As a result of our continuous coverage and analysis of the Zeek Rewards MLM opportunity here at BehindMLM, over the past few months several questions have arisen that to date have remained unanswered.

Today we take you behind the scenes at Zeek Rewards and reveal some of the more pressing issues that have surfaced:

Did OFAC really have anything to do with the recent banning of members? What is behind some of the relationships between well-known figures in the MLM industry and Zeek Rewards, exactly how much fraud are Zeek Rewards dealing with, how do they address it, is the company still vulnerable and if so, why?

Read on as we explore these very questions and more.

Probably the most pressing question regarding Zeek Rewards these past few months has been “why exactly did Zeek Rewards start banning members from various countries?”

For those who missed the original controversy, back in early April Zeek Rewards abruptly enforced a blanket ban on members from several countries, including Serbia, Slovenia, Belarus, Egypt, Croatia and Macedonia.

Initially the reason given for these bans by Zeek Rewards support suggested that international politics were behind the bans:

We do not have total knowledge of what happened. What I do know is that it is something with your countries government policies (not the Serbian people itself), that has required us to not list your country anymore.

Under mounting pressure over the vagueness of this reason, Paul Burks (CEO of Zeek Rewards and Zeekler) then put out a press release explaining that

The United States Government has established an Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) through the US Treasury Department.

This Federal agency maintains a list of “sanctioned countries” (and) under US law it is illegal for a US based individual or company to do business with individuals of companies in those countries.

After I contacted OFAC, they refuted this claim stating that they do “not currently administer comprehensive sanctions programs against the countries listed in your email“.

Since then, to date there has been no official explanation, clarification or explanation as to what exactly happened from Zeek Rewards.

Until now.

Information recently received by BehindMLM explains in detail what prompted the bans and why they happened:

It had nothing to do with OFAC. For a sustained period of time in Feb the company experienced 85% of all site transactions as fraud out of asia/indonesia.

In January 2012, 1.5 million visa/mastercard numbers were breached by hackers – that means 1.5 million stolen card numbers were being sold for fraud purposes.

Fraud was taking place on Zeekler auctions and through the bid purchases before then (and still is), but not on this kind of scale because there weren’t this many numbers out there in the hands of fraudsters before.

Fraudsters all scrambled to find places where they could cash in on the stolen cards and because of the way Zeekler operates – the business model and technology was easy to exploit for that purpose.

Zeekler probably would have been fine if they had fraud protocols in place so they didn’t identify it immediately and they didn’t have the technical capability.

Visa/Mastercard was taking responsibility for the breech and their zero liability policy protected card holders. Payment gateways that have fraud protocols in place WERE ABLE TO IMMEDIATELY IDENTIFY FRAUD AT THEIR CUSTOMER LEVEL, so the payment gateways cut Zeekler off because of the amount of fraud being processed through the site.

Zeekler had to reduce the fraud to get the payment gateways back. The majority of the fraud was coming out of a select number of countries, so their solution was instead of solving the problem, (to) just block entire countries from transacting on the site.

They compounded the problem by instead of telling the truth, taking responsibility with some of the language Visa/Mastercard provided to corporate customers, or deferring the answer they blamed OFAC, when that failed, they said it was a DDOS attack.

This again compounded the problem because once you publicly say a large site can be downed with DDOS, every amateur hacker in the world wants those bragging rights.

It was also indicated that whilst there are definitely ongoing DDOS issues affecting Zeek’s sites, that my source hadn’t seen anything indicating that these issues existed prior to Zeek announcing the DDOS attacks on their news blog.

How bad were the DDOS attacks? Alberto Mujica (friend of CEO Paul Burks) sent out an email on April 10th detailing the full extent at the time:

Hello Dan, Dawn and Paul,

Attached is a sample list of IP addresses seen attacking Zeek Rewards today.

The offending IP addresses are found to be consuming roughly 2.5Gbs of bandwidth. There are roughly 4000 IPs so far attacking the site.

The list detailed as described about 4000 IPs which were then presumably blocked from accessing Zeek’s online properties. This IP blocking protection, whilst largely ineffectual due to the obvious deployment of botnet swarms, was the primary defense method deployed to deal with the attacks.

So, what started with 1 fire is now 3 and the first fire was never actually put out because blocking ips doesn’t solve the hole in the system that allowed the fraud to begin with.

In the midst of all this – because there was so much fraud on the site and they failed to follow visa’s guidelines handling it, the payment gateways ceased doing business with Zeekler so affiliates couldn’t get paid unless someone manually processed them.

Not being able to use credit cards has been a huge thorn in the side of Zeek Rewards as to date they’ve failed to adequately or sufficiently explain why members cannot use credit cards to perform certain actions within the company.

Furthermore Zeek Rewards has only ever suggested that they themselves made the decision to stop accepting payments from credit cards, rather than acknowledge that they were cut off by payment processors.

In February 2012 Zeek Rewards did admit that hundreds and thousands of dollars of fraud was occuring through the company, but this was after the fact and failed to mention that around this time constituted 85% of all transactions being processed by the company.

Around this time payment delays were starting to be noticed by Zeek Rewards affiliates and shortly thereafter

all hell broke loose… Dawn called in O H Brown to get other payment gateways and in their mind it solved the problem but, again, the root cause was NEVER addressed – the technical infrastructure that allowed for the fraud and the DDOS (still) existed.

Since then Zeek Rewards and Zeekler have been up and down like a yo-yo with the company citing repeatedly that they are either under DDOS attack or are upgrading or maintaining their systems.

This in itself is questionable when you consider that

everything comes down to politics and cronyism. Dawn’s son and Paul used old code from Free Store Club written in ASP (a very old language with distinct limitations and security issues) to start Zeekler. They just modified FSC code to be an affiliate penny auction site and used that db to market it.

Paul (and possibly) Dan (don’t) know modern languages or platforms like .Net, PHP or Ruby on Rails or work with big data solutions like hadoop – and they can’t really get new developers to jump in and fix what’s there right away because the code isn’t documented and they didn’t use SVN so they can’t work in development teams.

Basically, only 1 developer can edit in the entire code base at one time. If they used the proper systems and protocols they could work with a team of 3-5 developers and a big data guy to redevelop the system in a few months.

The code is very old, very insecure, undocumented, never reviewed before pushed live, etc and the database is a complete disaster that has to be optimized before it will ever perform properly – so the site is slow, unstable and almost impossible to secure and control.

They also host out of a single datacenter in Miami on 6 servers that is owned by Paul’s friend Albert. You cannot run a site of their size or traffic at a single datacenter. Their choice of hosting in miami is the reason they were taken down by the DDOS.

They should, like everyone else, host in the cloud on something like Amazon S3 so they can balance server load across multiple data centers in multiple geographic locations and have a dedicated server admin that would manage the bandwidth so they wouldn’t have outages if they have DDOS attacks.

The technical infrastructure is completely inadequate for the traffic and transactions on the site and they KNOW it. But they refuse to do what any other company that expects to be around in 5 years would – redevelop their infrastructure to handle their explosive growth with solid technologies.

They are using ASP code (a very old scripting language) from paul’s previous venture, Free Store Club (i don’t even think he transferred the IP rights on it) and modifying it to be an affiliate penny auction site.

With all the financial success Zeekler and Zeek Rewards claim to be enjoying, why none of the above has been actioned or addressed remains a mystery.

Are Zeek Rewards really exposing their affiliates and entire business operations to ongoing risk and uncertainty due to internal company politics and cronyism?

Moving on, much was made recently of some positive commentary in the Network Marketing Business Journal back in April. Published by Keith Laggos, turns out this wasn’t the glowing independent third-party endorsement many touted it as:

Dawn said she bought $100K worth of prints of NMBJ and Keith’s personal consulting time to review Zeekler for compliancy and in return Zeek gets good play in the mag.

I would not call the coverage in NMBJ anything other than an advertorial it is not journalism – Keith’s name might be on the piece but Dawn wrote most of it.

Peter Mingils is the Executive Vice President of the Association of Network Marketing Professionals (ANMP) and also seems to have a strong relationship with Zeek Rewards:

he is a paid consultant to build out a training system for affiliates – he attends every marketing and training meeting and while I do not know the exact arrangements if there is new work on the table he almost always gets it.

Many questions have been made recently regarding the nature of the relationship between Troy Dooly from MLM Helpdesk and Zeek Rewards. Beginning a few months ago, there was a noticeable shift in attitude in Dooly’s reporting which seemed to stem from nothing more than attendance at a Zeek Rewards VIP Red Carpet Event and talking to Zeek Rewards management.

Troy Dooly is listed as a Committee member over at ANMP and on his involvement in Zeek Rewards my source had this to say:

I believe he was initially critical of Zeekler, but I think it was Keith Laggos that reached out to him and sat down with Dawn and him in Vegas.

Troy and Peter were brought to the table by OH – after they learned that Troy was negative on Zeek, they held a meeting with him in Vegas. He comes to all events and is favorable on the company now.

I do not know if any money is exchanged for consulting or other services but he does attend all the Zeekler events, speaks at events to affiliates on Zeek’s behalf and now gives positive reviews on the company.

Based on the fact that they pay everyone…

The thought was left unfinished at the time but at a later date the source further elaborated:

(Dooly) is now paid. – he comes to all events and is favorable on the company now.

In the past Dooly has denied being paid directly by Zeek Rewards (and I still personally give him the benefit of the doubt) but at the same time has hinted at a possible financial relationship existing between the ANMP and Zeek Rewards:

when a company is willing to have me speak on issues surrounding network marketing to their distributors as a Board Member of the Association of Network Marketing Professionals, then I will gladly do it.

Observing the strong implication of a financial arrangement between the ANMP and Zeek Rewards, I contacted Dooly for further information and received this reply:

None of the companies Rex Venture Capital, Zeekler or Zeek Rewards, or any other company or entity controlled by Paul Burks or anyone else for that matter who might have some form of vested interest in any of the above companies are members or sponsors of the ANMP outside of Dawn & Alex.

Dawn and Alex are paying member. She paid the $50 annual individual membership fee.

That said, I’m still finding it hard to not read between the lines when it comes to the relationship between ANMP executive and committee members and Zeek Rewards but for now I’ll leave it at that.

In summation,

• O H Brown does videos
• Troy Dooly – general advocate and speaks at events
• Peter Mingils produces affiliate training materials
• Keith Laggos is paid huge sums for the prints and reprints of his mags.

Looking forward, with compliance clearly taking centre stage as Zeek Rewards struggles to avoid being referred to as an investment scheme without actually changing the core of their 90 day ROI business model, I’ll leave you with some parting insight:

Their biggest concern right now is not the tech or fraud but the compliancy course.

The affiliates are continuing to sell the opportunity in a way that seems like a security because honestly – put the penny auction and the mlm thing together and how can it not be construed as such? It’s the easiest way to explain it.

They are investing all this money into compliancy because they already have a number of State’s attorneys sniffing around.

Stay tuned…


Footnote: In order to protect my source(s) discussion regarding their identity(ies) will not be permitted in the comments below. Members of Zeek Rewards who are able to are wholly encouraged to verify the information published above for its accuracy with the company itself.

I myself have verified the credibility of the source(s) used and am satisfied at the time of publication with the accuracy of the information provided.

There is no information on the Resort Cruise Club International website indicating  who runs or owns the business.

The domain ‘resortcruiseclub.com’ however was registered on the 5th of April 2012 and lists a Randal Williams from Prosperity Formula LLC as the domain owner.

Randal Williams (also known as Randy Williams, photo right) first popped up BehindMLM’s radar as one of the co-founders of the recruitment scam Fast Profits Daily. Teaming up with Brett Robinson and Scott Chandler (who had just quit as founders of AutoXTen, another recruitment scam), Williams launched Fast Profits Daily back in September 2011.

Less than six months later, in February 2012 Fast Profits Daily was relaunched as Profit Racer Pro. Profit Racer Pro used the same recruitment commissions model as AutoXTen and Fast Profits Daily before it.

The problem with the business model behind all three companies was that once new members stopped signing up, commissions dried up and the companies fell apart.

Now just three months after the launch of Fast Profits Daily it seems the company has stalled and Williams has decided to launch yet another company, Resort Cruise Club.

Is Resort Cruise Club International just another recruitment scam bound to fail in just a few short months like William’s other MLM ventures, or has he learnt from his mistakes and launched a viable product-based company this time around?

Read on for a full review of the Resorts Cruise Club International MLM opportunity.

The Resort Cruise Club Product Line

Resort Cruise Club International has no retailable products or services. Instead, members of Resorts Cruise Club are required to market and sell membership to the company itself to prospective members.

Membership to Resorts Cruise Club International provides members with access to third-party travel booking services, with the company itself having no part in the purchase of any travel related products or services:

Resort Cruise Club is NOT the “Booker of Travel”. All travel booking are done through our travel partners and their vendors.

In the event you have travel related billing issues, you deal directly with our travel partner to resolve any issues.

The Resort Cruise Club Compensation Plan

The Resorts Cruise Club compensation plan revolves around the sale of $25 and $75 memberships, with 100% of the membership fee being paid out as a commission.

In order to qualify for commissions, members must recruit at least two new members a month.

The basic idea is that you sign members up and earn a $25 or $75 commission monthly, depending on which membership option they choose.

Every 2nd, 4th, 6th and 8th and then 5th membership sale thereafter is passed to your upline. In turn, the same numbered sales of your downline are passed up to you.

Note that if you only purchase the $25 membership option, you are only qualified to earn $25 commissions, the remaining $50 is paid out to your upline.


Premier Membership Commissions

In addition to the basic membership commissions above, Resort Cruise Club also pay out commissions on the sale of Premier Memberships. These Premier Memberships range in price from $247 to $9,997 and are basically extended travel memberships to third-party travel vendors.

On the sale of these memberships Resort Cruise Club offer commissions ranging from $150 to $5,000 and they function in much the same way as the regular membership commissions.

Once again the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th and thereafter every 5th sales commissions are rolled up to uplines. One catch with the Premier membership commissions however is that Royal Cruise Club members are only qualified to earn commissions on the sale of Premier memberships they themselves have bought (or lower).

For reference, here are the Premier membership commission payouts (membership cost in brackets):

• Emerald – $150 ($97)
• Diamond – $500 ($697)
• Platinum – $1,000 ($1,617)
• Ambassador – $2,000 ($2,997)
• Executive Ambassador – $3,500 ($4,997)
• Royal Ambassador – $5,000 ($9,997)


For example, if you bought an ‘Ambassador’ Premier membership for $2,997 you’d be entitled to full commissions up to the Ambassador level. If you sold a higher level Premier membership, let’s say an ‘Executive Ambassador’ membership for $4,997 (commission: $3,500) you’d still be entitled to the $2,000 Ambassador level commission, but the remaining $1,500 would be distributed amongst your upline.

Commissions are distributed also according to Premier membership rank. For example in the above scenario, if the immediate upline had only purchased an ‘Emerald’ membership, they’d only get $150 out of the $1,500, with $1,350 continuing to roll up until it was entirely paid out.

Members who have not purchased a Premier membership are naturally not qualified to earn on these commissions.


Coded Bonuses

On top of the regular Premier membership sales commissions outlined above, Royal Cruise Club also pays out a coded bonus up six levels. The first level is your immediate upline, the second their immediate upline and so on and so forth.

Coded bonus commissions are paid out only on Premier membership sales and the payout is split between Level 1 commissions and levels 2 to 6 as follows:

• Emerald – Level 1: $20, Levels 2 to 6: $7
• Diamond – Level 1: $35, Levels 2 to 6: $12
• Platinum – Level 1: $75, Levels 2 to 6: $25
• Ambassador – Level 1: $100, Levels 2 to 6: $35
• Executive Ambassador – Level 1: $250, Levels 2 to 6: $50
• Royal Ambassador – Level 1: $700, Levels 2 to 6: $100


Infinity Power Bonus

The Infinity Power Bonus kicks in once a Resort Cruise Club member has sold five memberships in any given month. Once qualification is achieved, this member then earns a bonus of $10 to $100 (depending on membership level being sold) on every membership sold by their downline for the rest of the month.

The downline members this bonus is earned on can be capped if another member in the downline qualifies for the Infinity Power Bonus.

For example, if you qualify for the Infinity Power Bonus you are then qualified to earn on membership sales by your entire downline. If 2 days later a member on your level 6 also qualifies, the members you can earn on are then restricted to levels 1 to 5.

Joining Resort Cruise Club International

Membership to Resort Cruise Club International comes in two options:

$25 Traveller membership and $75 Cruiser membership with both options attracting a $19.95 a month admin fee.

There are Premier membership above this however they are handled via third-party partners. One of the above two membership options are still required in any case, meaning that both the Traveller and Cruiser membership options are an unavoidable cost of joining Resort Cruise Club International.

Conclusion

Whereas Randy Williams’ past companies focused on a once off membership fee, this time around Williams had added a monthly fee and substantially increased the membership costs into the thousands.

The end result is sadly still an opportunity dependent on recruitment but now with the addition of membership options that cost thousands of dollars, one which could suck a lot more money out of members.

Commissions are only paid out on the level members themselves buy-in at and with 100% of the basic membership commissions being paid out to members, it’s clear that the Royal Cruise Club membership options is a simple cash gifting scheme being played out between members.

The cost of the Premier membership options are grossly inflated to cover the commission payouts to members with commission overheads hitting 80% of the membership price at the Executive Ambassador level.

With these memberships being handled by third-parties though, all that really needs to be analysed are the two membership options offered by Royal Cruise Club themselves, that being the Emerald and Cruiser options.

Members make their money by signing up new members who pay 100% of their membership fees as commissions, whilst the company makes its money from everybody’s $19.95 admin fee.

If people stop joining or paying their monthly membership fees, the entire company fails and all the while no actual products or services are being sold through the company itself.

No doubt members of the company will put up the argument that travel services are available as part of membership to Resort Cruise Club, however the company clearly states otherwise:

Resort Cruise Club is NOT the “Booker of Travel”. All travel booking are done through our travel partners and their vendors.

As with Randal Williams’ other MLM ventures over the past six months or so, it’s easy to see that without a constant influx of new members Resort Cruise Club isn’t going to be able to sustain itself in the long-term.

Sooner or later those new members will dry up and then so too will the Resort Cruise Club opportunity.

Back in 2005 Doug Sleeth founded Printer Shoppe, a wholesale graphic design and printing company (non MLM) that marketed their services and products to US-based businesses.

As I understand it, Printer Shoppe retail centers (electronic kiosks) were set up in participating retail stores who would then, through the kiosks, sell Printer Shoppe’s printing and graphic services at a retail level.

In June 2011 Sleeth then decided to expand his business and launched ViralPrint to expand Printer Shoppe’s retail offering to a wider market.

Read on for a full review of the ViralPrint business opportunity.

The ViralPrint Product Line

ViralPrint, presumably through Printer Shoppe’s established printing network market a variety of printing services. These include business cards, postcards and tri-fold brochures.

I’m not sure whether ViralPrint themselves count Printer Shoppe as a partner but the company does mention that they themselves don’t handle the printing side of the business.

Rather ViralPrint defer the actual printing work to “printing partners” and instead focus on the retail side of things.

The ViralPrint Compensation Plan

ViralPrint use a unilevel compensation plan that pays out 5 levels deep. With a unilevel compensation structure, you are placed at the top and for each customer you acquire, they are placed directly underneath you.

In ViralPrint customers and members are one and the same with every customer you acquire being able to go on and find customers themselves.

In this manner each customer you yourself refer becomes your level 1, and any customers/members your level 1 refer to the company become your level 2 and so on and so forth.

Using this unilevel structure, ViralPrint pay out commissions on all product sales made by anyone who falls within 5 levels of your unilevel team:

• Level 1 – 10%
• Level 2 – 5%
• Level 3 – 3%
• Level 4 – 2%
• Level 5 – 1%

Joining ViralPrint

ViralPrint membership is free.

Conclusion

The biggest advantage of ViralPrint’s compensation plan is that it strongly compliments their product offering. Printing and graphic services are a truly consumable product and with commissions only being paid out on sales, there’s no incentive to just recruit new members and move on.

Instead, ViralPrint members will have to focus on sales and retaining customers if they wish to grow their business and enjoy success.

The ViralPrint compensation plan does lean more towards an affiliate style setup but most definitely does pay out on multiple levels, allowing members to build teams if they so wish. Note that doing so alone won’t generate commissions as products and services still need to be ordered.

Internal consumption also doesn’t seem to be an issue due to the fact that you are only paid out on other people’s orders.

In a greater marketing sense it is worth noting that the paper publishing industry is quite well established and competition is going to be steep. As a new ViralPrint member, given that you’re entirely going to be relying on attracting new members and customers (the lack of differentiation in the compensation plan is a non-issue given there are no membership fees), how effectively you can market ViralPrint’s products is critical.

I’d strongly suggest that any new members themselves do a test purchase to evaluate the quality of ViralPrint’s products and see if they’d feel comfortable marketing them to a wider audience. Also it’d be worthwhile evaluating your competition and seeing how they compare pricewise.

ViralPrint do offer a general favourable comparison on their website but a local comparison (online/offline) wouldn’t hurt.

In the age of the internet traditional paper marketing might have taken a back seat but the simple business card is still a staple of traditional face-to-face offline marketing.

If you’re happy with ViralPrint’s products and pricepoints and feel you can establish a customerbase, business model wise ViralPrint seems like a solid opportunity to have a crack at.

Over the past year or so I’ve had a few requests from readers to review the Lyoness MLM business opportunity. The first time this happened I added Lyoness to my review list and when the time came went over their site to start my research.

A few hours and a massive headache later, I closed my browser window and gave up. I concluded that Lyoness had put so little thought and effort into the coherency of explaining their business, that it simply wasn’t worth my time to try to understand the business model.

Taking recent strides to beef up their US presence however, Lyoness has finally realised that their business presentations and information desperately needed a massive overhaul.

Armed with some decent and clear information on the company and the business model, I’m now able to present a complete review of the Lyoness US business opportunity.


Foreword: Please note that for the purposes of this Lyoness review I’m solely analysing the US division of the company. As far as the international Lyoness opportunity goes it’s still painfully impossible to understand and not worth wasting my time trying to dissect it.

The Company

Lyoness is headed up by CEO Hubert Freidl (photo right), who founded and launched the company back in 2003.

I’ve seen Freidl referred to as a mathematician but I’m not exactly sure what he was doing prior to 2003 or whether or not he has a history in MLM. There doesn’t appear to be too much information out there.

The Lyoness Product Line

Lyoness itself doesn’t have any products that members can sell. Rather, the company’s members market membership to the company to new members.

Once a member of Lyoness, members are issued a “cashback card” which can then grants the user a cashback on specific purchases from partnered retailers (loyalty partners).

The Lyoness Compensation Plan

Whereas the Lyoness international compensation plan is confusing and presented poorly, Lyoness in the US have stripped out some of the more confusing aspects of the plan and streamlined it down.


Retail Cashback

Not really a commission but still effectively money in a Lyoness member’s pocket, the Lyoness cashback is effective on all purchases (online and offline) and giftcard purchases from selected retail partners.

The cashback amount varies between 1 and 2% and is paid out weekly (minimum cashout balance is $15).

Additionally, a 0.5% cashback is also offered on the purchases made by members you have directly recruited into the company.


Accounting Units

Accounting Units are where the Lyoness compensation plan starts to get a little complicated. Above you you have your upline and below you your downline.

Your upline consists of the person who recruited you into Lyoness and the lineage team they belong to. Work your way up far enough and you’ll eventually hit the first member of the company.

Note though that due to the unilevel structure Lyoness use, not all these members above you will be in your lineage tree.

Starting with you, every member you recruit is placed below you and forms your downline, along with any members your recruited members recruit and so on and so forth.

For each $75 earnt in commissions generated, paid out in cashback bonuses (both direct cashback and referral cashbacks) or $75 put down by members as a downpayment towards a gift card or payment, the company counts you as having generated one ‘accounting unit’.

For each accounting unit you generate, when 35 of the same units have been generated by your upline and 35 by your downline (for a total of 70), your accounting unit is redeemable for a $675 commission.

When four of your personally recruited downline members have each generated at least one accounting unit, you can also claim a loyalty bonus which further increases the accounting bonus commission payout by $198 (for a total payout of $873).

In addition to the $75 accounting units above, Lyoness also offer two other tiers that function in the same manner as the $75 accounting unit commissions:

• ACII – $225 (30 units required above and below, payout is $1869)
• ACIII – $600 (25 units required above and below, payout is $4380)


Membership Ranks

Within the Lyoness compensation plan there are a total of 8 levels of membership. At each level members are awarded a bonus as well as an increase on the amount they earn per accounting unit they receive a bonus on.

Members gain membership ranks based on the number of accounting units they have converted into cash returns.

Joining Lyoness

Membership to Lyoness is free. There are no fees whatsoever to become a member of the company.

Conclusion

On the surface, Lyoness looks like a regular enough cashback member rewards scheme and that part of the business I have absolutely no problem with.

You sign up for free, you shop and you earn a 1-2% cashback and a 0.5% cashback on the purchases of people you refer.

If this was the extent of the Lyoness compensation plan then, apart from it not really being MLM my conclusion would stop short here. The inclusion of “accounting units” however throws the entire Lyoness business model into question and raises some serious questions.

From a rewards viewpoint, the idea that members can earn an additional commissions as members in their up and downlines accumulate accounting units is solid.

What Lyoness then do however is allow their members to purchase these accounting units themselves.

Jump start your Lyoness benefits with “Down Payments” against a specific gift card order for future purchases.

The down payment is converted into units, which are placed in your Lyoness accounting program.

Being a “down payment”, as I understand it the money stays with Lyoness itself as nothing has been purchased from any retailer. At a later stage you could cash out a gift card but there doesn’t appear to be any onus or requirement to do so.

Effectively you pay your $75, $225 or $600 to Lyoness and they give you an accounting unit. Then after between 20-35 people in your upline and downline make a similar payment, you are paid a lump sum cash payment.

With how much you are paid and the amount of people needed to create accounting units above and below you directly tied into the value of your own accounting unit, it’s very hard not to see this as a return on the money paid to Lyoness for an accounting unit.

Lyoness themselves even encourage this:

Become a Business Member

The fastest way to become a Business member is by making a down payment of $3000 on future purchases.

Down payment: $ 3,000
Loyalty Credit: $ 15,750
Loyalty Commission: $ 9,108

Total Benefits: $ 24,858

Now as far as I can tell, the only difference between a business member and anyone else in Lyoness is the $3000 they’ve pumped into the company.

Given that you can entirely bypass the purchasing of products from retailers and cashback side of Lyoness and just focus on purchasing accounting units with your own money and encouraging others to do the same, it’s hard to not look at it as an investment scheme.

Effectively, the Lyoness compensation plan can be broken down into three investment plans (loyalty bonuses are included for simplicity):

1. invest $75 with Lyoness and once 35 people above and below you do the same Lyoness will pay you $873 (1164% ROI)
2. invest $225 with Lyoness and once 30 people above and below you have done the same Lyoness will pay you $1869 (830% ROI)
3. invest $600 with Lyoness and once 25 people above and below you have done the same Lyoness will pay you $4380 (730% ROI)


Note that if members make multiple investments, less people are overall needed to reach the investment targets of 70, 60 and 50 investments respectively.

Obviously not all of these counted units are going to be straight cash injections into the company and no doubt a lot of legit cashback accounting units are created, but the fact remains that the above scenarios are readily occurable.

Moreso when you consider that each member is relying on money being pumped into Lyoness by their downline (people they’ve recruited and people their recruits have recruited).

Lyoness do state that

down payments are neither investments nor loyalty credits, they are down payments on a specific gift card order for future purchases.

But given that there’s no requirement to put the money towards an actual purchase pending a ROI payout, I don’t see how members injecting money into Lyoness for a guaranteed return upon certain conditions (people above and below you creating accounting units) isn’t just a straight out investment with a paid return.

Finally there’s the question of revenue. Lyoness charge no membership fees and as far as retailers go, they are charged a once off registration fee of between $392 – $790 USD and then just $26 USD a month thereafter.

Even with thousands of stores participating, when you consider how many members Lyoness claim to have (in the millions)… it’s clear that at $26 USD a month the company would struggle to pay out the accounting unit returns (remember that the 0.5-2% cashbacks are paid out by retailers and not Lyoness itself).

Consider though that at the $75 accounting unit level, $5250 is the revenue generated by the creation of 70 member paid accounting units (enough revenue to pay out six $75 accounting unit ROIs), and it’s easy to see where the money comes from.

Like I said earlier, obviously not all the units are going to be member payments and there will be legit cashback accounting units in there so the numbers aren’t exact, but when you factor in that these cashback accounting units are actually a loss to Lyoness itself when it comes to payouts, it’s clear that the business model relies on a significant portion of the accounting units being directly paid for by members themselves.

As a cashback rewards program, given that Lyoness don’t themselves pay out the cashbacks, as long as they have retail partners that side of the business is sustainable. When it comes to the whole accounting units and MLM side of things though, all I’m seeing is what alarmingly resembles a Ponzi scheme.

Lyoness themselves acknowledge that

money spent on everyday necessities may generate several hundred dollars in Cashback per year

but as a business opportunity, “several hundred dollars a year” isn’t really worth writing home about (it’s only a few thousand in accounting unit payouts). Not withstanding the fact that in order to legitimately generate just one $75 accounting unit, members themselves must spend at least $3750 at Lyoness’ retail partner stores (less if you consider the 0.5% referral payment).

With the legit use of the cashback card no doubt joe average can generate a few cashback accounting units a year but if you want to earn anything considerable, we’re talking either massive retail spend on your behalf or a gargantuan downline, they themselves spending huge amounts on retail.

Much easier to just pay Lyoness $75 directly yourself and get others to do the same no?

Not a straight out Ponzi granted what with the sprinkling of legit cashback earned accounting units added to the mix and no fixed ROI timeframe, but a largely member funded scheme nonetheless.

Ever since the Solomon James writ 383 petition was filed late last year, Speak Asia, AISPA and senior panelists have harped on and on about how this one case was supposed to decide everything.

“Don’t worry about anything else, just follow the Supreme Court and they’ll sort everything out” was pretty much the line towed by those running things. Instilled with the confidence that the highest court in India was indeed handling all matters Speak Asia, the company’s panelists all too eagerly swallowed the company line and rallied against critics, the media and the various authorities investigating Speak Asia.

Seemingly out of the blue however, around a fortnight ago Speak Asia’s defacto management team in India, AISPA, started to publicly put forth a new direction. After nearly a year of proclaiming that the Supreme Court would fix everything and ensure Speak Asia a business restart, all of a sudden AISPA were now telling panelists to pretty much ignore all court cases.

Something didn’t add up, and yesterday why the sudden shift in company management policy regarding the subduing of panelists was finally made clear.

On the 21st of March 2012, AISPA told the Mumbai High Court that

the Apex Court has appointed a mediator and the mediator (has) seized the entire case.

This was infact something AISPA had been claiming for a while now and formed one of the cornerstone arguments of both AISPA and Speak Asia’s coordinated launching of court cases to have criminal investigations into Speak Asia quashed.

Giving AISPA the benefit of the doubt and not wanting to possibly rule over the Supreme Court (or interfere with the Supreme Court case if it was indeed dealing with criminal investigations into Speak Asia), the Mumbai High Court ordered a stay on the EOW’s investigation and asked that they “obtain clarification” from the Supreme Court regarding the writ 383 petition and criminal investigations.

In yesterday’s hearing of the writ 383 petition that clarification was made crystal clear with the Supreme Court clarifying once and for all

that (the) pendency of this matter (writ 383) either before the Mediator or before this Court will not hamper with the investigation.

In one statement, any notion that the Supreme Court writ 383 case had anything at all to do with any of the criminal investigations currently open against Speak Asia was shattered.

Naturally in light of this, the pertinent question then is “so what matter is the Supreme Court handling in the writ 383 case”?

To date the only matter discussed publicly in any order of the Supreme Court issued in regards to the writ 383 case has been the payment of owed money to the signed 115 petitioners on the writ itself.

To this end, Speak Asia has deposited 50 crore rupees and (misguidedly) hoped that this small token payment would settle all matters and dispose of the case (along with all other cases and investigations currently open that Speak Asia are involved in).

As per what information has been made public in the Supreme Court orders, while there has been some talk of tax liabilities but it’s unclear as to the status of such matter(s).

In any case, in yesterday’s Supreme Court order also ordered the listing of

all applications along with the main matter on 8th August, 2012 for final disposal.

The order is unclear in regards to the specifics of the applications it is referring to, but the fact that they have slated the case for final disposal come August means it is unlikely that any new matters are going to be taken up.

Thus as far as is publicly known, the scope of the writ 383 case is limited solely to addressing the owed payments to the 115 petitioners and possibly some tax liabilities.

There has been no talk of exit options, business restarts or anything else. Unofficial AISPA spokesperson Anjali has repeatedly made mention of an intervention application AISPA was planning to file (‘aispa has made an intervention application and is standing by for the right time to enter the process‘), but the likelihood any such application would be heard let alone accepted with the case slated for final disposal in the next hearing seems nonexistent now.

Although not clarified by AISPA or Anjali directly, it is believed their intervention order would call on the Supreme Court to make the action of paying off the 115 signed petitioners binding to all panelists who are owed money. Nevermind the fact that Speak Asia simply don’t have a recorded revenue anywhere near the 30,000 cr they currently owe all 1.2 million panelists.

One could make the argument that the request of the list of panelists details by the mediator R.C. Lahoti could indicate he was going to consider what was owed to all panelists, but I believe it’s far more probable that this information is required to be verified by the mediator before any money is ordered paid to the signed 115 petitioners.

The notion that one man would oversee the payments owed to 1.2 million panelists is not at all likely, especially when there has to date been no public mention or acknowledgement by the Supreme Court of any such notion in the nine months since writ 383 begun.

From the looks of it, the EOW have agreed to hand over the required information requested by the mediator (in regards to the 115 petitioners) on the assurance that this action ‘will not hamper’ their investigation.

After validation and confirmation by the mediator, the case then will go back to court in August and the issue of payment to the 115 signed petitioners will then be resolved. As I mentioned earlier, some tax liability issues might be included for resolve on this date but this remains unclear per the court’s orders.

That’s pretty much where we’re at regarding the writ 383 case and longtime readers will note two things – the writ 383 case has not (now or ever) had anything to do with criminal proceedings and investigation into Speak Asia, business restarts or exit options.

I myself had called out the Lahoti mediation committee’s uselessness back in November of last year and it appears that, as far as payments to all panelists and addressing criminal liabilities goes – that was entirely accurate.

Yesterday’s order was of course great news to the 115 signed petitioners, who for once appear to now have an end date in their sights, but for everyone else the lies they’ve been fed by Speak Asia and AISPA have only now been officially exposed for what they are.

With Speak Asia and AISPA both employing high-priced legal teams (paid for with panelist’s money), I suspect they saw the writing on the wall before yesterday’s Supreme Court order and as such have launched a petition signing campaign tomorrow on Saturday the 11th May.

The fact that Speak Asia, through AISPA are now openly calling on panelists to ignore any and all court cases only drives home the point that neither party can pretend or mislead people as to the scope of writ 383, nor the fact that their major arguments in all investigation and FIR quashing cases that the Supreme Court is handling everything, has been finally blown out of the water by no less than the Supreme Court itself.

As such, from what I gather come tomorrow those still willing to blindly follow Speak Asia’s management through AISPA will meet up, sign a petition with a list of demands to be made to Indian authorities (an admission in itself that they cannot stop police investigations into Speak Asia by wasting everybody’s time in court), and the placing of stickers on cars as some sort of coordinated protest effort.

With the Supreme Court clearing the way for criminal investigations into Speak Asia to continue, no doubt any such demands from Speak Asia’s management regarding the dropping of investigations will have trouble finding an audience.

Looking forward, all eyes will now no doubt turn to the next hearing of AISPA’s writ 3611 in the Mumbai High Court that is next due for hearing on the 28th June. With the EOW having received concrete clarification that the Supreme Court writ 383 case has no impact on any criminal investigation, one would imagine the High Court will remove the stay in place on the EOW’s investigation, along with the stay on arrests in connection to the case.

Before the High Court placed a stay on the investigation, the EOW were poised to arrest Bahirwani, presumably on suspicion of working in co-ordination with Speak Asia’s fugitive management in hiding and effectively serving as local defacto management for the company.

Once the High Court removes the stay on the EOW’s investigation, it’ll be interesting to see if the true relationship between AISPA, Bahirwani and Speak Asia will finally be revealed.

Last time Bahirwani caught wind of his pending arrest he fled and went on the run from authorities for nearly two months before his lawyers made the argument in court that the Supreme Court was “handling” the EOW’s case. With that argument now thrown out of the window by the Supreme Court it’ll be interesting to see what happens now.

I had considered that the EOW might resume their investigation taking a cue from the Supreme Court, but going over the High Court’s order it appears they do have to report back to the High Court first before getting back to their investigation. If I was the EOW I’d be gunning for a pre-poning of the writ 3611 case but I suppose short of Bahirwani fleeing again before June 28th there’s not all that much for them to worry about.

One final aspect to consider is also how the Supreme Court’s clarification might affect other cases involving the quashing of FIRs and criminal investigations. Most notably Speak Asia have launched a case against the CID in the Supreme Court and no doubt they were using much of the same argument(s) that AISPA were. Arguments that now hold little weight.

The Speak Asia vs. CID case is due back in court on the 2nd of July so we’ll have to wait and see what happens there.

In the meantime those that have been cheated, Speak Asia’s panelists, could accept the hard reality that this entire legal charade has been nothing more than an exercise with no other goal than to secure the legal absolution of company management for running the largest Ponzi scheme in Indian history, or give some blood tomorrow (a worthy action in itself) and sign petitions demanding India legalize Ponzi schemes immediately and permit Speak Asia to restart business operations.

Best of luck guys.

There is no information on the 10 Daily Cash website indicating who owns or runs the company.

The domain ’10dailycash.com’ was registered on the 26th April 2012 and lists the domain registrant as:

owner-name: Michael Chardi
owner-street: NYStreen No.3
owner-city: Sydney
owner-state: Sydney
owner-zip: 2993992
owner-country: AT
owner-phone: +43.83326556255
owner-fax:
owner-email: script4money@gmail.com

Interestingly enough the ‘admin’ contact details are different from the domain owner details:

admin-name: Wersen Janyers
admin-street: NY street no.342
admin-city: Florida
admin-state: Florida
admin-zip: 898773884
admin-country: UA
admin-phone: +380.3226545488
admin-fax:
admin-email: forexplanet@ymail.com

A quick search on both emails (‘forexplanet@ymail.com’ and ‘script4money@gmail.com’) reveals both emails have previously been tied into multiple dodgy looking investment schemes, the bulk of which are no longer operational.

You’ll note that the addresses provided in the domain registration also don’t really make sense either so I’m pretty sure that both listed contacts are fake IDs.

As always, if a MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.

The 10 Daily Cash Product Line

10 Daily Cash has no retailable product or service. Instead, members are required to make investments in the company and in turn then receive a return on their investment (ROI) over a specified amount of time.

These investments are made in $10 allotments and bundled with each investment are advertising credits. These credits are useable on an inhouse advertising network that features on the 10 Daily Cash website.

The 10 Daily Cash Compensation Plan

10 Daily Cash offer members four investment plans each with slightly different ROIs and maturity periods:

• 4% daily ROI over 50 days (200% total ROI)
• 3% daily ROI over 75 days (225% total ROI)
• 2% daily ROI over 100 days (200% total ROI)
• 10% daily ROI over 25 days (250% total ROI)
• 5% daily ROI over 40 days (200% total ROI)


Why 10 Daily Cash bother offering five investment options is beyond me, seeing as option 4 is most likely what every member investing is going to opt in for (why wait longer to earn less?).

10 Daily Cash pay out their ROIs at a rate of 70/30, meaning that at any given time 70% of the total ROI is able to be cashed out with 30% of it being required to be re-invested back into the company.

In addition to investment returns, 10 Daily Cash also pay out a 10% commission on any investments made by members you recruit.

Joining 10 Daily Cash

Membership to 10 Daily Cash is free however members must invest if they wish to participate in the compensation plan and earn money.

Free members are able to generate income via the recruitment of others and getting them to invest, however they themselves must first invest if they wish to cash out these earnings.

Conclusion

10 Daily Cash claim that they are

an advertising program that generates traffic for your products and/or services and also rewards you for advertising using our platform!

10dailycash.com IS NOT AN INVESTMENT PROGRAM.

Quite obviously though, if you consider that advertising cannot be bought without participating in the investment program and that the company offer fixed rate ROIs on any money invested in the company, 10 Daily Cash is an investment scheme.

This is further evidenced in the 10 Daily Cash refund policy, which states:

Once you have made your purchase, you are allocated with advertising credits which you can use straight away.

No refund will be offered.

If advertising credits were infact being purchased, the non-use of any such credits would surely entitle the purchasing member to refund. However with 10 Daily Cash using newly invested money to pay out owed existing returns, this is clearly not possible.

Amusingly, they even refer to the money invested by members as such:

The second bit of text I’ve underlined states that ‘10dailycash.com never gives and makes any guarantee of earnings or profits‘, yet quite obviously by guaranteeing a set ROI this is obviously a bogus claim.

With anonymous owners and a compensation plan that merely shuffles money invested by members around to pay out ROIs on existing investments, 10 Daily Cash is pretty much your everyday run-of-the-mill Ponzi scheme.

If one was to solely look at the purported benefits of joining a company like Global Information Network, the benefits at first glance seem quite impressive:

How to make money and create wealth.

How to invest and trade in equities, commodities, and currencies.

How to invest in real estate.

Asset protection, setting up trusts, foundations, and corporate structures.

Raising money, getting credit, financing and venture capital or investors for business ventures.

Opening offshore bank accounts.

Getting a second passport.

Living abroad.

Buying and investing in gold and silver and other precious metals.

How, where and when to invest for maximum profits.

New ground floor business opportunities.

How to get out of debt, fix bad credit and increase credit scores.

How to set up and prosper in home based businesses.

How to buy real estate with little or no money down.

How to make money in mail order, TV infomercials, direct response marketing and internet businesses.

How to develop wealth and secure retirement.

How to get grants that never have to be paid back.

How others have turned a $1,000 investment into millions of dollars in just a few years. 

How members have made investment returns of 300% -3,000%. 

How to use the law of attraction and other advanced techniques to have, be or do everything you desire.

How to attract things into your life such as a new car, better job or career, a lover or better relationship or even better health.

How to develop emotional well being, be happier, more fulfilled, eliminate depression and anxiety.

How to overcome fears, phobias and insecurities.

How to remove blocks and feel happy whatever the financial or emotional climate you are facing.

How to feel powerful, and in control with all people and in all situations.

How to read energy, virtually read people’s minds, expand your psychic ability and predict the future.

How to gain confidence, and a feeling of security and certainty in life.

How to get people to like you.

Dramatically improve your health and learn the natural non drug and non surgical ways to cure and prevent virtually every disease.

You will learn the closely guarded secrets of various secret societies and what really goes on behind closed doors in these powerful controlling groups, and how it could affect you and your future.

How others have raised $10k cash In 24 hours and made over $100k cash in just 90 days.

How to create a perpetual money making machine, giving you a permanent monthly residual income from various sources from around the world.

How to save up to 70% off most of the goods and services you are currently buying from year to year.

How to maintain an inner sense of calm and control, whatever the outer conditions you are facing might be.

How to get trips, vacations, and cars for free or at dramatically reduced prices.

You will have inside information on the unexplained, unidentified flying objects, and things like extrasensory perception or psychic phenomena.

Some of it sounds suspiciously dodgy, some of it sounds ridiculously absurd and some of it reads more like what you’d expect to find in Scientology marketing material than an offering from a bonafide MLM company.

Undeniably however, Global Information Network is definitely one of the more interesting MLM opportunities I’ve taken the time to look at. Read on for a full review.

The Company

There is no specific information on the Global Information Network about who runs or owns the company.

Instead, trying to pass themselves off as some sort of exclusive cult, Global Information Network provide only the following information on their owner(s):

The Global Information Network (GIN) is a Multi-Form Foundation organized in the country of St. Kitts and Nevis. It was conceived by a group of individuals from around the world who are the highest ranking members of several private societies, associations, clubs, and groups whose membership has been exclusive to the privileged elite class of the world. This group includes members of:

-The Brotherhood

-The Bilderberg Group

-The Council on Foreign Relations

-The Freemasons

-Yale University’s Skull and Bones

-The Illuminati

-The Trilateral Commission

And several other elite international societies

The individuals who conceived and helped organize the Global Information Network (The “GIN Council”) are, and will always remain anonymous.

For the first time in human history, the highest ranking members of these “secret societies” have encouraged the formation of a new, private, member only group. A group that allows people who do not qualify to become members of the above listed societies to join together, and be exposed to the same secrets revealed and taught to members of those societies and clubs.

Yeah, sure thing guys.

Whilst making wild vague claims about who founded Global Information Network might satisfy a few gullible prospects, these days it just doesn’t cut it. If you’re going to run a MLM business opportunity you need to be upfront and transparent regarding who is running and owns it.

Anything less is just insulting to anybody looking to sign up and whilst I understand the marketing technique of exclusivity being used, the reality is that such all such vagueness does is make Global Information Network come off sounding like some kooky cult.

As always, if a MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.

The Global Information Network Product

Global Information Network has no tangible products or services available for sale. As per the official company website:

This home based, internet business requires no inventory, no “product” selling, and no large up front cash investment or time commitment.

Instead, members of Global Information Network are required to market and sell membership to the company itself.

The Global Information Network Compensation Plan

With membership the only thing that is able to be marketed by Global Information Network members, the company’s compensation plan is thus a pretty straightforward affair with 100% of the commissions paid out being derived from Global Information Network membership fees.


Unilevel Commissions

The compensation plan itself uses a unilevel compensation structure meaning that any new affiliates or Global Information Network members (for more info on the difference between these two see the ‘Joining Global Information Network’ section below) you recruit are placed directly under you. These members and affiliates make up your  level 1.

Any new members or affiliates your level 1 recruit become your level 2 and so on and so forth. Using this compensation plan structure, Global Information Network pay out percentage commissions down seven levels.

How much of a commission percentage Global Information Network members are paid out depends on their affiliate rank. There are eleven affiliate ranks and along with their qualifications their commission percentage payouts are listed below:

• Affiliates - required to sell one new membership to Global Information Network a month and are paid 20% of the initial membership fee on levels 1 and 2.
• Bronze Affiliate - required to sell one new membership to Global Information Network a month and have recruited at least four members in total. Bronze affiliates are paid 20% on levels 1 and 2 and 2% on levels 3 to 6 (both initial and monthly membership fees).
• Gold Affiliate – required to sell one new membership to Global Information Network a month and have recruited at least six members in total. Gold Affiliates are paid 20% on levels 1 and 2 and 2% on levels 3 to 7 (both initial and monthly membership fees).
• Platinum Affiliate – must have recruited at least ten currently active members in total who have in turn themselves recruited at least one new member. Platinum affiliates are paid 20% on levels 1 and 2, 2% on levels 3 to 6 and 3% on level 7.
• One Star Platinum Affiliate – same recruitment requirements as Platinum affiliates but also must have a total unilevel team of at least 500 members with at least one Platinum affiliate therein. One Star Platinum affiliates are paid 20% on levels 1 and 2, 2% on levels 3 to 6 and 4% on level 7.
• Two Star Platinum Affiliate – must have recruited at least twenty currently active new members in total, ten of which have recruited an additional new member themselves. Also must have at least 1000 members in your unilevel team with at least one Platinum Affiliate in two separate legs. Two Star Platinum affiliates are paid 20% on levels 1 and 2, 2% on levels 3 to 6 and 5% on level 7.
• Three Star Platinum Affiliate - must have recruited at least twenty five currently active new members in total, ten of which have recruited an additional new member themselves. Also must have at least 1500 members in your unilevel team with at least one Platinum Affiliate in three separate legs. Three Star Platinum affiliates are paid 20% on levels 1 and 2, 2% on levels 3 to 6 and 5% on level 7.
• Four Star Platinum Affiliate - must have recruited at least thirty new currently active members in total, ten of which have recruited an additional new member themselves. Also must have at least 2000 members in your unilevel team with at least one Platinum Affiliate in four separate legs. Four Star Platinum affiliates are paid the same unilevel percentage commissions as Three Star affiliates.
• Five Star Platinum Affiliate - must have recruited at least thirty five currently active new members in total, ten of which have recruited an additional new member themselves. Also must have at least 2500 members within the first seven levels of your unilevel team with at least one Platinum Affiliate in five separate legs. Five Star Platinum affiliates are paid the same unilevel percentage commissions as Three Star affiliates.
• Presidential Platinum Affiliate - must have recruited at least fifty currently active new members in total, ten of which have recruited an additional new member themselves. Also must have at least 3500 members in your unilevel team with at least one Platinum Affiliate in ten separate legs. Presidential Platinum affiliates are paid the same unilevel percentage commissions as Three Star affiliates.
• Chairman Affiliate - must have recruited at least one hundred currently active new members in total, ten of which have recruited an additional new member themselves. Also must have at least 5000 members in your unilevel team with at least one Platinum Affiliate in twenty separate legs. Presidential Platinum affiliates are paid the same unilevel percentage commissions as Three Star affiliates.


Note that all recruits and required Platinum Affiliates must have paid at least two months membership fees before they count towards membership rank requirements.


Breakaway Bonus

In addition to the unilevel commissions offered, starting at the Three Star Platinum affiliate level, Breakaway Bonuses are paid to all qualifying affiliates.

The Breakaway Bonus is an additional commission paid out on all members in your unilevel team, effectively extending the unilevel commissions beyond the initial seven levels payable.

The Breakaway Bonus pays out via generations, with one generation being defined as the members in your unilevel team between you and a Three Star Platinum affiliate. These members count as your first generation.

The second generation is then formed by going down the unilevel leg until another Three Star Platinum members is found, with the members inbetween forming your second generation.

Naturally these generations aren’t static and will change in size as members in your unilevel team advance in membership rank. Also note that each unilevel lineage leg operates independently of all others in regards to forming generations.

How much of a Breakaway Bonus you are paid is dependent on your membership level:

• Three Star Platinum Affiliate – 2% on three generations
• Four Star Platinum Affiliate – 3% on the first generation and 2% on generations two and three
• Five Star Platinum Affiliate – 3% on the first and second generations and 2% on level 3
• Presidential Platinum Affiliate – 3% on three generations
• Chairman Affiliate – 4% on three generations


Note that at the Chairman Affiliate level ‘profit sharing’ is also mentioned, however no further details are provided. One would assume this is some sort of bonus pool Chairman affiliates are able to receive a share and subsequent bonus payout from.

Joining Global Information Network

Membership to Global Information Network comes in two varieties, membership to the company itself and affiliate members.

Affiliate membership is free and allows members to earn a commission on the sale of paid memberships to the company.

Membership to Global Information Network itself is an upfront payment of $1500 and then $150 a month. Global Information Network members are naturally entitled to also sign up as free affiliate members and participate in the company’s compensation plan.

Conclusion

If we look at the Global Information Network MLM opportunity from top to bottom, is clear that this is one business opportunity that’s riddled with red flags.

Starting with company management and ownership, the details of which are unknown. When it comes to business you need to know who you are going to be doing business with and anonymous company ownership is a huge red flag.

The domain globalbusinessnetwork.com was registered back in 2005 and the registration information is also set to private, another red flag when it comes to MLM business opportunities.

Not withstanding the fact that Global Information Network is supposedly based in the ‘Federation of St Kitts and Nevis’, a known tax-haven in the Caribbean – yet another red flag still.

As far as the products go, Global Information Network state they offer members access to a bunch of self-help orientated ‘live events, seminars, workshops, retreats, conferences, summits, meetings, and special briefings put on all around the world,’ but tucked away below is what I believe is the true nature of the business:

Since members share information with other members, several highly successful investors will be sharing trading advice, stock recommendations and other ways to get potentially strong returns from investment opportunities that non members would never know about.

Some members regularly report getting returns of 300% -3,000% from their investment selections. Members will have access to this priceless information.

Now we’re getting somewhere. First and foremost, nobody is paying $1500 and then $150 a month for some self-help material, shady investment advice however? Maybe.

When you consider that the entire Global Information Network commission plan revolves around the signing up of new members and getting them to pay monthly membership, the attraction of earning 300-3000% ROIs on investment advice included with membership starts to paint a clearer picture of what Global Information Network is about.

Unfortunately that in itself is probably the single biggest red flag when it comes to analysis of the Global Information Network opportunity.

Let’s be realistic, at the end of the day nobody is paying that $1,500 signup fee without some sort of strong financial incentive and given that there are no products to sell in Global Information Network, that leaves access to the investment advice the company offers (or “partners” do through the company) which the owners have priced access to as they see fit.

And before anyone mentions it, yes you can join Global Information Network as a free affiliate and market the $1500 membership fee to the company, but honestly – who is going to buy a $1500 membership from someone who they themselves hasn’t paid for membership?

When you tell someone the cost of membership to the opportunity you’re trying to sell them is $1,500, they’re going to want to know everything about it and if you can’t provide that information, it’s a dead sale.

Having no less than thirteen company membership levels (separate to the affiliate levels outlined in the compensation plan), but stating the membership requirements are ‘classified’ just isn’t going to cut it.

No doubt $1500 and $150 is just the initial buy in, with the price of membership only going up as you advance in company membership rank.

Why you’d want to do that though I have no idea (better dodgy investment advice?).

No wonder the owners of Global Information Network want to stay anonymous… if you were offering dodgy 300-3000% ROI investment advice and charging an arm and a leg for it, wouldn’t you?

There is no information on the US Utility Direct website indicating who owns or runs the company.

The domain ‘usutilitydirect.com’ was registered on the 15th of April 2012 however the domain registration information is set to private.

The only public name I’ve seen associated with US Utility Direct is “VIP Founder” Steve Gewecke. Gewecke credits himself as the President and Owner of ‘Morningstar Marketing and Consulting LLC’ on his LinkedIn profile and has published a few videos on Youtube where he mentions he is also the Marketing Director of US Utility Direct.

Back in late February Gewecke wrote on Twitter wrote:

Can’t wait to get my new project started! BIG things happening in the next 90 days! More details coming soon!

One month later he then began promoting his involvement in Network Marketing VT:

Network Marketing VT is of course a cash gifting scam launched in late January 2012 and not surprisingly, doesn’t appear to have worked out for Gewecke.

At present Gewecke is the only person I can see publicly promoting US Utility Direct which is definitely odd (why would an executive of the company be recruiting on YouTube?). Moreso when you consider that Gewecke doesn’t mention anyone higher than him (an owner, president or CEO) in any of his US Utility Direct marketing material.

Throw in Gewecke’s ‘can’t wait to get me new project started!‘ tweet and I’m starting to think that there might not be anyone higher than Gewecke himself.

A silent partner (or partners) is possible of course but with Gewecke running his own marketing company I’m not really buying it. That said, without further clarification public ownership of US Utility Direct Review is currently unknown.

As always, if a MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.

The US Utility Direct Product Line

US Utility Direct has no retailable products or services. Instead members of the company are required to market company membership to prospective members.

The US Utility Direct Compensation Plan

There are two main components to the US Utility Direct compensation plan, matrix commissions and an annual electricity rebate.


Matrix Commissions

The bulk of US Utility Direct’s compensation plan commissions are paid out via the use of a 2×1 matrix. A 2×1 matrix places you at the top with 2 member positions directly under you:

Each time both membership positions are filled underneath you (via the recruitment of new members), you earn a $25 cycle commission.

In addition to cycle commissions, US Utility Direct also offer matching bonuses  on the cycle commissions of all members you directly recruit. How much of a matching bonus you are paid is dependent on how many members you have recruited:

• Qualified Affiliates earn no matching bonus (1 member recruitment requirement)
• 1 Star Affiliates earn a $5 bonus (must recruit at least 5 Qualified Affiliates)
• 2 Star Affiliates earn a $10 bonus (must recruit at least five 1 Star Affiliates)
• 3 Star Affiliates earn a $15 bonus (must recruit at least five 2 Star Affiliates)
• 4 Star Affiliates earn a $20 bonus (must recruit at least five 3 Star Affiliates)
• 5 Star Affiliates earn a $25 bonus (must recruit at least five 4 Star Affiliates)


Finally there’s also a cycle bonus paid at the end of each month. For each matrix cycle company wide, US Utility Direct put aside $5 into a bonus pool. Each 5 Star Affiliate has one equal share in this pool and at the end of each month are paid their share of the bonus pool.


Electricity Rebate

After registering your electricity provider with US Utility Direct, the company then claims that, if members record their power bills 4 times a year in their backoffice, they will payout an annual 15% rebate on member’s electricity bills up to $200.

Joining US Utility Direct

Membership to US Utility Direct is $99 a year.

Conclusion

The US Utility Direct compensation plan is heavily dependent on the continual recruitment of new members to keep matrices cycling and commissions rolling. This in itself is a big enough of a red flag to raise about the business but their electricity rebate only raises more questions.

The big question of course is ’how are these guys paying a $200 rebate?’

US Utility Direct claim that the rebate they offer members is the result of a

proprietary partnership with a Venture Capital and Market Research Group that helps subsidize the rebates through their customer acquisition programs.

That by itself sounds reasonable enough… until you take a look at the requirements of the US Utility Direct’s rebate:

In order to claim the annual rebate there

are NO Credit Checks, NO Contracts, and NO requirement to switch your current power provider.

So naturally, how are a “venture capital” and “market research group” coming up with $200 annual commissions when they apparently make their money on “customer acquisition”, when through US Utility Direct no actual customers are being acquisitioned (you don’t need to change your provider to claim the rebate)?

How’s that gunna work?

The answer of course is that it doesn’t and effectively the electricity rebate just winds up being a $200 bonus for joining the company. Where this money is going to come from though remains a mystery.

The rest of the US Utility Direct compensation plan has nothing to do with electricity companies or rebates and read like any other pyramid scheme scam out there. So with the only money coming into the company being $99 annual membership fees, unless I’m missing something when you take into consideration cycle commissions and the bonuses, the numbers simply don’t add up.

If just 1000 members joined, paid their membership fee and claimed the full $200 annual rebate, that’s a pay out of $200,000 – with only $99,000 going into the company via membership fees.

Anyone want to have a crack explaining this one?

The first thing that struck me about the 14 Daily Profit MLM opportunity was the name, in that it’s remarkably similar to the 12 Daily Profit Ponzi scheme launched just over a month ago.

Sure the two company names sound suspiciously similar but is there anything else linking these two sites together?

Read on for a full review of the 14 Daily Profit MLM opportunity.

The only information on the 14 Daily Profit website indicating who runs or owns the company is as follows:

14Dailyprofit.com is a division of 14Daily Advertising Inc. Comprised of a Group of European Internet Marketing Experts, We are your Next Generation online advertising and Income Generations partner.

Where “14 Daily Advertising Inc.” exists (if at all) isn’t mentioned and the rest of the information is just vague generic info that doesn’t really tell us anything.

The domain ’14dailyprofit.com’ was registered on the 15th April 2012 however the registration information is set to private. So no luck there either.

If we poke around the 14 Daily Profit website however, it’s revealed that there are some images hosted on the 14 Daily Profit website that promote other companies:

Studio Banners Pay (investment ponzi launched early April, stopped paying out by April 20th):

13 Daily Doubler (ponzi scheme launched late March, reportedly stopped paying out around April 20th):

12 Daily Profit (ponzi scheme launched in mid March that was a relaunch of a 2010 ponzi scheme, website now offline):

All of these websites are running the same backend script and while the 12 Daily Profit website is down, the 13 Daily Doubler website is promoting Studio Banners Pay website (not member advertising, the actual website itself is hosting advertising).

Add all this up and I think it’s safe to say that 14 Daily Profit is yet another company launched by whoever has been behind a series of investment scams launched in 2012.

I don’t know who these people are other than that they appear to be operating out of Europe and their schemes seem to be collapsing at an alarmingly hastening pace each time they launch a new scam.

The 14 Daily Profit Review Product

14 Daily Profit doesn’t have any retailable product or service. Instead, for each investment made with the company members are given advertising credits.

Like all the other scams these guys have launched with advertising credits over the last few months, these advertising credits are largely useless due to the fact that nobody sees the ads other than the people visiting the 14 Daily Profit website.

There is no third-party exposure thus the network itself only exists to prop up the compensation plan.

The 14 Daily Profit Compensation Plan

14 Daily Profit guarantee their members a 14% ROI over 11 days (total ROI is 154%).

In addition to the investment returns, members are also offered a 6% commission on any investments made by members they recruit into the company.

Joining 14 Daily Profit

Membership to 14 Daily Profit comes in two varieties, free and elite.

Free membership costs nothing but limits referral commission to one level. Additionally free members must “upgrade” to Elite membership if they wish to actually cash out their earnings.

Elite membership costs $14 every 11 days and extends the referral commissions down 10 levels (people you recruit are your first level, people they recruit your second level and so on and so forth).

Conclusion

These guys have a terrible track record of launching scams and having them collapse in just a few short weeks and I imagine 14 Daily Profit is going to be no different.

At the end of the day a Ponzi is a Ponzi and isn’t sustainable no matter how you dress it up. I imagine it won’t be long before we see ’15 Daily Profit’ spring up once people stop investing in 14 Daily Profit.

One would think over time that the effort required to slap a few generic images together and launch a new site off the same backend script would outweigh the meagre profits generated by such opportunities but I suppose while people continue to invest in such scams, that’s obviously not the case.

With most of the important court cases Speak Asia are involved in delayed until June or July and seemingly little development overall in the month of April, there hasn’t been all that much on Speak Asia to discuss.

Whilst some senior panelists continue to run around telling everyone to be patient, “trust the company” and in the face of court delays even downplay the heavy emphasis placed on the various cases Speak Asia are involved in, others are seemingly fed up and bringing their plight and stories to light.

One such senior panelist is Raghuyveer Bere, a self-described ‘Kohei’ panelist from Hyderabad.

After requesting a refund and getting nowhere, Bere penned a letter to Ashok Bahirwani explaining his situation:

support-defreezal of the bank accounts

raghuveer bere

9/30/11

to speakasian.ash.

sir gvng

i am raghuveer bere,from hyderabad (certified kohei). i had a telephonic conversation with u 2 days back and as per our discussion i am writing this mail to u.

I have transferred an amount of 3 lac rupees on 11 Apr to master franchisee account, for applying for a franchisee for hyderabad/warangal, but i couldnot send an application with some doubts while filling it and contacted mr calvin. and i was not happy with the response and not sent any application.

later mr. Charan has been appointed as R.M for andhra and i went to goa on his invitation to sort out the issue. I have made every possible effort to get the refund of the said amount and all this has happend before the freeze of master franchisee account.

Mr.Ashish dandekar has sent an sms that, my amount can only be refunded after defreeze of company account.

My bank account (Individua current account,Axis bank ltd,Warangal branch) was freezed on Aug 5,which contained an amount of 39000rs balance in it,by an order of D.C.P of APCID. But I have not received any notice for the same from police.

pls inform me the effort of others like me whose amounts have to be refunded and bank accounts have been freezed, pls guide me to do the necessary, thank u

Most notably, is the fact that Bere had requested a refund on April 11th 2011, long before the CID stepped in and started to freeze bank accounts (this started to happen in May 2011).

Despite this however, Ashish Dandekar (suspected of being the long-standing “unofficial” COO of Speak Asia) advised Bere that he was unable to get a refund due to bank accounts being frozen.

Two days later, Bahirwani replied.

Ashok Bahirwani speakasian.ashok@gmail.com

10/2/11

to me

Dear Mr. Raghuveer,

Can you please inform me if you are a panelist of Speakasia.

Jai Speakasia

Despite having talked on the phone, stated he was a “Kohei certified” panelist from Hyderabad, Bahirwani appeared to simply brush Bere off.

Despite six months passing since initially depositing his money though, Bere maintained his patience and replied:

raghuveer bere

10/2/11

to Ashok

sir gmng

yes i am a panelist,my mail contained that information ”raghuveer certified kohei from hyderabad”

thank u

Despite this conversation occurring eight months ago, to date Bere has not received a reply.

Fed up and frustrated, Bere yesterday decided to go public with his plight on Facebook. In an open letter to Ashok Bahirwani, Bere wrote:

Dear Ashok ji

Namashkaar

I appreciate ur sincere effort in forming n lead role in aispa. I salute the spirit of Merwin castro, n specially the organised effort of Aman azad.

I was in ct with u over phone n mails before aispa is formed. I agree that u r one among those Indian citizens who live for others and feel social responsibility.

But sir i suspect ur relation with SAOL and its officials, Let me explain… why.

I am Raghuveer Bere , a panelist from HYDERABAD. I wrote quite a few mails and several calls to Singapore office , but miserably the response is utterly worst.

When i called n insisted them to give a reply to my mails, the person who attends my call frequently said that some from saol will call n answer, and last wk one of the RM called me N said sir pls be in touch with Mr.Ashok bahirwani, and all ur queries will be cleared if u follow the updates of aispa.

Sir i have not joined aispa, but i follow all the updates.(i am sorry that i cannot provide any evidence of that conversation).

Dear elderly friend, i know that We should not wash our dirty linen in public, thats why i kept quiet for a long time, but now the time has come show the dirty picture SAOL.

Its very evident by recent acts of SAOL that, it has encashed the emotions of lakhs fellow indians by using the loopholes in Law and adminstration.

The issue of withholding refunds aside, most eye-opening is the claim that a regional manager of Speak Asia directed Raghuyveer Bere to contact Ashok Bahirwani, secretary of AISPA.

To put things into context, the original email conversation I’ve quoted in this article occurred after unsuccessful attempts by Bere to resolve his situation through Speak Asia itself.

Upon contacting Speak Asia via the advertised official email communication channels and telephone numbers, Bere was told that someone from Speak Asia itself would call him back.

This did happen, but rather than work with him to resolve his issues Bere was instead directed Bere to contact Ashok Bahirwani to “clear” all of his queries.

Naturally with AISPA claiming to have nothing to do with Speak Asia’s management and Bahirwani claiming to have no association with company management himself, the pertinent question is on what authority are Speak Asia’s management deferring queries to Bahirwani and more importantly, why.

Upon receiving no reply to the above query, published on the 26th April, Bere then went on to publish another open letter to Bahirwani, published on the same date -

Dear Ashok ji

I hope ur seniority in age and experience will agree,that the people or the co whose intentions are good n true will not suppress the facts,they disclose all relevant information volunatarily, even before it was asked by others or a controversy is raised.

Sir through you i want to ask a few questions……..

We all need not to be lawyers or law makers to ask questions, but as a customer who has paid money to buy the product will have a right n responsibility to ask the relevant question. and the seller is bound to answer

Our entry into SAOL is through the purchase of 52 issues of Surveytoday, which is an e-zine, a periodical which will be delivered weekly to registered mail id.

Who is the publisher of this Surveytoday, its a simple fact that any newspaper or a magazine will contain the details of the publisher like who has published it and from where it is published.

All the time the info on our website diclosed that Harenventures p ltd is the global distributor and Kirtanji allied is the master ditributor in India.

And in recent updates on Speakasiaonlinemarketing.blogspot.com “As for Seven Rings International, they were the publisher of the E-Zine magazine which was distributed by HVP.”

why this information was disclosed earlier openly in the co website?

If this information was there on website probably some of us may not have purchased the subscription keeping sevenrings international in mind

Why a detailed invoice was not raised n sent to customers?

And today ,when we have not recieved all 52 issues of surveystoday ,why cant we claim our right as a consumer to get back the money for rest of the issues which are not delivered,regularly from Harenventures p ltd?

what is the contact no of HVP?

Why the master ditributors have not gone to court when their business was effected and was legal?( if they have approached pls give me the details)

why HVP is mum n not moving like a python who just ate a buffalo?

HVP has not introduced SAOL to us,Its SAOL which has introduced HVP to us.

people who buy the subscription of Surveytoday ,get an opportunity freely to enter in to speakasiaonline.com n participate in its activities,where no promise of income is made.

This may be legally correct. but it is like paying money to buy a remote control to get a tv free with that(remote control is useless without tv, but a tv can be viewed with out a remote.) ridiculous.

Its the need of us but for some of us a big greed which made us fools n fell for SAOL

sir u have not replied ,there on hope now u might have understood why i have not joined AISPA.

Sir pls tell me ur relation with our co, becoz the company has asked a panelist to get answers to the questions asked to co, which a RM donot have, which co couldnt reply by text, from a another panelist who joined late in February.

Sir may i ask u, why one shouldnt doubt the intention of the company, when they asked people to communicate with co on corcom@speakasiamarketing.com, later on india.south@speakasiamarketing.com, and they do not respond from more than a month, inspite of making telephone calls regulary to get a reply?

Regarding the issue of Seven Rings being credited as the publisher of the e-Zine whereas previously this was credited to Kirtanji Allied, I suppose when you’re running so many front companies and constantly chopping and changing your story to fit whatever legal explanation you’ve come with to justify your Ponzi scheme, sooner or later you’re intrinsically bound to create inconsistencies.

Inconsistencies that refreshingly at least one senior panelist hasn’t conveniently chosen to ignore in the face of ongoing empty promises of refunds and business restarts.

Increasingly it has become hard to ignore the obvious relationship between AISPA and Speak Asia. In addition to Speak Asia’s management deffering queries to Ashok Bahirwani,

• the fact that AISPA are using the same law firm that has represented several of Speak Asia India CEO Manoj Kumar’s companies in the past
• The “official” company blog uses doctored templates to publish updates on and increasingly has coincided with updates from AISPA
• AISPA itself has lodged a court case in the Mumbai High Court to quash criminal investigations into Speak Asia
• AISPA secretary Ashok Bahirwani has been interrogated multiple times by the EOW on suspicion over the extent of undisclosed involvement in Speak Asia (the details of the interrogations thus far have not been made public, although were heading towards an arrest of Bahirwani for ‘deliberately avoided the investigation agency with intention to suppress the relevant facts’ with the EOW currently seeking clarification from the Supreme Court over this course of action)
• AISPA paid off FIR complainant Navniit Kkhosla on behalf of Speak Asia and then claimed this was a joint effort by its members
• Bahirwani being named a ‘top official from Speak Asia‘ by reporter Samarth Moray after being in communication with Bahirwani and AISPA’s lawyer, Ahmed Abdi


all point to AISPA unofficially acting as the defacto management of Speak Asia in India, offering a convenient front for Speak Asia’s management to hide behind whilst they seek to hamper investigations into the company and preventing scammed panelists from demanding their money back.

In an AISPA update dated 3rd March 2012, Bahirwani himself even stated that

AISPA will serve us (sic) an interface between the Panelists and the Company Management.

In the update Bahirwani is using the future tense but quite obviously this is already happening and has been for some time. Continuing to deny any involvement or relationship between Speak Asia and AISPA in light of all this information only seems increasingly implausible at this point. Dare I say it, even blatantly ridiculous.

As far as I know Bere still hasn’t been paid and nor has he been contacted by AISPA, Speak Asia or Ashok Bahirwani since going public with his story on the 26th April.

As I mentioned earlier, he tried to publish his story on a Facebook group frequented by Speak Asia’s panelists but it was promptly deleted.

Looking forward though I wouldn’t at all be surprised if Bahirwani (through AISPA) paid off Bere in an attempt to hush him up and settle the matter. Of course if that were to happen, like the Navniit Kkhosla payoff though, it’d naturally be unofficially not on Speak Asia’s behalf…