Numox payment system - a new generation of Internet - scam!

When we started writing an article about Numox payment system, we were sure that we would see a common payment processor, registered by some offshore company that dreamed of making a revolution in the payment industry. However, any new facts that we were learning about Numox shocked the reporters of ECJ more and more. We even couldn’t believe at times that the situation was true. We have faced not the advertised positive payment system but a huge scam-machine that was stealing money from people and offering the same people new and new services in the future. How does it happen, who stands behind Numox payment system, what background does this system have and where Numox can lead its clients – we tried to answer all these questions in this analytical material completely devoted to Numox.

We have got acquainted with this payment system after a press release posted on paid and free services that distribute press releases on the Internet.

Here one of the examples of that press release posted on http://www.pr.com/press-release/87183:

“NUMOX Hits the Market as a New E-currency

A new e-currency by the name of NUMOX has hit the market. The e-currency is backed by gold and risk-free financial securities and it's accepted worldwide.
A new e-currency by the name of NUMOX has recently been introduced to the world market and it's already making headway in the industry. By combining traditional payment methods with bank-level security and total privacy, consumers are finding NUMOX to be a welcomed addition to the e-currency marketplace...”

One May day all the leading editions have published these words on their front pages. The Internet became tinted with the colors of the advertisement promoting the new payment system. All the people were thrilled with such a bombastic start and rushed to buy “a currency of the future”. But very few of them knew what was behind the colorful pictures and promising words.

Our journal decided to shed light upon this story veiled in obscurity and wallowed in intrigues.

So, let’s start from the very beginning. The story goes back to 2005. A young man, 23-year old MBA student of Marketing and Management from Slovakia Peter Takac have generated an idea of a mega-project on the Internet. In general, Peter Takac was alike thousands of his coevals with his desires and ambitions. He was a very sociable guy that was always met in society with a great pleasure. But one day he decided to open his own business and had big ideas about… a payment system! Some ambitious person, isn’t he? May be this idea didn’t seem to be ridiculous as exactly the same time the notorious e-gold has faced the first problems, and the new system could be just what one needed.

Source: http://www.facebook.com/people/Peter_Takac/541519078

Ambitions and big plans are the good things but where to get the dough??? The young man broke into a search of investor.

First Takac chose the easiest way – he decided to find a sponsor, and ask just to give him money for a mega-project. However, finding an investor appeared to be not such an easy task.

http://web.archive.org/web/20060820134211/goldreturns.com/index__.php
“We had an agreement with one angel investor to finance part of this project but unfortunately he backed off when the project was already in development. We were then constantly looking for a new investor but without success. Everyone who is familiar with angel investing knows that it is a hard mission to find an investor in 2 months period,” says Takac.

But time was running and it was necessary to find money somewhere, as the project had already been in process. Here the young man decided to try to get money himself and had opened the so called investment program or HYIP. What is the most interesting - Takac had never made a secret of the purpose of his investment program. He didn’t want to hide that he was going to scam people as the interest offered in his hyip didn’t accord with the earning tools that were available that time. He has showed all his devil nature when he decided to slip his hand in the purses of the Internet users and then to offer them his payment system created with their stolen money.
He was openly telling about the payment system in all his interviews, press releases and other statements:

Our company Fortech Trading Inc (note: registered in 1994by Peter Takac (Sr.), Peter’s father). is already for about 3 months working on a project of new e-currency - NUMOX that will hit the market sometime in September 2005.

Source: (http://web.archive.org/web/20051025120704/http://goldreturns.com/).

The history of the above-mentioned HYIP, Gold Returns, was short. Not being interested in any investments at all, but in getting high profits, GR existed just fpr a short while. Having gotten the money enough for opening the payment system, GR had quickly stopped the activity and disappeared with the money invested in this hyip by others. Though the project existed only for a short period of time, it has attracted lots of people. Who knows how much the fraudsters leaded by Peter Takac could steal from the common people in a long run. Today the name of this HYIP can be seen almost in all blacklists on the Internet. One of such examples is a blacklist provided by http://www.rolclub.com:

Source: http://www.rolclub.com/closed-programs-scam-warnings/1423-careful-these-programs-has-been-blacklisted.html

After getting money for the further development, Mr.Takac started to search for technical personnel. And here he was also original. Instead of taking top-professionals he decided to take the amateurs, as they are much cheaper. So, he had posted his advertisement on one of the freelance websites http://www.scriptlance.com/projects/1188389188.shtml?ref=joeldegan:

“We need a programmer which would login to our server (previous experience with Plesk control panel would be welcome) and analyze where actualy the problem is, for the scripts which are not running properly now, and fix the problem(s) or recommend the solution how to fix the problem(s) (if the problem is not inside the scripts/config files or MySql database, but rather in the protection structure)”.

Or another on http://www.getafreelancer.com/users/556807.html:

“Professional Video Testimonials needed

We are in need of 3 professional VIDEO TESTIMONIALS made by ordinary people or actors, for a new money making membership website. We need 2 male and 1 female testimonials”.

The last announcement was posted as Takac wanted to launch a new investment project instead of GR, which that time has already been closed.

In other words, Takac decided to economize on everything. Our edition has not covered this system yet in our Ecommerce-Checked section. But we can suppose that a Slovakian businessman has economized on safety of the system as well. And that means that even if this fraudster has finally chosen the right way, in any case his payment system will not be secure for the users.

Though it is necessary to say that not the freelancers have created NUMOX. A well known Slovakian IT-company krea.sk gave birth to the daring idea of Takac. It is necessary to note that NUMOX is not the only project of krea.sk and as it can be seen on www.krea.sk/refecrencie the number of its clients impresses:

So, the payment system was almost ready and the question of advertisement came into play. As we all know, ads play the leading role in the progress that defines the future and success of each business.

It is necessary to admit that the PR-campaign of NUMOX payment system is well-planned and is conducted on the top level.

And many people, though not all of them, believe this advertisement is honest. We can see some discussions on the forums on this topic.

http://www.talkgold.com/forum/showthread.php?t=219867&page=3

Vintage: They owned hyip that scammed people and now their new project is numox. I wouldn't trust an hyip admin with 1 cent.

Iearn-Money: Hello, We all know the new payment processor launched recently, which is Numox..Lots of people in different forums say that this new payment processor is a scam..
In fact I agree with them, and I'm here to warn you guys about it.. Of course not just words, I have prooves with me.

1) Beeing a partner with ExchangeMoneyForum:
I think before they accept a website/business as a partner of them, they must done a search about it, how can they approve a SCAM forum as EMF to be their partner ?

2) Numox and Goldreturns:
I think you already heard about Goldreturns, the big scam HYIP, I heard that numox is affliated with them..

http://www.italkcash.com/forum/e-currency-e-gold-e-bullion-paypal-epassp...

AzeAzeAze: I Just Knew It Some Few Days Ago, After It Has Been A Part Of ExchangeMoneyForum, The Forum Is Known As A Scam In All Other Forums, I Think Numox Will Not Gain People´s Trust, As They Are A Partner Of A Scam Forum !

Also i heard a concern which is them either being or closely affiliated with goldreturns.com goldreturns.com mostly was a ponzi scam, and if a new e-currency is run by the same people, So maybe numox is a scam!

In one of the interviews Takac was asked the following: Can people lose their money investing with Gold returns?

And his answer was: The sucess of the investment is based on the NUMOX system position on
the market. But we are sure that NUMOX will become popular and trusted online payment vehicle very soon.

Today GR is in the black list, and the conclusions suggest themselves. So, we hope, our dear readers, that you will think twice before trusting the new e-currency that hit the market. Just think yourself what good can come out of the payment system which is built on the scammed money? Today lots of people are ready to trust this payment system their last money but non of them knows about thousands who have trusted those scammers (once when they ran the HYIP) and have lost everything.

Before making a final conclusion on our story, we want to say that the amount needed for the creation of Numox was a considerable one, and a simple student, even a genius one, couldn’t afford it. We don’t know the exact number but we have made just an approximate calculation. The technical part of a payment system could cost $20k, but it is not enough for becoming the number 1 on the market of e-payments. Ads – that’s the pusher of progress and a visit card of any company. People usually judge about some product by its appearance and saving on advertisement is not a good strategy.
Today there are about 30 big forums where Numox places its ads, and considering the fact that the advertisement on each of them costs about $800-1000, we can say with confidence that the advertisement amount went over 30k. Such expenses as payments for sticks on the forums, numerous armies of posters who leave the traces of paid job. So, in general the whole advertisement content of NUMOX costed Takac more than $50000. And here you should add the cost of the creation of the payment system. During 2005 -2008 the young businessman was busy with the creation of his 'child' and that means that the money wasted was the money stolen from the trustful consumers via GR. As a matter of fact that guy has scammed lots of people and got hundreds of thousands dollars, and now he believes that people will bring him their hard-earned money again.

The reporters of ECJ have passed the way from 2005 to the present time to understand the meaning of the monster from the logo of Numox and to know what we can expect from this payment system. Undoubtedly, we can conclude that Takac has created a new tool for scamming money of the Internet users that is an upgrated model of his former hyip Golden Returns. He has created the payment system on the stolen money and now shamelessly offers the users to use this product. His idea is horrible. The guy, knowing that people do not like to transfer money from one payment system to another, probably decided to make a wide-scaled scam and one day to run away with the balances in the system’s accounts, and may be appear again later with a new image. We can only guess but the history of Numox suggests just that. Today lots of people see the advertisement on the Internet and even have no clue that this or that banner was made for money, or that he or she has invested in the hyip of that person. In other words, it seems that a man decided to make the most scaled scam of the century and today only with your help we can prevent this upcoming event. To use or not to use Numox, surely, everybody decides on his or her own. However, we would not like that very soon a new sad story will appear in the Fraud section of Ecommerce Journal, with Peter Takac's name who has founded Numox.