Wealthpire

Thanks for reading today’s review of Wealthpire

What is Wealthpire? The website is a day trading and swing trading educational company. In addition to offering educational products, the company also offers several trading advisories that specialize in stocks, options, penny stocks, and Forex. The cost of these services can begin at $300 per year for stocks tips, and as high as several hundred dollars per month for the live day trading room experience.

The Wealthspire “About Me” page lists the founder as a person named Manny Backus, headquartered out of 3435 Ocean Park Blvd, Suite 107-334, Santa Monica, CA 90405. A review of educators or employees of Wealthspire includes Manny Backus, Robert Joiner, David Becker, and Tim Biggam.

A deep search, using Archive.org, reveals that Wealthpire came online in late 2006. During the deep search of Wealthpire, using Archive.org, I discovered that Manny Backus claims to be a World Chess Champion, a chess prodigy from the age of 5, and a world class investor and multimillionaire. In fact, he states that because of his masterful skills at playing chess, this gave him the edge that he needed to earn millions of dollars trading the stock market. And now that he has earned as much money as he will ever need, he wants to give back to the trading community and help his fellow man.

In addition to claiming to be a World Champion Chess player and a multimillionaire, Manny Backus also claims to be a genius with an IQ comparable to Albert Einstein.

Complaints from TradingSchools.org readers

Since 2015, TradingSchools.Org has received over 20 complaints from subscribers of various Wealthpire products and services. The genesis of these complaints originates from the supposed performance returns as stated by Manny Backus to potential subscribers. Some of those performance claims include a 100% winning ratio, and average annual returns of 774%. In short, Manny Backus likes to make amazing claims of successes, but once the subscriber begins trading, they proceed to lose money. Wealthpire customers claim that losses are never recorded, while gains are hyped. Wealthpire has sold many different products and services over the years. A deep web search reveals the following websites, that are now mostly shuttered and the source of many complaints:

• MannyBackus.com
• ConsensusPicks.com
• Start-Day-Trading.com
• TradeForALiving.com
• PortfolioCrafter.com
• OptionsInsider.com
• LastHourTrading.com
• IchimokuSwingTrading.com
• TradingTips.com
• PennyStocksGuru.com
• Stock-Trading-Strategies.com
• MorningHoursTrading.com
• FirstHourTrading.com

It appears that the main marketing channel for Wealthpire is list sharing between various trading vendors. For instance, CyberTradingUniversity.com aggressively list shares with anyone and everyone that has a list of people that are interested in purchasing day trading products. Cyber Trading Univesity knows that once a person purchases their products, and then discovers how worthless the product actually is, they will cancel their monthly membership and look for a new product to purchase. And so Cyber Trading University attempts to “pimp-out” their list to companies like Wealthpire, in hopes that they can squeeze the customer for more money.

List Pimping

Suppose someone like Fausto Pugliese of Cyber Trading University has milked his list of 25,000 email subscribers to its full potential. He has nothing more to sell because everyone on that list now realizes that he is a complete and total fool that never made a nickel at trading, and so Fausto contacts Wealthpire and say’s,

Hi, this is Fausto the Fraud of Cyber Trading University and I have a bunch of suckers on my list. Why don’t you create some testimonial videos of how awesome your live day trading room is? And I will anonymously send out the promotional video of how much money you are making, and we share the profits from anyone that purchases your bullshit products.

Wealthpire responds, “OK Fausto Pugliese, I have a live day trading room that is as worthless as your live day trading room, let’s get these suckers to spend more money, and experience yet more financial misery. And so Wealthpire creates the following video, that is used to market the brand new, live day trading room, which we will name FirstHourTrading.com”.

Of course, this video is nothing more than a fraudulent promotional piece created by Wealthspire. It has been created to appeal to the former subscribers of Fausto Pugliese’s live day trading room.

As you can see from the above example, trading vendors are slick and crafty at “list pimping”. Have you ever signed up for a free trial of a trading service, and then several weeks later, you begin receiving promotional emails from a trading service that you have never heard of? List pimping.

Who is Wealthpire?

A rabbi once told me, “no lie lives forever”.

If you think about that statement, it’s pretty much true. You can only tell lies for so long before they begin to catch up to you. With trading vendors that defraud and scam their customers, their normal mode of operation is to shut down a website and quickly create a new website. Usually with “new” names, addresses, etc. But every once in a while, they get sloppy and people begin to complain to the authorities, like the SEC, CFTC, State Securities Regulators, FBI, or even lowly TradingSchools.org. And then the shit starts to hit the fan…with Wealthpire, the shit has definitely hit the fan.

On September 13, 2016 the United States Securities and Exchange Commission dropped a turd sandwich on Wealthpire. Apparently, and of little surprise to me, Wealthpire.com is nothing more

Manuel E. Jesus aka “Manny Backus”

than a fraud. They hit the company with a $1,500,000 fine. Apparently, there is no such person named “Manny Backus”, instead the real person is named Manuel E. Jesus. And he co-operates the company with a person named Robert C. Joiner. Both long-time trading scammers offering up all sorts of huff-puffery. After an exhaustive investigation by the SEC, it turns out that neither of these clowns has ever earned a nickel at trading. In fact, neither individuals were ever actually taking the trades that they purported to make to subscribers of their services. Its was all a fraud.

A short and condensed briefing by the SEC can be found the following link: Wealthpire Fraud

For those that enjoy a longer read, and a more refined detail of the Wealthpire scam can read the official SEC report:

Wrapping Things Up

Another day, and yet another fraudulent trading educator that claims to make millions of dollars at trading, but in fact does not even trade. Sadly, the list of frauds, fakes, and phonies grows by the day.

The one upside is that TradingSchools.org has begun to actively recommend that readers aggressively contact the proper authorities and get complaints filed as soon as possible.

TradingSchools.org is now getting traction with regulators and criminal investigators on the State and Federal level. We have been aggressively reporting frauds that we discover, and have developed direct contacts with various agencies. But we need clusters of complaints in order for the legal authorities to expend the necessary resources to close down the frauds. The following are a few handy links that can help you find justice.

Frauds relating to Stocks Trading (advisories, educators, live trading rooms).

Frauds relating to Futures trading, Forex trading, Binary Options, (advisories, educators, live trading rooms).

In addition to filing with the above civil authorities, ALWAYS file a complaint with the FBI. We have noticed that dual complaint registrations the contain a civil (SEC, CFTC) and a criminal filing (FBI), filed in conjunction can speed up the process.

Once your complaint is filed, you will be contacted by an investigator. The complaint will not be ignored. In particular, the CFTC is very good and thorough at investigations. But the caveat is that multiple complaints from various individuals need to be filed. Once multiples of complaints start pinging their internal systems, then they take a closer look.

Don’t be intimidated by a trading educator, or vendor. TradingSchools.Org has received multiple tips from individuals that were threatened with personal harm if they spoke to authorities. If this happens, then immediately file a report with your local police department AND the local office of the FBI. I have had to do this multiple times with various shady online characters.

Don’t be intimidated into not telling your story on the TradingSchools.org blog. Many times, a trading educator will find a lawyer to draft scary letters, titled Cease and Desist letters in order to intimidate the person into not talking. TradingSchools.org has received dozens of these letters from various lawyers, and they are all promptly filed in the nearest trash can.

Well, that’s it for today. Thanks for reading. And dont forget to leave a comment below.