NEARLY 3,000 people who invested millions of dollars into the cryptocurrency and foreign exchange (forex) markets through Trillions Systems Ltd (TSL) more than ten months ago are still waiting for the big payday they were promised.
TSL is run by director James Kerron Timothy Junior Rose.
According to business registration documents, TSL was set up in mid-2022, with Rose and Andre Miguel being the directors. However, in January 2023, Miguel ceased to be a director in the company, and Rodgrico Kabira was appointed a director in his place.
The Trillions Systems Ltd main office in Mon Repos, San Fernando, where several investors turned up on July 1 to collect their money, only to be told by employees there was nothing to collect. Rose later sent out a statement indicating the office in South and Central were closed until further notice.
In early 2023, TSL flooded social and mainstream media as Rose sold his dream to thousands—to invest their money in cryptocurrency and forex. In several instances he promised to triple their original investment, or promised that the returns would be ten times higher than what they originally put in.
It seemed like the chance of a lifetime. All over town, people were talking about it: a new crypto project promising huge returns if you got in early. Close to 150 people who spoke to CCN (Caribbean Communications Network—TV6 and the Express) during this investigation over the last two months saw it as a way out of debt. For others, it was a chance to build a future for their families and finally taste financial freedom.
DIGITAL DISPLAY: A screen grab of James Rose’s alleged crypto wallets containing millions.
People from all walks of life bought into the lucrative offer—doctors, affluent businesspersons, lawyers, trade unionists, offshore workers, construction workers, and self-employed persons like snow cone vendors and small shop owners scattered across the country.
The pool of investors swelled to nearly 3,000, according to a Telegram group created for all investors by Rose. Problems began in mid-2024 when people realised they could not withdraw their promised profits.
When CCN reached Rose through director Rodgrico Kabira on July 1 and sent him a voice note asking when these exasperated investors could expect their money and promised payouts—and whether this was a bona fide investment—Rose’s answer was noncommittal, repeating what he has continuously posted online.
Rose said, “So if it is indeed you following Trillions for a month-and-a-half, you will see everything we are doing right. We have digital projects, and we have physical projects.
“Now, where the digital parts of things are concerned, I am the trader, right? We just completed the 10x system, and this is the third time we’ve done this account, eh, the third time we’ve done this pool, so we complete this pool and credit everybody’s account, and what we’re telling men is, based on the timing in the markets, I humbly suggest it’s time to build, dawg (sic), and build bank, because when we run the numbers and figures, we can earn on that bank—like take it from here and build it bigger; and then when it is, we start the investment system; it’s a whole different level of investment….everybody gets their 10x, and we put that on the earnings side now.”
Core issues never addressed
He continued: “They could choose whether they want to earn 8% a month in forex or 17% a month in crypto; they could choose whichever plan. Let us just continue building forward. It has a proper system where trading and earning in the markets are concerned, so that is what I say—all these things with dreams and this and that… Aye, that is not the case. This is an earning system, and I am saying I am the one who built it this far. I send men the same trades, you know, dawg (sic). See, men understand everything. Nah, I’ve been doing the building part of things; I’ve been doing it. Men have been getting through, but men would not say that, nah; but anyhow, now all it is, we’re saying: leave a little bank with Trillions; let us earn on that.”
Rose never addressed the core issue of when these investors would get their money back, and when the projected returns made on their money would be placed in their digital wallets on a portal created by TSL.
Numerous investors claim the promised tenfold rewards never materialised. TSL’s private portal for each investor, despite displaying returns on their accounts, would not allow anyone to successfully withdraw their money. Several investors removed their names and sent us several screenshots of their monies sitting inside their digital wallets, ranging from $452,000 to as much as $2 million, and in some cases even more.
Many investors encountered difficulty when attempting to withdraw funds from their digital wallets and they were immediately redirected to the homepage. And more recently, the withdrawal option appears to have been disabled altogether, according to some investors who have been trying to retrieve their funds for months. One investor remarked, “It’s just a portal with figures—anyone can create that and send it to you. That does not necessarily mean that it’s real.”
Since then, senior police sources have told CCN that they started an investigation into Rose and TSL in late June of this year, focused on the physical assets of the quarry Rose claimed the company held. According to reliable sources, the Securities and Exchange Commission is doing a separate investigation into the activities of TSL.
Follow-up calls to Rose and text messages over the last week-and-a-half about the legitimacy of his claims that Trillions had owned a quarry were not answered.
Money in, nothing out
In early 2024, when the Trillions fever took off, Rose promised investors a 10% weekly payout on their initial investment. Many investors shared the belief it was the way many of their fellow investors had been “reeled in.”
Thousands of people made investments from as small as $10,000 to as large as $14 million.
A business couple said they had invested $500,000, while a doctor and another affluent business person revealed that they had invested $250,000 and $650,000 respectively.
An investor said he had been familiar with James Rose back in 2023 when Trillions was advertising packages for a platform known as Primordial—with investments ranging from US$500, US$5,000 or US$100,000.
“I joined them in October 2023 and the platform later crashed. I lost approximately US$13,000 on that platform. Primordial was an online platform that was doing trading with promises of returns, but Trillions was advertising the platform in Trinidad. So you would go to them to purchase the crypto and do the exchange and go to them to sell the crypto to get back cash. We tried to contact Trillions; they said if anything happen to the platform, they were the first to know, and they say they were not the creators of the platform—that they just use the platform, because the platform was working—when the platform had crashed and remade itself. They knew everything what was going and had promises of returns of when the platform came back up—was 35% only return. The other packages were off the table and few people got back access to the new platform; and I never got back my money from them,” said the investor.
But desperate to recover the losses, the investor, a businessman with a thriving food outlet, said he received a call from a friend in early 2024 and on the premise of collecting 10% on his weekly returns, invested $4,000 in early March with TSL. By June he had collected approximately $16,000.
Like so many others, he later realised that was the way persons were wooed to dump more cash into the crypto and forex markets. And he did it, too, putting in an additional $90,000 between September and October 2024.
When December rolled around, this investor, like thousands of others, had been promised at least 2.5 times the money they had initially invested. “In early December I went to the office and all they gave me was $10,000. Just a few people got some money at that time. After that, they told us they were not paying out any more money. Rose was telling everyone on social media because of the Christmas season people were at risk of getting robbed and said give him a week,” said the investor as he replayed the video posted by Rose.
The food business owner/investor concluded that it was merely a stalling tactic by Rose. It was a pattern also endorsed by another investor working in the construction sector who had invested $50,000 in August 2024.
“After he talked about people getting potentially robbed, we gave him a week; then the next week he sent a message saying he lost the money and the markets took a big hit, which didn’t make sense (as) back then Donald Trump won the US elections and the markets had skyrocketed. How did he take a hit? Crypto skyrocketed, stocks skyrocketed as far as I saw. It did not make sense—that is what he told and he needed two months or give him up to 90 days,” said the investor from the construction sector.
Payouts by Rose were pushed from January 2025 to February 2025 and then he announced on social media that he would be putting their crypto and forex investments in a mystery 10x pool with payments to be made by June 27, 2025.
That instruction and announcement by Rose did not go down well with an investor working in the legal field, who sank $50,000 into TSL in January 2024.
“I was not interested in that. But then he came in February and said—we no longer have the weekly 10% and everybody’s money will now be compounded in a 10x mystery pool—I had a problem with that. How you could just take my money and put it in a mystery pool? There was no discussion with me and that was a major problem, because I had no interest in my money being compounded in a period of months. I only join because I know I was getting a weekly thing. I felt conned, really—I felt the proper thing to do, if he was genuine…was come to the shareholders and say: we could no longer offer this—this is the option we have: if whoever interested can go with it, and who not interested could take their money. At least I felt that would have given him a little more credibility. Since then I have not been able to withdraw one black cent,” she said.
The thought of losing $50,000 for this investor has not been easy. “It has set me back a lot. One of the reasons I joined was to make enough money to finish school—now my money is tied up there—it’s very difficult now with school starting back soon and I don’t have access to my money; it’s frustrating—I was trying to make up some extra money,” she added.
It has equally affected the investor with the food outlet.
“It impact me in a very bad way because I had stuff to do for Christmas that I needed the cash (for), but could not get access to it. And one of my vehicles was down due to an accident and I only got that vehicle fixed around Easter weekend this year when I was able to make my own cash to fix the vehicle. Mentally and emotionally, it has been a disaster, because sometimes you are in a frame of mind where you finally find peace and then somebody mention Trillions and your mind all over the place—because that money you have tied up there could be used to pay bills, medical expenses and other things.
“The message for Mr Rose as a business owner…speaking to another business owner: it is unfair to treat shareholders the way you treat us,” lamented this investor.
“God and time for you, brother. I hope he pay back everyone their money, but I believe that is not going to happen, as we see with previous Ponzi schemes in Trinidad and Tobago—it unravels the same way,” said the investor from the construction sector.
Past ventures
Rose had launched similar ventures prior to TSL and an investor who was burned back in 2018 also spoke with CCN about his experience and about a company called Rose Capital Investments Limited.
He said he lost US$50,000.
According to documents obtained by CCN, Rose was listed as one of the directors and incorporators of that company in 2018.
This former investor, who had aspirations of becoming a pilot, said he had been promised returns on his investment by March 2018.
“March came when he promised payments and made an excuse that he could not pay the money yet whatever the case. Some people were ill and needed the money; some had school fees to pay; but when they went to the office in Golconda, they were met with abuse by persons there,” he said.
But when Covid-19 hit, Rose went silent, and everyone gave up hope. The former investor’s plans were dashed. “My initial plan for that money was to pursue my dream to become a pilot. That was my savings to do that; and now there’s no hope. I reported it to law enforcement. There were raids in Golconda and Bel Air soon after but nothing else ever came out of that situation,” said the distraught investor.
That investor said when he learnt of TSL, he set up a group to try and warn would-be investors about Rose Capital Investments Ltd. “I did reach out to people—not because I was trying to cause chaos, but trying to make people aware that the dreams and hopes that this guy is selling—because basically that is what he sells, he sells dreams and hopes—and I am just there to let them know that the dreams and hopes of they getting paid on June 27, 2025 or whenever he promises you, you’ll still be waiting, just like I am since 2018 and I have not gotten one red cent.”
TUESDAY: Tune in to TV6 News @7pm for a version of this investigative story: Get rich or penniless trying.
