This is the DD post (interview) by someone from that forum:
Hello there,
Thank you for your interest in our venture. Below are my answers to your questions. If you have any additional questions or need more information, please don’t hesitate to write back. We also have an extensive Knowledgebase at
http://www.privateopps.com/support/ that may answer any additional questions you may have.
Please note that some answers applied to more than one question, so I grouped them together.
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Hello, Please, introduce yourself.
What's your position in the program?
My name is Robert Vaughn, and I am the operations manager here at PrivateOpps. I had led the private group that purchased PrivateOpps from its previous owners only 12 days after their launch. We saw an incredible opportunity and are glad we had taken that move. We have plenty of good surprises for our participants in the works, including the launch of two new "Contracts" next week.
How many people are involved in running the program and what are their names?
Could you tell us a little bit about your staff and their background?
We have 8 main staff members, including myself. Remember that we do not conduct the trading/investing activity ourselves. PrivateOpps features “Contracts” that each represents a different offshore private club. Each club specializes in their specific field and employs numerous professional traders/analysts that carry their daily activities.
The following are PrivateOpps’ staff members at our Costa Rican headquarters:
Robert Vaughn – Operations Manager
Nina Solano – Operations Coordinator, overseeing the daily activity as reported by each private club
Stanley Borz – Customer Service Director
Kimberly Sands, Javier Espindola, and Max Felia – Customer Service reps and forum moderators
Markesh Lucio – Technical Director
Gabriela Gillis – Transactions Handling (deposits/withdrawals processing, etc.)
They all frequent our message board and post regularly. To contact a staff member directly, participants are instructed to send emails to [first_name]@privateopps.com. When support from a specific staff member is required, our Customer Service reps will often re-assign the support ticket through our advanced ticketing system.
PROGRAM INFO
When did the program launch, and were you available offline in the past?
The program launched on July 19, 2005 as "Offshore DigiContracts", and we purchased it in early August and changed the name to PrivateOpps. It was not available offline in the past, but all private clubs offering "Contracts" in our system have been in existence offline for years and have agreed to accept new capital online through our p2p investing concept.
Why did you decide to open Online Investment Program?
For the same reason any other business goes online - to reach a wider audience. More capital brings more opportunities and allows for additional leverage. It is true for giants such as Morgan Stanley as it is for PrivateOpps.
What do you think sets your program apart from all the other "opportunities" out there?
Our concept is unique, and creates the first-ever platform for offline private clubs to open up their client base to online users interested in high-yield opportunities. This is not some operation run by an amateur kid who started trading Forex last week, which seems to be the norm these days.
Why do you feel the need to have a referral incentive program (If You Offer One ) ?
We do have a Referral Program that pays participants 12% of any investment made by their direct referrals. It helps our business grow and is not different than traditional advertising methods. This is simply our marketing expense. Even the world's largest investing powerhouses need to advertise in one way or another, and a Referral Program fits our online presence model.
It is important to mention that we take spamming seriously and terminate accounts (without pay of referral earnings) of those participants who engage in such activity.
How do you generate the returns for your investors?
Do you trade yourself or do you employ traders?
If you're involved in several business/financial activities, how is your portfolio structured?
PrivateOpps enables anyone to participate in our network of trusted private offshore investment clubs, integrated into our platform. Each of these opportunities is called a "Contract", and is available to participants through the purchase of Contract Units with a variable Compounded Daily Interest.
The private clubs offering the Contracts are responsible for the daily investing activity, which includes Forex and Fixed-Odds trading, Real-estate transactions, etc. – depending on the Contract and its private club.
Please see
http://www.privateopps.com/1/how-it-works/ for additional information.
What type of experience do you and or your traders have?
Each private club in our platform has years of professional experience and a large base of offline clients not related to the PrivateOpps operation.
Can you show any proof of real work to public (Forex Statements, Trading Records)?
Not at this time. Our agreements with the private clubs prohibit us from disclosing any documents used by our staff for the weekly audits we conduct. You have to remember that the private clubs in our system wish to remain just that – private. The flow of funds from PrivateOpps participants is only a small percentage of their overall working capital, and such operation will be put at risk if accounting records are made public over the internet.
Do you piggyback off of other online programs?
Absolutely not. We see no reason to gamble and risk our participants’ capital at the various amateur investment opportunities out there when we have access to stable and real offshore investment clubs. Some people see that as diversifying, but we see it as simply throwing participants’ money away.
PAYMENTS AND PAYMENT HISTORY
What steps have been taken to secure members funds?
Have you established a reserve fund?
Funds obtained from participants in exchange for Units are transferred to the appropriate Contract operator/club, and are not used by PrivateOpps in any way whatsoever. Each Contract operator maintains a reserve account with us, which is used to fulfill Unit redemption orders. In addition, operators are required to increase the reserves as soon as PrivateOpps detects a potential increase in redemption activity.
All private clubs accepting participants through our system undergo a thorough due diligence process and are verified and audited regularly to ensure that our participants’ funds are used as per our terms and agreements with the club operators.
Have you ever had late payments?
Never. All withdrawal requests thusfar had been completed within 12 hours or less, with e-gold withdrawals being fulfilled instantly 24 hours a day.
What do you think is going to preserve the longevity of your program?
There are several measures we have taken that will guarantee the longevity of our program:
1. We do not disclose our physical location. Due to the nature of our business, we have made the decision to not disclose our exact physical location in San Jose, Costa Rica. While some will find it unacceptable, we believe that in the long-term it will serve our participants best and provide for a good foundation towards the survival of our venture in the years to come. I could, of course, provide you with a cheap “virtual office” phone number for you to dial and hear it ringing just to gain your trust – but that is not how we operate. We are not hiding somewhere and therefore trying to establish fake presence. We say it as it is – our policy prohibits us from disclosing our location. Our 550+ participants so far seem to like this “feature”.
2. No Contract can ever be “over-sold”, as each of them has a pre-determined Unit availability as per the private clubs’ instructions. Private clubs never have more funds than they can handle to be able to return the interest rates published on our website.
3. Our DDoS security measures and overall technological infrastructure as described in the relevant questions below.
4. We pride ourselves in excellent client service. No inquiry is left unanswered for longer than 12 hours – ever.
5. We are constantly seeking new private clubs to be added to our platform and in new fields. One of our next Contracts to be added is offered by a private club of Domain-name investors. This allows our participants to truly diversify their positions and allows for long-term stability.
Do you allow members to invest as many times as you want in a day?
Yes. Our platform is available 24 hours a day for participants to use it and purchase/redeem Units. We do not limit the amount of Units per participant, and the only restriction is the pre-determined quantity of Units offered to the public for each Contract.
How many active member/investors do you have?
At the moment we have almost 600 participants, of whom 90% are currently active (with a positive balance and/or holding Contract Units).
FUTURE PLANNING
Are you planning to close your program for new investors at any time?
We do not have such plans at this time. Each private club has designated a specific quantity of Units to be offered to PrivateOpps participants. When all Units for a Contract are sold, the Contract is no longer available to new participants. However, existing participants in closed Contracts will be able to increase their Unit ownership from time to time as per the private club’s discretion.
What are your plans for the future? How long will you stay online with current "Normal" plan?
For as long as possible. As stated above, each Contract has a pre-determined availability, so no private club can be over-sold. As we continue to grow on a daily basis, we already have plans to introduce 2 new Contracts very soon, and will do so every several weeks as more opportunities become available to us.
Can members cancel their investment and get their principle back and Do you have any administrative fees to do this?
Upon purchase, Contract Units are subject to a pre-determined Holding Period, during which they may not be sold under normal circumstances. However, we do accommodate requests from those persons who wish to redeem their Units prematurely and retrieve their principal back. There are no administrative fees associated, but we WILL deduct any referral payments already paid to their sponsor (if they have one) when they purchased their Units.
INCORPORATION
Is your company registered and incorporated? If so Where?
If you are registered or incorporated, Are your incorporation documents Available?
PrivateOpps is not a registered entity in any jurisdiction. Please see our Participant Agreement for additional information regarding our legal structure:
http://www.privateopps.com/1/terms/
Do you have a Physical Office and is it available for a site visit?
We do have a physical office in San Jose, Costa Rica, but it is not available for visits at this time. Doing so could also expose our participants to unnecessary risks (especially in Costa Rica…) as we obviously do not have the security measures available at banks and other financial institutions that accept walk-ins.
Do you use free or paid web hosting?
We use paid hosting, of course, and maintain 7 offshore dedicated servers around the world.
WEBSITE AND SUPPORT
What support options do you offer to your members?
We offer participants customer service around the clock through our web-based ticketing system. During business hours (Monday through Saturday, from 8 AM to 7 PM EST) we guarantee to respond within 12 hours or less, and usually do so within less than an hour.
In addition, we have prepared an extensive database of 35+ FAQs at our Support Center, accessible at
http://www.privateopps.com/support/i...gebase&_a=view
We will soon add many more FAQs, including some questions that were asked in your email!
What protection against DDoS attacks do you have?
All website requests go through our load balancing and firewall (DDoS-specific) appliances at the Redbus Amsterdam datacenter. Bad packets are dropped and ignored, while legitimate requests are transparently redirected to our secondary datacenter in Hong Kong, from which web pages are served. We have experienced a DDoS attack 2 weeks ago and were able to recover within less than 25 minutes by switching our DNS records to an additional load-balancing network we maintain in Austria. Since attackers never know our *real* server IPs, I would say we are relatively safe from DDoS attacks.
Do you have an emergency web site should you server crash? i.e. A redirect or duplicate web site with all of the information as the main web site contains?
Yes. As soon as our website becomes unavailable for any reason, our monitoring application will automatically update our DNS records at our managed DNS provider to point users to our disaster recovery center (where a duplicate website is present), and if an unscheduled downtime lasts for 2 hours or longer, a secondary members server goes live as well to serve registered participants.
Our database servers are located at a separate European datacenter, and therefore can be accessed by our backup servers should any web server fail for any reason, and are also safe from direct DDoS attacks or hacking attempts.
Do you update your memberbase as to what is going on with your program regularly?
Always. Program updates are sent to all participants at least once a month, and announcements that appear on our What’s New page (
http://www.privateopps.com/1/whats-new/) are also emailed to all participants the same day they are published.
Will you have a public forum that non members can visit and see what is going on?
We already have a message board. It is currently down as we are migrating it from vBulletin to a new board software this week. It should be back online before the weekend. Please see
http://www.privateopps.com/1/forum/
Anything you wish to add yourself?
Sure! Thank you for the opportunity to introduce our venture to your loyal member base! We are always excited to get new business and await any further requests/questions from you. Please feel free to publish this mini-interview in any way you wish (to your list subscribers, for example), provided that my replies are left unchanged.
Warm regards,
Robert Vaughn
Operations Manager
PrivateOpps.com
Yours,
PrivateOpps Support team
Re: Private Opps - PrivateOpps.com
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