Latest capital idea is pyramid shaped
Stepsys is back with another ‘staggering’ get-rich-quick scheme
I’VE been writing about Simon Stepsys since 2006, when he punted a get-rich-quick scheme saying: “Never in my time have I ever seen or experienced such an outstanding opportunity!”
Fourteen years and several failed schemes later and he’s pushing something called mind.capital.
“In my 22 years making money on the internet I’ve never seen anything so simple... the passive income side is absolutely staggering,” he says with a huge dose of deja vu.
One of its selling points is that the chief executive is a 73-year-old from Spain – Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo – who is apparently “famous for having beat the casinos in the nineties with his roulette system”.
Like so many recent get-richquick schemes, this purports to be a way to earn “passive income” from cryptocurrency markets.
Invest, tell your friends about it, sit back and watch the money roll in.
It’s touting returns of 18%, which would be implausible enough as a yearly figure. Yet mind.capital says this much can be made monthly.
“After several years of research, we are able to study in real time the evolution of the main crypto assets and their sale price in different currencies and find the optimum moments of buying and selling,” says the mind. capital website.
The first question I ask when I hear a claim like this is: if they have really found a way to make a fortune, why are they telling other people about it instead of quietly getting on with netting millions for themselves?
“Come and learn how ordinary people are earning anything from $100 to $1,000+ daily,” posted Stepsys on Facebook.
The 53-year-old, from Nantwich, Cheshire, added on his website: “I have already done my due diligence and have found nothing that suggests mind.capital is a scam.”
Can’t have been very thorough due diligence, considering that one financial regulator, the Texas State Securities Board, says it is being illegally promoted.
The Texan authorities have issued a banning order, calling mind.capital a pyramid scheme with the only obvious source of revenue being whatever money is put into it by new recruits.
“These schemes can be dangerous,” said the state securities commissioner Travis J. Iles, who is deeply sceptical of mind.capital’s claimed “advanced algorithms”.
He says: “Although promoters may boast about the successes of these platforms, potential investors are rarely afforded the opportunity to verify their claims – or even determine whether the applications actually exist.”
The order states that mind.capital is “intentionally concealing key information from investors, such as the significant risks”.
It goes on: “They are also not providing investors with critical information about mind.capital and its ability to actually generate represented returns.”
The legal action was taken against two companies, Mind Capital Tech SL, registered in Spain, and Mind Capital OÜ of Estonia.
The last time I wrote about Stepsys he was pushing some rubbish called The Advert Platform, which was supposedly a way to make a fortune by spamming Twitter and Facebook with plugs for the scheme.
“Who wants to make a lot of money?” he boomed at a recruitment rally I attended in London. “Who wants to make enough to buy a Ferrari for cash?”
But The Advert Platform crashed – just like its predecessor, My Advertising Pays, known as MAP. “Watch my lips, MAP is for life,” vowed Stepsys shortly before it collapsed into oblivion.
I’ve no reason for thinking that this latest scheme won’t go the same way, to be followed roughly this time next year by yet another “outstanding opportunity” that Stepsys has chosen to peddle. Neither mind.capital nor Stepsys have responded to my questions.
‘‘ Only obvious source of income is what is put in by new recruits