Hmmm. It's still not quite a smoking gun, but the info in this thread is starting to concern me.

When did production of MM start? Around the time the bank was incorporated?...

And why hasn't epass disclosed that they've founded a bank? Surely that would make their customers feel more secure?

It's not stealing if you take a loan from a bank you or your buddy owns.

If true, that is the beauty of it all ... well, not beautiful for those of us out of money (me included), but beautiful for the person that set it up. It would just be a loan gone bad...happens all of the time for banks.

I hope it's not the case ... but now that a closely held bank has been unearthed ... it could add up to nothing or be the answer to everything.

Time will tell.

In the meantime we're all speculating because Epass has told us nothing. In fact, a random security blog has given us the info we do know, which is St. Kitts had processing shut down with Visa because they felt something was afoul.

Scary
 

Almost scary to think that if these banks are indeed epass related whats going on? LOL

:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

Its our skin :(

lol

I got the exact same message in my epass account today. And yes I have also sent the documents before and verified my account.
Does not look good.

This means a few things:

1) By everyone requesting wires from Epass we are actually conducting a run on their own bank. Our funds are not kept in a bank one would recognize as trustworthy, but a bank they can only talk in very very biased tone about. Your money is safe in our pocket. Not some other bank's pocket, but our own bank's pocket. So by taking all the money out we are fucking this bank up and to prevent it from going tits up and all the shit to implode they will delay the wires. After all, how can that be, this is not your local bank you can take a step into in 5 minutes and withdraw everything you have there.

2) Since these people own the bank and own epass and fund shitty movies, then it could be they did secure the loans they took for the movies with bank's assets (read: our assets). After all that's how banks operate. Nothing new. Yet now when shit hit the fan for some reason in St. Kitts they had to announce it, but at the same time can't release the wires because they are being deposited as insurance in order to get their own Hollywood loans. after all... all this money in epass (especially in accounts where it wasn't the last station, like B2B accounts, trading etc) was mostly circling from account to account, from affiliate payments further to programmers, writers, who also had their own online projects and who ordered services from other epass account holders and paid them and so the majority of this money ciccled around the system and never exited. For the most part. The money was at the reach of the owners there in the bank all the time. They only moved the numbers around in our epass accounts, not the actual money. The majority of millions was there all the time, not going anywhere. So... what do you do with all this money in your bank as a bank owner? Jesus you do what every other bank does - you invest it. That's why banks come down if everyone wants to withdraw the money - the majority of the money is never in the bank actually. It's invested. To get it out they have to dump that little part of the investment they have and give you your money. HOWEVER THE SHIT HITS THE FAN IF that investment gets stuck and you have a small tiny private bank we are talking about here, then ouch, we can't give you your money just right now because it's somewhere else and it's stuck there as an investment insurance and we are doing everything possible to get it released... if it only wasn't for this shitty st. kitts bank that cut us off you would never know and we would be able to pay you since you wouldn't all be requesting the money right away and right now and at the worst possible time since the movie didn't make it... well... you do the math...

Yes, but you did selective quoting.

I originally said that in response to the possibility of Paramount have money into Middle Men. I was saying Mallick wouldn't be credited unless he had skin in the gave -- where the money came from is still a mystery but there appear to be a few options, one of which is discussed in this thread.

:2 cents::2 cents:

(I gave you an extra two cents in case you have money tied up in Middle Men. You're welcome!) :1orglaugh

:thumbsup

Epass owner: United International Trust
New Epass bank for wire since a couple of weeks: United International Bank

Good post!

I've always been incredibly impressed with the people of GFY and their ability to figure shit like this out. I hope this whole thing works out for the people who relied heavily on Epassporte. :2 cents:

This all sounds like research that should have been done in the past by people who had tens of thousands of dollars sitting in Epass accounts. :2 cents:

Don't forget that if an investment loses money (like say, totally hypothetically, an investment in a movie that doesn't even come close to breaking even) it won't be possible for a bank to reconcile everyone's balances with liquid funds. At that point it's a little like a pyramid scheme: the early ones to cash out get the $, but the later ones are lucky to get cents in the dollar, if anything.

Of course if the funds have been frozen by an authority then it's more likely that everyone will receive xx% (where xx is less than 100% of their balance)

Ego is a powerful emotion.

this will burst after weekend!

get your wet suit on :helpme

All I can say is this thread rocks, as far as real info goes. It beats all the BS Michael has been shoveling, (not that it is really his fault). How this will finally play out is going to be very intense for sure.:helpme

How do you know he isn't? I could be sitting on Mars and you would never know.

There are other frauding industry folk reading this board right now that have fled the United States in hopes of not being caught. Do you know who they are?

I always thought that Curacao is some drink and now my money is there? That sucks...

Wow...good research from the OP on this.

correction: your money WAS there!

Shoehorn, can you please return any of my messages.

thank you

Oh, well...

Maybe Chris Mallick is trying to make drama and use us to make his co-production film Middle Man more popular. He would like to go in the news and make free commercial for his shitty movie . What do you say Sherlock ?

FAIL! :1orglaugh:1orglaugh
there goes OUR money

I don't really see the problem with this to be honest.

The Netherlands Antilles is one of the places where one can obtain a banking license (easier as in the US for example).
So instead of using a bank they decided to start their own. Paypal has their own bank license as well. It gives great advantages for financial institutions like epassporte.

By the way several banks in the Netherlands Antilles (like the ORCO Bank on Curacao) isn't connected to the international SWIFT system, therefore they use intermediary banks which is quite common actually.

Curaçao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast.
Looks like a beautiful place.
Goodluck.

we are so fucked. :disgust

Hehe... everyone put there money in some small village in the middle of the ocean with incompetent people and surprised this is going bad for them.

There is reasons no reliable bank offers same services as epassporte and why you can't do the same thing at ING or Citibank or Credit Suisse or HSBC. But of course people in this biz too stupid to ask questions or think for themselves. There is reason St Kitts banks has many adult merchants accounts, because they allow so much credit card abuse up until recently and until visa/mc made them stop. Why you think you money safe with epass in a village in middle of the ocean when its a company run by one guy on ICQ and if he not there to fix you problems, you fucked completely?

And to other poster, yes Paypal has offshore bank as well. But they don't offer this service (payment cards for companies). Why? because it super risky and nearly impossible to comply with all laws and requirements. But like other dumb people in this biz, you don't see anything wrong with anything. He's a bro. All must be ok. Bros always right.

Nice, damn nice :mad:
You sure don't post often but you're damn good !
It doesn't sound good at all.

The information contained in this post certainly sounds like it could be an accurate account of the issues epass is having. Kudos for those that are looking into things. I think the information people are finding out though just confirms that the money is gone for good. To be honest, never expected it back, I knew the moment I heard the news that it was going to be a loss.

Trust me though, I would love to be proven wrong and would be more than happy to admit that I was wrong if I ever got my money back. I doubt that is going to happen though.

OK how do you know this for a fact? What I am trying to determine, who in fact are the investors?

Because movie productions are normally designed to spread the risk around.

Curaçao is part of the Netherlands Antilles, more so, one of the three islands known as the ABC islands, Aruba, Bonaire och Curaçao. Located north of Venezuela, the two islands Bonaire and Curaçao are part of the Royal Netherlands while Aruba is an autonomous jurisdiction.

Good job digging this up. I was optimistic things would be fixed soon, but I am starting to think ePassporte is done for.

http://www.ekvandoorne.com/UserFiles/GNS2(2).jpg

I think this is Gregory Elias in the middle with grey hair.

http://www.ekvandoorne.com/news/late...to-intolerance

It is also worth noting that ePassporte suggesting people keep money in their wallet accounts makes sense now that we know the bank that handles wallet deposits is more or less owned by ePassporte/Chris Mallick. I think when the dust settles we may find that this ePassporte bank is way over leveraged because of non performing loans to fund various other business Chris Mallick has. I would not be surprised to find personal loans on the books as well. Everyone scrambling to pull money out of their wallets is only going to add to the balance sheet problem. The Visa Electron/Virtual money is likely not even all on deposit with the bank in St. Kitts. That is the only reason I can see them shutting down the cards. What a fucking mess.

There we go:
http://news.on1place.com/2010/08/08/middle-men-2010/

actually, paypal offers a mastercard hooked directly account, just like epass. I have one... I can receive paypal payments then use my MC for the funds, no issues..

US only.

A lot of ePassporte users are based in countries with shitty banking systems where they are receiving their money directly from ePass.... not possible with Paypal

read the post !!!! Mallick did it by ego , even if studios did not want to invest . He paid to get it distributed.

As for me, my first job was with United Artist in 1971 , and stayed in the movie business till 1995 . What about you ?

aren't there a few webmasters on Curacao? there used to be. maybe someone should drop by the Bank of Mallick and see what's shakin. could a person that has money in a wallet needing to be wired out from the Bank of Mallick show up and bypass that by withdrawing in person?? if the excuse that there is so much paperwork and processing to do that they can't get to wires right away is true........ just wondering

Oh yes of course...just trying to get a handle on the industry...and what exactly is meant by "pick-up".

True... very true.

That not what I mean. For one person to open account , verify his documents etc is not a problem (and you can only do it from certain countries with Paypal). I mean payment cards under a company where main company has master account and then employees have sub accounts under master account and there is very little control over who has sub account cards. For example streamate.com models having epass cards to get paid by epass. Normal banks do not do this for many reasons. Could be model. Could be terrorist. Could be money laundering, certainly cheating taxes or whatever. That is my point.


No one asks why some porn guy is the only guy who offer this from some village in the middle of the ocean and not real banks from real countries. People in porn biz are very dumb.

a " pick-up " is when a studio adds a movie to the roster after it is completed and without investing a cent in it .
They maybe did cover the " house-nut " ( cost of the theatre to operate for the week, where the exhibitor is garanteed that amount, plus 10% of the gross above the nut . Exhibitors do that when they do not believe in the movie, causing low attendances resulting in low candy bar profit ( main profit center ) ).

Studio does the pick-up to get the distribution fee , plus the possibility of throwing in the movie as a freebie type in a pay per view deal , or any other type of deals .

And the studio ( Vantage ) will make a nice cut from the DVD , even if the film is still in major deficit position .

Mallick got played by his ego .... ever read " Les fables de Lafontaine " ?

the movie studios will distance themselves even further from the porn industry now. the studio will be embarrassed by this.

mark walberg is lucky he is in so good with HBO or his new show on the porn biz would prob get cut.