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An email has been going round on the Internet recently with the subject: TGE Newsletter. Tired of E-Gold? Try Casheqe!. They are advertising a fake e-currency service. Stay away from them!

Date:       Fri, 28 Sep 2007 09:45:06 +0000 [09:45:06 AM GMT]
From:      TGE NEWS <support@CASHEQE.ORG>
To:     xxx@xxxx.xxx
Subject:      TGE Newsletter. Tired of E-Gold? Try Casheqe!
Welcome to CASHEQE.ORG!

Casheqe team is proud to present you new digital currency with unlimited possibilites:

Opening an account is not just completely free - We pay you 10 US Dollars for it.

Merchant? Take another 100 US Dollars for processing payments with Casheqe.

Casheqe is fully compatible with major credit cards and payment systems:
Visa, MasterCard, American Express, PayPal, E-Bullion, Pecunix, E-Gold.
Planning to add more soon. You can pay directly to any e-currency account straight from your Casheqe account.

Funding and withdrawing Casheqe is totally automated
(however it takes 24h to clear PayPal transfers).

Use Casheqe ATM Cards for funding and withdrawing money in in local ATM machines. Use Casheqe as a tool for cashing out other digital currencies.

Easy API/SCI. Start accepting casheqe payments in minutes!

Get paid, stay paid. No chargebacks - payments can’t be undone.

Extremely low fees for transactions. Use Casheqe as an auto exchanger for your e-currency needs.

There are no fees for opening Casheqe account. You are just few minutes away from account activation.

Get on CASHEQE.ORG to sign up!

Best Regards,
Casheqe Team
support@CASHEQE.ORG

The scam is very similar to that of the now dormant GoldxCash.

Alertpay has announced that it would soon be launching debit mastercards for its users, very soon. In a recent newsletter sent out on 11th Jult 2007, Alertpay wrote:

Keep an eye out for:

More purchasing flexibility online and offline when we release in the next few weeks the AlertPay Debit MasterCards. (stay tuned for more)

AlertPay is a privately owned and managed company founded in 2004 with its office headquarters in Montreal, Canada. AlertPay offers any business or consumer with email to send and receive internet payments securely, quickly and cost-effectively.

You might have received such email before, purportedly from Moneybookers. I receive such regularly, and even got one just this early morning. The mails look real, asking you to accept a payment or update your account information. Of course, the mail is fraudulent and will only lead you to a fake website that will keep the login info you entered.

Very recently, Gambling911 raised an alarm about this issue:

A series of emails have been sent out unsolicited asking customers to confirm payments made to their MoneyBookers account.  In so doing, the link they are asked to follow takes them to another website.

“These scammers will then obtain all the Moneybookers customer financial information,” expressed Payton O’Brien of Gambling911.com.

Always confirm payments directly from the Moneybookers.com website.

“Never click on links from emails, especially unsolicited emails.  There is no need and with today’s countless scams infiltrating online payment processors, any payment solution requiring verification via email should be avoided like the plague.”

This phishing problem is even more common with Paypal which has over 120 million accounts. So, users beware!

Commerce gold (c-gold), a new digital gold currency has debuted, but despite the features and potential, I have some resentment about the shameless copying of e-gold’s web site look-and-feel. They could also have been more creative with the name. c-gold is just too similar to e-gold.

Aside the increased usage amongst other digital gold currencies, new ones are coming-up. This is as a result of the recent legal troubles e-gold/Omnipay has been having the the United States Department of Justice.

That said, I’d point out that c-gold promises to do many of the things e-gold does, an more. The one I find most significant is that they offer some verification for each account. Unlike e-gold’s anonymity with has attracted shady characters to their system.

According to DigitalMoneyWorld:

Verified accounts require ID, utility bills and other personal information. Why? The c-gold operators understand that the ‘The Know Your Customer’ (KYC) rules/regulations/laws spanning multiple jurisdictions around the globe are very important in today’s digital economy in order to combat terrorist funding, money laundering, child pornography, copyright infringements and to help eliminate attempts to abuse the c-gold system.

What can make the Malaysian digital gold currency promising? It operates online and offline, easy gold deposit and redemption, multilingual website (soon), customer support.
What can I say? The more the merrier, but only the strong will survive.

As at the time of blogging, c-gold’s website revealed the following stats:

8-Jul-2007 8:47:42 AM GMT

c-gold System Activity in the Past 24 hours
New Accounts: 23
Users Accessing Acounts: 31
Number of Spends: 2
Spent Weight (G): 131.104

Balance Summary
Number of Funded Accounts: 7
Avg Funded Account Balance (G): 742.8571
c-gold in circulation (G): 5200

Other digital gold currencies have been gaining popularity and patronage over the past weeks, following e-gold’s legal woes with the United States Justice department.

e-bullion and webmoney especially, have been seeing more patronage with online investment schemes and digital gold currency exchangers alike. The most recent move was made by CashCards Int. In a recent email to all their users, their CEO, Steve Renner, wrote about the addition of e-bullion exchange:

= = = = = = = = = = E-Bullion Exchange = = = = = = = = = =
We have been getting 4-5 emails a day from our  Members asking about E-Bullion. People want to Exchange their E-Gold for E-Bullion.   After serious consideration we have decided to go ahead and accept E-Bullion orders.   You can now Exchange your E-Gold for E-Bullion.   The system is not fully automated yet, but it  will be by next week.   So in the mean time, if you want to Exchange  for E-Bullion now, just transfer your E-Gold  as usual, and then send us an email with  your E-Bullion account number and we will  make the transfer for you.

Capitalex.com according to information retrieved from the 17th March 2007 version of their website through the Internet Archive WaybackMachine:

Capitalex.com Inc. is a global gold merchant corporation, established in the Republic of Panama as a subsidiary of the International Currency Conglomerate (ICC).

In business since March 2004, Capitalex.com is dedicated to making a decisive difference in the lives of its clients by providing them with Superior customer service, Rapid order execution, Competitive prices and special offers.

As 0730 GMT today 2nd July 2007, a check on www.capitalex.com simply displayed thier logo and the follow text:

support@capitalex.com
Capitalex.com recommends:
Reliable exchanger: Instant Gold Exchange
Innovative new e-currency: Loom.cc

No mention is made as to their reason for shutting down, on their blog.

Capitalex.com gained much popularity of the years, as a result of their professional e-currency exchange services. They also endeared themselves to their customers through their “Real Money Review” newsletter/publication. They had also been blogging extensively about e-currencies, scams, e-currency usage surveys, their own services and until recently, were also offering Virtual Credit Cards for sale though theirs were rather pricey.

Capitalex.com was also behind the extensive campaign against INTGold, until the “ecurrency” folded-up. See intgoldsucks.com

They even at one time, made offers to clients to invest their gold with them, so they could share the profit at a later time. Capitalex.com seemed formidable and invincible.

Capitalex.com was not listed as one of the e-currency exchangers who lost some gold, when e-gold Ltd’s troubles began. So, one cannot say they lost their gold deposit. More so, Capitalex.com is not based in the USA. Their websites are currently hosted in Malaysia.

Located in Panama City, the Crossroads of the Americas, Capitalex.com offers timely and efficient gold merchant services to customers around the world, 365 days a year.

Words have been going round on various blogs and forums, that Capitalex.com is a scam. The e-currency exchanger has however been refuting some of the allegations, on their blog, as recently as 2nd June 2007.

That their main website can close down today without any announcement to customers or information on their blog, can only make one suspicious and speculative.

Are you a Capitalex.com staff? Are you a customer? Do you have any information about the unavailability of Capitalex.com? Share your thoughts by posting a comment.