Charis Johnson
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Charis F. Johnson was the founder and administrator of the investment autosurf 12DailyPro. Johnson founded LifeClicks, LLC, the company which owns 12DailyPro, in her apartment home in Charlotte, North Carolina, United States.
12DailyPro was a version of what is commonly known as a “paid autosurf” program where “investors” deposited money, ranging from US$6.00 to US$6000.00 per account, and received an extremely high profit (44%) within a short period (12 days). Under the umbrella of her company, LifeClicks, and through the use of her experience in marketing and web development, Johnson created one of the largest modern day versions of the Ponzi scheme. Through the use of her website, she manipulated thousands of people to join and deposit money. In the later stages of the fraudulent scheme, she managed to retain investors' trust by repeatedly bouncing blame and failures on other companies, groups, and individuals, including Brigham Young University students and professors, StormPay, ABC4 News of Salt Lake City, Utah, The Owners of Talkgold.com and even the government of the United States. “Ms. Johnson was extremely successful in attracting investors and raised approximately $500 million in less than nine months.” [1] It was later discovered that Johnson had been syphoning money from the funds she generated using 12DailyPro (an excess of US$1.9 million dollars) into her peronal bank account since mid 2005. When the company was shut down many of these people lost large sums of money, although the earliest “investors” remained in profit.
On 24 February 2006, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ordered 12DailyPro and its parent company to cease and desist all operations. On 28 February, a Los Angeles judge ordered all company assets and records to be turned over to an appointed receiver for investigation, who published his first interim report on 1 September 2006 (see below). Charis F. Johnson now faces criminal and civil suits from both local and federal agencies.
