from the church in 2002 after speaking out on the subject on a Dateline NBC broadcast.
A 2016 governmental report in Australia — part of a wider review of religious and other organizations serving children — concluded that children were not “adequately protected from the risk of child sexual abuse” in the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It found the church’s case files in Australia contained abuse allegations against 1,006 members dating back to 1950.
Church spokesman Lopes said the Australia report “unfairly conflated institutional and familial abuse” in its criticism of the church and failed to note evolving legal standards for mandated reporting over the decades.
[Click on the link provided to see photos included with the article]
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Just read that Carl Olof Jonsson died yesterday
by slimboyfat infor newbies, who was carl olof jonsson?
he was a jw in sweden who was challenged by a householder in the 1960s, who pointed out to him that secular history books don’t agree with watchtower that jerusalem was destroyed in 607 bce, but instead place the event 20 years later.
the reason the date is important is because it is the starting date for jw chronology which leads to 1914 as the end of the gentile times, and the beginning of the last days, as jws understand it.
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AndersonsInfo
More information here at an Italian forum which easily translates into English:
https://forum.infotdgeova.it/viewtopic.php?t=28300
Also, see:
https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/12q6m2s/carl_olof_jonsson_has_died_today_april_17_2023/
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Court case Jehovah's Witnesses Norway kicked off
by AndersonsInfo inhttps://cne.news/article/2827-court-case-jehovah-s-witnesses-norway-kicked-off.
norwegian jehovah's witnesses are in court this wednesday and thursday.
they are fighting the government's decision to remove their registration as a religious community.. .
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AndersonsInfo
For Your Consideration:
Beginning in the updated 2012 Shepherd the Flock of God elders' manual and continuing through updated 2019, 2020, 2021, and lastly, the Oct. 2022 Shepherd the Flock of God elders' manual, it is stated that JW's can have nonspiritual association with disfellowshipped relatives and “Would not be dealt with judicially…”
See the following information:
2012 “Shepherd the Flock of God” Elders' Manual
Chapter 10 - Matters Related to Disfellowshipped and Disassociated Ones
Make yearly visits on those who qualify. Permit them to obtain personal literature at the Kingdom Hall Assist those having undue association with disfellowshipped or disassociated relatives
6. If members of the congregation are known to have undue association with disfellowshipped or disassociated relatives who are not in the household, elders should counsel and reason with those members of the congregation from the Scriptures. Review with them information from the “God’s Love” book, pages 207-208; The Watchtower of April 15, 1988, pages 26-30; or the article “Display Christian Loyalty When a Relative Is Disfellowshipped” in the August 2002 Our Kingdom Ministry. If it is clear that a Christian is violating the spirit of the disfellowshipping decree in this regard and does not respond to counsel, it may be that he would not qualify for congregation privileges, which require one to be exemplary. He would not be dealt with judicially unless there is persistent spiritual association or he openly criticizes the disfellowshipping decision.
FYI, the following paragraph is not found in the 2012 elders' manual but is in the 2019, 2020, 2021, and Oct. 2022 updated manual. Italicized word is found in the elders' manual.
Willful, continued, unnecessary association with disfellowshipped or disassociated nonrelatives despite repeated counsel would warrant judicial action.—Matt. 18:17b; 1 Cor. 5:11, 13; 2 John 10, 11; lvs pp. 39-40.
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2019 “Shepherd the Flock of God” Elders' Manual
Chapter 12 DETERMINING WHETHER A JUDICIAL COMMITTEE SHOULD BE FORMED
17. Though this is not an exhaustive list, brazen conduct may be involved in the following if the wrongdoer has an insolent, contemptuous attitude made evident by a practice of these things:
(1) Unnecessary Association With Disfellowshipped or Disassociated Individuals:
Willful, continued, unnecessary association with disfellowshipped or disassociated nonrelatives despite repeated counsel would warrant judicial action.—Matt. 18:17b; 1 Cor. 5:11, 13; 2 John 10, 11; lvs pp. 39-40.
If a publisher in the congregation is known to have unnecessary association with disfellowshipped or disassociated relatives who are not in the household, elders should use the Scriptures to counsel and reason with him. Review with him information from the Remain in God’s Love book, page 241. If it is clear that a Christian is violating the spirit of the disfellowshipping decree in this regard and does not respond to counsel, he would not qualify for congregation privileges, which require one to be exemplary. He would not be dealt with judicially unless there is persistent spiritual association or he persists in openly criticizing the disfellowshipping decision. (The word "spiritual" is italicized in this elders' manual)
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2020, 2021, Oct. 2022 Elders' Manual – “Shepherding the Flock of God.” [The material below is basically the same as found in the 2019 manual.]
Chapter 12 - #16 and 17
Brazen Conduct [Heading is Brazen Conduct for both #16 and #17]
17. Though this is not an exhaustive list, brazen conduct may be involved in the following if the wrongdoer has an insolent, contemptuous attitude made evident by a practice of these things:
(1) Unnecessary Association With Disfellowshipped or Disassociated Individuals:
Willful, continued, unnecessary association with disfellowshipped or disassociated nonrelatives despite repeated counsel would warrant judicial action.—Matt. 18:17b; 1 Cor. 5:11, 13; 2 John 10, 11; lvs pp. 39-40.
If a publisher in the congregation is known to have unnecessary association with disfellowshipped or disassociated relatives who are not in the household, elders should use the Scriptures to counsel and reason with him. Review with him information from the Remain in God’s Love book, page 241. If it is clear that a Christian is violating the spirit of the disfellowshipping decree in this regard and does not respond to counsel, he would not qualify for congregation privileges, which require one to be exemplary. He would not be dealt with judicially unless there is persistent spiritual association or he persists in openly criticizing the disfellowshipping decision.
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THE APRIL 2023 UPDATED "SHEPHERDING THE FLOCK" ELDERS' MANUAL WILL BE SENT TO ELDERS SOON.
MOST LIKELY, THIS WILL BE OF INTEREST TO JW'S AND DISFELLOWSHIPPED JW'S TO SEE IF THERE WILL BE A CHANGE IN THE WORDING OF #17 (1) OF CHAPTER 12 THAT CAN IMPACT THE ASSOCIATION OF JW'S WITH DISFELLOWSHIPPED RELATIVES.
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Hamburg gunman wrote theological book before attack
by AndersonsInfo inhttps://cne.news/article/2789-hamburg-gunman-wrote-theological-book-before-attack.
the hamburg shooter who killed seven jehovah's witnesses before he shot himself published a theological book at the end of last year.
the german authorities issued two reports on the publication.. .
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AndersonsInfo
https://cne.news/article/2789-hamburg-gunman-wrote-theological-book-before-attack
The Hamburg shooter who killed seven Jehovah's Witnesses before he shot himself published a theological book at the end of last year. The German authorities issued two reports on the publication.
The Hamburg shooter who killed seven Jehovah's Witnesses before he shot himself probably had a narcissistic personality disorder and was religiously blinded. However, he likely acted in full consciousness. That is the conclusion of two police reports on the mental state of the 35-year-old perpetrator.
A psychiatrist, Christoph Lenk, and an extremism researcher, Peter Neumann, both worked on separate reports commissioned by the Hamburg investigators. Their job was to carry out a psychiatric analysis of Philipp F. The basis for their reports was a book F. had published in December 2022. According to F.'s statements, he wanted to create a new theological standard work on 296 pages, which should stand at the same level as the Bible and the Koran. Read More: https://cne.news/article/2789-hamburg-gunman-wrote-theological-book-before-attack
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Court case Jehovah's Witnesses Norway kicked off
by AndersonsInfo inhttps://cne.news/article/2827-court-case-jehovah-s-witnesses-norway-kicked-off.
norwegian jehovah's witnesses are in court this wednesday and thursday.
they are fighting the government's decision to remove their registration as a religious community.. .
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AndersonsInfo
https://cne.news/article/2827-court-case-jehovah-s-witnesses-norway-kicked-off
Norwegian Jehovah's Witnesses are in court this Wednesday and Thursday. They are fighting the government's decision to remove their registration as a religious community.
The case is between the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Ministry of Children and Families, Dagen reports. The Oslo district court is to rule whether the religious community should retain its status as a religious community and the right to seal marriages. Read More:
https://cne.news/article/2827-court-case-jehovah-s-witnesses-norway-kicked-off
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CBS NEWS Report: Pittsburgh woman testifies for grand jury investigation into JWs and child abuse
by AndersonsInfo inhttps://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/video/pittsburgh-woman-testifies-for-grand-jury-investigation-into-jehovahs-witnesses-and-sexual-abuse/#x.
pittsburgh woman testifies for grand jury investigation into jehovah's witnesses and sexual abuse.
kdka investigator andy sheehan interviewed a woman from pittsburgh who's cooperating with an ongoing state investigation into the jehovah's witness church, testifying before a state grand jury about being sexually assaulted when she was 12 years old and how she says church elders told her she was to blame.mar 6, 2023. .
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AndersonsInfo
Pittsburgh woman testifies for grand jury investigation into Jehovah's Witnesses and sexual abuse
KDKA Investigator Andy Sheehan interviewed a woman from Pittsburgh who's cooperating with an ongoing state investigation into the Jehovah's Witness church, testifying before a state grand jury about being sexually assaulted when she was 12 years old and how she says church elders told her she was to blame.MAR 6, 2023
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Article: The Crypto Ponzi Scheme Avenger - [A former JW]
by AndersonsInfo in(this article is available by subscription only so i copied and pasted it below.).
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/crypto-ponzi-scheme-hyperfund.html.
here's part of the information about mr. de hek's past as a jw:.
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AndersonsInfo
Here's an email I received from a friend with some interesting food for thought, especially for Jehovah's Witnesses to ponder over:
"It was a new thought to me that the Witnesses are a similar type of Ponzi scheme. They have no actual product, it is all illustrations and spin. And like crypto schemes, the Witnesses claim that they are growing (they are not) and that followers can please God more by buying in deeper (monthly giving and estate planning). The cracks are beginning to show and I doubt that WTC can keep it from collapsing entirely. There are too many lawsuits, too much negative publicity, and too many disgruntled ex-JWs sharing their stories."
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Article: The Crypto Ponzi Scheme Avenger - [A former JW]
by AndersonsInfo in(this article is available by subscription only so i copied and pasted it below.).
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/crypto-ponzi-scheme-hyperfund.html.
here's part of the information about mr. de hek's past as a jw:.
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AndersonsInfo
(This article is available by subscription only so I copied and pasted it below.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/crypto-ponzi-scheme-hyperfund.html
Here's part of the information about Mr. de Hek's past as a JW:
... To understand that passion, and his mission to wipe out crypto Ponzi schemes, you need to know something about Mr. de Hek’s childhood. Like everyone in his family, he was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness.
"From the age of 5, I was knocking on the doors of strangers, telling them that fires and earthquakes were happening for a reason, that the world was ending soon,” he recalled, describing being taught that only believers will survive the imminent destruction of earth."
The Crypto Ponzi Scheme Avenger
From his home in New Zealand, the YouTuber Danny de Hek assails what he calls a dangerous and deceptive scheme, one rant at a time.
By David Segal
Nov. 11, 2022
Last year, Danny de Hek was a social media guru badly in need of a social media guru. A buoyant New Zealander with geeky glasses, he dispensed advice about how to vastly expand your online audience, to a group of just 350 subscribers.
He earned a living by drop-shipping electronics as he searched for ways to make serious money. Then, in February, the husband of a friend sent the 52-year-old Mr. de Hek an email crowing about a company that somehow guaranteed outsize and clockwork returns. Investors in what was then known as HyperFund — it has since been rebranded twice — could triple their money in 600 days.
“It’s the best passive income retirement plan I have ever seen,” the acquaintance wrote. Get in now then sit back and watch the cash roll in.
The message changed Mr. de Hek’s life, though not in the way his friend might have hoped. After a few days of looking into HyperFund, Mr. de Hek concluded it was a scam, one that he estimates has attracted at least $1 billion by recruiting thousands of participants, some of whom put up as little as $300 or as much as $50,000 or more.
By March, he had crafted a new online identity: crypto Ponzi scheme buster. Mr. de Hek has since denounced HyperFund in more than 130 videos posted to YouTube, some of them nearly two hours long, lecturing viewers in a style that toggles between goofball and scold.
“When I looked into HyperFund, to me it just seemed black and white,” Mr. de Hek said during one of several interviews from his home in Christchurch. “Then I thought, I need to warn people about this.”
Mr. de Hek is one of the few voices flagging crypto-based Ponzi schemes, which U.S. investigators say are a severely underpublicized scourge. The past week has shown just how volatile the market is: One of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, FTX, collapsed and the industry, is in meltdown.
Amid that kind of uncertainty, many investors have decided that if their tokens won’t recover from the steep drop in value that began last November, why not take a flier on a company that sounds crypto-adjacent?
“People are desperate, and out of desperation they’re giving it a go,” Mr. de Hek said. “It’s depressing because this is often a last-ditch effort.”
Mr. de Hek has denounced HyperFund in more than 130 YouTube videos from his home in New Zealand. Credit...Tatsiana Chypsanava for The New York Times
A Ponzi scheme, for those in need of a refresher, is an age-old fraud in which inflows of new money pay off earlier investors. Using cryptocurrencies does little more than lend the whole plate-spinning contraption a patina of the cutting edge — Hey, it’s on the blockchain — and makes it harder to pin down who is in charge. But the story ends the same way: champagne for those at the top, tears for everyone else.
U.S. investigators have busted a handful of crypto Ponzis over the years. Among them is OneCoin, which was based in Bulgaria and which prosecutors allege brought in roughly $4 billion from investors around the world. The charismatic co-founder of that fraud, Ruja Ignatova, disappeared after the fund closed in 2017 and is the subject of an 11-part BBC podcast, “The Missing Cryptoqueen.”
“We’ve worked multiple cases that involve more than $1 billion, and those are only the ones we hear about,” said Jarod Koopman, the acting executive director of the Cyber and Forensic Services section of the Internal Revenue Service, which spearheads crypto-Ponzi investigations, in a phone interview. “These are traditional Ponzi schemes that have been adapted to the digital landscape, recruiting investors through social media to make them look great. And they’re completely bogus.”
Mr. Koopman would not comment on cases other than those that are already public, and he declined to discuss HyperFund. The company has attracted the attention of regulators in Britain, where the Financial Conduct Authority has a webpage warning investors to “be wary of dealing with this unauthorized firm.”
Dozens of HyperFund investors have left withering takedowns on the company review site Trustpilot. One person who said he had lost $10,000 wrote, “For the love of God — stay away from this scam.” A Facebook page called “HyperVerse Scam — Now What!?” has 6,200 members.
“So that’s my money gone,” read the top comment in mid-October. “Lesson learned.”
To Mr. de Hek, everything about the Hyper empire seems suspicious. On its website and in promotional videos, HyperFund explained that investors could buy “memberships,” starting at $300, and earn “rewards” that would accrue daily in their account. Those rewards took the form of “HU,” the internal trading currency, said to have parity with the U.S. dollar.
And why would everyone’s HU triple in 600 days? Because the putative founders of HyperFund — Ryan Xu and Sam Lee, described on promotional sites as a pair of superstar blockchain entrepreneurs — were going to pour all that cash into promising and profitable crypto projects, which they claimed would eventually serve 30 million customers. They also said the company would go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
It sounded plausible to many. Whoever ran HyperFund exploited the craze for crypto, which to most people at the time was a bafflingly complex technology that seemed to mint millionaires. But HyperFund never went public, and the only product it sold was memberships to HyperFund. Members who recruited new members got a cut of their recruits’ rewards, a perennial feature of pyramid schemes, and an occasional feature of Ponzi's.
To Mr. de Hek, this sale of memberships, in the absence of any product, was a blazing red flag that he had seen all too often. Before the pandemic, he had created Elite: Six, a company that hosted twice-a-week, in-person networking meetings for small-business owners in Christchurch. Those who paid $60 a month could introduce themselves and pitch their company. Mr. de Hek vetted every pitch, and in more than a few cases the main product was a joining fee, which earned the right to recruit others and get a cut of their joining fee. And so on.
“They were basically multilevel marketing companies,” Mr. de Hek said. “I hate them with a passion. I never let them in.”
To understand that passion, and his mission to wipe out crypto Ponzi schemes, you need to know something about Mr. de Hek’s childhood. Like everyone in his family, he was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness.
“From the age of 5, I was knocking on the doors of strangers, telling them that fires and earthquakes were happening for a reason, that the world was ending soon,” he recalled, describing being taught that only believers will survive the imminent destruction of the earth.
He eventually started questioning some of his beliefs, and at 23, when he confessed to a romantic fling — premarital sex was forbidden — church elders “disfellowshipped” him, as ex-communication is called.
Only later did Mr. de Hek conclude that he had been raised in a cult. (The church disagrees. “No, Jehovah’s Witnesses are not a cult” is an answer to a frequently asked question on its website. “Rather, we are Christians who do our best to follow the example set by Jesus Christ and to live by his teachings.”)
To Mr. de Hek, the way that HyperFund investors talked about the company, in chats, and on YouTube videos, was an eerie echo of what he had experienced as a child.
“Everyone in the Jehovah’s Witnesses loves other members, and it’s that sense of community that is the most precious thing to them,” he said. “Everyone in those HyperNation Zoom chats keeps talking about how much they love each other. And in both cases, there is no talking anyone out of their faith. For the Witnesses, it’s faith in the Bible and in end times. For HyperNation, it’s faith in the blockchain.”
Since the end of last year, the HyperFund faithful have been severely tested. In December, the company rechristened itself HyperVerse, an apparent attempt to cash in on the vogue surrounding all things metaverse. (“Open a space factory,” it says in the Galaxy Pioneer section of the HyperVerse home page.) The internal currency was changed, too; everyone’s HU was suddenly called HV.
The new packaging didn’t solve a larger problem. Last November, Bitcoin began an epic decline, from about $64,000 apiece to roughly $16,000 today. Thousands of other coins are down 95 percent or more. With a crypto winter underway, it seemed impossible for HyperFund or its successors to keep paying rewards if they were truly the fruits of crypto-related investments.
By late last year, members had started to howl online that they could not withdraw their rewards. One of them was Mike Lucas, 61, who lives in Paterson, N.J., and spent much of his working life in the shipping department of A.&P. supermarkets. He was introduced to HyperFund through a friend of a friend.
“He’d invested in it, and he said, ‘Give it a try,’” Mr. Lucas said in an interview. “He showed me this chart of how much I’d earn in 600 days if I invested $50,000. Then I looked into Ryan and Sam, and they were real people who did crypto stuff.”
Last year, Mr. Lucas put $25,000 into HyperFund, all of it from an individual retirement account. A few months ago, when he tried to make his first withdrawal, nothing budged. At first, he thought it was a technical problem — the instructions are fantastically complicated. At some point, he realized that his money was gone.
“I was hoping to use it to spend more time somewhere warmer, rent a place south, maybe North Carolina,” Mr. Lucas said. “Those plans are on hold, and I’m furious. At a loss for words.”
Over the summer, as the anger mounted, HyperVerse pivoted yet again and became HyperNation. Again, the rules changed. Members could transfer their rewards to the new platform only if they bought one of several bespoke nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, such as a “purple box,” which cost $10,000. Large returns were once again promised.
In his videos, Mr. de Hek treats all of these and other twists in the Hyper plot with a light touch, one befitting a farce. That’s especially true when the topic is Mr. H, a figure who now appears on HyperNation videos as some kind of spokesman, wearing a gold mask and a black hoodie and uttering slogans — “HyperNation will be an equal, fair and transparent platform that can solve the pain points of today’s society” — in a variety of slick studio settings. It’s like getting lectured about utopia by a character in “Squid Game.”
Who is actually running HyperNation is a mystery that Mr. de Hek continues to plumb. In September, a man with a British accent named Keith Williams announced in a Zoom call of HyperNation elite — an insider sent Mr. de Hek a link to the recording — that he had been named “by corporate” as the global head of sales. He didn’t identify anyone in corporate, and Mr. de Hek has theorized that Mr. Williams is now in charge.
“Keith Williams has put his neck on the chopping block,” Mr. de Hek said in an interview. “Regulators will be looking for him.”
Mr. Williams could not be reached for comment through his LinkedIn page, Facebook account, or phone numbers in online databases associated with him. He did not respond to emails sent to Future in Safe Hands, a personal coaching company where he is a director, according to Companies House, the British government’s business registrar. One recent evening, a woman at a residence that Companies House listed as Mr. William's address, in a London suburb, said he was not home and offered to pass along a reporter’s business card.
In a recent HyperNation video, Mr. Williams described Mr. de Hek as a guy in a cheap suit looking to pay the rent through a YouTube audience.
Mr. de Hek’s suit is cheap, he says. But with a mere 2,500 subscribers, his YouTube audience remains tiny, and so far his labors on that platform have yielded a total of $1,200, after taxes, which works out to pennies per hour.
Without that drop-shipping business, he’d struggle. This doesn’t seem to bother him, in part because he is a born optimist and thinks this online scam-busting thing could one day catch on. Viewers have sent him dozens of links to likely online Ponzi schemes, and he plans to name and shame them all. If that creates enemies, fine.
“I’ve already had my life threatened,” Mr. de Hek said, with a smile. “My saving grace is that I live in New Zealand. I’m a long way from everyone.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/business/crypto-ponzi-scheme-hyperfund.html
Credit...Tatsiana Chypsanava for The New York Times