There’s a general consensus in the MLM industry that if you see an MLM company using one of three particular payment processors, then at the very least it’s worth taking a precautionary approach.

Payment processors handle money between MLM companies and their affiliates. In an age where global affiliate membership is the norm, payment processors simplify the process in which companies are able to effectively pay their affiliates commissions.

Today Liberty Reserve, easily one of the most frequently used payment processors in the MLM industry, was shut down following the arrest of its creator and owner in Spain. [Read the rest of this entry...]

After months of delays OfferHubb look to be finally gearing up for launch “sometime soon”. With that development has come a rather interesting announcement from Robert Craddock.

Craddock served as Acting COO Greg Caldwell’s right hand man in the $600M Ponzi scheme, Zeek Rewards. Following the SEC bust of Zeek, Craddock then raised thousands of dollars on the promise of organising legal representation for Zeek Rewards affiliates against the SEC.

This representation eventually amounted to charging those who pledged money to Craddock an additional $300 for a template letter those who bought it could sign their names to and send off.

What happened to the rest of the money is currently unknown, however one affiliate recently shed some light on where some of it allegedly went:

I have first hand knowledge of what RC is up too, I think it’s interesting that he collected so money from folks for legal representation in regards to Zeek Rewards and not one affiliate was represented.

He took in 6 figures and what was it spent on?  I was told from a very reliable source that over 50k of that money went into fixing the engine of his small plane.

With the court-appointed Receiver now seeking to recover funds from Craddock and other “net winners” in the Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme, Craddock and person(s) unknown have been working on OfferHubb, hoping to replicate the daily ROIs they were paid in Zeek Rewards.

In an email sent out to OfferHubb affiliates on May 23rd titled “We are going live”, Craddock wrote [Read the rest of this entry...]

When Global Hangout launched earlier this year several key issues were raised following a review of the opportunity.

Primarily there was concern over the lack of adequate differentiation between  retail subscribers and affiliates, with Global Hangout simply requiring a subscriber to sign up again free of charge to be given access to commissions.

Seen more as a psuedo-compliance measure than genuine effort to make a distinction between subscribers (retail) and affiliates, typically measures like this still result in a company mostly retaining affiliate subscribers (non-retail).

Secondary issues raised included no mention of company management or ownership on the Global Hangout website and that Global Hangout’s product, Google Hangout training videos, was already offered by Google, the creators of the service.

Official Google training was offered free of charge and had been available since Google Hangout’s release back in August 2011, begging the question why someone would pay $99 for Hangout training.

This played into the thin differentiation between customers and affiliates, leading towards the inclination that people wouldn’t sign up and hand over $99 for Google Hangout training without the free-of-charge attached Global Hangout income opportunity.

Seeking to address these issues (whether raised by myself or elsewhere), Global Hangout rebranded themselves Hubity sometime over the past month. Were they successful?

Let’s find out. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Wealth Podium launched in early May with Danny Gauthier crediting himself as the founder and CEO of the company on the Wealth Podium website.

On the Wealth Podium’s “About Us” section of their website, Gauthier writes

Many self employed people have been looking for a way to get a foothold into 21st century technology.

I said the timing is perfect to provide these tools and services. You have probably heard the saying “Find a need in the marketplace and fill it.”

This is a sure formula to wealth.

You have seen it with telecommunications. Now it is the Internet‘s time. I wanted to provide a turnkey system for doing business that would encompass anyone who wanted, yes, needed a chance in life.

I wanted to do this at a price that would not exclude anyone. I wanted an all inclusive business that would embrace everyone who wanted it worldwide.

I wanted to help people to generate income and take away the stress of living from pay check to pay check.

Between 2006 and 2009 Gauthier launched several low-key matrix-based MLM opportunites (WeNetProfits, Seed2Wealth and United TSI). Due to the recruitment-driven nature of these schemes, none of them survived any considerable length of time after being launched.

Writing off the failure of these previous company launches as “4 years of market and software testing”, Gauthier then went on to launch a new scheme in January 2012 called Ultamex.

Ultamex was your typical membership-based digital library, with affiliates paid commissions to recruit others into the scheme on a one-time affiliate membership fee of $59.

Just over a year after launching Ultamex, not surprisingly, appears to be in steady decline and with that comes the launch of Gauthier’s latest company, Wealth Podium.

Read on for a full review of the Wealth Podium MLM business opportunity. [Read the rest of this entry...]

There is no information on the Avisae website indicating who owns or runs the business.

The only mention of executive management on the Avisae website is the following vague marketing spiel, taken from the “People” page:

The founders of Avisae began with a belief and confidence in the human spirit and the fulfillment found in trusting and enduring relationships.

Further research into the company however reveals a “Brooks Yates” naming himself as “CEO and Founder” of Avisae on his LinkedIn profile:

In his profile, Yates also credits himself as being the former Vice President of International Operations, Managing Director of Distribution Systems, Director of International IT Systems and Senior International Technical Product Manager over at Monavie (a juice orientated MLM company).

Yates left Monavie in April of 2012 before launching Avisae a year later in April of 2013.

For reasons not immediately clear, at the time of publication Yates’ name does not appear anywhere on the Avisae website:

Furthermore the Avisae website domain, registered on the 28th of April 2012 (shortly after Yates left Monavie?), has its domain registration information set to private.

Read on for a full review of the Avisae MLM business opportunity. [Read the rest of this entry...]

After informing investors that their second Ponzi scheme, officially promoted as a “total passive investment program” paying out a 1.6% daily ROI sourced from “new deposits”, had collapsed just 2 months after they launched it, Wealth4AllTeam announced to the world that they “suspending all withdrawals until September 2013“.

In an email sent out to Wealth4AllTeam affiliates, the company informed them that as a result of an unnamed “outside consultant” who ‘literally stole most of the money that was being used for (their) investments‘, Wealth4AllTeam would ‘not respond to emails or requests for withdrawals‘.

Turns out those behind Wealth4AllTeam couldn’t wait for September to roll around and have prematurely returned with yet another business opportunity.

Read on for a full review of the AdRevWorld MLM business opportunity. [Read the rest of this entry...]

When the SEC busted the $600M Ponzi scheme Zeek Rewards, one of the myths busted was that the daily ROI Zeek paid out was based on ‘up to 50% of (the) daily net profits‘ the company brought in.

This was a key component of Zeek’s affiliate’s marketing efforts, with many investors brought into the scheme on the impression that what the ROI they were being paid daily was generated via legitimate sales to actual customers.

Of course those customers didn’t exist (or those that did weren’t buying anything with their own money), and after going over “hundreds of thousands” of Zeek Rewards documents, the SEC revealed that

In fact, the dividend bears no relation to the company’s net profits.

Instead, Burks unilaterally and arbitrarily determines the daily dividend rate so that it averages approximately 1.5% per day, giving investors the false impression that the business is profitable.

In essence, Paul Burks sat in his office and manually entered in a daily ROI percentage, that had nothing to do with sales revenue and everything to do with keeping his investors happy.

And by happy, we of course mean ensuring they were paid enough over 90 days to sustain their Ponzi point balances.

It is this disconnect from Zeek Rewards’ net profits (which was 98% affiliate funded), that resulted in Zeek Rewards paying out $162M and only receiving $160M in during its last month of operation (July 2012).

Given a few more months no doubt the money out would have eclipsed new investment money coming in and the scheme would have collapsed organically – most likely why Zeek’s CEO, Paul Burks, chose to settle with the SEC rather than deny he was running a blatant Ponzi scheme.

For those of us analysing Zeek Rewards for months prior to the SEC shutdown, it was evidently apparent that the daily ROI had nothing to do with the company’s revenues.

Time and time again it was observed that during time of outages (of both Zeek Rewards and their penny auction Zeekler), the daily ROI paid out to affiliates never wavered.

Logically, if Zeekler and Zeek Rewards were down for over 24 hours, no revenue (bid sales or otherwise) would enter the company. Yet miraculously, the daily ROI paid out to affiliates never missed a beat and remained relatively consistent (within a few decimal percentage points).

On other occasions it was observed that the daily ROI paid out to affiliates was literally double of what should have been paid, strongly indicating that manual-entry of the daily ROI percentage was occurring, as opposed to it being tied algorithmically into Zeek’s daily profits, as claimed by the company.

This was an ongoing observation, with any mention of it to Zeek Rewards management returning the familiar claim that how they generated the daily ROI was a “proprietary secret”.

As such when the SEC revealed Zeek’s daily ROI was just Paul Burks sitting in a room punching a slightly different percentage to pay affiliates each day (in an attempt to make the daily ROI percentage appear random), it came as no big surprise.

Perhaps also not so surprising comes the observation that JubiRev, touted by management as “the standard-bearer” of the MLM revenue-sharing niche in wake of the Zeek Rewards Ponzi aftermath, is now also experiencing abnormalities with the daily ROI it pays out affiliates. [Read the rest of this entry...]

When we last checked in with the MLM industry’s fight for legitimacy over in India, the various government agencies involved were engaged in ongoing discussion as to what constitutes a legitimate MLM company.

In response to the multitude of scams operating within the MLM industry and local authorities seemingly all but powerless to regulate them, the Department of Consumer Affairs established a committee back in July of last year to establish guidelines to separate legitimate MLM companies from the scams.

A deadline was initially set in “early 2013″ however it passed without the committee reaching its goal. As such a new deadline was set for April 30th, which has also now come and gone.

Whether the Department of Consumer Affair’s committee reached a conclusion or not I’m not sure but since the April 30th deadline, the issue seems to have quietly progressed behind the scenes.

In somewhat of a departure from establishing guidelines to define legitimate MLM companies, reports are now stating that the Indian government is looking to ban the entire MLM industry. [Read the rest of this entry...]

There is no information on the Brright Echelon Ad website indicating who owns or runs the business.

The Brright Echelon Ad website domain (“brrightecehelonad.com”) was registered on the 7th of March 2013, however the domain registration is set to private.

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Initially touted as a Zeek Rewards investment reload sheme, Wealth Creation Alliance was launched by Paul Skulitz and “Coach” Blaine Williams in September of 2012.

The original Wealth Creation Alliance compensation plan saw the company accept $2 investments from affiliates and guaranteed a $3.25 (162%) ROI on each investment, sourced from new affiliate investments.

Roughly a week after launching, Wealth Creation Alliance announced, somewhat ironically, that it was changing its name due to “scam reports” surfacing.

Turns out some guy called “Chuck Hughes” had launched his own “World Consumer Alliance” financial scam prior to Blaine and Skulitz and, not happy with the reputation the name had, decided to change WCA’s name to World Creation Alliance.

The $2 “micro-Ponzi” scheme business model was retained however in addition to it William’s also promised affiliates an upcoming business directory, an online shopping mall, something called “WCA University” and daily coupon details.

I’m not sure exactly when but WCA seems to have brought these new components online sometime in the first quarter of 2013. Along with the new components came a new compensation plan and that’s where this review comes in.

Along with the added components to the business, read on for a full review of the World Consumer Alliance compensation plan v2.0. [Read the rest of this entry...]