In the past few weeks I received numerous invitations to join Bidify. Bidify is a Penny Auction based opportunity, heavily modelled after ZeekRewards which IS really successful.

I see Bidify being promoted everywhere now and people are stumbling over each other to get a piece of the pie. If it only grows to half the size of ZeekRewards there is good money to be made.

But is it really a good opportunity?

First I should give some credit to ZeekRewards. You see, penny auctions have always had a bad name. They were associated with bad business ethics and fraud. The Federal Trade Commission even put out a Consumer Alert about them.

But that was until ZeekRewards came along. Not only do they offer one of the most exciting and rewarding opportunities found on the net today, they also cleared the bad name of Penny Auction Websites.
They shaped the Penny Auction concept to a legal and accepted business model which is now being embraced by thousands around the globe. A job well done.


As always success attracts copy cats with lesser ethics.


This is just history repeating itself. If you have been investing online for some time you might have seen the first opportunities appear based on bank debentures, forex, arbing, Reverse Pension Plans, website flipping etc. Whenever a ‘new’ concept comes up you will see a number of similar programs follow shortly after that. These are basically copies of the original program.

That is not to say these copies are by definition bad but history teaches us that most are.

A copy, in this context, is an opportunity that is put out there fast to grab a piece of the pie. The idea behind it is that once a concept is accepted, or even embraced, this niche is a potential goldmine. The gold diggers will move in to benefit from the emotional momentum that is going on.

Like I said, this is history repeating itself.


I’m not going into details of how Bidify is structure but suffice to say they adopted most of ZeekRewards business model and made a few changes here and there. It is pretty obvious that Bidify emphasizes more on the recruitment of new members and pays out commissions accordingly. That sure smells like a pyramid scheme to me but let’s not jump the gun.

So who is behind Bidify?

If you look at the WHOIS report we can see that the owner of the domain name bidify.com and Bidsson.com is a person called Lárus Pálmi Magnússon. Apparently he lives in Iceland as I’ll show later in this blog post.
The company itself is registered in the Seychelles.

The first question that comes to mind is why is it registered in the Seychelles? I think of a few reasons.

1) By doing so they company does not fall under US jurisdiction. Some consider that an advantage and I have seen that argument being used as a selling point.
Personally I haven’t seen any reliable online income companies operate from The Seychelles. I prefer them to be based in countries like the US. It keeps a company on their toes.

2) The Seychelles has a strong privacy policy and is therefore often used to shield the persons behind a company. At least when that company is registered as an International Business Company (IBC) which I suspect it is. There is no way to lookup the owner(s) of Bidify or Bidsson.
Although Lárus does own the domain name it is not sure that he also owns Bidify. There is no way of telling.

But why hide if there isn’t anything to hide? People that have nothing to hide, hide nothing.

3) The Seychelles are a tax haven. The owner(s) don’t have to pay taxes there provided they don’t do any business there.

Although you might look at this as good points you do have to ask yourself who you are going to complain to if at some point the owner(s) run with your money.

Enter Frode “Fraudy” Jørgensen

You can easily lookup Lárus on social networks like Hi5, Facebook, Ryze and Swom. In 2009 he was also quoted in an Icelandic newspaper with his picture. It seems he runs a Thai restaurant in Reykjavik, Iceland. The domain kruathai.is registered to Kári Magnússon, I assume that is family or his wife.

Here it becomes interesting.

If you lookup Lárus on Swom you can see he has two friends. One of them is Frode Jørgensen and he is an individual with a dubious history. I assume that is why mlmwatchdog.com issued a warning about Bidify and wrote that he real owner of Bidify is Frode Jørgenson.

Frode was the person behind PlexPlay, a scam that ran a few years ago. Frode was sentenced to prison for 2 years and 6 months for that.

Aside PlexPlay Frode allegedly has played an important role in The 5% Community (T5PC), People in Profit System (PIPS) and World Games Incorporated (WGI).


Strictly speaking we don’t know if Frode is involved in Bidify. But at the very least there is a connection between Lárus and Frode and given the fact that Bidify and Bidsson do not disclose any information about the true ownership of the program some caution is advised.

Some things about Bidsson.com

This is the actual auction website on which Bidify is based. Up till now the auctions have not started. Yet it says on the front page

• ‘Join 100’s of happy customers’.  - These can not exist can they?
• ‘Our average winner saves 85% off’ – There are no winners yet are there?

At the very best you could call this wishful thinking.


But let’s dig a little deeper into the relationship Frode-Lárus.

Frode promotes 1 program on Swom which is Juugo. There are some similarities between Bidify and Juugo. Both offer a prepaid master card, have similar plans (focus on bringing in other members) and I read that the last talk about Juugo is on talkgold in July; no payment proof.

I haven’t dug further into that but if you can add to the discussion please do so.

The website structure is similar to bidify. Try looking up the About Us page.
Notice the share menu (share on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Share). Notice that they don’t talk about the owners. The wording is also similar. Both have a footer (end of the page) with the Latest Tweet and Follow us options. That leads me to believe the websites were build by the same persons.

Coincidence? Maybe.

Let’s dig a little deeper.

Juugo.net does not reveal a lot of information but fortunately they have been around for a while. And in those cases we can use the internet archive to do a little digging in the past.

One of the things I immediately noticed is that Juugo used to be registered in Belize, another tax evasion paradise. This resembles the setup for Bidify.

Another interesting fact I found was in the archive of 13 December 2010. There is a message from the CEO in there.

The guy in charge is Ronny Nesset. A little snooping around reveals another founder; Are Vinje. Just like Frode they all come from Norway.

Ok, typing in Ronny Nesset in Google shows me a link to the LinkedIn page of Ronny. There it is, Ronny is the wonder of Juugo Inc and just like Frode he comes from the Trondheim Area in Norway. More interestingly, on the right I can see he is also the owner of ‘NorgesAuksjonen.com’.

Opening http://www.norgesauksjonen.com links me through to http://www.gotobid.net which seems to be yet another penny auction website. The resemblance with Bidify is striking.  The About Us page is empty, obviously this website is not ready yet.

Looking up the gotobid.net whois report shows that the domain info is shielded by privacyprotect.org  In my experience that is bad sign because, once more, people that have nothing to hide, hide nothing.

Ok, you still think this is all coincidence?

Let’s dig a little deeper then.

Looking up Are Vinje, the other co founder of juuga.net, up in Google leads me to his Facebook page. He didn’t protect his page so try looking up his friends on Facebook.

There is the rest of the gang again, including Frode Jorgensen, Lárus Pálmi Magnússon, Ronny Nesset and some other names that I’ve come across looking into Juugo.net

Coincidence? I don’t think so.


Everybody for himself in this case but I won’t be promoting this program. There are too many uncertainties and I don’t feel comfortable recommending it to others.

Although there is no real proof that Bidify is a scam I’m fairly sure it is ponzi scheme and people are going to get burned.
That is not to say you won’t earn any money with it now. There is a lot of momentum because a lot of the big dogs seem to be picking this up. But at the end of the line the people at the bottom end up paying the bill.

Comparing ZeekRewards to Bidify is comparing apples with pears. I’ll take ZeekRewards over Bidify any time. I just hope Bidify won’t cause so much trouble for the Penny Auction business that they will drag ZeekRewards down with them if they go down.  

A final word of advice to the big promoters out there, coming from mlmwatchdog.com. If this turns out to be a BIG ponzi you will run the risk of being prosecuted. It seemed to have happened with Skybiz as well. The guy keeps a good archive of such events so this may not be so far fetched.

I guess the final question to ask is if you want to be part of this. You decide for yourself but I won’t.