Elevate Pass appears to have collapsed.
At time of publication Elevate Pass’ website has been down for over twelve hours. Attempts to visit the site return a DNS configuration error.
Normally a website going down would prompt a day or so of watching before calling a Ponzi scheme’s collapse.
While it could still come back, I’m confident Elevate Pass has collapsed for a number of reasons.
The first is the nature of the website error; “ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED”.
This isn’t just the website going down, someone logged into Elevate Pass’ domain account and manually changed the DNS settings.
WHOIS records confirm this took place on May 11th, 2022 – exactly eleven months after Elevate Pass’ website domain was registered.
The error coming up means someone has intentionally broken the website through DNS settings. They had to log in and point “elevatepass.net” to nothing, which is what throws up the “not resolved” error.
Our next data point is a supposed communication from Elevate Pass CEO Rafael Cebula;
- manually changing DNS settings of a domain to null isn’t a “technical difficulty”, it’s an intentional action;
- nor is manually changing DNS settings of a domain to null a “technical glitch”;
- it’d take 5 seconds to log back into Elevate Pass’ domain account and change the DNS settings. No ETA? BS.
Couple this with the crypto market tanking today due to the Luna/Terra Ponzi scheme collapsing, and I think it’s pretty obvious Elevate Pass has collapsed.
The website could return with some bullshit cover story but that’d be a reboot. I’ll update below if that happens.
Elevate Pass was a 200% ROI cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme. Rafael Cebula ran/runs the scam from the UK.
Originally from elsewhere in Europe, back in February Cebula celebrated obtaining full UK citizenship:
Earlier this month Cebula then announced he was disappearing to Thailand:
One might assume, in light of Elevate Pass collapsing, Cebula’s travel plans were fast-tracked.
Update 12th May 2022 – As suspected, Elevate Pass has resurfaced with a new domain name.
The “technical glitch” excuse has been changed to “Google has suspended our domains”.
Their compliance team is rally slow, but meantime team has finished a backup solution and connected our server to the second domain”.
The specific issue for the alleged suspension isn’t provided. I’m not convinced, as when registrar’s suspend domains they typically don’t null the DNS. Instead an error page is typically set up.
In any event, Elevate Pass’ new domain is “epass.to”. Tonga isn’t as bad as .IO domains when it comes to scams, but the TLD does have a history of association with fraud.
Notably, anyone can set up a .TO domain without having to provide personal details.
We wanted to make sure you have access again to the website while we deal with the elevatepass domain.
Their team has told us it might take up to 48h, so we knew we could not wait that long that’s why the backup solution.
I’ll publish any further Elevate Pass updates below.
Update 15th May 2022 – Elevate Pass are claiming Google suspended their original domain after they were unable to verify provided contact details.
After attempting to verify the Elevate Pass domain owner details, Google purportedly replied;
Unfortunately, what you submitted can’t be used to verify your account details and you will need to submit additional documents using the secure form here.
Now why would Elevate Pass be unable to verify the submitted domain owner? Just Ponzi things, nothing to see here.
Elevate Pass continues to operate from its reboot domain, however this domain is missing SSL.
Investors are being told this is a problem with CloudFlare. In the meantime, they’re logging in and transmitting personal data over unsecured connections.
Update 18th May 2022 – Elevate Pass appears to have regained control of their primary website domain.
No explanation for why Elevate Pass’ domain registrar reached out to contact them, or why they were unable to verify the registered domain owner has been provided.
Update 23rd August 2022 – Elevate Pass has collapsed again. This time withdrawals have been disabled.