THE NET IS CLOSING ON COIN-IT - THE PONZI SCHEME THAT RIPPED OFF THOUSANDS OF HOPEFUL INVESTORS

Dear Readers,

          Thanks to anti-ponzi scheme activist Rowena James and a group of other like minded Coin-It investors this dubious scheme has been provisionally liquidated. But the battle that just might see the duped investors get some of their money back is far from over.

          Coin-It was the brain child of the Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal based De Beer family headed by Malcolm. It is estimated to have taken some 27 000 investors for a very expensive R2.5 billion ride. They were promised huge returns in a truck buying scheme that, it turned out, involve fictitious vehicles. Rowena was relatively lucky. As one of the early investors she was only R60 000 out of pocket when the scheme was shut down by the Financial Service Conduct Authority.

           Rowena and her group paid R350 each to start the ball rolling to get justice for investors against the De Beers. The money was use for the High Court action to liquidate Coin-It. Their task is huge because on the face of it the De Beers have all the money in the world to fight court cases on every front.

          This is her story:

“Against the odds, us Coin-It investors finally caught a break after months of plugging on and seemingly getting nowhere. After the first two court days we were really beginning to feel defeated, and as you may well know, High court fees do not come cheap. So between comforting victims of this scheme and sharing the truth about the De Beers from Dundee, I have also been encouraging investors to join our liquidation cause. The day before the hearing Coin-it's management issued this memo:

Dear Coin it Clients,

Tomorrow we will again be in Pietermaritzburg High Court in defense of the liquidation of Coin it. Your support and presence in defense of the liquidation will be highly appreciated. Should you be unable to attend please can you send someone to represent you?

All those who wish to attend kindly respond to this message with your T-shirt size as there will be T-shirts available for the first clients that arrive.

NB: Kindly share the MAIN Coin it # on all your social media platforms: 

#BRINGBACKOURCOINIT

Kind Regards

Management

“The result of this memo was three buses and two minibus taxis full of people protesting against the liquidation application arrived outside the High Court in PMB, with placards saying 'Hands off our boss Mr. De Beer'. 

“The Coin-It staff were opposing the liquidation application because they stood to lose their jobs. Fortunately the judge was not swayed by this. 

          “I don't know how many investors eventually paid their R 350.00 so that we could push through to get a ruling from a judge. It is a question for Linda Mazibuko attorneys. They have done very well. Most especially Tsepo, who I know has gone beyond and above to help us achieve victory. Adv. Boulle presented a clear and concise argument and the Judge ruled in our favour. 
         "This would not have been achieved without a relentless group of prayer warriors who had fasted and prayed. God came through for us. 

“Oh how we celebrated, and with reason too, this was a hard fought victory. But our celebrations were not going to last very long. Coin-it's management, the De Beers, sent an email to all investors:

Good day,

As you are aware we were in court yesterday to defend the potential liquidation of Coin it, unfortunately the proceedings did not go in our favour however this is only provisional and not final. We will be back in court again on the 28th May 2020 in defence against the final order being granted. It is necessary to elect a provisional liquidator until it goes back to court on the 28th May 2020. 

Kindly complete this form and email it to docs@coinitcenter.com, it needs to be signed and retuned to us before 8am on Monday morning.

The form from the docs@coinitcenter.com link is a requisition form for a liquidator that Coin it would prefer the court to appoint. 

“So, here I am, convincing investors to join with the liquidator we have chosen, because of his reputation for being excellent at his job as well as a man with integrity.

“We have to get as many of our forms to the liquidator so they can be presented before the Master and hopefully ours are more numerous than those from Coin-It. 

“Wish us well. I will let you know who wins this battle of the liquidators. I thank you kindly, Jon, for opening you blog to allow me to give our fight an audience.”

          Meanwhile the investigation by the *Keystone Hawks plods on. What is supposed to be South Africa’s ace investigative unit the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (The Hawks) made a very disturbing start to its Coin-It inquiry as far as Rowena is concerned. The statement she gave the Hawks was leaked to the very people she was complaining about.

          Coin-It that promoted a profit of up to 200% in three years was not the only De Beer ponzi money spinner. CommEx was another one. In this people were told that various minerals would be bought on their behalf and when they were sold the good hearted De Beers would pass on the substantial profit to the investors. My House was also one of their get-rich-quick offers that involve prefabricated houses.

Keystone Cops

Regards

Jon, who wishes the Coin-It investors the best of luck in their endeavours to get money back from this super confidence trick that should have been closed in its early stages had our enforcement agencies not been sound asleep.  

*The Keystone Cops were fictional, humorous, incompetent policemen featured in slapstick, silent comedy films between 1912 and 1920s.
P.S. The pictures of the scenes outside the court are Rowena's.
P.P.S See also:Feisty Rowena James; Heartless Sunday Times; Newspaper behaving badly; Rowena's death threat .

NEWSPAPER'S EMBARRASSING LESSON AFTER SLANDERING ENGEN

Dear Newspaper Readers,

          Those in charge of advertising at the Northern KwaZulu-Natal Courier must surely be regretting it now.

          The paper’s greed was such that it accepted feloniously obtained money from people it knew were crooks. It had first hand knowledge of this because it had carried not one exposé of the Coin-It and CommEx ponzi schemes, but three in quick succession.

          Then, on the face of it just to make money, it accepted a half page advertorial written by the promoters of these schemes that did nothing else but extol the charitable work Coin-It had been doing around Dundee in KwaZulu-Natal where these con-artists are based.

          At the bottom of this notorious puff for Coin-It the promoters included colour logos of what a reader could only conclude were businesses own by members of the De Beer family, the people behind these ponzi schemes. One was for Engen the R70 000-million a year South African oil company that was voted South Africa’s Favourite Petrol Station this year for the ninth consecutive time in the Sunday Times’ annual Top Brands Awards.

          Hardly a company you would expect to be associated with these Dundee crooks. So I sent an email to Yussa Hassan Engen’s Chief Executive asking him if he was happy to have Engen’s name linked to the De Beer family and their ponzi scheme rackets. Shortly afterwards I got the following reply from Gavin Smith Engen’s External Communications manager.

          It was clear that Engen had been seriously libeled by the compilers of this advertorial and the Courier for printing it. They were very lucky that Engen was evidently not interested in taking it any further.

          But it shows how dicey it is for a newspaper to print something like this, especially when it comes from known swindlers.(Newspaper behaving badly)

          Meanwhile activist Rowena James quit as the Administrator of the Facebook group she started to try and nail those responsible for these ponzi schemes.

          “I actually feel I have done all I can,” she told me. “So there it is the activist has hung up her hat. Our advocate failed to get an urgent order to liquidate Coin-It because the company suddenly found 28 investors who had been paid every month.”

          This is just a token amount among what is said to be 27 000 people who put their faith in Coin-It for a better life only to find it has now been closed by the authorities.

“So they are opposing the order.” Rowena continued. “We go back to court on 4^th December.
“I still have not heard from the Hawks. I did however email Gerrie Nel’s office. I got a reply and apparently the Commercial Crimes Unit; Asset Forfeiture Unit and the National Prosecuting Authority are all working on this case. I was told to just cooperate with them.” 

          A day later Rowena had changed her mind. “I have been dragged back into the fold due to some new developments,” she said. “A number of investors asked me not to hang up my boxing gloves just yet.

          “Last night a man phoned me and told me he had been a policeman for 30 years. He asked me not to stop as he said I was doing a sterling job. He is from Pietermaritzburg and undertook to visit Sgt. Zuma (the member of the Hawks dealing with the investigation) and get us some decent feedback.

          “So, I am stepping up my campaign to get investors to make statements to Sgt. Zuma and we are doing all we can to cooperate, despite the fact that my statement was leaked.”

          She added that some investors had staged a sit-in outside Coin-It’s premises and had refused to leave until they get paid. (Rowena James gets death threat)

          It was very brave of a small community newspaper like the Courier (Readership of 15 000 around Dundee with a weekly distribution of 4 500 papers) to expose the shenanigans of these ponzi schemes that have millions to spend on legal actions, but then they spoilt it all by taking that advertorial. I gathered that the Editor Terry Worley had no say in the matter as so often happens on newspapers when money making advertising is concerned.

          Regards

          Jon, the Consumer Watchdog you can count on.

P.S. I didn’t go any further with my investigation into the logos of the businesses that appeared in the advertorial as I felt that Engen was the most important one.

   

ANTI-PONZI SCHEME ACTIVIST ROWENA JAMES HAS RECEIVED A DEATH THREAT

Dear Readers,

          As if a death threat was not enough Rowena James has also been maliciously maligned on Facebook. In addition she says she has evidence that indicates that the statement she gave to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigations (The Hawks) was leaked to the very people she is complaining about.

          All this is because this 51 year old divorcee has been extolling the aims of a pack of 400 people that is growing daily determined to hunt down Malcolm De Beer the master mind behind the Coin-It and CommEx ponzi schemes. Coin-It alone is estimated to have taken 27 000 people for something like R2.5 billion.

          Rowena herself was a victim of Coin-It, although her R60 000 loss was perhaps one of the smallest amounts among this huge number of people, who put their faith in Coin-It before it was closed by the Financial Service Conduct Authority (FSCA).

          She antagonised the Dundee, KwaZule-Natal promoters when she started an on-line Facebook Group headed: Coin-It and CommEx – The Truth. This was to encourage investors to co-operate with the Hawks investigators brought in by the FSCA.

          “I believe what really sent them over the edge was the action FSCA took and the serving of papers on Malcolm to appear in the Pietermaritzburg High court this week,” she told me.

          “Our group have each put in R350 to employ a firm of attorneys and the advocate they have appointed will be making an application to liquidated Coin-It in the hope that we can recover money for the investors. Many pensions, retrenchment packages and life savings have gone, not to mention the money from those who took personal loans to finance their investments.

          “They are from all over the country, mostly from KwaZulu-Natal with some from the Western and Eastern Cape and Polokwane.”

          In a press release issue by the FSCA to update Coin-It investors it stated that it had become aware that Coin-It was trying to get its investors to have their contracts transferred to other associated companies.

          It warned them not to enter into any financial arrangements with unauthorised entities associated with Coin-It.

          The FSCA launched an investigation in August into Coin-It and CommEx Minerals for suspected breaches of financial sector laws. This involved a search and seizure operation of the Dundee premises of these firms followed by the opening of a case with the Hawks for further investigation. The Asset Forfeiture Unit had also obtained a preservation order against bank accounts linked to the parties being investigated.

          “Neither Coin-It or CommEx nor its directors Mr Michael Andrew Anthony de Beer (Coin-It) and Mrs Patricia Ursula de Beer (CommEx) are licensed to conduct any financial services or to receive deposits from the public,” the statement added. Mrs Patricia Ursula De Beer is the ex-wife of Malcolm Henry de Beer, the founder of Coin-It and still the person running the its day to day operations. 

                                 (Heartless Sunday Times)                    

          Some weeks ago on Facebook Sibonelo Khulu Coin-It’s Brand manager described Rowena as a “racist who is scavenging on black people’s bloods.” He maintained that being “fully paid up after her 3 year circle with Coin-It she is busy misleading them with all sorts of nonsensical updates so they won’t become rich like herself.” He blamed her for complaining to the FSCA and called her “a heartless racist.”

          In her reply on Facebook Rowena included copies of the contracts for the two trucks she bought and stated that she would be happy to receive a R400 000 cash settlement for them as she suspected they did not exist.

          “The person who originated the complaint to FSCA was from Cape Town,” she continued. “I’m from Durban so that’s yet another thumb suck you have spread. Like a good citizen I have given the FSCA and the Hawks my full cooperation.

          “Mr Khulu you obviously know that these investors you have successfully misled and still are misleading will soon be locking you away as you have a lot to answer for.”

          She told me she had been alarmed on the evening of 24 October when she discovered that Sibonelo, known as Khulu the Man on social media, had distributed her home address with two voice notes in Zulu. The first one was from an unknown woman who asked for her address as she knew people in Durban who wanted to teach Rowena a lesson. And the second one was death threat.

          “Almost as alarming was the fact that he was distributing copies of the statement I made to the Commercial Crime Unit in Durban,” she said.

          She has lodged a complaint about this to the prosecuting authorities in Pietermaritzburg and it has been passed to the Serious Commercial Crimes Unit.

          “It’s clear that this case has now been compromised and my life is in danger.” she stated.

          Attached to her complaint were screen shots of what she says were copies of her statement that Khulu distributed on social media.

          Rowena was not the originator of the group that wants to liquidate Coin-It. She heard about it on WhatsApp and decided to join it.

          Regards,

          Jon, a Consumer Watchdog who believes not enough is being done by our enforcement agencies to ensure that the crooks behind these ponzi schemes end up in jail for a long time. And if you can’t trust the police, even at the highest level, it becomes very scary.

P.S. Rowena is to be congratulated for really sticking her neck out by taking a stand against these shysters, especially in the social media jungle where just about anything goes. Too many people complain bitterly about something, but when the time comes to stand up to be counted they are nowhere to be found.

(Feisty Rowena James)

P.P.S. The money Coin-It investors paid was supposed to have bought them trucks to earn them an impressive return on their investments, but all the indications were that these didn’t exist. CommEx was structured in much the same way only this time it involved the buying and selling of various minerals.