‘Zuckerberg’ plan sours, sparks Complaints
A social media platform is recruiting low-income and elderly people, promising they’ll make thousands through clicks and posts. But officials say it has all the hallmarks of a pyramid scheme. Tony Wall reports
Petra Artep claimed to have found the secret to making money, just like Mark Zuckerberg. He’d made his fortune from Facebook, but Artep (Petra spelt backwards) had set up her own social media site and was now inviting people to come on board. They could make millions together, she gushed, saying her aim was to hit 20,000 users.
People believed her.
Her platform, established in June, was called NNL, which stood for No Need Limited. It was never made clear exactly how it would generate revenue – people were told they could earn money simply by using the site, at that point called gomynnl.com – posting content, sharing, liking and most importantly, recruiting new users.
Impressed by the slick website and explainer videos, hundreds of people, from Auckland to Rotorua to Palmerston North, signed up, after paying a $60 registration fee.
(More money was required as people graduated through different ‘‘phases’’.)
They were then asked to find five new members, which people did by tapping friends and family. For finding new recruits, they were promised $200.
Most of those who came on board were Pacific Islanders and Māori; many were pensioners or beneficiaries. Some had jobs and business investment experience and were wowed by Artep’s sales pitch and apparent worldliness. People weren’t naive enough to think they’d become millionaires, but hoped to make enough to keep up with rising costs.
‘‘We just wanted ... a few thousand to help pay our bills’’ says Rotorua woman Te Ara Amataiti, who joined in June when a friend introduced her to the scheme.
She’d already met Artep, a trans woman also known as Petra Huia, at a Billy Te Kahika rally, where Artep was selling flags and T-shirts. The friend sent Amataiti a Facebook video of someone raving about how great NNL was.
‘‘They were saying you can click and earn ... they said ‘every click is a dollar’. They said ‘this is how Zuckerberg gets rich’. I thought ‘well, why not, it’s time that it came around to us’.’’
Maraea Van Gent, also of Rotorua, says Artep’s heart seemed to be in the right place. ‘‘She said she saw people struggling and wanted to do something for them – a way to financial freedom.’’
But just four months after it was started, NNL – the website is now called nnlworld. com – appears to be in trouble, achieving nowhere near its 20,000-member target. Many users are demanding their money back. They say while Artep has made tens of thousands of dollars or more through fees, they haven’t seen a cent.
Even some of her volunteer administrators say they’ve been ripped off.
The Commerce Commission says it has received six complaints about NNL, making it the most-complained-about scheme of the past year.
‘‘If you’ve been asked to make a payment to join a group, and you’ve been asked to find other people ... that is a classic hallmark of a pyramid scheme,’’ says Vanessa Horne, the commission’s general manager of fair trading.
She says the commission will investigate whether there have been breaches of the Fair Trading Act, which would be a criminal offence. Actions could range from issuing a ‘‘stop-now’’ notice to laying charges, with a maximum fine of $600,000.
In previous posts on her sites, she appears to blame users for any problems, suggesting they haven’t completed their tasks or understood what was required.
‘‘I have been slandered, trashed, abused, reported on, all while I’m working 14-hour days, sometimes longer, to get everything sorted,’’ she posted at one point, as complaints mounted. ‘‘I didn’t reply here because I am too busy getting ready for the ones who do know how to approach NNL and me.’’
She claimed she had ‘‘data’’ to prove that many people had received their rewards.
‘‘Some even received refunds. What you signed up to ... was a social media site that rewarded its users, and it has done so.’’
In an email to Sunday News, she said she couldn’t respond without knowing who is making the claims as ‘‘NNL has processes and these processes must be followed, as each user is not the same’’.
She added: ‘‘I or NNL, do not take bullying, abuse, gender shaming, racism, slander & attacks.’’
Artep has been living at a large social housing facility in O¯ tara, Auckland, where residents say she hasn’t been around for several weeks. A private investigator has visited several times, attempting to serve her documents on behalf of a finance company in a court proceeding.
The manager says Artep still rents her unit and keeps stuff there, but seems to be avoiding people, only returning occasionally at nights and weekends.
Other residents are aware she is running some kind of business from her unit, with several computers, the manager says. ‘‘The other tenants are saying it’s a scam.’’
Artep has been involved in the hair and beauty industry and worked for the Advance NZ/Public Party campaign for the 2020 election.
Maureen Kumeroa, who was the Kelston candidate for Advance NZ/NZPP, says Artep worked as a campaign manager.
Te Kahika referred inquiries about Artep to Advance leader Jami-Lee Ross, as ‘‘he was the one that worked with Petra’’.
Ross says Artep helped ‘‘a number of candidates’’ in Auckland, and he remembers meeting her at a launch event. ‘‘There was a blur of many people volunteering who were all mostly new to me. I don’t know anything about what she does, or did, outside of that.’’
When people joined NNL in June, they set about completing ‘‘tasks’’ set for them by Artep and the admin team, involving posting and sharing content and clicking ‘‘likes’’.
If they didn’t want to find five new members, they could pay $120 and the admin team would find the new recruits for them.
Many took that option.
As they clicked away, they could see money accruing in their ‘‘wallets’’ on the site.
Palmerston North man Carl Ward says members were promised they’d be able to cash out – he’d reached about $8000.
‘‘I asked [Artep] about five times, ‘we go to the next stage, and we get our points paid out, eh?’ I finally got her to say ‘yes, you’ll be able to spend your wallet points’.’’
Auckland man William Ferris says some people had accumulated even more. ‘‘Some of us racked up $12,000 – my mate who signed me on, he racked up 54 grand – just from clicking. It clearly gave a dollar value [in the wallet] but it turns out it was fake money.’’
After about a month, Artep introduced a new scheme, which she called ‘‘formulas’’. Members were organised into groups of five. People would have $300 transferred into their bank account, they’d keep $50 and send the rest to the next person in the chain.
Supposedly, by the end of the ‘‘race’’, everyone would end up with $300. But it broke down after just one cycle.
‘‘Through her admin team she [Artep] said the whole thing crashed because one group ran off with the money, and she had no choice but to stop it,’’ Ferris says. ‘‘We don’t know if that was true or not.’’
Ward says he was also concerned that people were asked to provide personal information such as tax numbers, photos of their driving licences, bank account numbers and addresses. ‘‘I stood back and thought, ‘why did I give them enough information to create another identity?’’’
Ward says he was concerned that Artep was taking advantage of the elderly, and people who couldn’t speak English very well.
‘‘I noticed she was signing up a lot of old people who didn’t have computer skills, they had no idea, there’s no way they could have run this, but she was quite happy to take their money.’’
He wrote to Artep several times asking for his money back, saying he felt misled.
‘‘She just wouldn’t even answer. You just get radio silence.’’
Kumeroa, the Advance candidate, says Artep would promise to hold training sessions for people by video conferencing, but would cancel at the last minute.
Some people involved in the scheme were financially desperate and were relying on returns from the scheme to make ends meet, Kumeroa says.
‘‘I basically ripped into her online, say
‘In the old pyramid schemes, it’s friends and family who are using those deep relationships of trust to encourage people to join a scheme and pay money. Social media’s a bit different because there’s not that relationship.’ VANESSA HORNE, THE COMMERCE COMMISSION’S GENERAL MANAGER OF FAIR TRADING
ing ... ‘you shouldn’t be doing this ... you need to refund all the money’.
‘‘She started to put disclaimers on the website saying ‘if you’ve used any of the software or the apps then you’re no longer entitled to a refund’.’’
Sunday News has seen evidence that Artep did in fact attempt to refund some money. Funds from a company called The Brain – no longer on the companies’ register – were deposited into the account of an administrator, to cover refunds.
The administrator, who asked not be identified, says the money ran out, however, and she and other members of the admin team were amongst those now trying to get their money back.
‘‘She’s just left us hanging, we feel so robbed,’’ the woman says.
After a couple of months, Artep indicated that people would finally get their rewards if they moved to ‘‘phase four’’, after paying another $120.
At this level, their points would be moved from their wallets into something called Wolf Pay. ‘‘It’s like PayPal, but she made it up,’’ says Van Gent.
People received emails confirming they’d made withdrawal requests, but noone Sunday News spoke to received any money.
‘‘Our Wolf Pay balances were reading $12,500,’’ says Ferris.
‘‘We were going ‘woo-hoo, we’re gonna get paid, awesome’.
‘‘But it was all fake.’’
Shortly before shutting down one of the earlier iterations of the website, Artep complained in a post that she’d explained repeatedly to users the process to follow if they had concerns, and she’d given ‘‘so many extensions’’ for people to complete their tasks.
She promised that at the next stage, called Enterprise, ‘‘users will learn what is true and what is not. I’m about to bear (sic) it all and give you the real truth’’.
She moaned that people were ‘‘acting like’’ they didn’t understand the payment process, even though they’d seen others had been paid.
‘‘So ask yourselves, who is scamming who here?’’
Horne, of the Commerce Commission, says the NNL scheme is unique in that it uses social media.
‘‘In the old pyramid schemes, it’s friends and family who are using those deep relationships of trust to encourage people to join a scheme and pay money. Social media’s a bit different because there’s not that relationship.’’
If a scheme sounds too good to be true, it probably is, she says.
‘‘There’s only ever one pot of money – the money has to come from somewhere and in a pyramid scheme it’s usually those last people who have been recruited who are the ones who miss out.
‘‘The one thing we say all the time is ... just step back for a minute and have a think about what you’re entering into.
‘‘Who are you handing money to, and what are you going to get in return?’’