Speak Asia clamp down on panelists sharing info
Ever since Speak Asia effectively shut down back in May and the company’s management began their exit strategy to disappear overseas with panelists’ money, the company has engaged in an increasingly restrictive public relations campaign waged by the senior panelists of Speak Asia.
These senior panelists through the Speak Asia Mobi club blog, Speak Asia Powers Facebook page and All India Speak Asia Panelist Association have sought to curb the asking of inconvenient questions and sharing of information between Speak Asia’s panelists.
Why?
Speak Asia know full well the only carrot they have left to dangle infront of their supporters is the promise of a return of funds invested into the company. As long as they have this, they know their members will blindly support them to any end.
Over the last week a series of events have put a serious dent in these efforts. As the discrepancies between the ‘all is well’ narrative Speak Asia’s top panelists have been pushing across these three information sources (SpeakAsia Mobi, AISPA and Speak Asia Powers), systematically over the past week the company, through these panelists have severely clamped down on the free exchange of information between its panelists.
Today we take a look at why this has occurred.
Our analysis begins with Speak Asia’s public management: Harendar Kaur, Manoj Kumar and Tarak Bajpai.
Harendar Kaur
Speak Asia Global CEO Harendar Kaur, was last publicly seen in early 2011. She has not made an appearance since. Speak Asia sporadically puts out press releases with her name but there is no way to authenticate these as actually having come from her.
Harendar Kaur is allegedly hiding out in Singapore living on the retirement fund of over $100 million USD Kaur siphoned out of India in July.
Manoj Kumar
Manoj has not made a public appearance since mid May 2011, shortly afterwhich he fled overseas to Dubai.
Kumar did promise to lead panelists and return to Mumbai ‘shortly’ in a video published in August following COO Tarak Bajpai’s arrest, but this was a lie that never eventuated.
Since May Kumar has not made any public appearances and remains in hiding. His last digital appearance was a video published to Youtube from an unofficial account early last month (October 2011) where he made a series of promises, none of which have eventuated yet.
Tarak Bajpai
After Manoj Kumar’s promise to return to India and lead Speak Asia’s defense turned out to be a lie, many turned to COO Tarak Bajpai to lead them.
Bajpai played the role of Speak Asia hero briefly (but to no effect) before he was arrested in late July. Shortly after being arrested Bajpai suspiciously required immediate surgery and spent the next few months hiding in hospital.
Upon Bajpai’s discharge in late October he immediately went into hiding again and has not been seen in public or heard from since. Whether Bajpai is even in India at this stage or has also fled the country remains unknown.
I have since read rumours that Bajpai wound up back in hospital to once avoid interrogation by the authorities, but I haven’t as yet seen any official confirmation of this.
At this point I will also make mention of Ram Sumiran Pal, who I’ve previously hypothesised is the actual owner of Speak Asia. Ram I believe last publicly appeared way back in 2010, when he featured in the April – May 2010 edition of ‘The Business Diary’.
Note that in the Business Diary article (available here) Ram is singled out with Harendar Kaur and attributed as being a ‘founder member’ of Speak Asia.
Last I heard Ram was hiding in a hotel in Mumbai with his brother following the collapse of the scam AdMatrix in October, which the pair also ran.
The current whereabouts of Ram Sumiran Pal and why, despite being a founding member of Speak Asia, he’s dissappeared from the public spotlight remain a mystery.
In any case, with Speak Asia’s public management clearly in hiding they sought to influence the opinion of panelists by dangling the payment carrot infront of them via legal proceedings whilst management and those at the top sought to destroy the paper trails linking them to the company.
This has been going on for months now but it is only recently that the narrative of ‘we are bound to win and we will definitely win’, a quote infamously attributed to Tarak Bajpai, by Speak Asia has started to disconnect from reality so much that senior panelists, charged with keeping the rest of the memberbase in check are struggling to keep their members from turning against the company.
As I mentioned earlier, up until now the three primary sources of information distribution for Speak Asia panelists has been the AISPA website, ‘Speak Asia Powers’ Facebook page and SpeakAsia Mobi club blog. Unofficially these three information sources have been the public mouthpiece of Speak Asia after their own website went dormant.
I’ll note that Speak Asia claim to have an official Blogspot blog, but that hasn’t been updated since November 10th and appears to have been abandoned. There is also the media, who sporadically provide updates on the criminal investigations into Speak Asia, but Speak Asia’s senior panelists consistently dismiss these reports as lies (for no other reason than because they say so) and urge panelists not to believe them.
If we focus on the three primary sources of information panelists use (SpeakAsia Mobi, AISPA and Speak Asia Powers), as the stakes are raised in the courts and the need to control what panelists think ever increases, an analysis over the past week reveals some interesting insight into the inner workings of Speak Asia.
Speak Asia Mobi – Our analysis begins with the Speak Asia Mobi blog, allegedly owned and operated by a ‘MV Naik’. Routinely the updates that appear on this blog are copy and paste updates from the senior panelists running the Facebook group, ‘Speak Asia Powers’.
Despite Naik not seemingly having a presence in Speak Asia Powers (unless it’s an alias), for all intents and purposes the SpeakAsia mobi club blog is just another syndicated mouthpiece of Speak Asia’s top panelists.
The admin of the blog does not publish anything that isn’t just copy and pasted from the Facebook group. One difference between the Facebook group however is that Speak Asia mobi has relatively relaxed comment moderation.
Instead of spam being moderated out, the blog routinely uses a use voting system which hides the spam comments (along with any criticisms of Speak Asia).
Last week on November 19th an interesting entry appeared on the Speak Asia Mobi blog;
This group is available in facebook and this group is dedicated to support SpeakAsia …
Team Mobi-club noticed this group from last 2-3 months, and we really appreciate this group…
Underneath that was a link requesting panelists to join the group and a list of the Speak Asia senior panelists or employees running it;
- Aman Azad (works closely with AISPA)
- Harsh Vora
- Deepanshu Varshney
- Afaq Shaikh
- Sandeep Gupta
- Vikas Mahajan
- Chander Jaireth
- Anand Prasad
- Vineet Tiwari
- Kamlesh Patel
- Harsh Pujar
- Sanjay Singh Sagar
- Sanjeev Khanna
- Piyush Upadhyay
- Manish Jain
Effectively, these admins have been operating as the unofficial PR mouthpiece of Speak Asia for some months now. All of them in one way or another have a vested financial interest in Speak Asia and consequently need to keep the company’s panelists under control.
Since this post appeared on the 23rd, whilst the owners of Speak Asia Mobi club haven’t abandoned the blog (that would be too obvious), there has been a noted increase in the delay of syndication of updates published on the blog compared to when they appeared on the Speak Asia Powers Facebook group.
This can be observed following the recent events surrounding the arrest of AISPA President Melvin Crasto. Previously Speak Asia Mobi would syndicate news within minutes of it being published on the Facebook page (strongly indicating one of the admins of the page was also the actual admin of the Mobi club blog), but in this instance the updates were hours behind.
No doubt future updates will also be purposefully delayed as the Speak Asia Powers admins push for panelists to abandon the blog in favour of their Facebook page.
AISPA – The All India Speak Asia Panelist Association website has up until recently been a reliable source of information from panelists. Updates to the AISPA website and commentary has come from AISPA Secretary Ashok Bahirwani.
AISPA itself is run by what they call an ‘ad-hoc committee’ made up of self-appointed Speak Asia panelists.
Whilst I do routinely point out the ridiculousness of some of Bahirwani’s analysis I nonetheless respect the fact that he is currently the only other person out there analysing what is going on, rather than simply publishing what Speak Asia want him to.
As of the 19th November, the AISPA website has remained static and has not published any updates from Bahirwani or from panelists in its previously routinely updated panelist blog and testimonial sections.
Prior to the 19th, Bahirwani made it a point to publish an update clarifying significant events surrounding Speak Asia’s legal troubles (both civil and criminal).
Two days ago on the evening of November 24th AISPA President Melvin Crasto was arrested by the EOW. This arrest appeared to come out of the blue and since then Ashok Bahirwani has not been seen or heard from in public.
Yesterday afternoon Anju Argarwal, a Speak Asia panelist who works with AISPA, made the following comment on Facebook;
Anju Agarwal: the eow is on the lookout for ashok bahirwani.
Since then however Bahirwani’s status remains publicly unknown.
Interestingly, news first broke of Crasto’s arrest on the AISPA website itself. A short message appeared on a scroller informing people that Crasto had been ‘picked up’ and that a full explanation would be published shortly.
Three days later and no such update has been published.
This is interesting because if we look at the history of AISPA, they have updated their website without fail when something like this has happened. Naturally it’s in their best interest to clarify things but when the head of their own association is arrested in relation to the EOW’s criminal investigation into Speak Asia, apparently not so.
In his last update on November 19th, Bahirwani warned panelists not to
waste your valuable time and money in calling me as I am not going to be discussing the SAOL matter on phone.
Since then no updates have been published on the AISPA website and then a week later AISPA President Melvin Crasto is arrested.
Co-incidence?
Could be, but personally I think the far stronger explanation is that the lack of updates and Bahirwani’s decision to cut communication by phone is a strong indication that AISPA and Bahirwani knew they were under investigation before Crasto’s arrest Thursday night.
How much they knew and when they knew is anyone’s guess. Analysing the behaviour of AISPA if I had to guess I’d say as early as Saturday the 19th November itself.
As it stands now Bahirwani is MIA and the AISPA website hasn’t been updated since Thursday the 24th. Instead, panelists have had to rely on the admin updates from the Speak Asia Powers Facebook group.
Speak Asia Powers Facebook Group – Run by the admins listed previously in this article, with the effective lack of or delayed communication on the Speak Asia Mobi club and AISPA websites, panelists have been funneled into relying on the Speak Asia Powers Facebook group over the past week.
Since the admins got the ball rolling on November 19th article on Speak Asia mobi advertising the page, and on the same day the Ashok Bahirwani announcing that he’d no longer be discussing Speak Asia over the phone, ove this past week the admins have systematically began restricting the information exchange between panelists.
It started with a notice published by admin Manish Jain on November 23rd (the day before Crasto was arrested),
PLEASE DO NOT PROMOTE ANY OTHER BLOG AND COMPANY , LAST AND FINAL WARNING
ADMINS
All of a sudden the Speak Asia Powers admins were getting upset that Speak Asia’s panelists were sharing and exchanging information not directly released by themselves. Prior to this they’d openly encouraged the sharing of such information.
Over the next forty-eight hours following the arrest of AISPA president Crasto, a flurry of activity occurred as the Speak Asia mobi blog dropped the ball with updates and AISPA remained officially silent on the events.
As the questions surrounding the activity from panelists mounted and the pressure to maintain their control on what information panelists had access to last night, the admins made the decision on the evening of the 25th November to officially censor their panelists from creating new discussion on the group.
Admin Vikas Mahajan wrote;
ew Post Box For New Posts : Please use the spcae below for your posts…..
Daily a New Post Box will Arrive here 🙂
* New Posts on the Group Has Been Banned for sometime to keep the Forum Clean n Green Forever….
The admins are still encouraging people to participate in the topics they themselves publish, promising to put anything of relevance in a new topic discussion of its own, but effectively they’ve begun to censor what information points are and aren’t discussed by panelists in their group – but only after AISPA has stopped updating and the Speak Asia mobi began funneling users to it.
Get the panelists using one medium and then clamp down on what they can do on it hard. That my friends is the latest ploy from the Speak Asia unofficial PR team.
But why now?
Well, this coming week (assuming nothing changes over the weekend) has three significant events that the senior panelist admins from Speak Asia Powers obviously recognise are of critical importance in keeping that carrot of ‘panelist payouts’ dangling infront of their members.
First we have the Lahoti Commission mediation meeting on Monday. Speak Asia Powers members have insisted this is unaffected by the Crasto arrest on Thursday, but this remains to be seen.
Personally I think it will go ahead, but obviously with criminal investigations and arrests still occurring – will ultimately prove fruitless.
Secondly on Wednesday is the next hearing for the Rajmani criminal PIL against Speak Asia. As the recent arrest of Crasto proves, despite the narrative pushed by Speak Asia’s admins, that the EOW criminal investigation is very much under progress and ongoing.
Finally on Friday AISPA President Melwin Crasto’s 7 day custody period is up and the EOW will have to appear with Crasto in court again. What the EOW will do I suppose depends on the reason(s) they have arrested Crasto and are holding him in custody.
Reasons not only the Speak Asia Powers admins (and the rest of AISPA) know, but are currently refusing to share publicly.
Looking forward, it’s clear that whatever the outcome of the Lahoti Committee mediation proceedings on Monday and the criminal PIL hearing next Wednesday, the most pressing concern at this point should be the lack of information circulated and clarified regarding Melwin Crasto’s arrest.
And indirectly, what exactly is going on with AISPA.
For starters, it’s ridiculous that the Speak Asia admins running Speak Asia Powers are claiming they don’t know why Crasto was arrested and on what basis the EOW convinced a judge that he was too much of a risk to release on bail.
You can’t simply arrest someone and hold them without a good reason, and given the precense of the admins at Quila Court yesterday and fact that he is the President of AISPA, it stands to reason that both the admins and AISPA know full well what Crasto has been charged with, and why the EOW are wanting him to remain in custody.
This is the information Speak Asia panelists should be demanding to know from their unofficial leaders.
That and what on Earth has happened to Ashok Bahirwani, along with an explanation as to why he hasn’t made any public communication since his AISPA update on the 19th November.
And where is Tarak Bajpai in all of this. Why hasn’t he made any public appearances since he went into hiding after his hospital discharge?
Yesterday Speak Asia’s admins were pleading with their members to appear at the Quila Court to show solidarity and unity following Crasto’s arrest. Despite reassurances that Tarak Bajpai is still in India, he failed to make an appearance.
But instead, now that they’ve funneled the panelists into relying on one source of information which they now retain totalitarian control over, these are the only updates the admins want people talking about;
Arrest!? What arrest??? Just think about rainbows, birthday cakes and trust us…
What a farce.
Footnote: Whilst I appreciate that Speak Asia’s activities mostly affect Indians in India, please respect that this is an English blog. Comments in Hindi will not be published.
Everything is ok Oz. We have been moderating the powers earlier also and will keep on moderating as per our will.
Just go through our introduction page and all the rules to run the group are already there in black and white.
There’s a difference between moderation and outright censorship of the discussion and exchange of information not published by you and your fellow admins.
Instead of crapping on about birthdays in a weak attempt to divery people’s attention, how about straight forwardly answering the questions repeatedly put forward to you before the censorship decision was made?
Where is Bahirwani and what was Crasto arrested for and what reasons did the EOW present in court to remand him in custody?
Whenever you’re ready to come clean and admit what Melwin Crasto… sorry Melvin D’Costa was arrested for and why the EOW were granted custody for seven days, I’m all ears guys.
$3000, what $3000?! Why is a mere panelist of Speak Asia receiving $3000 bank deposits from Speak Asia when none of the panelists are being paid and the company has effectively shut down?!
The Times of India article quote the EOW clearly hinting that that D’Costa’s involvement in Speak Asia goes way beyond being a panelist and the President of AISPA.
Come clean guys, share what you know instead of continuing to manipulate Speak Asia panelists.
Unless of course you’re worried about incriminating yourselves. Wouldn’t happen to also unofficially be on Speak Asia’s payroll and accepting panelists’ money as payment now would you?
No wonder you guys have tried to stop panelists from sharing information…
We are not doing anything new by celebrating birthdays on this forum. This has been and was being done since inception of this forum. May be you are new on our page. We are all friends and treat ourselves as a family here. Our family members have no objections as to how we handle our group, how and why you are interested GOD Knows.
1) What is the definition of Senior Panelists – Please let us know and then we will explain how senior are we.
2) How can you allege that we are doing this on instructions of Speak Asia Management – We are individual panelists who have come together to share our views on recent happenings and we are the victims of all this crap being written in / shown on various media.
3) If we are encouraging people to participate in the topics we publish, promising to put anything of relevance in a new topic discussion of its own, how does this be counted as censorship. Even you are also doing the same on your page. Can any one write an article on your page without your moderation, then if we want that all the relevant posts remain visible on the post this can not be termed as censorship.
4) We are constrained to use our page with limitations as available by the facebook . If we want that all the relevant posts remain visible, why are you so much concerned. There are millions of pages on the facebook where people can go and comment we are not the only one who are operating the facebook pages on speakasia.
Our major reason to start this group was that we should be able to keep an eye on the company and its management and let them show our unity that this company should not run away after so many cases of companies shutting their shop. And we feel comfortable that at last our efforts are being recognized.
AND FOR GOD’s SAKE let us know what you are doing for the benefit of us panelists so that our hard earned money does not go down the drain. Just crabbing about our way of working by you will not do any benefit to us panelists.
Okay, why are you guys in charge, and not anybody else? Are you guys in SAOL first?
It is one explanation that makes sense. What is your explanation?
*sigh* “blame the media” excuse again. What exactly written by the media is “crap”? If it’s true and unfavorable, then it’s not “crap”, unless you have a very unusual definition of ‘crap”.
The big question remains: are you deleting / hiding messages / topic about SpeakAsia that do NOT represent a positive image of SpeakAsia?
Are you the biggest? Most prominent? Should you not set example for others?
The problem here is you are ASSUMING that SAOL operation is legitimate, and thus, you have a blindspot toward negative information regarding SAOL.
Now that there’s even MORE negative information, your announcement have the effect of appearing to be trying to “sweep things under the rug”, or “avoid negativity”.
Of course, only YOU would know the real purpose.
Again, you are assuming that the only way for panelists to get money is for SAOL to resume operations. The other way is for the government to seize all the money and redistribute it under court order, after a census of membership is established (and criminal proceedings completed).
Why are we in charge..Just because we want our money back. Either through SAOL restarting its operations, or government redistributing it.That’s the precise reason Mr. Lahoti has been appointed
We are the common panelists who are raising our concerns, we have no support available other than this facebook, hence we are voicing our opinions from here had we not been here all of you would have together never revealed any positives which the company is doing.
If you feel that we firmly believe about SAOL operations as legitimate , then who has given you the authority to pass a judgement that this is not legitimate. Let the court be the judge as to who is right and who is wrong,
Thanks for recognising us as big and prominent. What we are doing is just what we thought as correct. We are not here to set any examples. We just want our money back by whatever way it comes. If SAOL restarts its operation, we would be very happy and if not then also situation should not arise that we could not get our money back. This is the first company (among all those who have charged for fraud) who has been publicly saying that we are ready to pay ,the banking channels are not open for us.
We know only one thing, we are true, we are positive. It doesn’t harm to have a positive attitude. Positive attitude creates a chain of positive thoughts which in turn creates path for success. This is the way we operate. We have never deleted any negative comments, we have always tried to clarify our views on those negative comments.
The real purpose is only one and that is to get our money back. It is our hard earned money and since you are not part of it, hence it is very difficult for you to understand the pressures our families are facing yes due to all this MEDIA CRAP. Tell me one judgement of the court which has till now not gone in the favour of us panelists. The matter is subjudice and we are waiting for our company to come out clean.
melvyn ,the president of aispa has been arrested in the rajmani criminal pil case merely for being a panelist.there is no other charge on him.the money in his account is the money he earned from saol when it was functional and is not some new credit to his account.
the question is ,in mumbai ,where there are any number of senior speakasians ,why melvyn has been given this honor and been the first target.the answer is simple the eow wants to beat aispa into submission.luckily for aispa, ashok bahirwani was out of town when the eow came knocking.
why is the eow trying to shut down communication between the panelists?why is it trying to ensure that payments to panelists are not made?what is wrong with panelists forming associations or gathering on facebook to support each other and saol?is it undemocratic in any way?
how far can the eow possibly stretch this?they will release melvyn after 7 days .they can arrest a few more panelists hold them for 7 days and again release them.it will take them a very long time to work their way through 1.5 million panelists.
does the eow think it can scare speakasians with such stupid stunts?the more they push us the stronger and more united we will become.i think the time has come for speakasians to gather outside the eow office and INSIST on being arrested.
You did not answer the question. All you said was “it’s not yet declared illegal by court.” You did not answer WHY it IS legal/legitimate.
Sure it can do harm. It’s called being reckless. It’s also known as “burying head in sand”, “avoiding reality”, and “self-delusion”. If you are in a sinking boat, saying “this boat will not sink” is positive attitude, but it won’t make the boat sink any slower.
It’s not the media’s fault that SpeakAsia is getting investigated by the government. After all, if there’s nothing there, then there’s nothing there.
Media simply made you all look like idiots for joining up by pointing out all the problems you (and SAOL) never mentioned. Is that what you really resent? Looking like idiots?
As you said, there has been NO court judgement on SAOL yet. Thus, any judgment you have “won” as panelists is rather… irrelevant, by your own admission. All your victories thus far are basically procedural lawyer games, none of which addresses the main question: is SAOL a pyramid scheme?
(Which, BTW, is completely separate from your main question: how do the panelists get their money back?)
Can you prove this, Anju, or is this merely speculation on your part? or is this more “insider information” you’ve been alluding to for the past several months?
Another government conspiracy theory… coupled with paranoia.
Are you saying that NOBODY besides Melvin and Bahirani can post on AISPA’s website? Or that EOW has seized AISPA’s server? Are you saying that the Facebook group’s leaders should be expecting visit from EOW next?
You are assuming that EOW is not only out to “get” SAOL, it is also out to confiscate any remaining money belonging to SAOL and NEVER redistribute a penny. Do you have any PROOF that this is so?
(rest of conspiracy and and complaint about this alleged conspiracy snipped)
You did not answer which of the so called fraudsters have come out in open and challenged that they are ready to pay but agencies are not allowing us on pretext of one or other reason. Speakasia has been brave enough to fight its battle.
Please watch the video of press conference which Speak asia conducted, and you can understand what is the business model.
Since we are siting in the sinking boat hence we know how big is the hole. We know if we don’t create panic by saying Boat is Sinking, Boat is Sinking, we could find a person in the boat itself who can help me in repairing the boat.
But if we start panicking, there will be rush of persons on the boat due to which the hole will get bigger sooner than expected. This is what all those who are against Speakasia want.
Let the boat come to safety point (Let the things be decided how the exit option will work) and then you can sink the boat (Close SAOL which you are most willing to it seems) We are trying to bring the boat to safety point and once it is there then we will see if the same can restart or it has to be dumped.
Anyways thanks for making your points clear Chang. I would wait for Oz’s comments before I can close out this debate. My purpose of coming on this page has been resolved and Now at last i feel comfortable that I have put forward what was on my mind.
You can keep on understanding what ever you want to.
i know the charge on melvyn via our lawyers in court and i know about melvyn’s bank account because i know him.
the eow and you people seem to think that saol has the wherewithal to control and direct speakasia mobi,speakasia powers and aispa.please credit us with some intelligence.these are all efforts of the panelists themselves.
the eow is targeting aispa because it is the ‘offical’ association of the panelists.melvyn and ashok bahirwani have become the FACE of the 1.5 million panelists.if you want to scare off the panelists what better way than to chop off their head.
Beautiful words Anju Ma’m
Because of 3,000 dollars which came to Melvyn’s bank account Melvyn has been arrested says EoW Asst. Commissioner,
What nonsense is this? Has he arrested for just INR of 1.5 lakhs? No way..! in my opinion – EoW is also hiding things, everyone is hiding things, something fishy..!!!
No need to waste time or spent time like this for this case..! Even 2G case of India is also finishing in high speed. Have to wait & watch for Speak Asia..!
Hi Oz & chang,
are u against corruption or mlm concept, let me know, wanna take part in ur thread.
ritesh,this is just another case of gross misreporting by toi.the assistant commissioner of eow rajvardhan is a senior respected officer he could not have given such blatanty wrong info to toi.
so one has to assume that toi just got the news of melvyn being arrested and made up the rest of the story.
dear chang & oz,
u don’t know how our media & law works, they are far far away from truth.
@Sanjeev
Again I don’t care about your birthdays. Answer the questions.
Your little clique of admins. Everybody has everybody on speed dial, you know the upper workings of Speak Asia management and you’re in communication with the head honchos.
Here’s an example from anju;
You all know this (all the admins and AISPA management) yet this information is not openly distributed amongst regular panelists (and by proxy the public). You sit on this information because it’s disastrous regular panelists knowing about a $3000 deposit by Speak Asia into Melvin Crasto’s bank account that can’t be explained.
Because it’s pretty obvious. Speak Asia’a senior management are hiding overseas, how else does their word get out unless they’ve got lackeys on the ground doing their will.
That’s the problem, anything you deem of relevance. Relevance of course being anything that fits the ‘we are bound to win’ narrative, nevermind reality. As long as you can dangle the payment carrot infront of panelists they won’t turn on you or Speak Asia and in the meantime management can continue to dilute the papertrail and distance themselves from the authorities.
panelists… You admins are clearly in bed with Speak Asia’s management. You don’t need to keep an eye on management because they’ve already fled.
I know you lot either see people as for or against panelists (or Speak Asia) but I’m neither. This is a blog about MLM and Speak Asia falls into that category. The scope of the blog is way beyond the ‘waaah give us our money’ pleas of people who willingingly participate in pyramid schemes like Speak Asia.
What’s all this ‘we’ nonsense. You and your admins have the rest of the panelists by the balls information wise.
Case in point? When Crasto was arrested you lot knew exactly what was going on when nobody else did. ‘We’ had to wait for your lordships to grace us with whatever information scraps you’d throw our way.
This pretty much happens everytime Speak Asia are in court. It’s you admins who fire the shots information wise and decide what information is and isn’t distributed (until court transcripts are released).
How do you get this information? You’re in direct communication with Speak Asia’s management/lawyers of course.
Anyone would think a pyramid scheme is some new brilliant concept that nobody has ever heard of. It’s not, they’ve been around since the 1920s.
You don’t need a court to tell you that there’s something wrong with paying out commissions primarily on membership fees based on how many people can be recruited.
You also don’t need a court to tell you there’s no way company’s were paying Speak Asia 3.8 million USD a survey – the minimum amount Speak Asia had to collect for a year straight to prove they weren’t just relying on membership fees for revenue.
You might believe a pyramid scheme is legitimate, but that doesn’t make it so. I’m not asserting that I believe a pyramid scheme isn’t legitimate, that is fact.
It doesn’t matter if the company is willing to pay, banks don’t do business with fraudulent companies. Speak Asia know this full well and that is the only reason they’re stating they are willing to pay.
Not going to happen until they are completely cleared of criminal charges. Given it’s a pyramid scheme, that’s not going to happen.
Otherwise it’ll be open season for pyramid schemes nation wide in India – and that’s crazy talk.
Again, you’re misunderstanding what this blog is about. I don’t really care about panelists money – I care about the operations of Speak Asia and that’s what I’m following here. I’m writing about you and your admins as you’re obviously part of Speak Asia’s operations and it’s attempted control of its members – despite the fact it’s a scam and being investigated as one.
Don’t you get it? The EOW have named Speak Asia as the biggest MLM fraud in the history of India. When the company is shut down and all the fan sites and facebook pages disappear, these blog entries will be all that’s left.
Hopefully it will stop others from falling for such blatant scams in the future (so we can avoid the whole ‘waah give us back our hard earned money thing).
Yes it sucks losing your money but the world over, this is what happens when you participate in pyramid schemes. It’s why they are illegal – because sooner or later the recruits run out and management run with the money. Exactly what has happened here. Management are overseas in hiding and they’ve already siphoned off the bulk of the money overseas.
It’s gone.
Mate believe me, I’ve been lookin at MLM models for nearly 3 years in detail and there’s no mystery about Speak Asia’s model. It’s a simply paired binary that relies on membership fees to pay out commissions. Like digital downloads the e-zine is just to give the opportunity an air of legitimacy on technicalities, but at the end of the day it’s the membership fees that generate revenue and it’s out of this revenue commissions are paid.
If you think otherwise, I suggest you go and have a look at the business model Speak Asia actually used, not this crap about products and services which was never implemented.
@anju
No. Melvin was arrested because he can’t explain a $3000 fund transfer to him by Speak Asia.
Why the President of AISPA is receiving kickbacks from Speak Asia is grounds enough to hold him for 7 days, and a judge agreed.
Crasto can’t explain it because it incriminates him. Not to mention the fact that 1.2 million panelists would be furious their company is paying its cheerleaders under the table.
Who else is getting $3000 kickbacks to keep Speak Asia’s panelists in check?
Suuuuuuuuure he was :rolleyes:.
You mean Bahirwani got in a car and fled Mumbai the second he heard about Crasto’s arrest.
Well he did, so get over it.
@Ritesh
You dont think Speak Asia paying Crasto $3000 USD recently when they’re not supposed to be trading and Crasto asserts he’s just a regular panelist isn’t suspicious?
It’s freaking outrageous and a judge agreed. Regular panelists have nothing and the company is instead using their money to pay it’s cheerleaders conduct a PR campaign to keep them all subdued so it can get on with laundering the stolen money out of India through as many channels as needed until it cannot be traced.
Upon which point it will be transferred to the Manoj Kumar, Harendar Kaur, Tarak Bajpai and Ram Sumiran Pal retirement funds. This is what the EOW are trying to stop.
Where the $3000 came from is of the utomost importance in chasing up the money trail… let’s hope Crasto co-operates over the next 6 days.
@Faujdar
Your media and law don’t change the fact that Speak Asia’s business model is a blatant pyramid scheme.
Last I checked, pyramid schemes are illegal to run in India.
Neither are relevant to Speak Asia’s business model. Stick to the topic please.
You dont think Speak Asia paying Crasto $3000 USD recently when they’re not supposed to be trading and Crasto asserts he’s just a regular panelist isn’t suspicious?-soapbox
HOW do YOU know the amount has been credited to melvyn’s account recently and has not been lying there since april when saol payments were regular?WHERE does it say this amount has been credited to his account AFTER the company stopped payments?please prove this or stop being deranged.
read ashokji’s update.
Now Bahirwani is releasing an update that essentially claims the EOW ‘could not have made the statment quoted by them.
What a load of crap, of course they made the statement, that’s why they are publicly quoted as doing so.
Bahirwani’s argument is pretty much ‘nananan didn’t happen coz I said so’. – BULLSHIT!
He also claims that EOW Chennai and EOW Delhi ‘cleared’ Speak Asia. Since when were either of these bodies investigating Speak Asia?? Were FIR’s filed in either of those cities?
Again horseshit without proof. Everybody knows Mumbai EOW are the ones criminally investigating Speak Asia as far as the EOW are concerned.
Bahirwani must be really desperate as he’s not really known for publishing unsubstantiated claims. The official line seems to be ‘it’s not possible Speak Asia sent $3000 to Crasto because it’s just not possible’.
I think the EOW disagree, and they obviously had enough proof to convince a judge that Crasto was high risk enough to remand in custody for a week.
Bahirwani states the EOW were looking to arrest him too, I guess the fact they didn’t clears him of receiving kickbacks from Speak Asia for being one of their unofficial mouthpieces. For now anyway.
Because a judge wouldn’t care if it was lying there since April and if it was, it’s easily explainable.
Furthermore if it was legit, Crasto would have easily been able to explain it. He hasn’t explained it because it incriminates him and exposes the lie that he’s just a panelist.
A judge agreed and now he’s in custody.
Where’s your proof anju?
It’s freaking outrageous and a judge agreed.-soapbox
WRONG.the judge ,giving benefit of doubt to the eow allowed 7 days remand so that the eow could understand where the funds came from[duh.from speakasia].there are 1.5 million panelists and everybody was receiving money till april.how many accounts is the eow going to check?
Judges don’t give benefit of the doubt, judges listen to evidence and either agree or disagree.
When the EOW presented it’s evidence and an explanation of the situation at hand, the judge agreed Crasto was too much of a flight risk to release on bail. That’s why the EOW have him for a week.
We all know what happens when Speak Asia officials are released on bail, they dissappear.
Just ask Tarak Bajpai… oh wait.
Most likely just the ones they suspect of recieving kickbacks from Speak Asia from bank accounts overseas. There’s a six month investigation going on and Crasto’s arrest is just part of it.
Where’s your proof anju?-soapbox
well wheres yours?the toi report does not say ANYTHING about WHEN the funds were deposited.this is purely your inference and your THOUGHTS about what and how the judge thought.
melvyn has been arrested for participating in a ponzi scheme. today two more guys got picked up.guess eow will say they were running saol too.what a load of crap.
He also claims that EOW Chennai and EOW Delhi ‘cleared’ Speak Asia. Since when were either of these bodies investigating Speak Asia?? Were FIR’s filed in either of those cities?-soapbox
just because you dint know about it doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening.
What else would a judge agree that is severe enought to remand Crasto in custody for 7 days, what else other than a recent payment by Speak Asia has anything to do with the criminal investigation currently being undertaken by the EOW?
The judge granting custody to the EOW is proof enough.
All you have is ‘nananan not true because I said so’. Against 7 days of custody being granted to the EOW, that’s weak.
A judge agreed Speak Asia is a ponzi scheme? Oh my!
I wasn’t aware Speak Asia had been legally declared a ponzi scheme yet – so how can a judge grant the EOW custody of Crasto because he participated in a ponzi scheme? Or is Crasto involved in ponzi schemes other than Speak Asia?
As for the other two guys, were they arrested and if so who are they? Why hasn’t this information been circulated amongst panelists?
Were FIRs filed in either of these cities? On what basis were the EOW Chennai and Delhi allegedly investigating Speak Asia?
And again, if they were investigating and AISPA knew about it, why was this information not relayed to panelists?
EOW investigations into the largest MLM pyramid scheme in Indian history don’t just pop up out of the blue, so without proof I’m still calling bullshit on this one.
And how did Bahirwani come to know about these alleged investigations? Did Speak Asia management make a long distance call from Dubai and tell him themselves?
They’re obviously paying Crasto for something… do Speak Asia pay Bahirwani for every AISPA update he publishes too?
we r in deep corruption, politicians want their cut, agencies r dancing on thier beat, media is mostly intrested to spread negativity. why is moderation here? I can’t comment directly. plz help.
Hello Oz,
I can’t understand what you are talking about? Ok., i don’t know these news reporting is correct or not at the same time i don’t want to do any research on them to find out the truth because it is non of my business but what i’m coming to tell you is.. you also accepting that Melvyn Crasto is a Senior Panelist and already would have a big group of members under him and surely he would have earned a huge amount, right?
why unnecessarily company has to transfer him just 1.5 lakhs (INR) for his expenses towards the association? Can’t he take care of the expenses of his own for that small amount (?) compare to the amount what he has earned earlier which might be few crores?
Even though he knows very well that getting funds even a single penny in that way will place him in trouble in future if transaction made using his bank account..! Why he accept that small fund in that way from Speak Asia at this time? I don’t know correctly EoW has told that thing or not, if they told i’ll tell it might be for fooling media persons & you..
Oz & K. Chang,
Earlier, I was supporting all your articles / posts / comments and also i have appreciated your work in different ways but now i’m so sorry to tell that after reading all your comments and the posts or articles you are writing again & again – i can easily tell – not with just only suspicion but also confirm that you are working against this company.
You are a paid agent to work against this company called Speak Asia, it is mere waste of time to see all your articles as informative (of course so many information is there about the company which you are taking into different direction which you want to because it is the work you are carrying for which you are paid for..!, you are not creating any awareness but just writing against this particular company straightly opposing each & every activity of the company & also its members or so called panelists.
You are doing with a mission & vision to destroy this company which has very strong online backing by many of its members even after company goes dormant, i suspected you until yesterday after reading all your comments but today i can firmly or strongly tell you that – YOU ARE A PAID AGENT by some big corporate company and the way of expression and style of writing is matching with the people who use to write articles / giving comments in moneylife.
You are not operating from abroad, you are operating only from India, many of the information what you are giving is completely fake & false but you are doing everything intelligently..! That is the catch here since initially i was one of the person who has accepted all your writings & posts! But now..! No way..! I understood the truth..!
Nothing to comment more than that for each & every post or comment here in Behind MLM, a paid group to write against a company..!
Let’s wait & watch what’s going to happen for Speak Asia in future?
Because it’s not relevant to whether it’s violating the law or not. If a fraudster agrees to pay back his victims, it doesn’t make him innocent of commiting fraud.
I am against corruption and fraud. My views on MLM is detailed in another post:
https://behindmlm.com/companies/speak-asia-online/finally-speak-asia-charged-with-money-laundering/#comment-41872
Correction: it’s what they SAY to be their business model, which does not correspond with what was posted on their website or what they actually DID.
THAT, in itself, is fraud.
Thanks Ritesh. It seems my efforts have paid off.
Anju is not an admin of our group at all, hence please don’t try to mix and match comments of two individuals.
The AISPA was formed for this purpose only. We can’t believe whatever is being shown / published in media . They are known to twist the words. And when any AISPA updates comes they come after confirmation of facts and are on not on any assumptions or hear say comments.
This is the real fear of this entire Anti speakasian family that once speaksia launches no other corporate would be able to work.
The company’s revenue model was fully explained on their site and you might have also read it.
As per the reply of company, Revenue is coming from aggregating Panels and exchanging those panels for a cost.
If you are not aware of the term panelists, then I would like to elaborate here that as per my understanding Panelists are nothing but consumers who have willingly come together to participate in any ad campaign or opinion poll and are not those people who are unwillingly targeted by the telemarketing companies. The aggregating of panels could have helped various Telemarketing companies to find a target audience who currently keep om targeting unaware people by buying data from mobile companies and other publicly available websites. Remember Indian govt has started a Do Not Call registry and these telemarketers are now looking for alternate sources to collect customers database. What better than SPEAK ASIA and its panelists. Let the company get registered here and we should see a good business revolution.
That’s what I have been trying to explain since morning. You simply don’t care about the families who are suffering. You simply care that your blog should be successful so that you get more and more options to earn revenue.
But we do care about us and our fellow panelists and their innocent families that’s why you have been targeting us to come in panic by quoting comments from our page.
Since you are not ready to open up your minds and accept the new thing you will not be able to cherish this new concept which will revolutionize the way business is done atleast in FMCG segment.
I can keep on quoting your comments and replying but what I really can infer from all your comments and replies to my statements is that :
You are simply desperate to prove Speakasia is wrong. Mate tell me one thing when you say pyramid schemes are all ILLEGAL, then why the companies like Admatrix were registered in INDIA . Why was RMP allowed to work. Why is NMart still working. What did this so called EOW did for that company called Admatrix or for that matter Ram survey which has simply shut its shop with in few months of its launch.
And when there comes a company called SPEAK Asia you are all hell bent on proving that this is wrong. I am just pulling the Positives out of SAOL Management’s comments and you are pulling out negative comments therefrom.
As regards business model, I already confirmed that I am a panelist and not SAOL employee / representative who can get access to the company’s exact business model. The company has its business model in place and that’s why it has been able to vindicate its stand in media. All my comments on this forum are only based on the excerpts of that business model shared with us, the video of which you also might have seen
I will again emphasise that SAOL is not a simple survey filling company. Now It is a community of a few lakh people who were ready to buy as well as sell the products from its proposed new e-commerce site which never came into operation due to all this investigation thing. This would have helped company establish its footprint in ecommerce and mcommerce through precision marketing instead of mass marketing and soon this will revolutionise the way FMCG business is done in India presently.
New Ideas always face resistance and the same is being seen here.
I am anti-fraud, and SpeakAsia is a fraud based on various facts already available. I need no other reason. Nor does your government.
It is your freedom to IMAGINE various reasons for my behavior. I believe that’s called paranoia.
You have no proof that it happened either, other than Bahirwani’s statement. There are other explanations, such as
a) panelists in those cities were encouraged to drop their PIL in hopes of the Lakhoti panel giving some resolution
b) EOW in those cities dropped their investigation or put it in hold pending Lakhoti panel resolution
c) EOW in those cities did not “clear” SAOL and Bahirwani was wrong
Until either EOW or Bahirwani provide proof or other evidence contradict his statement, it’s just “hearsay”.
That’s assuming that boat is worth repairing, and you’re fighting the rescuers who’s trying to get you all away from the sinking boat, and the people who are telling you the boat is sinking, calling them liars who talk ‘crap’.
Oh, and Sanjeev… The captain already abandoned your boat.
@Oz
Anyone able to translate that from Hindhi? It mentions hotels and Ram Sumiran Pal.
There’s also a boatload of conversation there too – http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=260997453928920&id=121965407832126”
This dinner meet of the coterie confirms that Machinder Waykar is very close to SAOL mastermind Ram Sumiran Pal.
Ashok Bahirwani has reported today about arrest of Machinder Waykar.
Melwin Crasto and Machinder Waykar are very close associates of Pal Bros. Obviously the noose is getting closer to Pal Bros. Hence, the panic among the cheerleaders. Bahirwani is also vainly hoping that “they do not label them also as prime promoters and chief perpetrators of crime” while knowing fully well the reality.
Again you are just twisting the words and not trying to understand our feelings.
Your feelings have no relevance on the FACTS, nor does it have any bearing on a CRIMINAL investigation.
I do sympathize with you… though I consider you lot as victims of fraud (on many levels). The really sad part is you all are only after your money, not about seeing justice done.
YOU BEHINDTHEMLM people are just playing childish games and wasting your precious time writing Such Big Articles…
If You have Solid Hand Written Proofs or court orders or any letters or replies in written form which go against Speak Asia then Post here we would like to see them …..
You are Really a Cowards and fighting on your own forum…
Even a cock crows over his own dunghill
You please stop these all this shitty things you are doing without any solid proofs….
Too many Indian supporters of SpeakAsia just come here and post either in Hindi, or stupid statements like, “SAOL good, government bad. Bad men must die, so we get money.” (not exact phrasing, but that’s the gist of it)
I’m sure you can appreciate Oz’s caution in not letting just random comments appear. As you can see, he lets comments on all sides come through… if they are at least reasonably phrased.
@Chang,
but they r saying realty, realy our govt. is not good at all, they need only profit cut illegaly. Many fraud compenies r working here successfuly coz they have contacts.
Speak asia does’nt have any politicaly relation. So they r prooving them wrong. we r facing actual position. ur all comments based on media reports, facebook and blogs. there is no use of ur any research coz it’s not original. don’t confuse others to just make money frm ur blog. come to realty.
Secondaly if here is moderation thn why ozsoap is opposing post blocking at facebook groups, ask mark zuckerberg to romove this facility.
Haaaah…have been following this ‘behind MLM thing’ very closely for the last few days and have to say that they stick to the topic which at the moment are harsh for any Speak Asian.
If it’s a pyramid then it should leave our country.If its not, then by every possible means, should stay and flourish.Let the court decide on the criminal charges;as and when it does.No matter who says what,lastly the verdict counts.
Yes some Demigods in both the segments(pro n against) do live for a while. Do we need all of these???..think the simplest answer to this would be, yes, but only till now because we were relying on smaller sources to be fed with either strength or clarity…….
now let’s just concentrate on the proceedings of the court and dump the rest no matter how well they have been thought to keep an argument running unofficially..what a waste ultimately!
@ K. Chang,
For you FACT is just the news which came in newspaper, tomorrow if you pay any PR Agency and ask them to publish a news and after publishing you can claim it as a true fact (in India), you know that it is very much possible in India…
The same Times Of India (TOI) has given advertisement of SpeakAsia for a full half page & also full page so many times, they have been paid for that, same way they can be paid for publishing news in newspaper by any PR Agency, it happens only in India.
By the way you people are from moneylife group, you all are only Indians residing in India and also earning money to write against SpeakAsia, those articles written against SpeakAsia were not written by a foreigner as you are claimbing, you people are acting & also cheating..!
I do sympathize with you.. Though I consider you lot as paid post writers, beggars begging money or getting money from corrupts & frauds (on many levels) who wants to stop loyal way of income, who wants to stop money reaching needy, under-employed, unemployed, physically challenged, those students who were in need of money badly for their education, those people who wants money for their daily living – for their food & shelter &
also you are the one who wants to stop getting back the money by panelists from the company, who wants to stop the company who is ready to distribute the payment to all its panelists, you are the person who is in jealous with SpeakAsia thinking if this company comes back surely it’ll be a big set back for your company who gives you or pays you money… good sum of money or lumpsum money…
The really sad part is you all are only after the money totally which your company gives to you for writing against SpeakAsia, not interested in seeing justice done in a proper way or prompt way. Even after the justice has done to SpeakAsia, surely you won’t accept it at any cost, you will start criticizing and write Govt. is bad, Supreme Court is bad, SpeakAsia is Bad, Bad men must die, so we get money, more money, You are Good (not exact phrasing, but that’s the gist of it).
Graft is indeed a problem in various countries. However, that does NOT address the problem: is SAOL a pyramid scheme? According to Indian law, it is. (It just haven’t been convicted in a court of law yet)
So what you’re actually saying is the government is against SAOL because government did not get any bribes/graft.
It STILL doesn’t answer the question: Is SAOL a pyramid scheme?
The problem is your “reality” consists of people who are all in SAOL for the money, and thus are NOT neutral, whereas WE don’t have a stake in SAOL.
You are also showing symptoms of cultish behavior, where you are increasingly radicalized as you only associate with “like-minded” people (i.e. other “SpeakAsians”) and reject any information that doesn’t fit your world view.
Chinese have a saying, “Those inside the plot are blind, those outside the plot see clearly.” I’m sure you Indians have a similar saying.
The moderation here is to keep things “on topic”, not to restrict viewpoints, and you are no longer on topic.
PR agency don’t publish news. PR agency issue “press releases”. If you are claiming that PR agencies have control of the media that’s a separate issue altogether and not relevant to whether SAOL is a pyramid scheme or not.
A scam sucks IN money, and pay out a tiny fraction of people to make it look legit. Clearly, you only care about your slide of the pie, not worrying where the money actually came from (answer: your fellow panelists).
@chang,
hey mate, nothing personal, m very much at topic, actually u r base is wrong. and I’m more intelligent thn u. m writing in english but u can not write in hindi. (m Indian)
ok, if speakasia is a pyramid scheme, thn why pyramid schemes r running in many countries ? now m wid u & wanna stop all this.
give us the solution.
You’ve gone from discussing SpeakAsia to insulting my intelligence, and you still claim you’re “on topic”? You’re on an English blog. My first language is not English either, and I’m doing fine. So enough with your lousy excuses and claims of superior intelligence.
You’re going off topic again. We’re NOT talking about pyramid schemes in general, but SpeakAsia in particular. Your attempt at “red herring” is clumsy.
Yes, there’s a gap between one is suspect in a crime vs. convicted of a crime. That doesn’t make the victims any less victimized if the suspect had not been convicted. What’s really amazing about a scam is the victims are WILLING to be defrauded.
To borrow the boat metaphor again (I know, I’m pretty much flogging it to death)
SpeakAsians: the boat is in danger of sinking but we’re trying to plug the leak (hey, I didn’t write this, Sanjeev did)
Government (EOW/CID/etc.): you need to get off the boat so we can recover your belongings before it sinks! Your captain already jumped off and swam off! The whole boat is built of straw and leaking like a sieve!
SpeakAsians: no! the boat’s fine! You just want your hands on our belongings!
Government: The captain who’s gone dropped half of your belongings over the side a while back! Get off and help us save the rest!
SAOL supporters: no! the boat’s not sinking! You are all liars! You just want to charge us some rescue fee!
Yes, this was done in sarcasm. But there’s a lot of truth in it. Will you recognize it?
They’ve been published by Indian newspapers, except you SpeakAsians refuse to consider them, claiming you don’t trust the media to tell the truth. It’s a circular argument.
NOTHING short of of the various CEOs confessing on camera that it’s a scam would convince you it’s a scam. In fact, even then, you’ll probably claim they were coerced or the video’s a fake or something.
@Faujdar
To stop spam. Most blogs have comment moderation turned on for this reason.
As for the Hindi thing, I don’t speak it and I run this blog. Contribute in English or don’t contribute at all. Use Google Translate if you have to.
The solution is for the relevant law enforcement agencies to take them down. Given that any idiot with a computer and backend script can launch a pyramid scheme these days and given interantional boundaries (Speak Asia and Singapore for example), there simply isn’t enough logistical manpower to stop all pyramid schemes.
And as high as the penalties might be for running them, they’re still always only going to be a deterrent. Lookat the penalty for murder, it’s pretty hefty in most countries but murder still happens.
The next best thing to apprehending the crooks who run these scams is public awareness. I analyse MLM business models and companies and publish my findings. People can then read and build on my information and/or verify it themselves.
Regarding Speak Asia, to date nobody has name a single company who paid Speak Asia 3.8 million USD for a survey for a year straight. This is the amount Speak Asia had to charge companies to do surveys for them if they wanted to generate more revenue then they did from membership fees.
Nobody has named a company because there are no companies buying surveys off Speak Asia. It was always just a membership fee recruitment scam.
And that’s my problem because…?
The news aren’t reporting, the news are quoting the EOW. The EOW convinced a judge that Speal Asia transferring money to him when he claims to be just a panelist was a serious enough matter to hold Crasto as a flight risk in custody for 7 days.
Believe what you want, that’s what happened.
Because that’s not why they did it. Speak Asia are paying all these senior panelist cheerleaders to keep on dangling that ‘you’ll get your money back’ carrot for as long as possible.
Every day gone is another 24 hours for Harendar Kaur, Manoj Kumar, Tarak Bajpai and Ram Sumiran Pal to run further.
Well he’s the one unable to explain the transfer from Speak Asia. What other conclusion is there to draw? Guilty as sin.
Really… you’re going to start with this horseshit again? I’m not even based in India and personally couldn’t give a crap what happens to Speak Asia and its members.
I do run this MLM blog though and within the context of the blog have a great interest in following the collapse of one of the largest MLM frauds of late.
BehindMLM was started before Speak Asia even existed. But please, continue to believe the conspiracy theory that I work for your competitors or the government. This isn’t the first time people have claimed this, it pretty much comes up every time I write something a company’s (any company, not just Speak Asia) members disagree with.
Rather then address and analyse the information (as I have done), company members start off with ‘WAAAH YOU WORK FOR OUR COMPETITORS!’ and then shortly afterwards, ‘WAAAH YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND OUR BUSINESS’.
Both are a load of crap and a quick look at the publishing history on here (which goes back way beyond Speak Asia’s launch will confirm this.
I know it’s easy to just write me off as a paid agent now that there’s a huge suspicion on the admins of the various pro-Speak Asia groups and AISPA because of Melvin’s $3000 payment from Speak Asia – but look at the history of this blog, it goes way before Speak Asia even existed.
Yeah… I except that I don’t. Have a look at my other blog, (which has been running for even longer than BehindMLM) I go to some pretty extreme lengths to pretend like I’m not in India now don’t I.
If I’m not online I’m out exploring Taiwan for articles on OzSoapbox. But no please, I’m a paid ‘agent’. Of course.
That’s called writing coherently. I know you’re used to reading the appalling text published on Facebook and Speak Asia’s fansites, but I do try to maintain a level of coherancy on here.
‘YOU WRITE TOO WELL!’ – Can’t say I’ve ever had that used against me before. Actually why are we discussing this – oh that’s right, yet another attempt at detracting from the issue of Melvin Crasto’s $3000 Speak Asia deposit that he can’t explain.
I could be the man on the moon or the President of India, none of which changes what’s going on. So how about we stick to what’s going on hey.
I never said she was, but she’s high up in AISPA. I group all you head honchos in the same basket. You’ve all got eachother on speed dial and are well connected.
Uh hang on, the media recently quoted the EOW. I know you paid shills love to criticise the media but they’re quoting the EOW (and have been for some time).
A judge agreed that Crasto’s unexplained $3000 deposit was serious enough to keep him in custody for 7 days.
You can try and pin this on the media publishing misinformation but they quoted the EOW. And the EOW had a judge agree with them.
What happened to ‘let the courts sort it out?’ crap you people were pushing so hard when you got your mediation date?
What, let me guess the judge that granted custody to the EOW was bribed? You guys have been crying for the EOW to do something for weeks now in the courts… well here it is. Let’s hope there’s more to come as the results of their criminal investigation bear fruit.
Please, you’re ‘us vs. them’ crap might work on Facebook but you can’t write this site off as being just anti-speak Asia. That’s way to narrow a scope for a MLM blog that has existed before Speak Asia came about and well exist long after.
I think the term you’re looking for is ‘anti-pyramid scheme’.
Damn straight I did. Out and out recruitment scam using a paired binary model calculated daily. There is no mystery here.
If you’re going to push the survey profit was larger than membership fees profit so Speak Asia’s business model was legitimate line, you do realise this means that the company had to charge 3.8 million USD for a survey 1 year straight just to match the income generated by membership fees.
More if they want to prove they made more from survey sales than they did from membership fees.
Please advise the name of one company that paid Speak Asia 3.8 million dollars upwards for a commissioned survey?
I know you’re new here but I’ve been fleshing out the finer details of Speak Asia’s nonsense since April. The ‘we have corporate clients’ angle is bunk because no company was paying Speak Asia 3.8 million USD for surveys for a year, plain and simple.
So Speak Asia had a year to register themselves, why didn’t they?
Because they knew they were running an obvious pyramid scheme that would have been denied registration. Also they never had any intentions to register themselves.
Get the money off to Singapore and run away was always the game plan.
This is a MLM blog, not a ‘waaah we invested in a pyramid scheme give us our money back blog’.
Your attempts to superimpose the lack of empathy I have for Speak Asia’s members as some sort of hit on credibility on myself is weak. The hard truth is the money has been siphoned off to Singapore and laundered away. It’s gone.
Stick to Speak Asia and their shoddy business model. The only people who benefit from dangling the ‘we’ll still get paid’ carrot infront of panelists are those running the scam and those being paid by them to keep dangling the carrot.
I’m much more interested in the criminal side of things. Lets not forget this is the biggest MLM fraud India has ever seen. That’s worth paying attention to if you follow the MLM industry as I do.
Please not this horseshit again. Pyramid schemes have been around for years and officially recognised as a business model for nearly a century.
There is nothing revolutionary about a paired binary compensation plan and recruitment bonues. It’s old hat scam.
…you must be new here. Have you read anything on this blog other than the Speak Asia articles?
Were they? Registered by who?
And it’s not my job to bust these companies, I simply write about them – as I’ve done with Speak Asia. Want to see what I thought of the AdMatrix scam, have a read!
As for other companies, I can’t write about every opportunity under the sun – but I do put out articles frequently enough when I can. Trying to discredit me because I haven’t written about every MLM company in the world is silly.
And it has nothing to do with Speak Asia or their scam business model.
What is there to prove?
They made revenue from membership fees and paid out panelists from these fees.
It’s a scam!
Well I’m in no way involved in the company and I had access to their business model to. IT WAS ON THERE WEBSITE FOR A YEAR AVAILABLE TO ANYONE!
Additionally Google still brings up a ton of slideshows and presentations further explaining the model, it’s a basic recruitment scam!
Excerpts???
What other commissions were paid to panelists other than what was in the business model published on the website???
NONE!
Please don’t even bother to go down this path.
Proposed is the keyword there, IT NEVER HAPPENED! You cannot announce a business model you never implemented and claim it as your active business model. Furthermore any such announcement does in no way negate the past 12 months of fraud you committed in running a simple recruitment scam (May 2010-May 2011).
Any business model of Speak Asia’s mentioning products was not implemented and therefore is completely irrelevant in the context of the company’s criminal activity.
Again, there is nothing new about pyramid schemes. They have been around for longer than you or I have been alive. Perhaps even your parents too.
I didn’t bother reading past the first line of your wall of text. The media in this instance are directly quoting the EOW by name.
You can’t infuse media bias or agenda in a direct quote. It’s what the EOW said.
The same EOW that a judge agreed to grant custody of Crasto because he received $3000 recently from Speak Asia he couldn’t explain.
You want to talk about censorship, this is now what happens if you try to share information that the admins of the Speak Asia Powers Facebook group disagree with or don’t want other panelists to know;
And the (now censored) Speak Asia PR campaign rolls on…
Tommorow should be a blast. If things are simply delayed again nobody is going to know anything because the admins will keep quiet and so will AISPA.
@Observer
I note that the link is now broken. Do you have screen shots?
It appears whatever else was on there connecting Crasto and Waykar to the Pal brothers was too damaging for anyone else to see.
Wouldn’t mind a translation of your quoted hindi from one of your ‘intelligent’ Indians;
Interesting to note that Bahirwani is now equating being a ‘prime promoter‘ of Speak Asia with being a ‘chief perpetrators of crime‘.
Thanks Oz for clarifying. Just tell me one thing now if Speakasia is a scam which you have been repeatedly trying to say, what would you do had you been in our place. Won’t you fight to get your money back.
What would you do to get your money back.
Yes we were fools , idiots who entered this company based on the big promises but now what else can we do instead of demanding money back and looking forward to courts for producing an amicable solution to all these.
Just simply writing that we the admins are in bed with speakasia management is hurting my sentiments a lot and I can not accept that all..
No I am not a representative of SAOL at all. I am a common man who has put in 11K but is yet to recover a single penny. I am an optimist pulling out the positives from what ever the company is saying. Name of the clients is not some thing which company is hiding. Names of the clients are available in their financial statements posted on ACRA website of singapore govt if company officials are to be believed. Yes I have not seen those financials till now but i am believing what company is saying. The following is a reply which was published on the company website
“Panel Business operates on the lines of multiple exchanges where panel providers are pooled in and the clients can take their pick of the panels based on their profile requirement directly or through brokers. The panel profile can be based on demographics and many other parameters. The selected profiled panel is picked up like in any other exchange and the work is allocated to them. Hence the panels cannot know the clients name directly. (e.g. in a stock exchange we buy stocks but at the time of buying we do not know who is selling those stocks)
This is the company’s confidential data, which unfair competitors would dearly love to know; hence the names have not been publically disclosed .However our books of accounts clearly show the details of income from panel business and the agencies who gave us work.“
As regards revenue Model the company`s reply as published on the website is reproduced below..
“`Speakasia is not earning any revenue from the panelists in India. On the contrary, SAOL provides reward points(RPs) to India based panelists, for filling up correct surveys and for participating in other activities of SAOL.
Not every Panelist earns RP’s equally. If a panelist chooses to not participate in the SAOL portal or in any RP earning activity, they will NOT earn the RP’s. Therefore if you do not earn, you also do not get paid out. These earned reward points can be either encashed by the panelist or utilized for purchasing selected goods offered by SAOL.
So it is clear that company is aggregating Panels and exchanging those panels for a cost. And paying amount in name of the surveys might have been a business strategy to accumulate panelists (a scam in your words).
This is only my understanding of the facts and data as presented before me on various forums and should not be construed otherwise.
But i would love to hear your comments on the above statements .
Me personally?
11,000 rupees is what $200 USD or so? So if it was me personally I’d swallow my stupidity and move on.
If 11,000 rupees was a big deal to me, I’d accept that the company is a scam and realise that if I was going to get any money back, it certainly wouldn’t be via the company itself.
The banks wont touch Speak Asia with criminal investigations open into it. That much is clear because they initially froze Speak Asia’s accounts themselves (the RBI simply highlighted the risks of handling the funds of a company under criminal investigation).
Organising a flash mob everytime someone is arrested and decrying every bit of information in the news that is critical and negative of Speak Asia isn’t just ‘trying to get your money back’, it’s beleiving in the scam and trying to convince others that pyramid schemes are some new and revolutionary business model the world at large simply doesn’t get.
You claim you’re just panelists who want your money back but there’s way more to the PR machine then that. From Facebook (published 20 hours ago);
Then explain Crasto’s $3000 payment. If one of the admins is being paid by Speak Asia then it stands to reason you all are.
Why else would you censor the Facebook group within 24 hours after the announcement of Crasto’s arrest?
So where is this list?! Why hasn’t it been published?! The biggest flaw in Speak Asia’s push for legitimacy is that nobody paid them $3.8 million USD per survey for a year. Don’t you think if they had proof of which company’s paid them this they’d publish it??
If Speak Asia made more money from selling surveys than they did from membership fees than they are legitimate. Don’t you think if they could prove this by publishing a list of clients (forget competition confidentiality, we’re talking about the legitimacy of the company here!) they would?
They can’t of course because there are no clients and the entire thing is a lie. No company paid Speak Asia money for their inaccurate surveys in which one person can reply up to 10 times with their sub panels. Certainly not 3.8 million USD each week for a year either.
If they could prove it there’d be no criminal investigation, yet here we are.
Panelists pay membership fees to join the company. Right from the start this expalantion is a lie.
What’s your point? If you join a pyramid scheme and don’t recruit you don’t get paid. Sorry was there supposed to be some sort of groundbreaking reveleation there?
The bit in bold was never implemented, and therefore is not the business model of Speak Asia – another lie by the company.
And if you disagree, please provide the number of panelists who purchased any goods (and what they purchased) from Speak Asia between May 2010 and May 2011.
And what is the basis of these panels? Filling out surveys the company doctored themselves? That’s a bogus foundation that exists simply to mask the main source of commissions themselves – recruiting others and being paid out on the paired binary commission within the compensation plan.
The surveys are not a strategy, the compensation plan and business model are. The surveys have nothing to do with recruiting more people to the scam.
Speak Asia didn’t generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on the promise of you can make $7-$20 a week filling out surveys, they did so because of the commissions offered on the recruitment of new members (that is the scam).
Again, for Speak Asia to be legit they need to prove they earned more in selling surveys to corporate clients than they did from taking in membership fees – They cannot prove this because the numbers don’t add up (this is where the $3.8 million USD per survey (2 a week) for 52 weeks straight (May 2010-May 2011) figure comes from).
Forget that we’re talking about Speak Asia for a second here, I’m sure even you will agree no company is paying 3.8 million USD for a simple survey that is inaccurate to buggery (10 responses from one respondent??).
You pretty much sum up your own understanding in one statement ‘i am (blindly) believing what company is saying‘
Crunch the numbers yourself and do the analysis. The compny is pushing a business model they never used, claiming they sold two surveys a week for upwards of $3.8 million USD for 52 weeks and that companies bought these surveys but cannot name a single client, despite being criminally investigated and risking being shut down and legally declared a criminal organisation in court (the EOW have already gone on the record as declaring Speak Asia to be ‘the larges MLM fraud’ in the history of India.
I am no guru and I have not speculated. The analysis on here is based on what happens, not blind faith or ‘i believe the company because they say so’. If Speak Asia say something it has to add up, and upon analysis thus far it hasn’t.
That is the basis of my proposition that the company is a scam. Meanwhile all you have is ‘i believe what the company is saying’.
Why should we not press for this. Let the government for once and all declare that it is illegit. Let the final yes or no please be received. Let our laws become foolproof that again no such scam (If it is a scam) should allow to re appear.
Just because it is a small sum , every next day the new companies start up and then vanish. Always the entry costs are small enough to be swallowed by individuals but the companies come and swallow huge sums which none of the governments take care to get back. Just because its a small sum, we would not sit quite and try to get our money back. No this is not going to happen.
Had we not created this pressure, the investigations which have now reached the supreme court level, would have been dumped like any other scams earlier.
Hang on, I emphasised me personally because I knew you were going to turn whatever I said and superimpose it upon ‘we’.
My answer was what I would do specifically.
As for ‘we’, well you can by all means try to recover your money, but let’s not pretend that is all you senior panelists are doing. You guys believe no crime has been committed and wholly in the legitimacy of Speak Asia’s business model. You’ve admitted that yourselves.
Thus the agenda of panelist payments is dangled like a carrot to retain support of the panelists. Lose that support and things get a whole lot more complicated.
Laws are never foolproof. They can only ever act as a deterrent. Even if Speak Asia is legally ruled a pyramid scheme, that doesn’t stop some other scamsters starting up another scam company – no matter what the penalty for doing so is.
The key is in public awareness.
You want my sympathy because people are stupid enough to continue to join multiple companies again and again and continue to lose their money in obvious scams?
Yeah, that’s not gunna happen either. I have no sympathy for anyone who does not do their due diligence on any MLM company they wish to join, regardless of the amount they have to pay to join.
No ‘investigation’ has reached the Supreme Court level. Your civil PILs have reached the Supreme Court level. This civil action is useless as the criminal side of the matter is still being investigated. And apart from the arrests, which serve to further the criminal investigations, the actual criminal matter of Speak Asia hasn’t been brought before a court yet.
From what I understand the RBI, MCA, ED and possibly CID and EOW too are waiting on a SFIO report to be released in December.
Lahoti cannot order banks to do business with Speak Asia unless he guarantees exemption of any liability on their behalf should the result of the open criminal investigation into Speak Asia result in a criminal judgement against the company.
He’s obviously not in a position guarantee hundreds of millions of dollars now is he.
The civil action will always stall while the criminal action is not resolved. I’m really not expecting much from tommorow other than another date set in the future.
@sanjeev khanna
sanjeev,soapbox is lying when he says castro was credited this amount AFTER speakasia closed down.he has NO proof of this and this is merely his inference.nobody is interested in his inference.pick up the phone and speak to ashok bahirwani. he has seen the bank statements of melvyn and will immediately clarify this point.it is SHAMEFUL for people to point fingers at a decent person like melvyn with NO proof.
this is a truckload of crock being propagated by soapbox based once again only on HIS own inference and has nothing to do with saol’s REAL business model.
people who have seen the business model description as explained to the supreme court and eow chennai and delhi,will laugh at soapbox’s contentions.
and YES the eow chennai and delhi have cleared saol and this will come up in court too.
@anju
Explain why a judge and the EOW would give a flying crap about a payment from Speak Asia before they were shut down?
Explain why Crasto cannot explain the transaction then if it was simply a payment made before the company shut down?
The EOW obviously have proof of this because a judge ordered Crasto into the EOW’s custody for 7 days. Why would the EOW get custody and be able to convince a judge that this was important if they had no proof.
I don’t need proof, the EOW obviously has it and a judge agreed. What happened to trusting your judges anju?
It’s simple maths. 11,000 rupees times the amount of panelist accounts = 3.8 million USD per survey for a year.
This is the amount Speak Asia need to prove they made from selling surveys and they cant.
It’s not inference, it’s simple math.
How many people bought products from Speak Asia between May 2010 and May 2011? On what date did Speak Asia oficially retire the paired binary compensation plan for a product based sales compensation plan?
You’re full of shit Anju and your blind faith is tiresome, here’s a tissue.
Come up in court when?! Where is Bahirwanis PROOF of any of his claims?
Again, why would either Chennai or Mumbai EOW investigate Speak Asia?! Where are the associated FIR’s that would instigate such investigations?
So many questions… and as usual – no answers.
Why you people are just after SAOL , if you go through the order of 14th nov by Hon Supreme Court of Writ Petition 383, it is clearly mention the amicable settlement between the parties can be possible.
are you above supreme court , judges had gone through all the proceedings , and then they order , so just stop spreading rumours without any solid base . its a request
How can you amicably settle anything with a company when there are criminal investigations and lawsuits pending (ED with its money laundering charge)?
We’ll have to wait and see what happens tommorow, and I imagine not much.
what is 11000 to do with every survey. 500 Rs. was the money which was paid to panelists for a survey. Can you be a bit more expalnatory here
Come on OZ, you are behaving childish here. If a Plan was there and was not executed, every one knows why it was not. It was nipped in the bud by arresting the great minds behind this. If your hands are tied and then you are asked to drive, you will not be able to drive and then people will come up and say that you dont know how to drive. Be logical man.
We are not saying this that this can be amicably handled, it is the supreme court of india who has said this.
Explain why a judge and the EOW would give a flying crap about a payment from Speak Asia before they were shut down?-soapbox
the magistrate who allowed remand for melvyn is not seized of the saol matter, he is just the magistrate on duty.if the eow says -judge we are investigating saol for being a ponzi scheme and we have managed to get hold of a senior panelist and want to investigate the funds in his account the magistrate will give benefit of doubt to the eow and allow remand.that’s how the law works.
please do not pass off your inferences as proof here.
So many questions… and as usual – no answers.-soapbox
well nobody’s going to jump the gun and spill the beans to you soapbox. why don’t you just find out by HARD WORK like we do.aispa has hired senior counsel and their staff are able to get us info like the delhi chennai eow info[with the requisite paperwork].ask the press to give you complete info.why ask us?you’re not on our side.
You’re full of shit Anju and your blind faith is tiresome-soapbox
absolutely not soapbox, my contentions are based on actual documentation in court and yours are based merely on your inferences and press articles both of which don’t stand in court.
You’re full of shit soapbox and your blind faith in yourself is tiresome.you bullshit MORE than our press if at all that is possible.
I said before, I sympathize with you, but I’ve also said that there are TWO (or more) ways to get your money back:
1) Trust SAOL to give back your money (despite they transferring lots of crore’s to Singapore before CID got the account frozen)
or
2) Trust your government to seize SAOL property and money (even internationally) and then give back your money.
You guys seem deadset against method 2), even though method 1), trusting someone who had already cheated you, seem to be madness. There really is no other logical explanation to us, outside of India, other than people who are promoting method 1 is attempting some sort of delaying tactic, and the only one who gain from that is… SpeakAsia itself.
That theory was corroborated by the unexplained money in Melvin’s account, as explained by EOW and quoted by your newspapers.
This is a bogus explanation, and here’s why: NO company ever came forward to claim they have hired SpeakAsia for any panelists. Even SpeakAsia revealed that the surveys people had been taking were NOT commissioned by ANY client.
Add to that revelations about this guy who had been designing the surveys that he had simply copied them from Wikipedia and it’s pretty clear that the above explanation is NOT how SAOL is actually doing things.
Then what are the join-up fees for? Why aren’t those count as revenue? What about the test costs? Come on… You really expect us to take your regurgitation of company promo? Did you actually COMPREHEND what you just copied and pasted?
I hate to say this, Sanjeev, but you didn’t look close enough. You simply repeated the words, decided that it sounds good, and accepted it at face value.
Apparently “it may be too good to be true” never even entered your mind. And now, many of your fellow SAOLers don’t even want to hear the questions you SHOULD have asked BEFORE you joined up, much less questions regarding what you just quoted.
(darnit, missed a “blockquote” in that thing. Oz, can you kinda fix that? )
The judge is referring to the panelists and SAOL.
However, that won’t stop the CID and EOW.
Then what are the join-up fees for?-chang
the ‘join up ‘fees is actually subscription money for an ezine and this money does not go to speakasia as it is not the publisher of the ezine.
Didn’t Bahirwani warned that he will NOT speak to people about SpeakAsia over the phone, so don’t call him? Did you, Anju, just told people to ignore that request?
Yet you can’t find any flaws in the inference, can you? So you’re just bad-mouthing it. Unethical debate tactic: “ad hominem” attack. (go look it up)
A business model that was never implemented can be “REAL”? You have a weird sense of reality, Anju.
The judge is referring to the panelists and SAOL.-chang
on WHAT basis have you arrived at this conclusion has the judge said that?
the order clearly reads that the supreme court believes that the matter is to be amicably settled between the PARTIES and not just TWO parties.
the parties [documented in the supreme court]are -panelists,saol,haren ventures,central govt through ministry of finance,rbi,and later the judge impleaded
eow mumbai and income tax[through ctbt].
you can twist the judgement to keep your argument alive, but i can assure you the lahoti committee will follow the law.
You mean the E-zine even its creator said he was doing for SpeakAsia, confirmed by seized communication between him and SpeakAsia?
http://www.mumbaimirror.com/article/2/2011100120111001020731998a655a9f8/Speak-Asia-didn%E2%80%99t-have-clientssurveys-were-fake.html
Oh, but wait, you don’t believe a word EOW says! Too bad.
justice dalveer made the judgement because inspite of being ‘ordered ‘to attend court no agency of the govt bothered to come forward.
the supreme court will automatically infer this to mean that these parties have no provable charge against saol ,but merely have some misgivings against the company which can be resolved with an amicable settlement.eg –
the rbi can ask for some changes,
the mumbai eow can be explained to in detail like the eow delhi and chennai have,
the finance ministry can insist the company gets registered before restarting business etc etc.
if you understand indian law ,this is what the supreme court judgement means.
EOW, CID, and RBI are government agencies and they are investigating SAOL alleged violations of various laws and regulations. Thus, there’s nothing to “resolve amicably” other than the dispute regarding money between panelists and SAOL.
You can’t resolve a criminal investigation “amicably”. You’re either guilty or not guilty.
Chang & OZ – I think i am just wasting my time in debating with you all. You are just hell bent on proving that every pyramid is a scam. Thanks for opening our eyes and let us know that you are not Un biased. We thought debating with you with help us get on some new facts / basis which we are not aware of.
But sorry to state that you are also one of the unofficial mouth piece of anti-spakasians who are hell bent on influencing court’s decision by publishing all the negatives only.
Tell me one decision of the court that has not gone in favour of us panelists till date…
(Ozedit: hindi removed)
Whether or not you publish this. i am not interested now. hope you start using your page for benefits of society and not merely for earning revenues by publishing copy paste comments
OW, CID, and RBI are government agencies and they are investigating SAOL alleged violations of various laws and -chang
yes they are, and when the supreme court orders them to come forth and explain their stand in court ,they are supposed to scurry there and tell the judge why they believe saol is a scam and why they need MORE time to furnish proof.
they should have come and decimated the saol business model and the illegal transfer of funds and the money laundering charges.talking to the press is not enough ,they need to talk to the supreme court.the supreme court would have easily given in to their request for more time.
their absence says it all and that’s why justice dalveer made this judgement.
@Sanjeev
11,000 rupees is the membership fee to join Speak Asia. It’s their one and only source of revenue.
…then it is irrelevant. We’ve been over this ad nauesum with Anju and that resulted in her spitting the dummy and storming off.
Speak Asia’s future plans don’t negate running a simply pyramid scheme between May 2010-May 2011. Nor can they use future plans as a defense for running one.
If what you were going to do absolved you of your past crimes, everyone would be making up bullshit future plans in their defense.
I probably should have explained to you earlier that the level of debate on here is far higher than the publishing of silly JPGs images and random quotes.
And ‘every pyramid is a scam’, stick to Speak Asia please. It’s ok if you can’t explain things when pressed on the nitty gritty, that’s pretty much what will happen when the criminal investigation finally goes to court too.
So in summation, you can’t explain Crasto’s recent $3000 payment.
You can’t explain how Speak Asia are going to prove they charged 3.8 million USD a year for 2 surveys a week.
You can’t explain who paid Speak Asia this much.
It’s ok, Anju spit the dummy over these points too and I understand why. Because you can’t explain it.
This blog is all about analysis of what is going on. It’s entirely reactionary to the events surrounding Speak Asia.
Again, simple minded attempts to write off the information here as ‘anti-speak asia’ don’t work. The us vs. them might work on your censored Facebook group, but this is a whole different ball game.
Fridays custody hearing for one and the Bajpai and co. arrests earlier. But that is irrelevant, you answered my question with a question instead of actually answering it. Typical.
What, and let me guess, every judge who makes a judgement for Speak Asia is?
The EOW had to produce evidence enough to convince the judge Crasto was a flight risk and what they had on him was serious enough to warrant an additional 7 days of interrogation. The judge agreed.
You can spin this anyway you want, that is what happened. And I see you can’t explain the $3000 either.
It’s not hard work when you’re on the Speak Asia payroll like Crasto was.
And what do you, someone who allegedly just helps out at AISPA have to do with a criminal investigation into Speak Asia that has nothing to do with AISPA?
Remember, Crasto wasn’t arrested in an AISPA matter – he’s being interrogated over a recent $3000 payment from Speak Asia.
Hahahahahahahhahahaha. So it’s just co-incidence that the revenue generated by Speak Asia over the past years roughly matches 11,000 * 1.8 accounts?
Lol, Speak Asia didn’t make any money from membership fees. Hahahahhah.
They don’t. Because their stand remains unchanged. ‘We are in the middle of an important criminal inveistigation into Speak Asia and our prescense at your silly civil suits is a waste of our time.
See how far your civil action tommorow goes.
Well, well, well! what a bunch of jokers we have here! That is why our country is in such a mess! Someone spits at us, we allow them to, hit us, we take the blows like idiots!
All the clowns here asking for proof that MELWYN has not done anything wrong why dont you prove that he has done something wrong. You talk about investigation do you know what is guilty or not guilty in an investigation.
They have been investigation for 5 months and have not found anything yet if there was something guilty why havent they found it by now?
How would you like if the govt agencies investigate your house for 5 years just on the ground of suspicion and in the end nothing is found out and you are proved not guilty. Keep investigating all your life them like a loser about this company you will not get any proof. Accept it coz matter of fact is, if you had you would simply come up with it, not whine away with your illogical loser explanations.
Chang and Ozsoapboz are too interested in what the newspapers and media say. They have also said that aishwarya rai’s daughter’s eyes matches with amitabh find out the actual truth! If an actress is linked to someone it becomes breaking news! If India loses a cricket match they r treated as vilains!
So you are talking about the credibility of such people who cant even sell their wives and mothers for news and claiming good proof on those grounds! According to your own logic and not going by anyone;s feelings and emotions (Im sure you dont have any as well) it has to be proved in the court that its a crime if it is which all the clowns have unable 2 do so far.
Why will the court order an amicable settlement go to the supreme court website and check the status of case number 323/2011 type writ petiton (civil) , you will see if you have any common sense of law understanding that is.
And stop being a judge when the court did not find anything wrong despite so many arrests, investigations, what right you have and who are you to show your judgement which reflects sickness as it is in all aspects,
I think it will be better if someone does the same thing to you, arrests you on investigation grounds and keeps you people there for 6 months simply on investigation basis we would call you prospective criminals then..lol by the way by your talk you seem potential critics who can wirte anything for money like the Indian media.
Stop being a judge and making a fool of yourself, there are thousands of cases where people have been kept in house arrest for investigation and have been cleared by the court and this is no different, in our country people exploit in the name of investigation and thats why we have risen like mr anna hazare to stop this corruption once and for all,
the question is not only about speakasia the question is about corrupt people and wicked ones like you who without any knowledge write to make money at the expense of the life of others. Like it is truly said a person who does not know what is own life means will never understand the value of the life of others so pity for all u clowns there and good luck
@Mr X
Wow, what a load of irrelevant nonsense.
Accepting a $3000 payment from Speak Asia was severe enough that a judge ordered him remanded to the EOW’s custody for 7 days for interrogation.
That proof enough?
They found Crasto’s secret $3000 payments from Speak Asia didn’t they? They’ve found Speak Asia manufactured its surveys in Mumbai alone and the ED has charged them with money laundering. Who knows what else the EOW have on them.
We’ll find out when the SFIO report comes out in December no doubt and the whole thing goes to court.
The newspapers and the media are directly quoting the EOW these last few days. You cannot claim a direct quote as media bias, that’s why it’s a direct quote.
That’s just it, it’s civil action. You think the SC is going to let civil action get in the way of taking down the biggest MLM pyramid India has ever seen?
Criminal action always trumps civil. And the authorities know this, hence the lack of bothering to turn up and waste their time with the civil proceedings.
If I ever decide to run a pyramid scheme involving hundreds of US dollars then yes… till then you’re just waffling on.
I’m a guy with a keyboard.. deal with it and welcome to democracy, bitch.
Oz
When you are not able to debate you start abusing. Very good.
in 5 months so that is what they have found a 3000$ payment hahahaha you loser ass even that you cant prove hahahah! Is is the result of a 5 month long investigation process by top govt agencies.
you dont have d guts 2 face d truth dude grow up you just cant take it kiddo a dog can bark loudly in his own kennel but will object when others do the same, I already know what kind of a guy ur u dont even know about democarcy of a country and you talk of keyboard democracy for u it shud be keyboard kennelism!!!
Boo Hoo crybabies who cant take it when given back 2 them suck your own sense and whine away and think about why u r such losers in life crying will not help and neither i wana waste time with screwed asses so cya
@sanjeev
I take my personal freedoms quite seriously.
Still can’t explain those points? No worries, back to posting fluff photos on Facebook then I guess.
@Mr X
You’ve obviously been living under a rock. The EOW have publicly stated that there are no corporate clients, that the surveys were generated in India, that Speak Asia is the biggest ponzi scheme they’ve ever invested, amongst other things.
And it’s a criminal investigation, so who knows what else they have. The $3000 payment sounds as if it’s them getting closer and closer to Ram Sumiran Pal. I hope he’s still in India…
The EOW had to produce evidence enough to convince the judge Crasto was a flight risk and what they had on him was serious enough to warrant an additional 7 days of interrogation. -soapbox
dint you read what i wrote .the eow is investigating saol for being ponzi and arrested melvyn for being a participant in a ponzi scheme.this is allowed under the pcmc act.the eow can arrest all 1.5 million people if they want to and the court will give them remand at least on the eow’s first request.
the money in melvyn’s account has been laying there since april.if saol is bribing anybody they’ll do it in cash. imagine a company which is under advice of eminent lawyers ,and engaged in a mega battle for it’s life ,paying small bribes via bank transfer that too straight into the account of none other than the aispa president.NOBODY is THAT stupid.
or maybe just you are.
Prove that the money came into the account after april or shut up about it.
So it’s just co-incidence that the revenue generated by Speak Asia over the past years roughly matches 11,000 * 1.8 accounts?-soapbox
this calculation of revenue generation is the wild imaginings of you and the press and the eow.saol DOES NOT receive the subscription money.saol has other sources of revenue which have been explained satisfactorily to the supreme court.sorry the eow couldn’t make it to the supreme court to catch saol and it’s business model.for an agency which will stop at nothing to prove saol is illegal.
it’s astounding they dint think it fit to attend the supreme court and argue the saol business model to be a fallacy.that’s what the real task of the eow is isn’t it -to show how saol business model is a pyramid scheme?
They don’t. Because their stand remains unchanged.-soapbox
What stand ?ALL the parties except the panelists,saol and haren ventures NEVER stepped into the supreme court ,neither have they till date filed any reply in the high court Mumbai. NO court knows their STAND. the supreme court understood they had NO STAND and hence the judgment in favor of saol.
this is senseless. either you are daft ,or pretending to be ,for the sake of argument.
see you later alligator.
Your twisted version of events is irrelevant in the face of the facts.
The EOW had enough proof to convince a judge that Crasto received $3000 from Speak Asia and needed to be further interrogated.
That’s what happened, end of story.
Your ‘the money has been there since April’ story doesn’t add up because
1. Crasto would be able to explain this
2. It’s not severe enough for a judge to grant 7 days custody.
No it’s isn’t, it’s simple maths. 1.8 million accounts X 11,000 rupees membership fee.
Who do panelists pay the membership fees to?
Answer: Speak Asia
They might try to weasel out of this by transferring the money to one of Harendar Kaur’s 25 other companies, but at the end of the day it’s still with Speak Asia.
If you’re referring to the business model Speak Asia submitted to the Supreme Court, this was a lie.
How many panelists bought anything from Speak Asia? On which date precisiely did Speak Asia retire their binary pairing compensation plan and implement a product based sales compensation plan?
Answer the above or stop wasting my time.
That the civil proceedings are a complete waste of time until the criminal investigations and any resulting proceedings are sorted out. The Supreme Court cannot guarantee the liability of any payments a bank processes for Speak Asia if they are found guilty of running ‘the biggest MLM ponzi scheme the EOW has ever investigated’.
This is why none of the authorities investigating Speak Asia have bothered to turn up. It’s just a waste of time until the criminal matters are concluded.
Toodles.
soapbox – you are an undertaker (undertaker’s business depends on death of persons). Your articles only promote fear, guilt, ‘dont do it’ spirit. It does not support entrepreunerism.
You are branding all Direct marketing as hoax, phoney, fraud and bogus. Though it is a 110 billion dollar industry and endorsed by President Bill clinton, you only pick holes in it.
Today, even Amway wants Speakasia up and running. End of the day, even you are dependant on this industry, due to the hits you receive on this website, though you perpetrate fear….
ozsoaobox I fell like laughing at your stupidity. As a matter of fact eow can investigate and take anyone into custody for that matter they have that right they dont have to prove it for taking someone into custody for interrogation that is the law of the country either you dnt know the law of the land or you are purposely acting as an agent like other cheapos who is paid 2 post articles against speakasia
coz seems you have no toher work you spend all your time in it, nice way of earning by the way, article writing is tougher than this but fools find the easy n short way out always.
As for your knowledge of civil and criminal criminal proceedings have to be ultimately carried out in the court and they give their verdicts that is why we have criminal lawyers you dumbass even that is why kasab is on trial in court but wait why am I telling you you are just a paid agent ready to bark out any nonsense without any logic
as is very clear from all your posts and as Mr X rightly pointed out you all are sore losers everyone here understands what shit you are talking so better train yourself for bullshitting and lying coz u seem 2 be a newbie in this field or elswe u mite not get paid by the pig who has hired u 2 spread dirt
So it’s his fault that there are so many scams out there for him to comment on? Which planet do you live on? Do you also blame police for criminal behavior?
How much of BehindMLM did you actually read before you formed this bogus observation?
Clearly, you are not familiar with western slang.
Besides, he debated every point X did.
You took a quote out of context to fit your own agenda. What does that make you?
A pyramid scheme IS a scam, even in India. It’s prohibited by Money Chit and Circulation (Banning) act. If you think SAOL is somehow and exception to the law, you will be sorely disappointed.
I am biased toward the truth and the law. Clearly, you’re not.
What’s positive about a scam? That it enriched some people and made others poorer? Or the false hopes it offered to many more?
And you’ll just end your stay with a generic “**** you all negative people” comment. Clearly, you really don’t have many arguments left except generic accusations.
You’re just tired of of seeing every point you raised thrown back in your face when it was revealed to be bogus. And your dignity is wounded. And now you’ll turn away in a huff claiming to yourself “I don’t need to take this”, so you’re walking off, but you couldn’t resist some parting barbs.
Interesting theory, but it does not fit a couple facts revealed thus far:
1) The 3000 payment (which you claim had been there since April but cannot explain why Melvin cannot explain it). Until we actually see the statements we have to go by the direct quotes from EOW by the newspapers, unless you wish to accuse EOW of lying again…
2) Is Melvin pretty high up in the panelist hierarchy? Why him and not anybody else? If you want to arrest people for participating in a Ponzi scheme, you’d start at the very top, and EOW had SAOL membership list for a long time (that’s when they discovered those 800 bogus panelists).
Or in other words, who is “member zero”?
Anju, you have an interesting explanation, but give the information available (which is incomplete), I have to give a slight advantage to Oz’s theory than yours. His theory explained the $3000 and “no explanation”, your theory didn’t. and it relies on ANOTHER unsupported theory (the money had been there all along).
M. Saroagi, issued an official SpeakAsia statement back in May 2011… (before he quit)
http://business-standard.com/india/news/speak-asia-talksexit-option-to-subscribers/436326/
Thus, the e-zine subscription is paid to SpeakAsia, not some third-party that you’re alleging.
You, Anju, have a very “convenient” memory, forgetting facts when it suits your narrative.
@viniben
Yeah… because not being able to participate in your favourite pyramid scheme equates to death, lolamirite?
Thankyou for clarifying your complete inability to read. Nothing much else needs to be said, well except maybe lol at the Amway comment.
Yes Amway want pyramid schemes to flourish in India, the very thing they’ve campaigned so hard to distance themselves over the past few decades. More unsubstantiated crap from bitter Speak Asia members.
No they can’t, they need to produce them in court and convince a judge it’s a serious enough matter to hold them in custody. Otherwise they are released.
What era are you living in, KGB Russia?
And you, master of investigation that you are have inferred this from what, the three articles I wrote on Speak Asia last week?
Yes… the EOW are slowly tightening that noose around Ram Sumiran Pal and Speak Asia’s members are flocking here with their abusive and hilariously unsubstantiated claims and personal attacks… and I’m the sore loser.
I note that the Speak Asia Powers group admins have decided to go AWOL for 2 days and are encouraging everyone to speak Hindi. Too bad I can translate hey…
@K.Chang
Anju’s narrative is as fluid as the Ganges.
One minute she’s claiming she just helps out as AISPA, then she’s going on about how she has access to the President of AISPA bank account records, access to confidential legal documents regarding Speak Asia that have nothing to do with AISPA and the EOW’s investigation notes.
Anju just chops and changes her narrative to fit any current event surrounding Speak Asia, and like the Ganges – is full of shit.
yes they can hold in custody if there are allegations made against the company there were several complaints filed that is why they could get the order approved,
further more melwyn is the president of the all India speakasia panelist association which is known as AISPA, so there is reason enough to doubt if he is linked with the managment of the company so they could take him in custody but nothing has been proved as usual and he will be out like all the other company employees have got free as well.
You like the eow based on several vested complaints can only grudge and find faults with your blah blah claims but as a matter of fact you and chang fail everytime miserably to prove anything in fact you suck at even justifying your silly claims which are quite amusing sometimes.
The EOW had charged the company with money laundering but could not prove it in the court and like wet cats they did not even turn up in the Supreme Court whereas earlier in the High Court all claims of EOW were dismissed by the Mumbai High court.
check the court website to see the status kiddo no one believes you everyone will believe the judgement otherwise the company would have been charged under the money laundering act and there would be an arrest term for its main management people read the rules of Indian law relating to mooney laundering
Im sure that you belong to some other shit country and your upbringing is shit so you call the Ganges shit as well. Not your fault but twisted tails can never be straight.
And yes they do earn by selling ezines and there is nothing wrong in it there are many online sites out there that sell information through ebooks as well and revenue which comes from ezines is just a part of their entire revenue there is something call market research as well
if you have any bit of lilttle idea about the internet which as it is is doubtful you will see the rate paid for every survey and focus group in US and UK goes upto 150$ whereas here it is just 10$ so it is not a new thing
but anyway people like u will never believe it as your main incomes comes from critical article writing you cnat do any better than that. Sorry state of affairs keep up your articles with Chang and try 2 earn a little more glory for yourself thats d max you can do..
Sigh… this is what happens when your ears are directly connected to the cheerleaders of Speak Asia’s arses.
Yeah except that’s not what happened. The EOW are conducting their own criminal investigation as of now.
They can arrest people sure, but if they want custody they need to convince a judge that the person they are holding has done something or is connected to their investigation in such a way that warrants it.
Crasto has a $3000 deposit from Speak Asia he couldn’t explain. The EOW have been following the money trail for months now and no doubt have evidence enough that points to this sum coming from Speak Asia.
A judge agreed. That, and that alone is why they were granted 7 days custody of Crasto. Whatever he knows a judge agreed it would further help th criminal investigation against Speak Asia.
Irrelevant. He was picked up because of a $3000 deposit by Speak Asia he himself was unable to explain.
I don’t ‘like’ the EOW. This isn’t some popularity contest between Speak Asia and the EOW, it’s the investigation of the largest MLM fraud in India’s history. Leave your immature popularism at the door.
Now this is just horseshit. The EOW to date have not charged Speak Asia with anything – how can they? They’re investigation isn’t even finished! And dismissed in the Mumbai High Court? lol?
The ED have charged Speak Asia with money laundering but as of yet they haven’t filed anything. As far as we know, all parties concerned are likely waiting for the SFIO (investigative branch of the MCA) report which is due in December. This is a report based on tax evasion if I recall correctly and will strengthen the money laundering charge against Speak Asia.
You don’t have to believe me, just what’s happening. Even when the EOW are being directly quoted you guys still refuse to believe. It’s hilariously sad. I’ve only ever run into this level of blind faith in the face of reality once before, and that was dealing with Scientologist. What a hoot that was.
I didn’t call the Ganges shit, I said it was full of shit. And it is, it’s one of the most polluted rivers in the world. Deal with it.
But hang on, you just said that ‘The EOW had charged the company with money laundering‘.
…again, this is what happens when your only source of information are the senior panelists who have one and only one goal – to present as biased a slant as possible on the reality of both the criminal and civil action Speak Asia is facing against it.
Oh really? Can I buy an e-zine without joining Speak Asia?
No. So I’m not paying for an e-zine subscription, I’m paying for membership to Speak Asia.
Pot, meet kettle.
Don’t waste your time trying to discredit me personally because you cannot discredit the information presented to you. It’s an amateur strategy that only highlights your inability to discuss anything of relevance.
I could be the man on the moon making a living selling cheese to aliens, that doesn’t change the fact that Speak Asia is one of the biggest MLM frauds in history to go down.
constantly talking of 3000$ payment then prove it! If it is money laundering prove it! where were u all these months and what has the eow done all these months 2 prove? They cpuld not even prove a single claim so cant you!
Yes you can buy an ezine frm whever you want go search on google kid you will get ma ny sites selling information, the ezine related so epakasia is the one you need to buy for joining speakasia as you get surveys related to information about products you get on the ezine so that you are well educated and aware of what you are filling if you ask me about cottage cheese and I dont know what it is whats the benefit of getting me filled the survey,
Im not discrediting you, you are already discredited day by day by your lack of subsantial proof
you might be very good with reviews of other companies but lets face it with speakasia you are a total failure I think you need some more time to know about it well but we sure will be laughing our ass off at you and your supporters here when speakasia is up and running dont forget this time then..
Where is Melvin Crasto?
He’s sitting in jail because he can’t explain a $3000 payment from Speak Asia to the EOW! A judge has seen the evidence and granted 7 days custody!
Honestly, what more proof do you need?
Where is the panelists money? It was transferred overseas to the Manoj Kumar, Harendar Kaur and Tarak Bajpai retirement fund! The EOW and ED have announced they will charge Speak Asia with money laundering.
No you can’t. I cannot buy the e-zine without becoming a member of Speak Asia. I suggest you familiarize yourself with their compensation plan.
Retail is only retail if you don’t have to join the company. If you have to join the company then you’re not buying anything but a membership.
By the author of the e-zine’s own admission, the e-zines are just copy and pasted from Wikipedia and various free article directories. What, you can’t google wikipedia and e-zinearticles.com yourself?
If the EOW getting a judge to sign off on a seven day custody period isn’t proof enough for you, then you are already a lost cause. How’s fantasy land working out for you?
Scams are scams and Speak Asia is no different. Speak Asia was judged on the same criteria as every other company and when I reviewed it back in March (before the EOW or anyone else got involved) i called it for what it is, a simple recruitment scam.
lol again your talks are irrelevant and you are unable to answer simple questions asked to you and you just give baseless answers.
How did you know the judge granted custody on the 3000$ payment and not on some other grounds did he call you up at night to say so so that you can post this on your blog…lol
I was saying for a general ezine even I know that for joining speakasia you ned to buy speakasia ezines only I have given u the reason why be mature enough to understand it you judged it in march but it was running frm february last year so you are judging a company more than 1 year after its operations started , quite early I suppose so….
As for the ezines that is just an option to subscribe to an azine and become a member did you know that if a person is already qualified in the market research industry and has proof of earning in that industry of 1000$ or more he can join speakasia for free read the terms of service of the website at least before giving your expert reviews hahah,
further more people who have not got into the market research industry also have an option of sitting for the exam and if they clear that they get free joining as well you dont even know the basic 3 ways to join and you are being the judge here like the media which declares a person the criminal even before the crime has been committed!
Respected judge Oz your judgements are totally baseless and no one who has proper knowedge of this company is taking your shit so dont feel bad about it as you lack knowledge
Jesus Christ, are you retarded or what?
Because the EOW said so! The TOI quoted Rajawardhan Sinha, additional commissioner (EOW) as saying
A judge would not grant custody if this payment by Speak Asia was before they shut down in April. Additionally if it was, Crasto would be able to explain it, as it’s publicly known he is a panelist.
Crasto himself has refused to explain the $3000 payment and the EOW are going to use the next 7 days to interrogate him further over his dodginess.
Any more replies from you continuing to waste my time over this will be sent to the spam basket.
Within the context of this article I couldn’t give a shit about general e-zines, we’re talking about Speak Asia’s e-zines, which cannot be bought from the company on a retail level, you have to pay for membership before you can get it.
Any further commentary not about Speak Asia’s e-zines will be sent to the spam basket.
Show me where it says this in Speak Asia’s terms and conditions:
There is only one way to join Speak Asia and that is by paying the company a 11,000 membership fee. Unless you substantiate your claims your next reply will be sent to the spam bin for wasting my time with nonsense.
You come here sprouting utter crap from your arse, and I’m the one that’s baseless…? Yeah, good one champ.
yes these are the 3 methods to join speakasia you as an ingorant person dosent know this ask this from learned people.
you cant take it so you say any comment now from ezines will go to spam well I care a dam!
as for ezines I would not bother my head to search for every erticle related to my survey to search on google or wikipedia for that matter. The EOW has also said that you need a mental check up immediately or else your head will be blown off well ask me where I saw that I just saw it in a news article!
I dont need proof the same way as you dont need proof and believe it just because the EOW has said so. EOW has also said that your blog is shit and you a re bunch of clowns try contesting that I saw it again in an online news article…lolz…
So it’s not in the terms and conditions then? Thankyou for admitting you are a liar then.
Well if you’re a lazy arse that’s why you’re paying $210USD membership to a scam that copy and pasted this information and sends it to you.
So you have no proof to the contrary that disproves the EOW’s claims (that a judge agreed to).
Thankyou for wasting everybody’s time with your childish nonsense.
@Oz: you believe the indian media and the EOW which links indian cricketers with different girls all the time making issues out of it, which is fed by politicians to show biased news for money and you believe the EOW
were you in hibernation along with the EOW for more than 1 year speakasia was running and doing business? If they violated FEMA and tax evasion occued was the sfio, EOW and tax departments and RBI sleeping for 1 year like what you have been doing you are quite late in this case
it is 2 years, when most people have earned quite handsomely from it and will continue to do so in the near future I can imagine what a bunch of clowns you people will turn out to be then and trust me just imagining the thought makes my stomach ache with laughter..
You have no proof as well to show that even one of your claims are right so I agree with rehan what the EOW has just said about you that you should go check your head its an emergency…lol…
and very rightly these are the 3 conditions to join speakasia if it is not in the tos it does not mean it is not there only you are turning out to be a big liar in this forum quite ineffecient in proving any of your shit claims in your shit blog
keep whining away but fact is speakasia is the only company on record which has had the guts to come p and face the media whereas all others who complain only bark frm behind their backyards but when time comes to prove it in the court of law they are scared cats like you and EOW!!
Same thing Sanjeev did… When he realized he couldn’t spin his bull**** here he quit in a huff and wounded pride. He even tried playing the “You hurt my feelings” card. I tried throwing him an olive branch with the “you were victims of fraud” post and he won’t take it.
Anju, at least, pretends to use some logic, and does not defend a failed theory once pierced. But these two… nah.
@speakasian
The media quoted the EOW and the EOW showed a judge what they had on Crasto and that was sufficient enough to hold him for 7 days.
Y’know, the same judges you people are championing as the ultimate last word? Well a judge decided that the EOW’s dirt on Crasto was worth holding him for 7 days for interrogation. Deal with it and stop trying to divert attention to your conspiracy theories.
Speak Asia didn’t have 1.2 (1.8?) million members a year ago. I reviewed them in March at the request of a reader. Government agencies are always reactive to scams, just as they are to any crime.
This in no way absolves Speak Asia of running a ponzi scheme between May 2010-May 2011, so I’m not sure what your point is.
That’s how a pyramid scheme works, and I sincerely doubt most people made a ton of money from Speak Asia. Why do you think there’s so much drama regarding panelist payouts and exit strategies? Most people lost money buying Speak Asia membership, because by the time they joined the recruitment explosion was over.
Yes.. because here in the land of fantasy pyramid schemes are all of a sudden legitimate business models.
A judge saw the EOW’s proof and granted them 7 days custody for further interrogation. Your answer to this is some irrelevant conspiracy theory.
Deal with it.
Then why say it is in the TOS? I didn’t say it was there, rehan did.
Yeah so I’m not watching a near 2 hour long video, please point out the timestamp where the 3 joining options are mentioned.
And if they are mentioned, it’s proof yet again of fraud as the company never disclosed this in their publicly available business model documents (you can’t advertise one thing and do something else entirely different in practice). But I’m getting ahead of myself, first please provide the exact timestamp the 3 joining options are mentioned.
Also note that a video doesn’t prove anything, in light of the documented business model Speak Asia were using. They’ve already lied to the Supreme Court about a product based business model that was never implemented. Who’s to say this 3 joining option was ever implemented too?
Do you have paper proof of it ever existing beyond some bald guy saying so in a presentation? And before you ask for my proof that the 3 options doesn’t exist, it’s right there – on the Speak Asia website where they detail their business model to the public.
Where are Manoj Kumar, Harendar Kaur and Tarak Bajpai – oh that’s right, they’re all in hiding.
Who represents Speak Asia in court? Lawyers paid for by panelist’s membership fees.
Yeah, hide overseas and let your lawyers deal with everything paid for out of your member’s fees – real guts.
The EOW just went to court last Friday and proved in front of a judge that Crasto’s dodgy $3000 payment from Speak Asia was worth keeping him behind bars for a further 7 days.
As for the civil suits, why should they bother turning up, it’s just a waste of time until the criminal matters are concluded. And judging by last weeks turn of events, the criminal investigation is coming along nicely.
Does it actually say that certain “prequalified” people can join for free, as rehan claimed? If so, why is that NOT on the website? Had it EVER been there? Did you just help or hurt your own theory?
We’re not here to speculate on the reasoning behind the press conference. We’re here to discuss the business model of SpeakAsia.
Yes they can join for free if they have earned 1000$ or more in the market research industry well peoples if you cant see a 2 hour long video you aint fit at your level best to comment a shit about it as the entire speakasia is much more than a 2 hour video also which you cant see !
Again you and chang fail to prove any of your claims repeating like a parrot” THE EOW HAS SAID SO! monkeyfeeders of EOW the world and the court goes by proof not by just what is said in 5 months of inbestigation when they could not prove anything so what will a bunch of peacocks like you prove!
And as is evident you are failing everytime in your posts to prove a single claim and being made a moeckery of in your own blog! Hats off to the true speakasians who are showing your true chameleon colours day by day.
You are a group of losers who asking for proof are unable to prove your claims in fact you have clamied that it is a scam, money laundering etc so you are the one who should prove it or else you are just shit and thats what you and your blog are.. cheers…
So you cannot provide the timestamp? If your next reply does not include the timestamp where baldy mentions 3 joining options, I’m goign to assume you just made the whole thing up.
No it’s not. The business model Speak Asia used was simple. Pay $7-20 a week for completing fake surveys, and paired binary commissions based on the amount of people members could recruit.
That’s it – that’s the whole business model right there. This model did not change between May 2010 and May 2011. Discussion of any other plans of model is irrelevant as Speak Asia never used them!
A judge in a court saw the EOW’s evidence on Crasto and remanded him for 7 days in their custody for further interrogation. Deal with it.
Uh, see above. Furthermore they haven’t officially finished their investigation yet – so no case has been filed yet. Yet you’ve already declared that they’ve found nothing? Yeah, good one.
You have not provided a timestamp.
You cannot accept that the EOW convinced a judge in a court that Crasto’s $3000 mystery deposit from Speak Asia was worth keeping him in custody for 7 days.
You are believing that Speak Asia used business models they never used.
It’s right there in the business model, take membership money and pay commissions for recruiting new members.
if you’re blind that’s not my problem.
The judge has approved that on grounds of 3000$ he wil be kept in custody- what proof do u have again? zero? The judge can have many reasons to do so again you will say EOW has said so! LOl!!! failing again.
Cant see the entire press conference so commenting on binary like a child who wants to read stories wwithout learning abcd- impractical
If money was paid only for recruting members then who does the money paid for doing the surveys go to? not to you definitely it goes to the panelists! again shows you know nothing and are a big liar paid to promote maliciously.
so investigation is not over yeh? 5 months gone you take 5 years as long as it is not proved it is not guilty in law and you or anyone else for that matter cannot change it! Accept it you are going old and out of stock in your news now repeatedly failing to answer with valid proof
Where is Melvin Crasto?
He’s in jail under the custody of the EOW.
Why?
As Rajawardhan Sinha, additional commissioner of the EOW) stated: ‘He could not explain the transfer of around $3,000 in his account’. The EOW are going to spend the next 7 days getting to the bottom of it (note that this is part of the larger criminal investigation currently underway).
The binary is the published business model. Please provide a timestamp in the video where 3 joining options are mentioned. This is the third time it’s been asked for.
There is none. The surveys were doctored in Mumbai by a third party on contract with Speak Asia. The EOW have already investigated this and have a written confession from the survey creator stating that Speak Asia sent him topics to prepare surveys on, and expected him to do so using Wikipedia and free article directories.
Also to prove they made more from survey sales than membership fees, Speak Asia had to sell 2 surveys a week for a year at a price of $3.8 million USD. Who paid them that?!
Nope. It’s the biggest MLM fraud in India’s history and Speak Asia’s management have all but fled overseas. It’s a difficult task but the EOW are evidently getting on with it.
Hello People.. I have been reading and following this blog for some time now..first of all I am not a “Proud Speakasian” or a Speak Asia member..my interest on following on what’s going is because of a very close friend who was involved lock stock and barrel in this in the first 6 months of this year.. he tried to pull me onto this but I simply did not believe and stayed away..now back to the subject under discussion..
Pls accept my congrats to the way you guys..(Oz & Chang) have handled the situation with a micro level analysis of Pyramid/Multi level marketing schemes.. I clearly understand that it is your business to analyse all the MLM schemes in business across the globe.
Regarding Speak Asia..the mystery will unfold only when the actual charge-sheet is filed in Supreme Court by EOW etc..what does not stop me being amazed is the dedication and one mindedness proclaimed by the Panelists(Read Subscribers/Investors) on disbelieving any clues/news about what’s going on in Speak Asia.
Such is the brainwashing done by the trainers of the Company that they refuse to believe in actual facts. You cannot say it is night all around you at 12p.m. in the morning by simply closing your eyes. Believing is good but blind faith sometimes is rued. This mindless volume of info published on the net on this can be brought down to some few simple questions about the legitimacy of Saol..
1).. Do they have clients? If yes then name them with their confirmation.
2).. The pot boiled over at 1.5 million members would the company have had enough money to pay if it was 5 or 10 million (as they had proclaimed it would be at the end of the year had it being allowed to flourish).
3).. Are the EOW, Media etc..so stupid as to give comments regarding Saol without any evidence and hence endangering Lawsuits of various kinds..remember the old saying there is no smoke without fire..
they (EOW) are simply gathering evidence to make it a foolproof case..man..this is a democracy..you just cant put someone in jail without complete evidence. Every Law Agency and Media people are Accountable and cannot simply bullshit the Mass.
The moment you have answers for the above and the case is solved…(Q.E.D).
If at all it proves to be a Ponzi scheme I would salute the promoters for their elaborate set up and smart handling of situations..it is amazing to see that none of the top officials of the Company are present in the hearings..(I wonder where the CEO with his famous quote of the decade is) If they are right than they should have stood by the panelists in these difficult times where the very existence of the company is in question..
mere handling situations through lawyers or a video or an update is not enough at all..I pray to God that whatever happens all the Panelists of Saol should get back their hard earned money..( I sincerely wish that SAOL gets a clean chit and is allowed to refund the money back)
I believe lots of people became so much dependent in a short period on the Saol income that they gave up everything else..the easy money was the biggest lure..imagine getting paid so much money for nonsensical surveys..(dubbing them International Panel Exchanges..lol)
It is not easy as some Top Guns have earned Millions of Rupees and would not part with them easily as well and would keep fighting. The EOW is systematically tracking the flow of cash since the origin and hence picking up guys at the helm.Oz and Chang.. you guys are doing great..just be more patient.
ur all are gone MAD dear….just wait & see
Mr. X has given comments, Mr. Y has also given comments, Now where is Mr. Z..?
One talks about the company positively and one talks negatively..
Over all., I’m very much surprised to see these members of Speak Asia (so called Speak Asians) in large numbers still supporting their company and this was the great achievement by the company training system, its’ really great..!
This company has made someone to come forward like Behind MLM or Moneylife with a big mission & vision to destroy this company’s name / brand which they’ve created all these days, already this company has created very strong online backing in cyber space (internet) even after company goes dormant,
see – for destroying the name & brand some PAID AGENTS were needed by the back-up of some big corporates supported by politicians. That itself is a great achievement…!!!
Any have, All the Best for Speak Asia..! Let’s wait & watch what happens now..!
…except both BehindMLM and MoneyLife existed before Speak Asia did.
Logic fail. Brain hemorrhage in 3…2…1…
I’m just here for fun. One of my hobbies is busting another Indian scam called “TVI Express”. You can find info on this scam elsewhere on BehindMLM.
It’s amazing how members of scams will defend a scam to death, it seems. They use the same tactics.
SpeakAsia is not even that big of a scam if you go worldwide. In Colombia, 6 MILLION people were recruited into “DMG Grupo” Ponzi scheme. When it was shut down, people rioted and went on hunger strike begging the government to allow DMG Grupo to resume operation. Members were chanting in the streets “We believe in God and DMG”. (See any similarities with SAOL?)
@Rashid and Ritesh — so you two don’t really have anything useful to add to the conversation, no new revelations, just “we believe in SAOL”?
The Lahoti Committee in Delhi should have started roughly 15 minutes ago. Should be an update later tonight.
Then why did Rehan said there are THREE ways to join? Are you trying to help Rehan or distract the issue?
Yet you can’t prove that EOW’s lying, can you?
Tell that to EOW and CID. THEY are the ones who say SAOL is a scam and money laundering scheme.
Your anger seems misdirected. I hope you don’t own any pets.
“YES we believe in SAOL”
ha ha ha
none of your business……..waiting for update????
by the time it will come u will be asleep!!!
…analysis my friend analysis. What this entire site is about.
I know you can’t see past your financially invested nose, but some of us are just here to cover and analyse what goes on.
K. Chang – Don’t ever think that If I am silent, I have left this conversation. I am neither a blogwriter nor a person who believes in illogical and baseless things. Most of the comments here about you and ozsaoapbox have already proved that you are dumb asses.
And sorry please don’t try to provoke me because I do not get into useless arguments. You have a mind of your own but that is closed and you can not think logically. And Sorry I am not hurt or I am not here to play any cards .
As told earlier, my purpose of coming on this blog was that you were writing I don’t know what all on this blog about speakasia and you say you know everything about speakasia. You are still not aware about a basic thing that there are three ways of Joining Speakasia as rightly told by rehan and speakasian .
Hope you will now shut your mouth and don’t try to provoke me again. Whatever I have to say I have already said and since you are not willing to understand, I don’t want to get into useless things and waste my precious time here.
I don’t know whether you got such a lengthy debate till now but I am happy that atleast I got a place to put my point of views. You understood it or not, I am least interested.
What sort of analysis you are doing, i don’t know. But tell me one simple thing that what is precision mass marketing and how many companies are involved in this type of marketing all over the world. Or is there no term such as precision mass marketing in this world.
Please I am waiting eagerly for your reply.
Very true words friend. I also have the same feelings but was unable to express.. Thanks
@Sanjeev
You can’t argue against the brickwall of facts. It’s ok, you don’t need to cry about it.
Every single point for Speak Asia has been logicially reasoned against. Then you guys throw up your arms and have a cry about it and storm off.
Every single time…
Sorry, where is the proof of this?
Some idiot published a 2 hour long video they claimed explained the 3 joining options, but when pressed did not provide a time stamp – leaving the only conclusion that the video does not explain the options.
Furthermore the three options never appeared in any public documentation provided to the publc – meaning if it did exist, it’s another account Speak Asia are guilty of fraud. Publishing one thing about their company and doing another.
There is nothing to understand when it comes to pyramid schemes. It’s you who fail to understand a simple business model that is recognised as a scam the world over.
Welcome to the 21st century.
You must be blind then, good luck with that.
Oh please. Where does ‘precision mass marketing’ fit into a simple ‘recruit people and get paid a commission’ off a paired binary compenstaion plan?
And what were Speak Asia marketing between May 2010-May 2011?? Nothing.
Not one product from one company. Oh, they did try and toss some company names around but then Manoj Kumar had to issue a public apology for lying when these companies announced they had nothing to do with Speak Asia, nor had they ever commissioned them to do any market research or marketing for them.
If you’re unabel to reduce your own argument to the knuckledragging sentiment of SpeakAsian, what does that make you?
Lol, from the senior panelists regarding today’s hearing;
Things must have gone well then… what happened, Speak Asia aren’t paying you enough to update panelists now?
That’s where your non aware ness of the speakasia is established. This video is of the press confrence conducted by SPeakasia on May 16th and doesn’t need any time stamp.
Just go ask any of the news channels of India and they will authenticate for you. Start doing some googling you dumb asses and you will be amazed to find this proof.
Why are u so interested . If you need updates Please go and confirm from your sources , powers will not feed you dumb asses now.
No one is arguing it’s not a press conference. It’s a near 2 hour long video, please provide the exact time stamp they mention 3 joining options within this video. I’m not wasting my time sitting through 1:44 minutes of video.
Please provide one news channel report that mentions three joining options.
To date no official company documentation from Speak Asia about their business model mentions 3 joining options
Anyways thanks for recognising efforts of powers group . I am going off for sleep now. And don’t please ask any date stamps now. Good Night from here in india.
So you senior panelists think regular panelists are are dumb arses now…? Thanks for clarifying the admin’s of ‘Speak Asia powers’ position on this.
With the admins applying full censorship to the information regular panelists have no access too, despite Speak Asia Powers and senior panelists claiming to represent regular panelists’ interests, it seems our clamp down on information originally noted in this article has come full circle.
Wow, I’d hate to be a panelist of Speak Asia relying on these clowns for information.
‘Relax, we represent you but don’t expect us to keep you updated with what’s happening. We’ll only do that if we need something from you…’
I’m interested for the sake of analysis. I guess I’ll have to wait for the media to update the general public on exactly what happened.
So you can’t provide any proof of this 3 joining option nonsense either.
Thanks for wasting everybody’s time then. Cheers, have a good nights sleep whilst 1.2 million panelists are left wondering wtf happened at ‘their’ committee meeting today.
I note Lahoti seems to be pissed that Speak Asians were calling him relentlessly looking for updates. Perhaps they wouldn’t have to do if the senior panelists weren’t so restrictive in providing updates to the panelists whose interests they claim to represent.
Just see the news channels archives for 16th and 17th may and you will find so many clippings where they have been shouting like anything that Speakasia apologises.
And you will have to watch this 1 hour 44 miuntes of video only then you will find snippets of this press confrence in those archives and sorry I am not sitting here to provide you the links or the proofs. I am not a journalist or blog writer like you who has nothing else to do .
Sorry not good enough, provide specific examples.
I’ve been following this since it broke and have never seen 3 joining options mentioned in any official business model documentation or news reports (I thought the media were lying demons anyway, now you’re relying on them??).
Either back up your claims or don’t make them.
To date there has been no proof published of 3 joining options.
Again not good enough, please provide specific time stamps, nobody is watching 1:44 mins of video just to hear mention of 3 joining options explained.
It’s either there or it isn’t, so provide the timestamp for when it’s mentioned otherwise stop wasting everybody’s time.
You don’t need to be a journlist or blog writer to be able to back up your claims, you just need to have some credibility and be able to substantiate your claims – which you seem to be failing to do.
Really, but you said you’re no longer interested.
Or is your memory as convenient as Anju’s?
As regards
It was always available on the main page of their old website.
No it wasn’t. I scoured their website back in March for my initial review of Speak Asia and 3 joining options were never mentioned in the business model or Speak Asia compensation plan.
And if I entertain you and accept that it was there (even though it wasn’t), why then was it removed?
The only way to join Speak Asia has only ever been to pay an existing panelist or franchisee 11,000 rupees which they then forward to Speak Asia so that they can earn recruitment bonus in their paired binary and the direct commission for each person recruited.
So unless you can provide any specific examples to back up your claims, you sir are lying.
The feeling is mutual, but I have more published facts on my side, and you… just have SAOL and AISPA released “spun” statements.
Yet there’s no documentation of such an option ANYWHERE other than Rehan’s statement thus far. Something NO OTHER SpeakAsians was able to authenticate other than “hearsay”.
You said you’re no longer interested. Thus, it cannot be a provocation.
Whatever I have to say I have already said and since you are not willing to understand, I don’t want to get into useless things and waste my precious time here.
Except you didn’t say anything verifiable except you believe in SpeakAsia, and we knew that already. Doh!
The following question and answer appear in the detailed FAQs as posted by Speakasia (SAOL) on their website – http://tinyurl.com/spkfaq
The above link may not work now. As the old website was replaced with new website. But it was there when I joined Speakasia in April 2011.
Thankyou Sanjeev, much appreciated. Why was that so difficult to get out of you?
Despite not appearing in their business model used May 2010-May 2011, I’ll accept that it’s on their website now.
Unfortunately the website was designed and products added before any actual changes were made to the business model though, so I still maintain it doesn’t count.
Between May 2010-May 2011 everybody was paying 11,000 to join up, membership has never been free.
The faq that appears on the Speak Asia website was only uploaded after the criminal investigations into Speak Asia were announced (the RBI got the ball rolling if I remember correctly).
edit: You have to scroll down to
and click it.
Does that laughter mean you do NOT believe in SAOL?
But we’re not here to discuss your belief in SAOL. We’re here to discuss SAOL’s business model (and how illegal it is).
Hope this satisfies you. let the website come into normal operations and you will be happy to know that you have been proved wrong at least on this account. All the best.
Remember in Speak Asia Model I am not dependent on my downline to earn my regular fixed income. The only help I get from downline is that the amount of extra income increases fast. 20 Lakh people are sufficient for speak asia to continue its business model but always there is greed that if we can earn something more then why not ???
If speakasians are greedy than what about Mayawati and Ratan Tata who are unmarried and don’t have any family which they have to support. Even then they are working hard as per their skill to accumulate wealth. If we are greedy than let it be..
@Sanjeev — It does bring up an interesting point, now that we got that “3 ways to join” settled.
Weren’t there reports that the tests were not free? That you need to pay a fee to take the test?
And did SAOL ever release any figures on how many people joined via each of the three options? I can’t imagine there are too many people who already makes $1000 in survey income in India.
Why is this relevant? If the tests were not free, but are instead handled by SAOL authorized places (i.e. answers to SAOL), then it’s just an attempt to dilute the money trail.
The issue is not the proposed business model, which appears to be product based (but to date has never been used).
The problem is the existing business model, which is a ponzi scheme and was used to obtain the growth of 1.2 million members and 1.8 million accounts.
Nobody is investigating Speak Asia on a model they never used (the one they submitted to the SC), they are being investigated on the ponzi scheme they ran between May 2010-May 2011.
Irrelevant. No matter how many unmarried people who join and have families to support, it doesn’t in any way justify the running of a ponzi scheme.
Thanks oz. It was not difficult but I thought you had access to this. This was always available on their website but I never knew that I had to share this with some one . Other wise I would have saved a screen shot of that page instead of just copy pasting this data in my docs.
And yes the link which you are referring to was published when RBI got the ball rolling. Earlier the black and green background website had this joining criteria mentioned clearly.
But please allow me to have some sleep now. I would be replying to your comments if any after a few hours.
@Kasey
In my Speak Asia review in March this was the one and only advertised way of joining Speak Asia;
That is verbatim how it appeared on their website and official publicly available compensation plan material. There were no other joining options at the time.
This is how the company operated May 2010- till at least March 2011 when the review was written.
It is worth noting that people were claiming the company were waiving the test altogether and just letting people join if they paid the membership fee.
Also there were several media reports highlighting the fact that people were paying membership fees to join without even being aware of the e-zine. They were just being told to join, recruit other people to Speak Asia and watch the income roll in.
IBN Today and Star News broke these stories, and that’s when all the ‘raraara it’s a giant media conspiracy against us’ crap started from Speak Asia’s members who were upset the recruitment game was busted on national television.
@sanjeev
Not in March it didn’t, see above for the one and only method of joining Speak Asia that was advertised before Speak Asia rewrote their website following the RBI announcement.
No worries, it’s 3:30am here also and I only woke up to briefly check if any detailed news of the Lahoti committee meeting had been published, which it appears it hasn’t. I’m back off to bed too.
Do you think everyone who sits for exam can qualify? 60 Reward Point is only the exam fees which if translated to rupee is only 3,000 rs approx. And this 3,000 rupees is taken for conducting exam where all administrative costs are involved and to recover these costs 3,000 is what the company charges.
If you are able to clear the exam then your joining is free. But if u are unable to clear the same is forfeited. You can not link exam fees with joining. These are two seperate things.
Yes may be what you are saying is correct because I never saw that too.
Oz – Now I think I should be awarded the most lengthy debator award on your blog. Or was there some one else who debated so long with you on a particular topic since your started reviewing Speakasia
anju was involved in lengthy debates for months on here, but she fell apart with the whole not being able to explain who paid Speak Asia 3.8 million USD thing, how the company could present a buisiness model it never used to the supreme court and more recently Crasto’s unexplained $3000 payment.
Since then and the EOW’s recent probe into AISPA she’s been kinda quiet. I will grant that you’ve been the most coherant pro-Speak Asia commenter on here though.
Anju went around and around in circles refusing to accept things quite a bit. We did get her to admit Speak Asia’s business model was a ponzi scheme at one point but she couldn’t get over the fact that a proposed business model doesn’t count as an actual business model the company has used. I think that was when she stormed off and said she wouldn’t be back a few weeks ago.
I thought last we’ve seen of her was earlier when she claimed the e-Zines were published by some third party and NOT by SpeakAsia, so you can’t count e-Zine subscription as SAOL revenue? I cited the Saroagi direct quote and haven’t seen her since.
Oh, you’re nowhere close. 🙂 You should see the “Sugarmums” topic, where I, Oz, and a few others engaged this guy who persist in pushing his nutritional supplements, then when challenged, tries to derail the topic into broad debates like healthcare, causes of cancer, research ethics, and a ton of other stuff. 😀
Actually, that’s not relevant. The real relevance is where is this money going. Is it going to a genuine third-party (i.e. for rent of space, for creating and administrating test, etc. )
Also, it seems to be terribly overpriced. 3000 rs is like what? 60 USD? How much is a Chicken Maharaja Mac (i.e. the closest thing to a Big Mac) there? 100 rupees?
Thank you for the candidness.
@Kasey
Ah yeah.. there’s been a few dummy spits, I’ve kinda lost track :).
Oz – as regards 3.8 Million thing, I present some mathematical logics for you.
These may not sound music to your ears but this is how the business model was supposed to work. Obviously when you keep on recruiting without even thinking of sharing the next step of business strategy with your panelists unless media pushed you into a corner, it is bound to raise suspicions which you have been rightly saying that May 2010 – May 2011 was indeed a period which requires investigation.
The Mathematical logic for you is here.
Disclaimer: The statements published here are my own based on information collected on worldwideweb and have not been validated by SAOL management anywhere.
Some queries and their replies
Query 1
Mother of all frauds:
Speak Asia has collected Rs 2000cr frm 2 mill.members for a market which is not more than 10crore Rs per year. ( Market research is a 100 crore industry of which only Rs10 crores is spent for collection of information every year and only small portion is online.
Speak asia is proposing to make 1 crore members and collect 11000 crore Rs and pay 48000Crore Rs per year ( 4000 per month for 12 months for filling up forms per head!!i) Can you beat this fraud????
Reply 1
Advertising and promotion spend of Hindustan UniLever (One of the biggest FMCG Company in India) was Rs.2,391 crore, or close to 14% of its Rs.17,500 crore sales in fiscal year ended March 2010. Assume this company spends apprx 25 crores (10% of entire AD Budget) to target their audience through survey companies like SPEAKASIA who have their business model well explained in their press conference and SPEAK ASIA targets only 20 such companies it can generate 500 Crores from FMCG sector.
Then there is auto sector, Banking Sector, Consumer Durables sector and the list goes on. In the country like INDIA, i don`t think it is hard to find 300 such companies who can spend 25 crores per annum to reach the target audience… 25 Crores X 300 = 7500 Crores.
That simply speaks volumes of business this company can generate. So don’t be amazed if tommorow some one wants to be a panelist and not a single penny is charged by the company from them
Query 2
investing 11k and getting 50K in return in a year….don`t u think its not correct somewhere in itself?
Companies u r mentioning may spend certain amount on surveys..agreed ..but they ll also pay per survey. As I heard this company is allowing one member to give their opinion three times ..how fair is that business??
getting 500% returns and that too from a fair business of filling brainless surveys..
Reply 2
Have you ever noticed that whenever a new idea is born, there are more resistances to it than acceptances.. (Amway, CNG Autos, Low Floor Buses, Ramdev Yoga Classes, FDI in Retail sector in India etc…
Now each of these are acceptable in India. This is because people who have short vision and are narrow minded can not see a longer clear vision.
It is not mandatory to pay 11000 just check the website of the company
Query 3
do you know the calculation of their weekly survey payout? let me tell you – 500 + 75 (sponsor commission) x 1500000 = 86.25 crores x 2 surveys = 172.5 crores??????? therefore wyarly payout for 52 weeks = 8970crores … can you enlighten us how many companys needed for this?
Reply 3
They need 300-400 companies spendiing 25-30 crores each.to pay 9000 crores. HUL`s advertisment spend last year was 2391 crores hence 25-30 crores is easily spendable by most of the companies in INDIA.
Now don`t say corporates won’t spend such a small amount just because every one is hell bent on proving this as a PONZI . IF they see merit in company’s business model i.e. precision MASS Marketing, they can spend even 100 crores each..
8950 crores is a pretty small amount when compared to various other numbers floating in media through our beloved politicians..
Even article on economictimes link for which is given below says that
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-05-09/news/29522950_1_survey-easy-money-unemployed-youth
“So, should you become a member of any online survey scheme to earn money on the side? Ideally, no. But if you do want to give it a try, opt for the one you know the most about, the one that is most forthcoming with details of its business, and the one that is the least costly to get into. Use the online advantage to keep in touch with other members and make sure that you know about the company`s whereabouts”
They are also not sure whether this is correct or not.. But it has been atleast open in suggesting to give a try..
These were the sort of analysis I did when I saw the business model and thought that although I am stuck with this company now but if it has some merit then why not wait and watch.
@Oz
you really broke my trust on you that i believed, you the person who know all details regarding the what speakasia did in past and what it doing recently.
But you failed yesterday. As you did not have sufficient information that any person who wanted to join the “SPEAKASIA” company. three (3) options were available on their old website is 100% true.
Not only me but you are find a lot with this information. Sanjeev is an example. And your demand for time stamp is not legal at all.
I again confirm that 3 options were provided from the speakasia company side.
I would like to know ,not only me any many other peoples those who are following this blog regularly that since when did you started posting about “SPEAKASIA” metter.
Second, did you ever visited the old website of the company?
Third, do u believe that , (3 joining option) may become turning point for the company that , it’s not cumpalsury that to pay 6000rs,11000rs or what so else?
MORE QUESTIONS I HAVE WHICH ARE FOR NEXT COMMENTS….
And personally, i would like to know where you from, who you are, and you really do all this for fun is not easy to believe.
C U SOON………….
Oz – A thing I liked about this blog is that you are ready to accept criticisms and post all the views which may go agaisnt you also. Kudos..
@Sanjeev
Supposed to work is irrelevant when the reality of how your business works dictates otherwise.
Well that’s what the EOW, RBI, CID, ED, MCA, SFIO are all doing with their respective investigations.
Regarding your mathematical logic, to be honest I stopped reading after the first query.
You seem to have overly complicated what is a simple mathematical equation. Speak Asia charged 11,000 to join the company and has 1.8 million panelist accounts. Ergo they took in 19 800 000 000 rupees (381.7 million USD).
Over a year (May 2010-May 2011) at a rate of two surveys a week this is the equivalent of Speak Asia earning 3.6-3.8 million USD per survey.
Now to prove they earnt more from selling surveys than they took in from membership fees, Speak Asia actually had to have charged more than this amount per survey.
More again because I think it was Manoj Kumar himself if I’m remembering properly who stated that not all of Speak Asia’s surveys are commissioned by third party companies (the reality is that none of them are but that’s beside the point).
Add to this that any survey done by Speak Asia is wildly inaccurate due to the fact that any one member can file up to 10 replies. On this basis comparing it to well established and long running market research companies seems like a waste of time.
Oh and precision marketing? Rehashing Wikipedia and free article directory articles is not precision at all, it’s about as vague and general as you can get.
Of course neither the surveys or the lack of companies paying these ridiculous amounts for Speak Asia’s surveys really matters, because the e-zine and survey side of the business never mattered. It was a straight up recruitment ponzi scheme that solely relied on distributing new member’s membership fees to existing members with Speak Asia taking a little slice of the pie each time (a text book ponzi).
I’m human like anyone else. I maintain at the time of my March 2011 review on Speak Asia there was no mention of joining the company for free and there certainly wasn’t 3 joining options.
Everyone was joining Speak Asia by paying the 11,000 membership fee – and this is solely how the company was being marketed. What happened after the RBI got involved appears to be phase 1 of changing their business model – which ultimately never happened.
This change doesn’t negate the prior year or criminal liability of Speak Asia running a ponzi scheme (May 2010 till at least March 2011 when the review was written and I did my research into Speak Asia).
Not legal? I’m going to assume you have no idea what a time stamp is… otherwise what is this, communist China? Not legal lol.
Somebody asserted something, and when pressed for proof published a near 2 hour long video the contents of which they stated explained the model.
I think I watched the first five minutes or so before realising the expalantion, if indeed it even was there could have been anywhere in that video. You don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for a specific timestamp so that people can fastforward to the snippet of relevant information?
Cmon, we’re talking nearly 2 hours of video here.
Someone asked me to review the company back in March 2011 and that’s when I reviewed Speak Asia, as I review many other companies on BehindMLM. I didn’t write about them again till the end of May when a press release came across my desk with Speak Asia projecting they were going to have 10 million members by 2012.
Given I’d already reviewed them as a ponzi scheme, I found this number hilarious and wrote about it.
Of course I did, I thoroughly investigate and research any company I write about here. I did my initial research back in March 2011 for my March review.
It’s not a turning point because I stand by it was never implemented.
Case in point, can anyone name a single panelist (not a senior panelist paid shill) who joined Speak Asia other than by paying 11,000? Why do you think the civil action is causing such a furore, because everyone paid 11,000 rupees to join the company as that was the only way possible!
The real losers were the people with multiple pins they’d purchased trying to offload them. These people, who sold multiple panels to new members are the ones with their downlines screaming at them for refunds.
6,000 rupees was always on the table yes but everyone joined for a year at 11,000 as it was cheaper (and made sense on paper if you ignored the whole ponzi scheme thing as many did).
Believe it.
@Sanjeev
I’ve always maintained anything published on BehindMLM is up for scrutiny by anyone who reads it. It’s personal analysis by me and other people analysing my own analysis only serves to make it stronger if I’ve missed something or corrections need to be made (it’s happened before).
Sadly all too often, particularly with Speak Asia’s members, this opportunity is wasted and people instead try to bring their ‘jai Speak Asia, we will DEFINITELY win! you are all paid liars!’ horseshit here, which just gets put in the spam bin because it ultimately adds little to the conversation and its constructiveness.
i think the time for providing explanations to our detractors is now past.
we are on the final leg of our race and nobody is really stopping us ,except for the eow who in desperate frustration,are poking around in panelist accounts.since no one is asking ,let me clarify that melvyn is fine and nobody is bothering to even question him up at the eow.he will be out on the 2nd.
justice lahoti is very sympathetic towards saol ,considering the trials and tribulations the company has gone through.
the rbi was kind enough to show up on it’s own accord for the MEDIATION and AMICABLE SETTLEMENT meeting.final notices have been served on all the other absent parties and their continued absence in future, will allow saol an exparte judgement.
really soapbox and chang don’t get carried away with yourselves.if i stop arguing a point it DEFINITELY does not mean i have seceded the argument to you. it merely means i have made my point and am not interested in your approval.nobody is interested in running round and round in circles with you and beating things to death.
the speakasians who are reading, can make their own judgements about who they believe is right.
yesterday a writ petition was filed in the mumbai high court by aispa detailing the excesses and suspicious behavior of the mumbai eow.it should come up for hearing in a couple of days.
Nice blog you have but accept it mate in reality you are a total failure only with speakasia go and watch the 2 hour video is you really want to know.
what it it you are a person who has watched just 5 min as you yourself claimed and are giving judgements about the company! The 3 options of joining were always there it was people’s choice they opted for 11000 as it was more profitable than the 6000 one and much more fast and convenient you have a choice too either to get the full information, do research and post or get scared by a 2 hour long video like a cock a doodle doo which you have already proved!
SPEAKASIA charges 11000 for ezine and people are getting paid for surveys well there are numerous clients who want to spread base in India so they get surveys done by speakasia why would they want to reveal their names to you anyway? Some might be self commissioned but not all of them otherwise it would not have run for 15 months.
If you compare it with an investment plan then the return is actually 40% , an investment plan like unipay can give only 10% and yet shut shop in 6-8 months and you think this will keep giving 40% for 15 months..lol first of all this is not an investment plan and we arfe not investores you make us sound so thats is why your sick logic.
Secondly You are still incapable of proving any claims which you have made against this company show us the proof and we will believe you we will not work for this company again but again you are empty handed coz you can only hullaballoo in your space as you neither have knowledge nor backing of any of your silly claims.
Yeh right we already made our points clear like they say en empty vessel makes more noise! You can keep beating around the bush and argue till kingdom comes but it will still make more sound!
ALL SPEAKASIA EMPLOYESS have got anticipatory bail- proof enough to show that nothing worng has been proved against them
EOW- a total failure and not present in the hearing yesterday also- proof enough to show that these scared cats have found nothing in their 5 months of investigationg god knows what!
AFFIDAVIT FILED IN SUPREME COURT OF INDIA CASE NO 323/2011 WRIT PETITION CIVIL TO ENSURE THAT COMPANY PAYS ALL ITS PENDING DUES- proof enough to see that the company does wnat to pay all its members
HUNDREDS OF COMPANIES RUN AWAY EVEN AFTER BEING REGISTERED- and the eow and others do nothing recelty a 4 year old gold company ran away- proof enough to realise that is speakasia had to run it wud be 100 times more easier for it as it was not even registered in India!
FIRST TIME AN ASSOCIATION FORMED TO SUPPORT A COMPANY- proof enough to show that the the members do wholeheartedly support it- no one on a mass basis would support a scam!
ACCORING TO OZ’S LOGIC TAKING 11000 AND PAYING THEM FOR WORK DONE IS A SCAM AS HERE IF YOU DONT DO THE SURVEYS YOU GET NOTHING- proof enough to show that kind of a biased mind in existence well then shut down all mba insitutions they charge you 10 lakhs for education and training and if you work in corporates then you make 10 times that amount !
man this is an investment how can they give 10 times that amount they arfe a scam ! shut it down how can they charge mba fees! ROFL! nothing more to say peoples you have seen it for yourselves..
@anju
…you’re idiotic if you think the currently open investigations of the RBI, MCA, ED, CID and SFIO are just going to go away
In the absense of a detailed explanation of the four hour or however long committee meeting yesterday, you’re going to have to do better than ‘it’s true because I said so’.
Yes, yes… and final noticed were served the last time and the time before that too. This civil action cannot overwrite the criminal action pending.
It’s like being owed money by someone who has an open investigation for murder on them. No court is going to suspend the open investigation for your civil action. You’re not getting anything until the more pressing matter is resolved.
Was it a civil writ? Because if it was, it’s just yet another waste of time until the criminal matters are concluded.
The fact of the matter is that if anything resoundingly positive occured at yesterday’s committee meeting, Speak Asia’s senior panelists would be shouting from the rooftops about it.
Their refusal to comment speaks for itself. Perhaps they’ve realised nothing is going to happen until the criminal investigations are concluded.
@Rehan
I don’t need to watch a 2 hour video, I researched the Speak Asia business model in detail back in March. The video appears to be a presentation of the business model the company never introduced. Therefore it’s irrelevant.
I’m fast losing patience here. Is being illiterate a requirement to join Speak Asia?
The company was reviewed in March on here based on the official documentation of the compensation plan provided by the company.
No they weren’t. I know because I went over it with a fine tooth comb before publishing my review. Can anybody name anyone who isn’t a senior panelist or friend of management who joined Speak Asia without paying 11,000?
Can I buy the ezine without joining the company?
No, ergo you’re not buying an e-zine you’re buying membership.
1. To date not one company has come forward in support of Speak Asia. Meanwhile several have openly denied any involvement in the company after Speak Asia lied about their involvement.
2. No company is paying Speak Asia 3.8 million USD per survey. Especially when they are wildly inaccurate and doctored from Wikipedia and free article directory articles.
Well then why did you say it was? What is this, the twilight zone? Speak Asia is a ponzi scheme, it’s got nothing to do with investment.
Seriously, we’re back to this?
Or that they’d gotten everything out of them they could have at the time. In the time Speak Asia’s employees were arrested it was revealed that 800 fraudulent accounts were created, the surveys were doctored in Mumbai and Speak Asia was named the biggest MLM pyramid scheme India has ever seen.
It’s an ongoing investigation that appears to be progressing nicely, yet you’re ready to declare it having concluded nothing. That’s rational.
Payment to panelists does not absolve one of engaging in the criminal activity of running a ponzi scheme for a year. ‘But we’ll pay the panelists’ is not a get out jail free card for Speak Asia.
Except that’t not where the bulk of commissions came from now is it. Nobody got rich on $7-20 a week doing surveys, they got rich mass recruiting others to the scam and getting paid on the paired binary and direct recruitment commissions.
People can support a ponzi scheme all they want, it’s still an illegal ponzi scheme.
Do they pay you huge commissions for recruiting others?
Didn’t think so.
Some Speak Asia members say it’s an investment, 5 minutes ago Rehan is saying it isn’t. Which one is it guys?
If Speak Asia’s members are incapable of comprehension that’s not my problem. I honestly don’t have time for anymore of these donkey regurgitated argument replies.
Read what’s been written and unless you’ve got anything new to add to the discussion, accept that Speak Asia is a ponzi scheme or continue living in your fantasy world.
well, i have said what i have to say about yesterdays meeting .you can wait for the other senior panelists to validate it.i have got the news from our counsel mr.abdi, who was representing aispa in the lahoti committee.
there is a reason why nobody bothers to answer you pet questions about -who o who paid saol xyz amount for their surveys and when o when did they shift to a product based model.
the reason is your questions are INVALID.
if EVER you gain access to the business model of saol you will understand why your questions are invalid.there can be NO right answer to a WRONG question.i’m sure the media will provide you with this document .
till then you have to realize that the supreme court and now the rbi have agreed with this document and so nobody is bothered if you have ants in your pants.
you are merely stumbling around trying to find a black cat in a dark room and now we are standing here laughing because we have the torch.
If Speak Asia collected more money from membership fees then selling surveys to clients, they are a scam.
If Speak Asia collected more money from selling surveys than from membership fees, they are not a scam.
How is asking whether or not Speak Asia collected more from selling surveys than membership fees invalid?
Honestly, if you can’t understand the above you’ve pretty much got to have dogshit for brains at this point. And I’m being polite.
I did, in full back in March.
If you’re referring to the bullshit business model that revolves around products and comparisons to ebay that was submitted to the SC, can you provide the specific date Speak Asia actually implemented this buisness model and to date how many people have purchase products from the company?
(this is the part where you storm off because you can’t).
around products and comparisons to ebay that was submitted to the SC, can you provide the specific date Speak Asia actually -soapbox.
omg.don’t tell me you’re compressing the 60 page business model into this one line you read off the company blog.this is just ONE line towards the end of the document.and if you start at the beginning and read upto the end it is perfectly valid.
i think you should storm off because you don’t have access to it.
i have made my point about this and you’re free to keep barfing up these questions ad nauseum but rest assured it will never be answered unless you change your line of questioning.
the writ filed yesterday is criminal.
bye.
Does the bullshit business model submitted by Speak Asia mention the sale of products?
If so please provide the exact date Speak Asia implemented this business plan and the names of any panelists who brought products from the company.
If you can’t, accept that this business model was never used and therefore Speak Asia claiming it as its actual business model is a lie.
It’s a simple request.
I don’t need access to business models that were never used. Neither does the SC or any authority investigation Speak Asia for criminal activity committed between May 2010 and May 2011.
Oh, and to all you people crying about 5 months the EOW have been investigating, here’s a real world example of how long a criminal investigation and subsequent criminal lawsuit against the company can take.
TVI Express, another ponzi scheme that was/is popular in India was under investigation in Australia back in early 2010 by the ACCC (kind of like your EOW/CID etc.). In May 2010 legal action was brought against TVI (after they were ordered to stop promoting it there) and only today, eighteen months later was the ruling handed down that TVI Express is an illegal pyramid scheme (they also paid out majority commissions on the recruitment of others).
A 5 month investigation by the EOW is still early days.
in 5 months of criminal investigation they dont obey the order of the supreme court did this happen in australia too?
Probably they woud have kicked your asses off if it happend that way cocking in your own blog dosent make sense abt it anyway
The ACCC finished their investigation and this legal action was the result of that investigation, so no, the ACCC did turn up to court.
Your supreme court action is instigated by civilians and is irrelevant until the authorities have finished their criminal investigations. Once that is done they’ll launch criminal proceedings against Speak Asia and that could go on well for over a year (the Speak Asia scam is larger in India than the TVI scam was in Australia).
Note that the ACCC legal action had nothing to do with those scammed recovering their money (as is the Supreme Court action in India). Now that the legal proceedings by the authorities are concluded, criminal action is being taken against the ringleaders of TVI Express by the ACCC and any civil action by TVI members against them (as the representatives of TVI in Australia) can be acted upon.
In India you are trying to the reverse with the civil Supreme Court action, recover money before a criminal investigation is concluded and the appropriate legal action launched.
any criminal investigation has to follow the rules of the court thats why criminal layers are there do you need law lessons too?
In the 2g case in India they had to report everytime for the hearing in the court when they were called if an agency does not report, then 1 notice, another and the final is sent, in India it takes a lot of time as compared to others thats why i said if the same thing happend in australia the result would have come by now and they would have kicked your ass in no time
Yet here we are, with the EOW and no other regulatory body (except the RBI, who themselves stated they never opened a criminal investigation into Speak Asia and only ever sought to establish whether the companies overseas transfers were legal), not turning up.
Why?
They’re busy with their own investigations which take precedent over civil action launched by panelists. I’d be very surprised if they bothered to turn up to the next Lahoti Committee meeting too.
Just last Friday the EOW had no trouble presenting evidence to a court to get Crasto remanded in custody till Friday, so obviously there are currently no legal ramifcations to them ignoring the civil action brought by panelists to date.
They didn’t bother turning up to the Supreme Court and now it’s some mediation committee, I doubt they will involve themselves until they’ve finished their own investigations. They know the banks wont touch Speak Asia (so nobody is getting paid) until they’re done investigating and Speak Asia is either cleared or found guilty as a result of their investigations.
I have no idea what 2g is but unless it’s a ponzi scheme involving hunreds of millions of US dollars it’s irrelevant to discuss it here.
Again, the legal action in Australia was only brought about after the investigation by the ACCC (like the EOW/CID etc.) was concluded.
Had members launched their own civil action against TVI you can bet nobody from the ACCC would have bothered to turn up either because they’re busy with their own investigation/legal proceedings at the time.
Oz, From now itself you please start preparing to write against Lahoti (also Supreme Court of India), RBI & whoever agency gives clean chit to SpeakAsia.
You have already written (previously) an article with the title “Why the Lahoti led Speak Asia committee is useless” kindly continue that artcile as second part and also start writing against Solicitor General Mr. Gopal Subramaniam as a bad man as you did in your earlier artcile & posts.
Even you will call Hon. Lahoti as a bad man one day if something happens good for the panelist and Speak Asia very soon. By the way you are writing in your posts, it is very clear that you expect Speak Asia case to go on for years & years in India. Keep Dreaming..!
Now it seems that they are going to accept the fake business model of Speak Asia (as per your claim) and you also just going to start writing against Indian Govt. & judiciary system since it seems that they are going to give green signal & accept to distribute payouts to SpeakAsia members.
I can understand if SpeakAsia started to give its payout to its panelists surely you will be totally upset but i don’t think you will quit writing in Behind MLM that too against SpeakAsia, Am I right?
Above all, if they started their business activity again, surely you will be totally out of your control and start writing against the Govt. of India. Raising so many questions..! Is it right? I think you are going to do that next..!
Oz, surely you won’t be having experience of this kind in your carrier. Am I right? Here we go… Now see what this Oz is going to do? Oz is going to feel so bad very soon..! Any have my Best Wishes Oz!
Yawn Michael, I follow the MLM indusrty – personally I couldn’t give two shits what happens to Speak Asia. I have no money invested in them, am not investigating them or planning to bring about any legal action.
If India wants to legalise ponzi schemes then by all means do so. I’ll merely report on the hilarity of the decision and move on.
The Lahoti Committee is useless, whatever the outcome. I’ve never commented on Lahoti as an individual so please don’t put words in my mouth.
Subramaniam got up and lied to the Supreme Court about Speak Asia’s business model. Whether he did it intentionally or not I don’t know, but I’ve already covered this – so what’s your point?
Nope, personally couldn’t give a shit. It doesn’t affect me. WIthin the context of MLM and this blog though, of course I’d cover the development.
You guys can try and pin me as anti-speak asia all you want, I couldn’t care less – but ultimately it is only you supporters who have a vested financial interest in the company. The rest of us just watch from the sidelines and analyse what goes on. It’s quite comical at times.
I just read on Facebook some Speak Asia member crapping on about how ‘the anti-speak asians’ are giving out Lahoti’s number for everyone to call because it’s a conspiracy by them to make him angry and lose his patience.
Hilarious.
Oz is going to do what Oz always does, get on with reviewing MLM companies and covering the more interesting events in the MLM industry.
BehindMLM isn’t a blog about Speak Asia, it’s a blog about MLM.
Wow the attempts to control information and censor panelists from communicating amongst themselves has hit an all new low.
From Facebook;
And from AISPA’s latest update;
With AISPA clearly not publishing any new discussion on the site and the Facebook Powers group on and off stopping panelists from creating discussion topics, why on Earth would panelists want to restrict themselves to these two sites?
These senior panelists are really doing their best to stop panelists from accessing information and communicating amongst themselves. And this all started right before the Lahoti Committee got underway – things are obviously going well (sarcasm).
I expect senior panelists and those with access to tell us all it’s for everybody’s own good, well that’s easy to say when you know what’s going on.
Meanwhile the rest of the plebs… sorry panelists are kept in the dark!
Who knows what’s going on, it’s chaos! Now another admin is openly disagreeing with the suggestion;
Perhaps the senior panelists running the group realised if people listened to AISPA and stopped openly discussing Speak Asia and sharing information, that would mean the death of their Speak Asia Powers Facebook group too…
Except there are NO proven clients for SpeakAsia… unless you still claim that the client list is “trade secret”, like Anju did. How big the alleged market is, is irrelevant. The question is how is SpeakAsia going to generate this much money to pay its panelists, and it has yet to prove that ANY company paid it ANY money, much less enough to pay lots of panelists.
You did not answer the question. You are using the “heresy” argument: something new will always be accepted later, when that is not the case.
If only a dozen (or even a thousand) or so out of 1.5 million panelists got in for free then it’s irrelevant. You agreed earlier that no figures about who got in via each of the three methods were ever published.
Aaaaaaaaaand we’re back on with the clamp down of information;
With the details of what went down yesterday supposedly about to be released sometime tonight, they obviously don’t want panelists openly discussing their thoughts on the committee.
I wonder who the ‘higher authorities’ are, Speak Asia, their lawyers or AISPA?
If I sue you, to recover my money, in civil court, while the police are also investigating you for other fraud (just as an example, don’t take it personally), if I ask the police to come to court to help my case, do you think they would care?
No. Their own investigation is more important. They are not about to reveal what they turned up just because someone asked them. IT IS NOT THEIR CASE.
Same here.
Can you refute the conclusion in that article: that Lahoti committee will do NO GOOD BEFORE the criminal investigation is concluded? Can you support your opinion with logic instead of insults and innuendos?
If you can’t, then you’re just venting, and not contributing to the discussion. At least Sanjeev and Anju tries to inject SOME reasoning into their posts.
Can you prove that what Subramaniam presented in court is actually true with third-party sources, NOT SpeakAsia propaganda? Subramaniam presented a business model that was NEVER IMPLEMENTED. That is NOT the truth. and presenting something not true in court as if it is true is perjury.
Subramaniam may be a great man, but he is a lawyer, and lawyer do what their clients ask them to (or they can quit, like Saroagi did couple months ago, after only a few days on the job).
Lahoti’s personal conduct has no bearing on SpeakAsia.
Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes generally take 18-36 months to conclude. Business in Motion case in Canada took even longer. Expose was done by CBC TV in 2009, but RPMC only filed charges in 2011. TVI Express in Australia took 18 months.
So far, the quickest nation on pyramid scheme slamdown is China. TVI Express there lasted only 6 months, but final conviction took much longer. TVI Express scam reached China in April 2009, and in July and August arrests already started, though convictions didn’t happen until 2010 and 2011.
If you think India’s justice system moves after, please feel free to cite some examples.
There’s a huge difference between allowing SpeakAsia to pay panelists what’s supposedly due them, vs. declaring it legal and not a pyramid scheme. Don’t link the two just yet.
Hilarious. It is valid if you read the entire 60 pages, yet nobody can summarize it. Ha-ha. Sounds like a new way to say “it’s too complicated” and “you just don’t understand us.”
Bernard Madoff told his investors that his methods are too complicated to explain, and gave them statements that look okay. Turns out the statements were complete fabrications generated by a programmer under Madoff’s control, and look at where Madoff is now… in jail for running the largest Ponzi scheme in US history.
The question is actually very simple: what does SpeakAsia buy, and what does it sell? And do they really do what they say they do?
Supposedly, SpeakAsia buys panelist’s survey results, and sell them to companies. That is what a survey company is “supposed to” do, after all.
However, in practice, SpeakAsia sells membership/subscription (it’s linked together), and buys recruiters (who are paid to sell memberships). There are surveys, but they were not commissioned by any company.
Thus, SpeakAsia is NOT a survey company, and the subsequent ‘revision’ of business model is merely smoke and mirrors.
Now the senior panelists are once again dangling the carrot of payment to control the panelists;
‘Do you want money, or updates? – what is so explosive that happened yesterday that if made public the senior panelist and AISPA fear could jeapordize
theirthe panelists’ money?!Dear Oz,
I hv gone thru ur analysis and wld really appreciate the hard word and thinking u hv put in. Really u hv done some kinda research or some one is guiding u and u r just a puppet. But in both the cases i cld not ignore ur analysis which i think is beautifully done.
Der is only one thing which is not convincing in ur analysis and that is it always looked biased. Throughout ur analysis u hv never discussed or tried to analyse even a single positive aspect of the company in question.
That makes me to think that the company does never had or never did any thing thats positive or it is worth of ur mention.or u also know that negativity only sells and thats wat u r doing.. pls ellaborate…
Biased and convincing aren’t related. I’m not here to convince you of anything, just analyse what’s happening and give my opinion.
That’s because nothing good ever comes from ponzi schemes… unless you’re the one running them.
I’m not selling anything and Speak Asia is what it is.
Obvious scam is obvious… and the mountains of negativity ponzi schemes bring with them is not something I alone invented.
If a murderer gave his fortune to charity, does that act make him any less guilty of murder?
Whether SpeakAsia does any “good” is not relevant to whether they are illegal. Lots of organized crime syndicates, such as the Mafia (La Cosa Nostra) gave plenty of money to charities, orphanages, and the like. They’re still criminals.
Dear K Chang, wilh all request i wld like to say now u r behaving like an immature cos der is law to decide whether they are gulity or not. You can not jump to conclusion unless the law gives its verdict. Rest is opinion and assumption.
Now my point was that a right analysis always happens when you see the both the sides of the coin. If u only see one side of the coin ( eg. HEAD ) AND assume that the other side is also the same ( HEAD ) thn discussing further with u is a waste of time.
Speak Asia took membership fees, these membership fees roughly equal the amount of revenue the authorities who have access to Speak Asia’s financials claim the company generated in revenue (and subsequently shipped off overseas instead of paying panelists), and paid out an overwhelming majority of commissions based on the recruitment of new members.
Speak Asia’s global CEO Harendar Kaur has not been seen or heard from since early 2011.
The Indian CEO Manoj Kumar fled the country as soon as the RBI announced an investigation into the legality of Speak Asia’s foreign bank transfers.
Speak Asia’s COO (the last publicly known recognised management figure of Speak Asia left) went into hiding just over a month ago upon being released from hospital. Tarak Bajpai has not been heard from or seen since.
Virtually nothing is known about 100% company shareholders Podium Ring International, other than that their business address is given as
Why does the only listed shareholder have a PO Box at an ‘offshore incorporations centre’? Does that remotely sound legitimate to you? Especially given that the BVI is a known tax haven and the Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax Department have jointly claim that Speak Asia ‘evaded payment of income tax‘ and ‘expect to file a show-cause notice by the end of December‘.
Then there’s the ED booking Speak Asia for money laundering (presumably to be filed along with the income tax fraud by the end of December).
The money trail appears to be India –> Singapore –> BVI –> The Harendar Kaur, Manoj Kumar, Tarak Bajpai, AISPA President Melvin Crasto and the other mystery members of Podium International retirement fund.
Who are the members of Podium Ring International and who is on their payroll? Senior Panelists… AISPA committee members… the various front companies set up by Speak Asia to funnel money around and doctor surveys…? How far does the rabbit hole go?
Seriously, when was the last time you heard of a legitimate company’s management behaving this way? What’s the other side of the coin being missed?
Think about it, half of AISPA’s committee are claiming they’ve never made a cent from Speak Asia – does it make any sense to you that these people, who joined Speak Asia before they stopped sending out surveys and had their bank accounts frozen didn’t make any money from the company?
Furthermore what are their motivations for forming an association fighting to clear the company’s name?
Would you put in the effort to protect the reputation of a company you joined but never made a cent off?
Of course if Podium Ring International is paying them off they can wholeheartedly claim not to have been paid a cent by Speak Asia. Or perhaps one of Harendar Kaur’s other 25+ companies is being used to make the payments.
And who is funding AISPA’s legal action? Who is funding Speak Asia’s legal action? And with what money??
Hopefully the week long interrogation by the EOW of Melvin Crasto has shed some light on this, although I doubt we’ll find anything out till the investigation is concluded.
So many secrets… and the deeper the criminal investigations get, the tighter the control on information made public about Speak Asia gets.
Case in point, the joint decision by Speak Asia, its senior panelists and AISPA to withhold any and all information about the progress of the Lahoti Committee from its members.
My dear learned Oz ,
Im so very disappointed. I am sad to take my words back where i was impressed by ur writings and appreciated u for ur research. Im sorry to say but i strongly feel ur research is based on incomplete information.
As if the base of ur research is incomplete ur whole research is useless. Thn is becomes only as assumption. you are requested to elaborate your opening statement
and im sure you will get all the answers yourself..hv a nice day..
vikrant, Speak Asia’s members didn’t generate 30,000 crore of owed payouts by filling out surveys. The bulk of Speak Asia’s commissions are paid out on the recruitment of new members. That’s not assumption, that’s the business model.
Speak Asia owe members 30,000 crore, meanwhile only have a accountable revenue of around 2,200-2,400 crore (according to the EOW, IT and ED departments).
Why do you think the Lahoti Committee meeting progress is being surpressed and Speak Asia’s management have fled overseas into hiding?
I didn’t arrive at any of these figures myself, they’re straight from the investigations into Speak Asia’s financials by at least three government departments. Writing off these observations as based on assumption is a weak dismissal of the facts as they stand before us.
Do you need new pair of eyeglasses, Vikrant? I did NOT say SAOL is guilty. I said there is a reason why BehindMLM and its critics do not discuss the “good” parts… because it is IRRELEVANT to whether it is a scam or not, and I gave the reason.
And what other side is there, since SAOL thus far have yet to prove it has ANY revenue other than membership / e-zine subscriptions?
No addition revenue means all revenue is from subscriptions / membership dues.
And because it pays out money for recruiting, it is a pyramid scheme.
What is the other side, when the other side is not factual?
The business model was never implemented if there were no clients. The “empowered consumer” thing was never implemented either (the only proof of which is a bunch of TVs in a container, worth at most 40 crore, probably less). So the other side you’re asking for is mostly fiction.
It could have provided proof of additional sources of revenue for MONTHS, even since May, when the TV station did the special investigations, and EOW/CID/RBI/IT/etc. started calling. Instead, it launched a 1.5 hour press conference in which precious few actual facts were given, except apologies for prior lies.
And you’re insisting that there’s something POSITIVE about this… scheme?
Everything said and done – There is a post on many of the speakasia facebook pages which says that SAOL Singapore has been declared as compliant by ACRA. I have been waiting since yesterday evening but nothing has been posted regarding this on Behind MLM till now.
What does this mean. A small comment of one admin is immediately published on this page saying that SPEAKASIA has blocked the flow of information but when a positive news about SAOL is published on the same facebook page, you are not even mentioning of the same after 16 hours of the same being posted.
This shows how unbiased you people are. Let me see if this comment of mine is published or is moderated
ACRA compliancy is what, the filing of notification that Speak Asia had an Annual General Meeting to ACRA?
And considering Speak Asia have no business operations in Singapore, other than using bank accounts there (before they were shut down) to launder money through – ACRA certification means what exactly?
‘Hey guys, we had an AGM this year!’
I imagine Speak Asia’s AGM was just Harendar Kaur calling up Manoj Kumar on skype and asking him if he was enjoying retirement and pina coladas on the beach, paid for with stolen panelist money.
Whopee! Because that’s news worth publishing.
If Speak Asia actually did have an AGM and published what went on at the AGM, that might be worth analysing and writing about… but like the Lahoti Commission and secrecy surrounding everything else the company is involved in, I doubt that’s going to happen.
If memory serves correctly even Ashok Bahirwani downplayed the lack of ACRA compliance as the ‘filing of standard documents’. I myself don’t recall having ever made a big deal about it (I certainly never wrote an article dedicated to it).
Moreso the record for Speak Asia lists the company as formerly known as ‘Haren Technology’. There’s no mention of ‘Haren Ventures’, which is one of the 25+ companies Harendar Kaur owns and uses to launder money from Speak Asia.
Get Haren Ventures and the other 25 companies ACRA compliant and then we might have something worth noting.
Might as well get compliancy in other country’s Speak Asia doesn’t do business in too… it still doesn’t change the business model or what took place in India.
Nothing. That’s why there’s no mention of it.
Honestly Sanjeev, holding up this like it’s some imaginary ‘white list’ and approval of Speak Asia’s business model just shows how paper thin the argument that Speak Asia isn’t a ponzi scheme really is. Even more so when you try to deflect attention away from the censorship and restriction of information you’re providing to panelists because I didn’t waste my time writing about it.
Oh, and it’s been nearly 72 hours since the Lahoti Committee meeting… and Speak Asia and it’s paid senior panelists and AISPA continue to withold information from the panelists they represent. What a shambles.
I gave you guys 36 hours to come clean before publishing anything. Long enough I thought.
But no, please continue with the one-sided and completely biassed Facebook coverage from Speak Asia’s paid senior panelists!
Until you make public the details of the Lahoti Committee you have no credibility whatsoever. Apologies if you thought waiting 16 hours to mention the ACRA complaince notice and then trying to use that timeframe to discredit everything else published about Speak Asia on here didn’t work.
You were the first to mention it on here, and unlike yourself I retain my policy of not censoring information regarding Speak Asia to suit my own undisclosed agendas. What happened to the ‘no more updates’ announcement? Or are Speak Asia Power’s paid admins just going to continue to provide the people they supposedly represent with information that is useless and of no help or meaning to them?
@Sanjeev — ACRA is Singapore’s equivalent of Companies Act in India. All corporations have to file a report of annual meeting of shareholders and such. If you don’t, you are not compliant.
It has NO BEARING on whether the panelists are going to get their money, or whether SAOL is a pyramid scheme.
But it is better than silence. Too bad it’s just… elevator music (and I’m being nice)
My idea of writing this here was exactly this that I wanted to debate on this topic too. And very rightly said by you, this is a paper thin argument, but the same non-compliance was made as a big issue at the time the news of this SAOL so called SCAM broke out.
And as regards censorship, please make a note here that we were not privy to the ex-CJI Mr. Lahoti’s meeting and whatever information we have received has already been shared.
Not be me it wasn’t. Infact the only time ACRA was ever mentioned in an article on BehindMLM was after Speak Asia used it in a presentation in an attempt to assert the legitimacy of the company.
So just to clarify, Speak Asia made a big deal about compliance, which it then turned out they didn’t have. then months later they finally file some papers that say they had an AGM and get compliance back, and you come here claiming a big deal was made about non-compliance and attempt to use it as an argument that we’re censoring discussion here.
This despite the fact that you were the first person to come here and mention the recently obtained ACRA compliance and the fact that your comment went live before I’d even read it.
That sounds about as logical as claiming a ponzi scheme is a legitimate ‘revolutionary’ business model.
…oh wait, sorry forgot who I was talking to here for a second.
What was discussed in the four hour long Lahoti Committee meeting? Why has detailed information not been released to the very people you claim to represent?
And please don’t you ever say that we are paid admins. As mentioned many a times before we are group of panelists. Yes being the oldest of the lot who came on facebook initially we are being regarded respect by other members and AISPA , but it no where means that we are paid admins.
Whatever we have been doing is just to keep a small ray of hope with us. When the case is under legal purview you know it better than anyone that not the entire information can be made public. Has EOW given the entire details of how the investigation is proceeding . No.
Similarly the company can not also disclose unless advised by lawyers to do so.
What is it about a simple civil mediation process between Speak Asia and its members cannot be made public? We’re not talking a criminal matter here (like the EOW investigation) and it’s certainly not a matter of national security.
What is so damaging that it might ‘threaten the restart of business operations’ of Speak Asia and is being kept hidden from its members?
What could possibly have been discussed that resulted in the co-ordinated censorship and clamp down of information across Facebook groups, blogs and AISPA – including a call from AISPA itself to Speak Asia’s members to cease discussing any and all matters pertaining to Speak Asia across any platform?
Again, what was discussed in the four hour long Lahoti Committee meeting? Why has detailed information not been released to the very people you claim to represent?
Those very people whom we claim to represent are matured enough and have rightfully accepted the updates as released.
Given that you, the rest of the senior panelists, Speak Asia and AISPA all know what went on at the Lahoti Committee and that it is a simple civil civil mediation process between Speak Asia and its members again, what was discussed in the four hour long Lahoti Committee meeting? Why has detailed information not been released to the very people you claim to represent?
And don’t give us that crap about not knowing, upon learning what was discussed you all conspired to make a joint decision to not inform the members of Speak Asia what happened because, and I quote, it would jeapordize ‘the restart of operations of the company’.
What was discussed in the four hour long Lahoti Committee meeting? Why has detailed information not been released to the very people you claim to represent?
thanks for the info. It seems u guys are more informed thn i am. As for as ACRA is concerned, it made sense to blow the issue when it was non-complaint and if now the compliance is der ( if it is, im not sure ), u rightly said, its just a AGM …..
Now i hv also done some analysis and request u to shed some light on the below:
* Do u guys sit here full time and getting paid for it. If yes pls tell me that process to join it as a part time job.
@vikrant
BehindMLM is a blog that I own and operate, along with Oz (which should instantly put to rest the crap about being ‘an agent’ paid by the media or Speak Asia’s always un-named competitors (ponzi schemes have viable competitors now!?)).
Anybody can start a blog, you just need to write about something you have an interest in. On here I write about MLM.
Be warned though, it’s a lot of work – but if you genuinely enjoy the topics you write about that ofsetts the level of effort involved.
Vikrant – I concur with your apprehension. Now that this blog is being operated by these guys as mentioned by Oz, indeed this blog has been paid to do this task of negatively charging internet cloud about speakasia.com, who else has time to relentlessly speak against speakasia.com, without a cause, that too full time!!! amazing effort!!!
This kind of effort requires dedication, motivation and conviction and not to forget “lot of work”. I hope after this any visitor to this site can get a feeler – Whats going in behind : behindmlm.com as a site!!
Who’s ‘these guys’? BehindMLM is a one man operation.
As for negative coverage, it’s merely a symptom of Speak Asia’s ponzi scheme business model and company actions. I didn’t make them do anything.
And I too hope people appreciate the effort that goes into this site.
Vikrant – See the instant reply. The only time he’s not this fast when he’s off to a pub……. to make use of the monies he gets.
@Observer
If you must know, I’m in the middle of writing an article. I update 2 blogs 5-7 times a week. You think content writes itself?
I understand how people investing in ponzi schemes have issues with actual work though, so I won’t take your comments personally.
@anju
The issue isn’t who is signing the checks or personally handing over the money, the issue is whether it can in one way or another be traced back to Speak Asia.
I find it highly suspect random members of the public are willing to bankroll AISPA’s legal activities.
This I know you can’t prove either way, so I guess we’ll leave it at that. Your lawyer doesn’t care where the money ultimately comes from and you can get anyone to hand over a cheque.
It is an interesting point of note though, especially when you consider AISPA President Crasto’s recent unexplained $3000 deposit from Speak Asia. (and before you chime in with ‘do you have any proof’, he was arrested and held in custody for it – proof enough).
dear Oz, i completely appreciate ur effort.otherwise who will sit here full time without getting paid. hats off to u man..
OZ – you taking comments personally??? I don’t think so, you are a professional, and you people take contract without a conscience!!
it won’t matter to you what a person feels when he/she losses. But you definitely gain from your contract of making an evil of speakasia… say it again – I am wrong.
Bogus argument. A dozen or so “SpeakAsians” will not make Oz rich from ad traffic, even if they each post a dozen comments every day for the next ten years.
@Oz
Please request this new “Observer” to either change his identity or you may simply bar him to avoid confusion as his observations are incoherent.
k.chang – spare sycophancy over here on the open cloud ….. understand the matter first then poke nose with valid comment. I am talking on oz’s contract and let him answer to that first.
This is your comment copied from whihc you have been denying since many days but accepted later on. Just wanted to check if your memory is sharp enough.
https://behindmlm.com/companies/speak-asia-online/speak-asia-online-review-combining-mlm-and-surveys/
@Sanjeev
Are you braindead? I maintain that when that was written there was no free option to join Speak Asia. They only introduced this policy after the RBI investigation and when they redid the site.
Its a near verbatim transcript of the Speak Asia business model as it was publicly displayed at the time.
Like everything else it was never implemented. There were archives of the Speak Asia website published a few days ago, the faq was like 3 points and none of which mentioned a free joining option.
Now of course it’s on the website, but like their product based business model it was never implemented nor did anyone actually sign up to the company with it. Everybody paid 11,000 rupees.
I completely stand by my original review as it was based on the business model Speak Asia used May 2010-May 2011.
There is no ‘the case’. The Supreme Court is civil action. The criminal filings are yet to come following the SFIO report.
These two cases are independent of eachother. One is people whinging about money, the other is criminal prosecution for tax evasion, money laundering and running a ponzi scheme.
There’s plenty of SpeakAsian sycophancy here already. Need some balance, but then, you guys call it faith and “support”.
There is no contract. This is merely a wild conspiracy theory that you spawned, spoken by EVERY MLM or scam that got a negative review virtually ANYWHERE.
You have a theory without proof. As you spawned the theory, you are supposed to provide proof to support it. And you’re trying to pass the burden. Why should he try to disprove it when it’s YOU that supposed to prove it?