alert The fund can't be withdrawal from Epik.com via Masterbucks wallet

[enamebroker]

It happened on 23rd Aug 2022 and this matter lasted almost one month without any process. Masterbucks.com declined my fund withdrawal and disabled the button of fund withdrawal. And I contacted Epik.com and got no further action even if Rob Monster got involved in it for two weeks. All the time I was told in email by management review.

What is wrong with Epik.com? Do you think it is normal to disable fund withdrawal? How can I get back my fund from Epik.com? Thanks for your suggestion.

 

[bmugford]

Isn't it brilliant. Using your clients' escrow funds to litigate against them.

It reminds me of this, what SBF of FTX fame is asking for -

It is essentially asking to use alleged ill-gotten gains to defend against the charges related to these alleged ill-gotten gains.

Brad

 

[branding]

BR sounds just like Rob and the other Rob to me. I sympathize with people being owed, however.... Its time to pull the plug. I've seen these excuses before.

The money just isn't there. Start whatever lawsuit you can NOW.

The CEO is actually, publicity, stating they can't pay you. What more do you need?

 

[jberryhill]

The money just isn't there. Start whatever lawsuit you can NOW.

If the money isn't there, then a lawsuit won't make it appear.

That's where involuntary bankruptcy starts to make sense. The registrar accreditation and domains under management make the registrar piece worth carving out and selling to any of Newfold / Identity Digital / Tucows / GoDaddy. That would probably clear enough to pay the creditors a good chunk of what they are owed if not all of it.

Royce has demonstrably said things he knows not to be true, so this is not a "good cop / bad cop" play. It's all bad cops.

 

[JB Lions]

What a mess but he told you his game in the video below if you were paying attention. Not sure how many people actually watched it but right afterwards my first thought was, wow, this guy is devious:

My belief was Rob was always just full of it, business was going bad so he decided to play the Christian angle. He was an atheist, never went to church, got released as CEO then....God spoke to him and said be God's registrar. If you're struggling, one way to get instant support is to claim Christian. Now, I have no idea if he's Christian or not but there is no doubt he used it for marketing purposes. He spammed his own Prayer thread he started. I always thought he was the guy that still wanted his private jet and Maserati back, he mentions this in the video.

I asked him before in this forum if he had a photographic memory, and he dodged the question. The reason why I asked was because in the video he said:

He filled 2 libraries, became diligent scholar of all kinds of belief systems:
evil
good
masonry
occult
magic
witchcraft
later he said he was a messianic Jew

When he said that, I was like damn. He could go to a forum on masonry, witchcraft etc. and fit right in, speak the lingo, just like he did with Christianity.

The problem I had with him, when he was using this angle, he was also promoting products off a massacre, tweeting out the same anti-Jewish stuff that got Kanye in trouble, reposting anti-Muslim memes on Gab, reaching out to right wing/hate sites, reached out to incel site that had threads about raping underage girls. etc. It's one thing to be a registrar and say you believe in free speech and all that but he became a participant in the spreading of hate with what he posted at Gab. Didn't seem real Christian-like to me. All this stuff is in all the superlong threads here. But people still worked with him/that company. New CEO in the podcast said he was a fan of him, and Alex Jones (red alert) and same free speech spiel Rob did. Doesn't seem to like domainers much and says he inherited a mess, which is true based on everything out there already.

And what people have been saying about the crypto would make sense. Take the money, put it in crypto, thinking it would still be going up. Keep the profits, the other money is still there for people when it came to withdrawal. Problem is crypto tanked, so no profits and money to pay people is gone. Who knows but it would make sense that is what's happening.

 

[bmugford]

It's one thing to be a registrar and say you believe in free speech and all that but he became a participant in the spreading of hate with what he posted at Gab. Didn't seem real Christian-like to me. All this stuff is in all the superlong threads here. But people still worked with him/that company. New CEO in the podcast said he was a fan of him, and Alex Jones (red alert) and same free speech spiel Rob did. Doesn't seem to like domainers much and says he inherited a mess, which is true based on everything out there already.

When I mention Epik, I almost always put "free speech" in quotes as to me it is more a marketing schtick than actual belief.

The "free speech" issue is a strawman. 99.99% of people don't have a problem with their speech, being deplatformed, or anything else like that.

Do people who believe in free speech go around threatening defamation?
Do they try to coerce people into removing or changing negative reviews?

It just seems like they constantly play the victim when anyone else uses their free speech.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

I am not sure if this is new or old information in this article:

https://www.criticalhit.net/technol...er-has-to-repay-the-debt-he-owes-the-company/

It says, among other things:

In an email to one of these unfortunate customers whose funds have been spent by Epik, it was revealed by the current CEO Brian Royce that former CEO Rob Monster has to “repay the debt he owes the company”, and the customer was warned that further negative coverage he made public could “force Epik into bankruptcy, resulting in a massive suit against Rob”. Multiple customers have also filed complaints and a case against Monster is underway.

When asked about whether Epik was holding cryptocurrencies and waiting for their value to increase, Brian Royce said “No bitcoin is being held at Epik. Rob Monster had a private wallet that was never turned over to the new CEO, later the new CEO also found out that Rob Monster had a Private wallet on his laptop and a Binance account that was also never disclosed”. He failed to confirm whether Epik held other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, which some customers have been paid with. The revelation that Monster had substantial sums in crypto wallets adds weight to the possibility that Monster used Epik customer’s funds to invest in the crypto markets.
---

There are also some interesting screenshots from the Masterbucks admin page and emails from Royce.

In an email to an Epik customer, Lars Skarrup thought a customer was owed $2,976.92, when in fact the customer had “instore credit” which couldn’t be withdrawn of $38,344.50, meaning the customer was in fact owed over $40,000. In reply to the customer’s request to get their money back, Lars Skaarup said that the customer’s “antagonistic behavior does not correspond with a need for a $2,976.92 payout”.


Hey Lars, that is not how it works.

You owe a debt, you pay the debt.

Somehow they are the victim here, not the customer?

Because Epik was offended by a customer who wants their money, they think they can just wipe out that debt.

Sounds like a really strong legal argument.

Brad

 

[JB Lions]

When I mention Epik, I almost always put "free speech" in quotes as to me it is more a marketing schtick than actual belief.

The "free speech" issue is a strawman. 99.99% of people don't have a problem with their speech, being deplatformed, or anything else like that.

Do people who believe in free speech go around threatening defamation?
Do they try to coerce people into removing or changing negative reviews?

It just seems like they constantly play the victim when anyone else uses their free speech.

Brad

Christian marketing, patriot marketing, free speech marketing. It's so easy because people just gobble it up.

My first taste of Christian marketing online was like 20 years ago in the affiliate marketing forums. New merchant to forum was Jesus this, Jesus that, their merchant site drowning in Christianity when what they were selling had nothing to do with it. Why? Instant support. Christians support Christian businesses. If you're struggling to make money online, claim Christian. Had a fellow mod that was an actual Christian, hardcore Baptist and met this merchant at Affiliate Summit, and with just a few questions, knew he was a fraud.

Patriot marketing one recent example is Glorifi bank, lots of popular right wingers were pushing it. Failed after 3 months. But was very easy to get the more gullible type to sign up.

‘Anti-woke’ bank shuts down after less than 3 months​

https://fortune.com/2022/11/22/glorifi-bank-shuts-down/​

 

[Derek Peterson]

What a mess but he told you his game in the video below if you were paying attention. Not sure how many people actually watched it but right afterwards my first thought was, wow, this guy is devious:

My belief was Rob was always just full of it, business was going bad so he decided to play the Christian angle. He was an atheist, never went to church, got released as CEO then....God spoke to him and said be God's registrar. If you're struggling, one way to get instant support is to claim Christian. Now, I have no idea if he's Christian or not but there is no doubt he used it for marketing purposes. He spammed his own Prayer thread he started. I always thought he was the guy that still wanted his private jet and Maserati back, he mentions this in the video.

I asked him before in this forum if he had a photographic memory, and he dodged the question. The reason why I asked was because in the video he said:

He filled 2 libraries, became diligent scholar of all kinds of belief systems:
evil
good
masonry
occult
magic
witchcraft
later he said he was a messianic Jew

When he said that, I was like damn. He could go to a forum on masonry, witchcraft etc. and fit right in, speak the lingo, just like he did with Christianity.

The problem I had with him, when he was using this angle, he was also promoting products off a massacre, tweeting out the same anti-Jewish stuff that got Kanye in trouble, reposting anti-Muslim memes on Gab, reaching out to right wing/hate sites, reached out to incel site that had threads about raping underage girls. etc. It's one thing to be a registrar and say you believe in free speech and all that but he became a participant in the spreading of hate with what he posted at Gab. Didn't seem real Christian-like to me. All this stuff is in all the superlong threads here. But people still worked with him/that company. New CEO in the podcast said he was a fan of him, and Alex Jones (red alert) and same free speech spiel Rob did. Doesn't seem to like domainers much and says he inherited a mess, which is true based on everything out there already.

And what people have been saying about the crypto would make sense. Take the money, put it in crypto, thinking it would still be going up. Keep the profits, the other money is still there for people when it came to withdrawal. Problem is crypto tanked, so no profits and money to pay people is gone. Who knows but it would make sense that is what's happening.

I have never seen that video. What a lying piece of garbage. Knowing the background of all those "deals" it really is pretty scary how confidently he pitches them like a big deal. Sybil was 3 teenage boys in UK, reselling hosting for lolicon and worse, total revenues were under $30K/yr including gab (I know that b/c Monster sent the P&L for the company for some weird reason). Some very funny stories happened but not related.

Bitmitigate was owned by Nic Lim, a couple months after buying Nic quit and rebuilt and started competing. Without Nic Monster was unable to run bitmitigate. They had no non-compete. I have known Nic for many years, not a bad kid but lots of very public mental health issues, most of which happened after his Monster dealings. Very sad stuff in fact and all Monster cares about is talking up his "acquisition", knowing it was unusable.

Rob spent hours on the phone with me and others pumping for info and ideas. I was very open, as the happy soldier I am, to share knowledge and ideas if would be used for greater good no matter who gets credit or even profits. All Monster ever wanted was info so be could form his pitch for grifting the right.

 

[Derek Peterson]

Christian marketing, patriot marketing, free speech marketing. It's so easy because people just gobble it up.

My first taste of Christian marketing online was like 20 years ago in the affiliate marketing forums. New merchant to forum was Jesus this, Jesus that, their merchant site drowning in Christianity when what they were selling had nothing to do with it. Why? Instant support. Christians support Christian businesses. If you're struggling to make money online, claim Christian. Had a fellow mod that was an actual Christian, hardcore Baptist and met this merchant at Affiliate Summit, and with just a few questions, knew he was a fraud.

Patriot marketing one recent example is Glorifi bank, lots of popular right wingers were pushing it. Failed after 3 months. But was very easy to get the more gullible type to sign up.

‘Anti-woke’ bank shuts down after less than 3 months​

https://fortune.com/2022/11/22/glorifi-bank-shuts-down/​

Glorifi was another Thiel data scraping project. As soon they started pitching we started attacking and when that ex-right wing doxxing, antifa spy Candice Owens started pitching we escalated. They knew it was hopeless. Exposed before launching. Expecting another attempt with some other spook from paypal mafia to lead, probably fake christian on panhandle, can't remember his name.

Anyway, the 'freeze peach" marketing is far worse than you can imagine. The main marketing they do is by getting "fellow" "patriots" deplatformed so they are forced to use their tech and most don't mind getting deplatformed b/c they make much more money as victim. Gab was famous for this, Torba hired dozens on Indians and Kenyans to report everyone on the right non stop for about every post they made. I confronted him on fundraiser site, where he was forced to answer every question posted by site. He was afraid to lie b/c would mean calling that weirdo Cernovich a liar and then suffer more revelations so he basically confessed and still grifted another million. Cernovich was friend with Twitter execs and they were sharing all reports against him with him.
I would not be the least bit surprised if Monster did the same. There seemed to be a pattern many of noticed where Monster was making contact with various right wing personalities and sites and asking what their needs were. They would be like, none we are good but we will keep you in mind and then, just by coincidence they would get deplatformed a few weeks/months later.

They are almost all self serving opportunistic grifters with no concern for anyone or anything beyond themselves. The right is better off without them.

 

[JB Lions]

Glorifi was another Thiel data scraping project. As soon they started pitching we started attacking and when that ex-right wing doxxing, antifa spy Candice Owens started pitching we escalated. They knew it was hopeless. Exposed before launching. Expecting another attempt with some other spook from paypal mafia to lead, probably fake christian on panhandle, can't remember his name.

Anyway, the 'freeze peach" marketing is far worse than you can imagine. The main marketing they do is by getting "fellow" "patriots" deplatformed so they are forced to use their tech and most don't mind getting deplatformed b/c they make much more money as victim. Gab was famous for this, Torba hired dozens on Indians and Kenyans to report everyone on the right non stop for about every post they made. I confronted him on fundraiser site, where he was forced to answer every question posted by site. He was afraid to lie b/c would mean calling that weirdo Cernovich a liar and then suffer more revelations so he basically confessed and still grifted another million. Cernovich was friend with Twitter execs and they were sharing all reports against him with him.
I would not be the least bit surprised if Monster did the same. There seemed to be a pattern many of noticed where Monster was making contact with various right wing personalities and sites and asking what their needs were. They would be like, none we are good but we will keep you in mind and then, just by coincidence they would get deplatformed a few weeks/months later.

They are almost all self serving opportunistic grifters with no concern for anyone or anything beyond themselves. The right is better off without them.


Show attachment 230131Show attachment 230130

Yep, that's where I heard about Glorifi, thru Candace Owens -

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

She also pushed the Freedom Phone to her users, which is just a budget Chinese phone. She never used it, she kept using her iphone -

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

She's also getting sued among many others for pushing the Let's Go Brandon Crypto, that tanked shortly after:

Candace Owens Among Trumpworld Defendants in New Lawsuit Filed by Regretful Trump Supporters​

"A class-action lawsuit has been announced after a pro-Donald Trump crypto-currency was launched, leaving investors broke. Those suing purchased a digital currency named after the right-wing slogan “Let’s Go, Brandon.” Now they’re saying that they were the victims of a pump-and-dump scheme by the insiders, the Daily Beast reported."

https://tntribune.com/candace-owens...-lawsuit-filed-by-regretful-trump-supporters/

Just a bunch of grifters.

 

[Derek Peterson]

Yep, that's where I heard about Glorifi, thru Candace Owens -

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

She also pushed the Freedom Phone to her users, which is just a budget Chinese phone. She never used it, she kept using her iphone -

View this content on Instagram

View this content on Instagram

She's also getting sued among many others for pushing the Let's Go Brandon Crypto, that tanked shortly after:

Candace Owens Among Trumpworld Defendants in New Lawsuit Filed by Regretful Trump Supporters​

"A class-action lawsuit has been announced after a pro-Donald Trump crypto-currency was launched, leaving investors broke. Those suing purchased a digital currency named after the right-wing slogan “Let’s Go, Brandon.” Now they’re saying that they were the victims of a pump-and-dump scheme by the insiders, the Daily Beast reported."

https://tntribune.com/candace-owens...-lawsuit-filed-by-regretful-trump-supporters/

Just a bunch of grifters.

Monster, Torba, etc are grifters but grifters have no loyalty, they will sell anyone for a buck. Candace is real spy, do a search for "candace owens social autopsy". Her business was literally doxxing right wing people on the internet to intimidate them into silence before becoming an alt-right token and now running one of the larger "free speech" socials.

It's all so tiresome.

 

[sharfab]

In an email to an Epik customer, Lars Skarrup thought a customer was owed $2,976.92, when in fact the customer had “instore credit” which couldn’t be withdrawn of $38,344.50, meaning the customer was in fact owed over $40,000. In reply to the customer’s request to get their money back, Lars Skaarup said that the customer’s “antagonistic behavior does not correspond with a need for a $2,976.92 payout”.


Hey Lars, that is not how it works.

You owe a debt, you pay the debt.

Somehow they are the victim here, not the customer?

Because Epik was offended by a customer who wants their money, they think they can just wipe out that debt.

Sounds like a really strong legal argument.

Brad

This company seems to have a pattern with randomly removing owed money. This is the same action that occurred to May Chen. They wiped away her 20k masters buck balance without any explanation.

 

[satsdifference.com]

RJ: where is @berryhillj now ! !!!

 

[Recons.Com]

Unless Epik was using Rob's details as some kind of WHOIS privacy details, it is not something that one would expect to see with a registrar. The registration date in the image above predates the introduction of GDPR in May 2018 so this might have been some strange implementation of WHOIS privacy. With GDPR, a lot of registrars started redacting ownership data from the public WHOIS. As you had admin access and were able to move them to Dynadot, it was a lucky escape. If they were kept fully paid and active, they should not have had Rob's details as the registrant.

In the past and on other registrars, I've seen WHOIS data change when a domain name expired and was not renewed and then, when the registrant renewed, the WHOIS data changed back to the original WHOIS but they were domain names in other gTLDs. Some of those non-renewed expired domain names would move to the registrar's auction site or auction partner rather than go through the normal renew/expire/drop lifecycle.

Regards...jmcc

This doesn't explain using [email protected]

The names are renewed way in advance and expired@ is, frankly, very negative and misleading.

They are using it to hijack the ownership immediately upon expiration so that they might get leads in those few weeks before drop to gauge the interest and maybe get some leads for a sale for themselves. But this must be some weird extension of that tactics.

 

[Mister Funsky]

they might get leads in those few weeks before drop to gauge the interest and maybe get some leads for a sale for themselves

Yes, it has been their SOP for years.

On a side note, anyone worried about having names there simply need to ensure they have not deleted the emails that confirm the name was registered/renewed. Also, it is very easy to download purchase history which has all the necessary info.

The names are a hard asset (recurring revenue stream) that another registrar would pick up quickly in the event a sale would occur...forced or not.

The area of concern would be any names in expired status. Although a 30 day grace period is available now, it would be smart to have registrations up to date.

 

[jmcc]

This doesn't explain using [email protected]

The names are renewed way in advance and expired@ is, frankly, very negative and misleading.

They are using it to hijack the ownership immediately upon expiration so that they might get leads in those few weeks before drop to gauge the interest and maybe get some leads for a sale for themselves. But this must be some weird extension of that tactics.

Would need more information on this (the renewal history of the domain names, when they were renewed (before expiry or after expiry) and whether any other domain names on Epik have been affected. The practice of registrars using grace periods (the first one can be from 0 to 45 days and is determined by the registrar) to shift expired domain names to their own auction/sales sites is a well known issue. The domain name can generally be renewed for the normal renewal fee in that first grace period but the cost of renewal from the second one is higher.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Kt88]

https://www.criticalhit.net/technol...-an-asshole-in-text-message-with-rob-monster/

 

[GoKaizen]

Epik does send most domains to NameLiquidate.

Would need more information on this (the renewal history of the domain names, when they were renewed (before expiry or after expiry) and whether any other domain names on Epik have been affected. The practice of registrars using grace periods (the first one can be from 0 to 45 days and is determined by the registrar) to shift expired domain names to their own auction/sales sites is a well known issue. The domain name can generally be renewed for the normal renewal fee in that first grace period but the cost of renewal from the second one is higher.

Regards...jmcc

 

[bmugford]

https://www.criticalhit.net/technol...-an-asshole-in-text-message-with-rob-monster/

How was this text message obtained?
Assuming it is accurate...

Once again, the "asshole" here is the person Epik owes money to? At least according to Epik.

I think most people would argue the actual "asshole" here is the company leaving customers holding the bag.

Epik playing the victim, saying it is "defamatory" when people simply report something seems like an ongoing trend.

I have yet to see them really refute any of these allegations.

Epik sure has a twisted stance on "free speech".

Brad

 

[Kt88]

The text screenshot was sent from Rob Monster to an Epik customer to prove Brian Royce was making a payment to John Rampton on the Monday after he posted his TrustPilot review back in mid October

 

[bmugford]

The text screenshot was sent from Rob Monster to an Epik customer to prove Brian Royce was making a payment to John Rampton on the Monday after he posted his TrustPilot review back in mid October

Well, if that is the case, it looks like Brian Royce has been caught in a lie once again.

He said Masterbucks customers were notified before it went down. There are no reports of that happening.

He said that payments are being processed in the order they were requested. We know that is false.

Those are only a couple of the things he said that appear to be factually untrue, among others.

Brad

 

[sharfab]

If the text conversation is authentic and after reading John Rampton's trust pilot review, then there are a few things that was exposed. John Rampton said he was told the money in the Epik bank account was froze. Now the question is why did the bank resort to this action. Previously I was under the impression that Brian Royce had a strained relationship with former CEO Rob due to the faults he placed on how Rob mismanaged the Epik company along with the commingling of clients funds. This text message shows us that they both are in direct contact with each other contrary to what we all may think. And again we see that Brian authorized payments that are not being issued in the order they were received, but yet we have seen him really take a hard stance on valid negative reviews that are true and accurate when asked to explain. John Rampton was paid his 400k, while Kathleen is still owed her 91k, I think it was John Rampton's million+ followers that persuaded Epik to pay him first over the many people who are owed their money...

 

[bmugford]

John Rampton was paid his 400k, while Kathleen is still owed her 91k, I think it was John Rampton's million+ followers that persuaded Epik to pay him first over the many people who are owed their money...

It also shows that despite what they have said, payments are not being processed in the order they were requested. They are clearly working on some type of priority payment system.

It seems far more people in the US have been paid than in other countries. I suspect the actual order of payments is related to what could cause the biggest exposure for Epik. This could be legally or just bad press.

I mean obviously you would want to pay out the person with a massive social media presence above others.

Brad

 

[jberryhill]

Epik playing the victim, saying it is "defamatory"

It is clear they do not understand the definition of that word.

Among other things, a defamatory statement must be false, and the falsity of that statement must demonstrably damage the reputation of the party in question in some quantifiable way.

There are a number of problems with trying to make out a defamation claim in any of this. For example, if I say "Rob Monster used Epik to steal money from its customers under the fraudulent claim that it was engaged in escrow services, and Rob Monster kicked my dog", then there are a couple of things going on in that statement.

Principally, it is shocking and damaging to their reputation that Rob and Epik are crooks. But that's not defamation. It is admitted by these crooks that the "escrow" was a sham and that customer "escrow" funds were commingled and treated as company funds. That's not even debatable at this point. They simply ran off with other people's money under false pretenses. Now, by "damaging to their reputation" we mean that it has harmed them in some palpable way, such as having lost business. Again, Rob is demonstrably a crook, and Brian is demonstrably a liar. Those statements are true and, quite frankly, nobody should do business with any one of them - but that's certainly not a consequence of any false statements. It is a consequence of the truth.

Now, the part about "Rob Monster kicked my dog" is not true. And, while it might make someone think less of Rob, it has no bearing at all on whether or not people should do business with him. The basic problem here is that at some point, someone has trashed their own reputation by their own actions to the point that they become what is known as "defamation proof". Whatever incremental damage one might claim arises from saying "Rob Monster kicked my dog", it is nothing next to the crazy shenanigans in which Rob and Epik have demonstrably engaged and for which their reputation rightfully belongs in the trash.

 

[Future Sensors]

Brian is demonstrably a liar

Sad but true.

TrustPilot confirms.