Mervyn Copperwaite, is the brains behind a highly controversial company called Global Digital Transfers which has been around since 2000 and claims to be creating a truly global economy based on the internet and involving a range of 26 DX Synergy internet services including DX Shopping, DX Auctions, DX Adsexposed through a network of 50,000 current members all connected with a soon to be launched internet phone through the DX Connect company registered in Vanuatu. However the company has had problems with negative publicity on internet forums claiming it is a scam owing people money. In addition there was controversy over the attempted purchase of the then Grande Hotel which is now the Sebel, when Westpac Bank refused their much higher bid allegedly because of concerns over lack of financial records and assets to back up the bid.
With DX Connect now claiming to offer free VOIP network services through it’s system Daily Post publisher
Marc Neil – Jones interviewed Merve Copperwaite at the Cyber Village which he has taken over to relaunch his DX internet network and filed this report.
Can you describe what DX Connect is all about
DX Connect is all about a number of different E Business services coming together and merging and connecting. It is not just here in Vanuatu, it is worldwide with our member base and business base which will all be connected by our phone system.
When was the system set up?
Around 2000.
How many members do you have currently in the system?
Oh we have an unlimited number of members. There could be 50,000 members but many have not been in for years and only a few are currently involved. That is not many. It is a piddling size when we know what the system can do. We are only in the base area of the business and subscriber section now as we are only now relaunching our business and commercial side. You cannot run a world economy without a commercial side. This is what we have told all our earlier members and users that this is only a small part of the overall system and until we get this correct, we can’t go into the commercial side. What happened a couple of years ago when I first came to Vanuatu, a lot of people took huge advantage of the system and took advantage of it and gained a huge amount of value out of it before it was due and ready to handle it and upset the system so we just pulled the plug on it and dropped all the commercial site and had to go and correct all the issues of compounding values and everything like that through the system. It took us 18 months to get it back into a position where we could regain the commercial side and that is when we had a little bit of trouble last year when we were getting ourselves correct rebuilding ourselves to where we are today which is ready to launch the phone system and the commercial side which is needed to get everything to work together.
Do you have a locally registered company if you are employing people and offering a domestic VOIP telephone system?
As the business is internet driven and based it is done through an International company which handles the connection and registration of members. They then become an international client.. DX Connect is a local agent selling phones in Vanuatu as a side issue. We basically just sell the infrastructure for e- Business in Vanuatu via a phone. We are in the process of setting up a local company for the internet café and to sell the phones. However we do not really need a local company to operate here, just an agent.
The DX Connect system is a VOIP network system for domestic use and international use. You also say you will be providing free phone calls domestically. If this is the case how will you get revenue from it?
The DX Connect phone system is only a minor part of the overall system which uses a telephone to connect to use the commercial side of the system. People should not worry about where we get revenue for us through the phone system as it is part of the overall system. We are not in competition to TVL and Digicel. The VOIP phone has always been there for us to use. We will give free calls to other DX Connect users locally and charge a small fee to connect overseas similar to other VOIP networks. You buy your mobile phones from us for our system access. We have one model currently available for around vt10,000 vatu and others coming out. We are also internet connected and can provide an internet service to the phone for a fee as well as video streaming so people can see each other when they are talking. Using VOIP is no extra load to us if people want to talk to each other over the internet which they pay a fee for so free VOIP domestic calls are no problem. International VOIP calls overseas will be at a fee comparative to other VOIP services using other carriers. We would charge a fee if you connect to a TVL or Digicel number as they expect to get paid. If they accept us as a third party you will find we will be competitive to what TVL are charging which is vt40 a minute. VOIP will end up taking over the current communication system in Vanuatu eventually. We have all the facilities here already for the phone system, we are just waiting for a few components to arrive but phones are ready from China.
Does the regulator know about your system because if it takes off Telecom and Digicel could face serious competition if people realize they can make free VOIP phone calls to each other? How many staff do you have?
We are only working within the confines of the licence we have. The Telecom monopoly may be broken but now it is a cartel and the government got screwed. The government say they want competition. We are not doing the telephone system just for Vanuatu. It is an international system and only accounts for about 10% of our overall system. We currently have three staff but we could have two or three hundred as this will be a hub here in Vanuatu. We are not competition to TVL
Why did you set up in Vanuatu given the cost of things, poor internet and expensive telecommunications? Is it because of the secrecy laws? How are you going to make money?
Do you know what we have got here? We have dishes and servers located in an office near the airport. We do not need or rely on anything to do with TVL. Currently we are with TVL as we haven’t actually launched yet? We make money on fees and transactions.
But your web site has been offline for ages because of money owed hasn’t it?
We don’t need the web site because we have just been sitting still waiting for the commercial site to get back on. This is what people do not understand. The commercial site is the key to the whole operation and we have had to tidy up all the crap before we can commence again.
What exactly are these commercial sites and where are they? Do you just have your own version of Ebay, Amazon, Facebook and others?
We offer about 25 different sites. The global trading one is the main site where for example we can get businesses out of China to trade with other countries on the network.. The auction site is part of the global trading site and we have a shopping site as well.
People build web sites. Big deal! People have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying and building web sites. For what? You have to have a platform whereby buyers can access your products on the web and that is what we do. We give your business the credibility and platform to trade. E business allows us to offer transparent business dealings worldwide with ease on the internet. We are reversing what is normally associated with International Companies where they hide money as the money does not come here, we simply facilitate it here.
How is money transacted and where does it go?
We have a payment system for registration and fees but the payment between the two parties is done direct. We offer an Escrow system if they want to ensure funds are paid. Our income system is derived from the fact that we offer the platform to do the trading.
But you have had problems with the overall system. A lot of people have been claiming that you owe them money and a number of forums on the internet including DXStrategies Forums: Welcome to the forum and comments made on our newspaper web site on DailyPost- Dedicated Hosting, Domain Register, Website Design, Computer Service & Sales, Internet Service, Logo Design from all over the world say that they have lost money, it is a Ponzi scheme, it is a scam and they have lost a fortune, you have no money etc etc. What is happening?
We have had to wait for the e- Business Act to change in Vanuatu. This is why we have not been able to move. E Business is our business. We needed to change the Act because it was a screw up. They put an Act together in 2000 and I said then that it was never going to work as I realised that what we were going to be doing was of national importance and a great benefit to the country. The National Bank of Vanuatu didn’t want it and can’t use it as they are not electronic to start with and if we wanted to use the National Bank of Vanuatu I would have to supply all the work stations and the whole electronic system. Even now 8 years later they still haven’t got it in place. They can’t even transfer between accounts electronically, can they? Just by asking questions with government officials they didn’t know what they had electronically so I set about building our system into position and waited and waited whilst knowing that the Act was never going to work. In 2005 I saw the opportunity here because our system works on a very large scale and it involves businesses, consumers and in the electronic world, it doesn’t matter where you are in the world you are, as long as you have got the right communications and parties involved you can operate in Vanuatu without any disadvantage because we are small. We can operate the same as in London or New York here. Before they wanted money to come in to National Bank and then go out again like an offshore system. I remodelled our system so that Vanuatu would benefit from a transaction and trade between one country and another or two people or business to business outside of Vanuatu. You do not have to send the funds in and then get the funds out to another place as that would never work with the National Bank system. We do not use the banking system here as they couldn’t do it. We do not want to be involved in an offshore system because that is an old system now. It was designed 80-100 years ago merely to hide money and not generate money.
What about all these allegations on the forums including our own The Vanuatu Daily Post site and readers comments?
What you are reading here is what we call the ‘gutter’ net. We have tested your Web site and someone said that they sent a positive comment in and it wasn’t included, or listed. You have to remember that 95% of people involved with DX want this system to work. It is only a small minority causing problems. Our system is almost like a country. I am not a materialistic person who wants money. I simply know that we can do something that can benefit others and benefit others. I read the history of Vanuatu and thought you guys have been screwed. You are controlled by countries who always want to dictate and Vanuatu will find it difficult to get on top of it.. This is an opportunity for Vanuatu to get a leverage to change the system and develop. Lets see if we can put together something that benefits Vanuatu. Something that grows from a little acorn into something that makes history. I have seen an opportunity as I understand the internet and have seen how people get screwed on the internet as you can’t use credit cards so I had to redesign the whole system of trading on the internet. I modelled something piece by piece over several years. A hotel came along and we were ready to launch into a commercial site. I just didn’t see the way the banks here are controlling the country here.
It is my understanding that a lot of people on forums say they are owed a considerable amount of money. We are told people put cash into the DX system that was then converted into reality money in the form of credits which grew at a very fast rate and then they couldn’t get their funds out. When did the problems start? What about all the people who put in money initially who complain they can’t get their funds back? Why can’t they get their funds out?
We do not actually hold the funds and they are not lost. The user holds the funds in the system. We use other payment services where the funds are stored. We know exactly how much a person has put into the system, the value of their credits and taken out. Our role is to administer the security of the account. We are the facilitators that hold all the records and the system and all the accounts. We told everyone this from day one. Nobody can cheat us. We have locked down the whole system to stop a small minority who have taken advantage of the system. We have now locked them out. We know what value they have put in, what they have earn’t in the system. We know who has taken funds out of the system, we know who has cheated the system and used networks in the system. Once we relaunch the commercial network again, it all comes into play and supercedes all those who currently cannot move in the system.
Why do you owe money and have had these problems?
We haven’t gained any income for two or three years. When we saw people in networks taking advantage of the system and screwing it by pulling profit out quickly. I can tell you those people complaining on the forums say one thing on the forum and do something different in their own account. In an economy you need to provide credit. We provided credit to a certain level similar to a bank. You can’t take money out without paying fees. You put a certain amount of money in and you can then earn a certain value from that by keeping your principal in there. Use the credit in the system. You can store it and make it grow or use it within the system. If you take it out you have 30 days in which to pay it back. If you do not pay it back it is held against the imput value you started with. The size of the credit is only equivalent to the size of the imput value. You make get more than one to one but you can’t use that credit. This will be how it will work in future when we relaunch to stop people screwing with the system.
Aren’t you just changing the parameters as you go along? What about people who put in money thinking they could make a profit and cash in on it but can’t. The DX system seems highly complicated to the extent that educated people in the finance industry have problems understanding it?
All people do is go in and put a value of what they want to invest. Go and select what country and city you want to purchase a digot for and simply live there. People earn it for you. You don’t need to do anything. There is no complication in it. Each one of those countries and cities has got a different activity with it and this is where you get a different earning ability and credit ability depending on the activity going on where you have investment. It is unique for each person and changes daily.
That’s fine but what’s the point if you can’t cash them in? Isn’t it just reality money that doesn’t exist?
It is not supposed to be pulled out. It is supposed to be used. We have never said this was an investment scheme. It is a storage and credit scheme. Since day one there have been fees there. If you take money out you must put it back. This is the way they have cheated the system by not paying fees and taking funds out. We and others have had to pay the price for them not paying the fees. These people are greedy but get upset when you tell them that. They accuse us being the biggest fraudsters under the sun but some of them were using the system to cheat us. We didn’t want people to get cheated but they were operating in networks to cheat the DX system so we had no choice but to close it down and remodel the system to stop them doing it again. The biggest loss we should have made in withdrawals should have been 3% but it was a lot higher. The reason why we gave extra credit in the whole system was because those guys who had taken out thousands of dollars and had a massive negative were able to pay off without credits and get back to zero. Now if you want to get back your credit you must come back with a value equivalent to what you have taken out already had didn’t pay a fee for it. We have not changed, we have just tightened up to stop the cheats. If everyone pulled out money from the system which was credit we would be left with nothing. People were compounding their holdings through auctions through networks and avoiding paying fees.
People must pay fees to use the system the same as banks charge fees to obtain credit. We are not changing the world. We have a system that is equal to everyone regardless of where they are.
These guys cost us millions of dollars and our programmers went nuts trying to stop them. A high percentage of the people abusing the system were scammers. They tried to scam us and we blocked them to protect the ones in the system who were doing it right. There were a small amount of people who would take advantage and sell their parents and sell their children, sell anything just to get the better side. We rarely answer comments made in the forums other than occasionally. Earlier on these forums people who were inside the system controlling mass numbers of people were telling one thing on forums and taking advantage of those same people at the same time. We were watching these guys what they were saying on the forums and not responding because our job was to rebuild the system. Now we are saying to them, “screw you. We are now going to keep the good part of this system intact and come out the other side ahead. If there is a delay doing it right then so be it.. We hold absolutely every record of what all members did going back to 2002/2003. One of these people who screwed the system compounded his account by US$450,000 in just 6 weeks. He had megabucks in credit through networking in the system that forced us to reduce the credit across the whole platform. We know his original investment.’
People were supposed to pay fees on transactions and didn’t. Nobody has paid anything whatsoever in the system to get what they have got through compounding their holdings. What we have done is give people credit based on what they put in to use within the system but if they want credit they must pay a fee. If you want the value you put in to come out without the credit that is fine. This is what we have changed in the system to stop the problems.
They built networks all over the place and were in touch with each other to screw the system. One guy went bankrupt because he tried to use us as his financial services. He borrowed money from people around the world and said to people ‘you give me the money and I will give you credit ‘ because he was using the credit inside our system to give to somebody. He never paid us for his credit so he was just shifting it sideways and so we locked him and others doing the same thing out and they do not like it.
Are you planning on expanding the DX internet café here to other places?
We have DX Cafes ready to sell on a franchise in airports and shopping centres anywhere in the world. People will be able to go in and use our system to talk to each other, book hotel rooms, conduct business. We are doing things in reverse to what others have done. You have groups like Google. They designed a search system which is useless to a degree as they make no money from it. They make 98% of their money on advertising so they had to set up a system for their ads to make it work so the company could continue to grow and they keep adding new services to grow. Even today they make no money on searches. E Bay is the same, they designed a system and then had problems with getting goods paid for so they purchased Paypal. It still isn’t a good system. Our DX system combines everything under one scheme and the phone system will mean people can talk to each other at no charge if they are members.
You are always going to get people making comment who have no idea what is going on. We never comment on criticism. I knew from day one we would be challenged by administrations.
Do you have financial statements? Would people who have put money in be entitled to see financial statements?
No. It was not designed for that. We hold the mechanism to insure that funds are used when we get the commercial side running again.
Why are you currently offline?
We do not need to be online until the commercial business side is running.
Why choose to set up in Vanuatu? The secrecy laws?
The purpose of coming here was to bring in expats and teach local staff. We brought in a lot of technical staff and this is difficult because it is a large expense for little return.
How is the company building up its income and have money for purchasing assets?
We have had private blue chip investors come in and invested with us to build up the system. Some of these blue chip investors have already had an 80% return on their investment. We need to get them sorted out when the commercial system starts again. We have had problems and no revenue for the last couple of years whilst the commercial system has been taken offline waiting for the Act to be amended.
DxSynergy - Digital ECurrency Xchange by Vasu Brown (Book) in Business & Economics web site states in a book review about DX Synergy:
DXSynergy is a Ponzi scheme run by a Vanuatu registered shell corporation called Global Digital Transfers, Inc. Before they were Global Digital Transfers they were GalaxyGlobal Investment Retirement, Inc. At that time they ran a program called global-e-share.com. In a December 2001 news release, the Australian Securities & Investment Commission identified global-e-share.com as a scam. The newer DXSynergy is nothing more than an updated and more complex variation of the original Ponzi from GalaxyGlobal in 2000 and 2001. The author of this book may well be an honest and well intentioned person, but they are, intentionally or not, promoting a criminal operation.” Is it?
ASIC got involved because they saw the word ‘share’ and thought it was a sharemarket thing when it wasn’t. It was only a test at the time. ASAIC have not declared it a scam.
Why do you have no support contact here for people to contact over concerns as raised in forums? Why do you change your email regularly? The word is because you are avoiding contact with irate members in the system wanting to get funds out?
We answer legitimate questions raised on forums. People only listen to negatives not positives. I have known that from day 1.
We had one guy on the forums who uses my name and always complains about the hotel that we were purchasing saying he was owed accommodation and had put so much money into it. Do you know how many people actually booked and paid for accommodation at the hotel? Only two. All the others booked using our credit in the system. At the time we wanted the system to be tested as we wanted to see how it would work and to handle bookings on any number of rooms. We wanted to know that we could book holidays at the hotel and know there was no crossover with double bookings. We built the system and tested it for security. It was just a test at the time. Now the system is ready with filters and problems ironed out. We can now add flights. At present you have all these hotels here taking bookings. How do they get paid? With our system anyone wants to book a holiday here and the transaction will be done through our system here and funds will be sent directly here. Vanuatu will benefit.
You put in an offer of US$22 million for the Grande Hotel which was rejected by Westpac. Where were these funds coming from, blue chip investors?
Blue Chip investors came afterwards. We had funds we were entitled to from our system that were there to get to the first step of the hotel. This was at the transmission stage before we moved into the commercial area. We then had to stop everything because of the reasons I have mentioned and I knew then that the hotel was out of our range. We were interested at the time as the hotel offered a perfect business set up in Vanuatu. We knew then that the banks didn’t understand what we were about because we are 30 years ahead of them. They will never be able to do what we are able to do. We saw crazy things that the banks were doing like using the internet for a due diligence platform which is stupid as you are only going to get negative comments on the internet, not positive. We trusted Westpac and when they asked us for information on our company , they had told banks in Australia within 24 hours despite telling us it would not leave the country. So we turned it back on the banks and asked them what they were doing in Vanuatu and we were testing them and we found out that the Australian banks are screwing Vanuatu as they are playing the game for the Australian government and keeping things under Australian control in Vanuatu.
If I wanted to join your system how much will cost? If it costs us nothing to make local calls how do you make money?
Well you buy your mobile phones from us. We have one model currently available for around vt10,000 vatu and others coming out. We are also internet connected and can provide an internet service to the phone for a fee as well as video streaming. Using VOIP is no extra load to us if people want to talk to each other over the internet which they pay a fee for so free VOIP domestic calls are no problem. International VOIP calls overseas will be at a fee comparative to other VOIP services using other carriers. We would charge a fee if you connect to a TVL or Digicel number as they expect to get paid. If they accept us as a third party you will find we will be competitive to what TVL are charging which is vt40 a minute. VOIP will end up taking over the current communication system in Vanuatu eventually.
We asked for a photograph of Mr Copperwaite to go with the interview and he refused saying that we could take his photo after the DX business and commercial system was relaunched.
Author: Marc Neil Jones
Sun, 22 June, 2008 18:35
The Vanuatu Daily Post - Post Interview with Mervyn Coperwaite, DX Synergy Internet
Post Interview with Mervyn Coperwaite, DXSynergy Internet
