And3-Matrix Review: Recruit your friends? Scam.
With the recruitment driven matrix + useless products MLM model all but tired and busted, it seems admins that launch these scams are doing less and less to try to make them legit.
Still, there’s usually some small effort to at least try to convince people that recruiting members to earn commissions is not dodgy. But then every so often an opportunity comes along where the admin doesn’t even bother.
Read on for a full review of the And3-Matrix MLM opportunity.
The Company
There is no information on the And3-Matrix website about who is running or owns the company.
The domain registration for and3-matrix.com however lists a registrant as a one Mr. Martynas Simkevicius (photo right) through the company ‘UAB Duomenu Centras’, operating out of Siauliai in Lithuania.
As far as I can tell, this is Simkevicius’ first MLM venture as an owner/admin.
The And3-Matrix Product Line
And3-Matrix has no retail product offering so members instead have to market membership and the income opportunity membership provides instead.
Products are attached to the purchase of membership to And3-Matrix but not surprisingly, the company doesn’t go into specifics:
Get $100.00′s Worth Items
You will get these Items absolutely free instantly when you join.
The usual deal with these sorts of offers is a bunch of Private Label Rights material or useless ebooks sourced cheaply.
The And3-Matrix Compensation Plan
The And3-Matrix compensation plan revolves around a 9×5 matrix. With you at the top of this matrix 5 legs branch out forming your level 1. Each of these nine legs then branches out into another nine legs (level 2) and so on and so forth down five levels for a total of 66,429 members positions.
As you recruit new members into And3-Matrix, the company will pay you a monthly commission on each member, depending on where that member sits on your matrix:
- Level 1 – 30 cents a member (9 members, $2.70 total)
- Level 2 – 20 cents a member (81 members, $16.20 total)
- Level 3 – 15 cents a member (729 members, $109.35 total)
- Level 4 – 15 cents a member (6,561 members, $984.15 total)
- Level 5 – 30 cents a member (59,049 members, $17,714.70 total)
Joining And3-Matrix
Joining And3-Matrix requires a one time membership fee payment of $2. There is mention of the upgrade to ‘gold membership’ for an extra 40 cents, but the company does not explain what the difference between gold membership is.
With such a low joining fee I imagine it’s not much.
Conclusion
The core premise of And3-Matrix can be found on the company’s website itself:
You will receive payment for each person who signs up below you. Just introduce your few friends to us and earn money when they join our team.
Or in layman’s terms, just another recruitment dependent scam waiting to go belly up.
A quick look at the sourcecode reveals that the And3-Matrix website is powered by something called the ‘FDS Matrix’. I don’t know much about this FDS Matrix backend software but some guy was selling FDS Matrix with a “lifetime license” in late 2011 for as little as $20 a pop.
If I didn’t know any better, I’d guess Simkevicius purchased one of these licenses, slapped together a website with some products nobody cares about and figured he’d try his luck running his own low-cost entry recruitment scam.
Folks, you’re probably going to want to avoid And3-Matrix at all costs (no pun intended).
January 22nd, 2012 at 3:52 am K. Chang(Quote)
All he did was he got roped into buying one of these “ready-made” websites thinking it would make him lots of money.
http://edyhosting.info/forum/topic.php?post=2
January 22nd, 2012 at 9:43 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Ouch, web hosting companies with pre-loaded matrix scam templated hosting.
Oh well, at least it came with ‘Sexy Captcha‘.
(seriously, wtf?)
January 22nd, 2012 at 10:29 am K. Chang(Quote)
Yeah, the host bought license to FDS Matrix and sells “hosting” to the gullible. They’re in the clear as they are just web hosts. It’s the gullible who buy these websites who goes down under lawful scrutiny.
You *can* find all sorts of **** on the Internet, including weapons to hurt yourself.
January 31st, 2012 at 3:11 am And3-Matrix admin(Quote)
Hello, and3-matrix is not the scam! Martynas Simkevicius is not an administrator.
January 31st, 2012 at 8:19 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Well, that’s a well thought out and presented argument. How do you claim it’s not a scam when 100% of the commissions paid out are based on the amount of members recruited?
Then why is the domain registered in his name, and if he’s not – then who is?
January 31st, 2012 at 9:05 am K. Chang(Quote)
And your proof of this is… your word?
WHOIS says he owns the website. So who are YOU?
January 31st, 2012 at 10:46 am M_Norway(Quote)
If the payment is $2 – $2.40 per month, then I doubt any Government agency will be willing to file a case against it, at least if we’re talking about pyramid laws. Pyramid cases becomes even more difficult to prove when the money involved for each participant are very low.
January 31st, 2012 at 4:57 pm Guest(Quote)
I don’t know administrator name, but administrator is women. This is new matrix, yet there are not many users.
January 31st, 2012 at 5:14 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
I’m assuming you’ve joined the company if you’re claiming there aren’t many users of And3-Matrix, because there’s no mention of total user numbers on the site itself.
You want me to believe you’ve joined and still have no idea who the admin is, other than it’s a ‘women’?
Riiiiiiiiiiight.
Also you didn’t explain what Simkevicius’ name is doing on the domain registration.
January 31st, 2012 at 9:30 pm M_Norway(Quote)
I checked the site myself, instead of reading reviews.
$2 one time payment isn’t exactly scam, and neither are the small payouts for recruiting. The amount involved are too low.
The registration reminds alot of phishing, asking both for personal info and payment account info, including password.
Conclusion?
It’s either a “honeypot” with very little honey in it, or an “intelligence test” for how stupid internet users may be from time to time, if they’re promised something in return.
The honey in the honeypot is the “receive free stuff worth $100″. I don’t consider the money involved to be significant enough to act as honey. It’s more like a “registration fee” than some sort of “incentive”.
The “intelligence test” is the registration details, if people are willing to fill in all that information. Another part of the “intelligence test” is if people really read Terms and Conditions before they signup, if they’re able to read them (black text on dark blue background), and if they’re blindy willing to accept any kinds of agreement.
I woudn’t be surprised if the site is part of a gullibility test, and the main purpose is to test people’s awareness rather than to collect data. They didn’t seem to have any member at all, as far as I could see (except for admin).
January 31st, 2012 at 11:10 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Whatever the fee, a scam is a scam. A fee doesn’t make it a scam, it’s the business model.
$5 and less recruitment scams have been around for as long as their more expensive counterparts. Admins launch them because, as you point out the legal risk of getting pulled up by the authorities is significantly lower.
Fortunately so are the payouts so they’re not all that common.
January 31st, 2012 at 11:54 pm M_Norway(Quote)
Why I consider it to be a “gullibility test”?
The site isn’t set up to attract the normal group of people that usually are interested in joining income opportunities. Most people in this group are experienced, and know how to read a compensation plan and how to calculate what’s needed to make money. They won’t be attracted by this compensation plan, it promises them more work than incentives.
The money involved seems to have been ‘regulated’ to be within an ‘allowed range’, or what most people will consider to be an unsignificant amount of money. This is close to what I will expect to find in a study or experiment organized by a university.
This plan won’t attract any real income opportunity seekers, but it may attract some people that are curious of what the “$100 worth of items” may be.
A real income opportunity will need a better matrix. The promise of a one time payment of $2.70 for recruiting 9 people isn’t exactly ‘attracting’. A “3×8 matrix with spillover” or any other matrix would have been more ‘attracting’.
A real income opportunity will need more incentives.
* a commission for recruiting, one time payout.
* residual income (this will require a monthly fee to participate)
* more money involved, making the scheme more able to pay different bonuses and other incentives, like ‘matching bonus’ for personal referrals.
In other words, I didn’t find any of the attraction needed to make this work as a pyramid scheme, or as a feeder to another scheme. People usually needs to be attracted to something to be willing to join.
February 2nd, 2012 at 11:15 am M_Norway(Quote)
I have found a few reports indicating phishing:
http://www.phishtank.com/phish_detail.php?phish_id=1101962&frame=details
http://sitevet.com/db/asn/AS16125
They were found when I searched “UAB Duomenu Centras” and “Martynas Simkevicius“.
UAB Duomenu Centras is a hosting-company in Lithuania, with 3,000 company clients and 5,000 private clients. They didn’t have many phishing reports, but they had a few.
February 2nd, 2012 at 11:25 am M_Norway(Quote)
@Oz (off-topic)
There may be a problem with my 2 former comments (the first one of them). It shows up differently in IE, and will prevent posting comments without using some tricks.
Shows up differently?
* left margin is different from other posts, a 5-6 letters “Tab”
* the name M_Norway seems to use BIG-tags or something
* the comment-editor has been 1 column wider (the column “Latest”, “Most wanted”, “Companies”)
* there isn’t enough vertical space for the “Post comment” button. It shows up as a 2×2 or 3×3 pixel “dot”, but the little dot works.
February 2nd, 2012 at 11:32 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Thanks for bringing that to my attention M_Norway. It wasn’t your comment it was mine before it, the use of the < bracket made wordpress list the following comments using the list format which was stuffing up the code for the rest of the page
.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention, wasn't something I could see from the WordPress backend.
February 2nd, 2012 at 1:23 pm M_Norway(Quote)
@And3-Matrix admin
It may be time to post some info about and3-matrix, to save us some time and to prevent us from digging too deep into this.
* Is it a phishing site, or what is it?
So far I have found that the forum connected to the site has 7 members total, including administrator and global moderator.
The forum is located in Lithuania – and3.ql.lt
The forum has a more “normal” requirement for info than the and3-matrix registration.
The website(s) doesn’t belong to any university.
… and so on and so forth.
“UAB Duomenu Centras” = Private Ltd Duomenu Centras (if we translate it to English).
I’ll guess your former comment “And3-matrix is not the scam!” sounded very convincing to you, but we have actually seen and heard lots of better arguments. Please try to impress us.
February 8th, 2012 at 1:55 am M_Norway(Quote)
Their website doesn’t seem to be very active. It seems more like an unvisited site, with no new members in 8 days.
This forum status hasn’t changed in 8 days:
“Two users at the same time” was me and Google-bot.
And Google-bot is a registered member.
February 15th, 2012 at 9:02 am M_Norway(Quote)
The website still seems to be close to inactive, with 2 new members in a week.
Note:
This statistics is from the forum part of And3-matrix.