Familia Unitas Review: $20-$200 a month recruitment scheme
Familia Unitas operate in the online marketing MLM niche.
An address on the company website suggests the company is based out of Michigan in the US, but curiously a contact number in Slovenia is also provided.
Identified as CEO of Familia Unitas on their website is Timothy Saltsman (right).
Past MLM opportunities Saltsman has promoted include Ingreso Cybernetico (recruitment-driven matrix scheme), IQ Life (rebrand of Level9App recruitment scheme) and MMO Cashout (another recruitment scheme) and ProShareExtreme ($1 micro Ponzi scheme).
On his Facebook page Saltsman was talking about launching an opp early this year, but Familia Unitas appears to be his actual first launch.
Read on for a full review of the Familia Unitas MLM business opportunity.
The Familia Unitas Product Line
Familia Unitas has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market Familia Unitas affiliate membership itself.
Bundled with Familia Unitus affiliate membership is access to “digital products”.
The Familia Unitas Compensation Plan
The Familia Unitas compensation plan pays affiliates to recruit new affiliates, both directly and residually through a matrix compensation structure.
Direct Recruitment Commissions
Familia Unitas affiliates are directly compensated when they recruit new affiliates, via a unilevel compensation structure.
A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):
If any level 1 affiliates go on to recruit new affiliates they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.
If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.
Familia Unitas cap payable unilevel levels at ten, with commissions paid out as follows:
- level 1 – $5 per affiliate recruited
- level 2 – $2 per affiliate recruited
- level 3 – $1 per affiliate recruited
Note that as these commissions are paid out of monthly affiliate fees, they are also monthly recurring.
Residual Recruitment Commissions
Residual recruitment commissions in Familia Unitas are paid out through a 3×3 matrix.
A 3×3 matrix places an affiliate at the top of a matrix with three positions directly under them:
These three positions form the first level of the matrix, with levels two and three generated by splitting the previous level positions into another three positions each (for a total of 48 positions).
Commissions are paid when positions in the matrix are filled at a rate of $1 per position filled.
Once a matrix is filled and $48 is paid out, an affiliate is placed in a new 3×3 matrix and the process begins again.
Joining Familia Unitas
Affiliate membership with Familia Unitas is $25 a month.
Additional affiliate membership levels of $50, $100 and $200 a month are advertised but not currently available.
Conclusion
With nothing marketed or sold to retail customers, all Familia Unitas are doing is paying their affiliates to recruit new affiliates.
The inspiration behind the scheme appears to be Ingreso Cybernetico, which also combined digital products and services with matrix position purchases (albeit far more expensive).
In addition to chain-recruitment, there is also a “pay to play” elements within Familia Unitas.
As per a Familia Unitas marketing video featuring Timothy Saltsman:
Everytime you’re gunna upgrade (pay more money each month), everything you’re earning is gunna double.
Although not currently available, it seems the three additional affiliate membership options directly impact an affiliate’s income potential.
As a compliance guideline earnings in MLM opportunities should always be tied to individual sales performance, rather than how much money they pay in fees each month.
As with all recruitment schemes, commissions in Familia Unitas will slow down once recruitment of new affiliates dries up.
Once recruitment slows down, those at the bottom of the company-wide unilevel will realize they’re unable to recruit new affiliates.
This will see them stop paying their monthly fees, which means those above them will stop getting paid too.
They in turn stop paying their fees and, as this effect slowly trickles up the company-wide affiliate genealogy, eventually an irreversible collapse is triggered.
At that point anyone who hasn’t recovered their monthly fees by way of recruitment loses out, with this statistically being the majority of participants.
I’m really disappointed in this review. I thought this site was meant to help network marketers with useful information about mlm companies and not making every mlm company look bad.
Let’s start with picture? WHY did you post 10 years old picture???? So that it looks like 16 old boy is running company?
And information about matrix is completely wrong. It’s not working like that and it won’t ever.
I have to agree with you on what would happen if it stays like this. But I’m pretty sure that you purposely left what this company is really about so that it would make us look bad!
You didn’t mention that there are already projects in development that will make this company long lasting and something very diffrent from recruitment scheme.
Details on how matrix works are incorrect. Also you have forgot to mention that this project is online only for 7 days and this is not it’s finally looks. Programmers are already developing new more interesting projects that will make this look alot better ….
None companies started as perfect from it’s first day. In 2-3 months there will be completely different picture of what this project is really about.
Aside from looking balder, Saltsman appears to be the same in recent marketing videos. I didn’t know the photo was 10 years old.
The information was sourced directly from Saltsman’s mouth via a marketing presentation. You have issues with it, take them up with him.
And that would be what exactly?
Because they have nothing to do with Familia Unitas affiliates paying a fee and getting paid to recruit others who do the same.
So why start off with a pyramid scheme then?
If the foundation of an MLM opportunity is chain-recruitment, from there things will only deteriorate.
By the law of USA this is not a pyramid scheme. If in any country this is not legal please tell me.
Not at the moment as they are still in development. But when they will be finished they will have to do everything with them paying the membership.
Oh shutup. Affiliates paying a fee to qualify to earn commissions when they recruit affiliates who do the same = pyramid scheme. Totally illegal in the US.
Development schmelopment. All that’s relevant is the here and now, that being Familia Unitas is functioning as a recruitment-driven pyramid scheme.
There are not paying membership to qualify to earn. They are paying membership to access the products.
This system is not illegal as there are many similar systems that are working now for few years.
I’m pretty sure that I and neither Timothy would publish our names if we had any intentions at all to run a PYRAMID SCHEME!
Every company has to start at some point. Maybe our projects are still not developed completely but they will be soon and this DOES matter for the people that joined and it DOES matter for our public image what our intentions are.
And who told you this? Are they qualified to make such a determination, i.e. MLM lawyer?
They are affiliates and they are paid to recruit new affiliates.
Ergo the fee they pay is commission qualification. What you bundle with it is irrelevant.
Pyramid schemes are illegal the world over.
Yet here we are.
Well you’ve totally botched yours so far.
Your projects are irrelevant when all you’re doing is paying affiliates to recruit new affiliates…
You don’t need to have intention, merely misunderstanding of the laws involved.
Better call up Kevin Thompson or Jeff Babener and pay them whatever their fee is for them to look over your comp plan ASAP… for your OWN sake.
I have to admit it. You scared me a little so I called mlm expert to check it again. We are legal!
We are also in the process to make it completely official so MLM lawyer will check it out. If we missed something we will fix it.
I have no intentions of scamming people!
All I found was some vague information about “digital products” and “marketing tools”?
And I also found the compensation plan presentation, e.g. that people could double their income by upgrading to a higher level.
I hope by “MLM expert” you don’t mean someone already running such a business. But the truth is nobody can do a proper evaluation without studying your comp plan and ask you a lot of questions, which will take several days.
If you got back to us in hours, your “expert” is probably not a MLM lawyer.
The mlm expert I asked for help is someone that owns mlm company and I trust him completly. But we also did some consulting with Babener & Associates when we started with idea and programing.
And of course we will pay them fee to go over it all again so that we are 100% sure that everything is ok.
Just beware that even mlm lawyers can fail spectacularly when it comes to company vetting. Look up Gerald Nehra as an example.
“MLM expert”, lol.
Here is an idea… Before the next review, gather some solid data, maybe do an interview with the owner…
It sounds like all you did was stalk some FB posts, and watch a couple videos… How is this a complete review? A redo is in order.
Did you or did you not misrepresent the Familia Unitas compensation plan in the YouTube video you uploaded?
I sign up for $25 a month and then get paid to recruit other Familia Unitas affiliates who do the same.
I don’t see what “other data” needs to be gathered, or why an interview or redo is in order.
All I see is a duck trying to convince everyone it’s not a duck.
I checked the information too. I only found some vague information on the company’s own website about the products or services.
You can check your own website. 🙂
If you want to disguise the opportunity as “product oriented”, then you must focus much more on the products, e.g. there will need to be some rational explanation for the $50, $100 and $200 “monthly product purchases”.
“Pyramid scheme”
The conclusion here is correct enough.
If you’re familiar with the shutdown of Vemma, then one of the arguments from FTC was about “emphasis of the program”, i.e. that Vemma focused heavily on recruitment and hardly had any focus on retail sale to external customers.
Another argument was that participants had to pay for the eligibility to earn commissions and bonuses. A third argument was “misrepresentation of income potential”. A fourth argument was “failure to disclose relevant facts”.
The court accepted some of Vemma’s defense arguments, e.g. it found that Vemma probably had some retail sale and potentially could survive even if the recruitment scheme was halted.
How the opportunity is PRESENTED as well as what actually happens is what counts, not what was “intended”.
Interviewing the owner will only ascertain on what was his surface intentions, and their website would contain only PR material.
Seems, however, you’re a fan of the Dooly school of reviews.
You may want to check the track record of Dooly vs. Oz here on spotting scams, before further commenting.
So in other words, you asked for an echo, and you got one.
Well, it’s YOUR company. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. But really, not have an MLM lawyer review your comp plan FIRST? Tsk tsk tsk.