Saturday, October 01, 2005

http://www.cashitz.net and http://www.surfwize.com/ are now officially dead and gone with the Shwinn. While shamelessly claiming to be one of the longest running paid to surf sites on the Net and advertising 100% payouts to members, nothing could have been further from the truth. Research into the site cashitz site itself showed that it never existed as a surf program for all the time the owners claimed it had been running. It had actually first been a site called Adonis flirts which promoted itself as an adult gay-lesbian cross-dressing venue of some sort.

As cashitz, and later with their spin off site surfwize, the owners Paul and Penny Westhead and company of Blackpool, England - a beach resort town north of Liverpool, seemed to specialize in making exaggerated claims of success and prosperity on one hand while then citing financial, or script or hosting difficulties on the other that prevented them from actually paying the majority of the members. They made false claims of 100% GUARANTEED payments on their main page and in all their advertising to lure members into upgrading their accounts only to then refuse pay these same members citing an Accept Loss clause hidden in the fine print.

When finally confronted by enough members tired of their stalling, excuses, non-payment and even deletion of accounts, the group went offensively on the offensive: attacking anyone and everyone who reported their failure to pay members. They embarked on a campaign of harassment against programs and boards in which their members had posted announcements and complaints against the programs, often posing as their own members to spam the forums with their hate and vindictive. They even told members at one point that the only way anyone would be paid is if the members went to forums and emailed other members and debated the issues!

They even manufactured issues to debate when the only issue was that they were not paying members. They took peoples money in way of upgrades and Admin fees, but then failed to pay the members as promised. In attempts to deflect attention away from themselves and their own mismanagement and swindle, they bashed and trashed other sites and members.

All the while they continued to not pay the majority of the members, then blamed the non-payments on the boards, forums and other people. They claimed making a lot of money and having thousands of members on one hand, while telling the actual members they could not pay them because of Â’other circumstancesÂ’ on the other! The owners even took to joining forums as different people with names like iwinyoulose and spamming the sites until the sites were finally able to block out variouIPIp addresses.

Suddenly, all this activity stopped. Xtream then learned that Internetprogress http://www.internetprogress.org/, watchdog site for Paid to programs, which had taken the lead in organizing claims and complaints against the sites and the owner, had finally had some success in halting the dubious activities surrounding the cashitz and surfwize programs and the owners dead in their tracks.

Stopping scammers on the Net is often very difficult. However, through diligence, patience and a lot of work through Interpol, Scotland Yard, the local law enforcement and community groups in Blackpool, measures finally added up for bringing the sites offline and to the point where the cashitz and surfwize, at this writing, are no longer online and able to defraud any more members or potential members for the time being.

Let us hope this situation lasts for a very long time.

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