Bidify v2.0 Review: Relaunch of a Ponzi scheme
Almost a month ago to the day, the newly appointed CEO (Albert Liske) and VP (Christopher Robinson) of Bidsson (Bidify’s penny auction platform) suddenly and without explanation resigned from their respective posts.
To date these resignations have not been explained by Bidify, despite promising to do so. Possibly indicating a conflict of opinion on the future direction of Bidify and Bidsson, just days after Liske and Robinson’s resignations, unofficial rumours began to surface indicating that Bidify were looking to ditch their retail bid orientated compensation plan just four months after its implementation.
Worryingly, these rumours also suggested that Bidify were seriously considering a return to their Ponzi scheme roots, which were abandoned literally days after the SEC shut down their biggest competitor, Zeek Rewards, for being a $600M Ponzi scheme.
Prior to the compensation plan change, Bidify was running a near identical affiliate funded bid investment scheme to Zeek Rewards.
A few days after the rumours appeared, Bidify itself confirmed it was looking to change up its compensation plan on the official Bidify blog, however no specifics were given.
Dubbed “the future of MLM penny auctions”, recently the new “Bidify 2.0” compensation plan (which is really Bidify 4.0 if you count the two post Zeek Rewards compensation plan changes) have leaked, and today we take a look at it.
Of specific interest will be to see whether or not retail bid focus has indeed been ditched and perhaps more importantly, has the focus of the compensation plan reverted back to affiliates paying affiliates?
Read on for a full review of the Bidify 2.0 compensation plan.
Compensation Plan breakdown
As we’d normally do with a new company review, here’s a breakdown of the Bidify 2.0 compensation plan:
Membership Fees
New (non-commissionable) membership fees have been introduced, starting at 100 EUR ($130 USD) to join Bidify and then 50 EUR ($65 USD) a month thereafter.
Unilevel Commissions
A unilevel compensation structure starts with an affiliate at the top and places every directly recruited affiliate under them (level 1).
If any of these level 1 affiliates go on to recruit new affiliates of their own, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team, and so on and so forth.
Using this compensation structure, Bidify pay out a percentage of the bid commissions earnt (including an affiliate’s self purchase of bids) down 15 levels.
How much an affiliate earns on each of the affiliate’s in their downline depends on what level of the unilevel structure their team members fall on:
- Levels 1 and 2 – 5%
- Levels 3 and 4 – 4%
- Levels 5 and 6 – 3%
- Levels 7 to 10 – 2%
- Levels 11 to 15 – 1%
Note that level payments are restricted to affiliate tiers, of which there are five in total:
- Tier 1 (pays out on levels 1 to 3) – 50 PV
- Tier 2 (pays out on levels 1 to 5) – 100 PV, PCV and GV
- Tier 3 (pays out on levels 1 to 8) – 150 PV, PCV and GV
- Tier 4 (pays out on levels 1 to 10) – 200 PV, PCV and GV
- Tier 5 (pays out on levels 1 to 15) – 300 PV, PCV and GV
Also note that
- PV = Personal Volume and are the bids personally purchased by an affiliate
- PCV = Personal Customer Volume and is the bid sales volume by an affiliate’s personal retail customers
- GV = Group Volume of an affiliate’s entire downline
Daily Profit Sharing Pool
Bidify’s Daily Profit Sharing Pool essentially redistributes the money spent purchasing bids (by both retail customers and recruited affiliates), to those who did the recruiting.
This is done via CAPS and the CAB.
A CAP is a “Customer Acquisition Point” and are generated when
when someone (a recruited affiliate or retail customer) you have referred purchases premium bids and redeems the bids in Bidsson.
Affiliates are capped at giving away up to 250 bids per month to any retail customers they have referred.
CAB is the “Customer Acquisition Bonus” and is how an affiliate gets paid. The CAB is made up of the money generated by bid sales (bids must be used in an auction to count towards the CAB) and any income generated by won auctions.
Subtracted from this amount are company costs (paying out Executive staff salaries etc.), shipping and auction item costs. What is left at the end of each day is then split a further 40%/60% between affiliates and the company, with 60% making up the daily CAB.
This CAB is then redistributed out to affiliates with each CAP paying out a daily ROI over 60 days. Essentially the more CAPS you have, the higher your daily payout through the CAB will be.
Bidify also state that the percentage value of each CAP is dependent on an affiliate’s unilevel tier rank, with higher tiers earning an affiliate a higher percentage of the CAB per CAP point they have generated.
Frequent Sales Credit
The Frequent Sales Credit pays out credit to an affiliate equating to 25% of any unilevel commission earnings they generate.
This credit cannot be directly redeemed for cash and has to be used either in the Bidsson auctions or to pay an affiliate’s monthly membership fee.
Conclusion
Before we get into an overall summary of the “new” Bidify compensation plan, let’s take a look at the individual components.
The unilevel commissions do actually require retail customer bid purchases if affiliates wish to earn anything beyond three levels of recruitment. If you’re not interested in finding customers however, it’s entirely possible to juts ignore levels 4 to 15 of the unilevel and earn on the first three levels, solely on your own bid purchases.
Why would you do that? That brings us to the whole CAP/CAB scheme.
Basically a clone of every other affiliate funded daily profit share out there, the CAB/CAP scheme (hereafter referred to as CAB) theoretically pays an affiliate for auction activity they generate.
The problem?
Set up a few dummy customer accounts to bid with and the money being paid out is still primarily being generated by affiliates.
The theory of course is that affiliates purchase bids, give them away and then later these customers go on to purchase bids, contributing to the overall success of Bidsson and injecting non-affiliate money into the daily CAB payout.
Demonstrably though, this has been proven to not happen. In the example of Zeek Rewards, upon being shut down it was revealed by the SEC that, as per Zeek Rewards’ own books, 98% of the daily ROI paid out to Zeek Rewards affiliates consisted of affiliate money (affiliate’s purchasing (investing) and re-purchasing (re-investing in) bids).
In the wake of Zeek Rewards’s retail activity (or lack thereof) being revealed, it has been generally accepted that the retail side of MLM penny auctions is simply not viable.
The most recent example of this in practice is the failed penny auction startup Funky Shark. Funky Shark initially announced plans to launch an affiliate funded scheme, but after their legal counsel advised them to restructure their compensation plan to rely more on retail bid sales, Funky Shark pulled the plug on the entire operation.
A letter sent out by Funky Shark to its members advised
(We have) recently discovered that the way we executed our Founder program may violate certain securities laws in the United States.
Due to these actions that we’re taking to remedy this error, in conjunction with our business model, our confidence in the future success of Funky Shark as a penny auction is greatly reduced.
We really cannot in good conscience move forward with the penny auctions.
In order for the penny auction to be profitable, there needs to be a lot of activity with the auctions. We lack confidence in this regard.
Looking at Bidify itself, in changing their compensation plan in August following the Zeek Rewards bust, Bidify started only paying affiliate’s on the bid purchases of retail customers.
Following this change, commissions plummeted and Bidify affiliates began to revolt.
Why?
The changes brought to light the painfully obvious fact that Bidsson had next to no genuine retail customers buying bids and the business would be unable to survive should it continue to rely on this insignificant retail activity.
Now this is a point I can’t stress the importance of enough. From a retail customer point of view, the Bidsson bidding experience is the same post Bidify 2.0 compensation plan and prior.
Prior to the plan changes there were no retail customers and both Bidify and Bidsson were stuck in a downward spiral, often paying out affiliates just a few cents a day.
Following the implementation of Bidift 2.0, the company has again reverted back to paying out commissions on the purchase of Bidsson bids by Bidify affiliates (internal revenue), and rewarding affiliates with a daily ROI based on the amount of bids purchased and given away.
Bidify have of course introduced the caveat that the bids be used and capped the giving away of bids to 250 per customer per month, however given the amount of customer fraud going on in Zeek Rewards, it’s evidently all too easy to generate a few fake customers and use them to bid with.
Make no mistake, for those experienced with how Zeek Rewards, the creation of fake auction customers (family members, bogus email addresses created only to create a Bidsson account etc.) is a non-issue.
Fundamentally, the money going into the CAB, whether the bids are used or not, is still going to come from Bidify’s affiliates.
You join Bidify, you create a few bogus customer accounts (accounts which are solely created to use bids in auctions with no intent to ever purchase any retail bids), you earn a daily ROI through the CAB.
And just like Zeek Rewards, you then earn even more if you recruit new Bidify affiliates and get them to invest in bids too.
In changing the compensation plan to pay out a daily CAB ROI (and it is a ROI, given that affiliates are now purchasing bids with the expectation of earning a >100% ROI over 60 days on the purchase price of each bid), nothing has changed for the end customer.
Infact, arguably with all the guaranteed bid inflation that’s going to arise (Zeek Rewards demonstrated that a ton of affiliates investing in bids made the auctions even more unattractive to genuine retail customers via bid inflation with all the bids being given away), following the implementation of Bidify 2.0 Bidsson will become even less attractive to retail customers.
They weren’t interested in spending money in Bidsson when commissions were solely tied into the retail purchase of bids post Bidify 2.0 and they aren’t going to be interest post Bidify 2.0.
Hell, Zeek Rewards had over one million affiliates “advertising” the company and they still generated next to no retail activity. Is Bidify going to be any different with a near identical affiliate funded daily ROI compensation plan?
You tell me.
The problem with all these ‘self-purchases’ propping up the bottom line (i.e. money in, money out) is it merely LOOKS good on paper to people who look only at the surface.
Let’s say, they pay only on retail (I.e. Bidify 2.0 and 2.1, post-Zeek), and the affiliates got $X
Now they want to do 3.0 (or 2.0, or 4.0, depending on how you count) where instead of affiliates only get $X, affiliates need to buy $Y, but somehow through ROI get $Z back.
IF $Y = $Z, you still end up with X, but the “income” looks bigger, as it’s now $X+Z. Never mind the expenses (i.e. buy bids).
So clearly, either there is NO net gain (i.e. you still end up with $X), or there’s some sort of redistribution where the people on top get net gain ( Z > Y) while the rest lose (Z < Y) which brings us right back to Ponzi scheme.
OK, I’ll “tell you”
Your blog is starting to “jump the shark” guys. Your posts are not accurate regarding Bidify. Your cheerleaders really need to find something constructive to do with their time instead of cheering on your mis information.
Ok, here goes, and if any Bidify Admin can chime in with specific factual data, please do:
Bidify can account for every dollar that was paid out, NEVER a ponzi.
Bidify Affiliates DO NOT receive commissions on THEIR personal bid purchases, nor do the ever receive caps which pay cabs on their personal bid purchases.
At Bidify you can NOT buy your way to an income. When an affiliate buys bids, they have to use them or give them away and this does NOT create ANY financial gain for an affiliate other than exposing potential customers and or affiliates to their own Bidify Business. AFFILIATES DO NOT EARN ON BIDS THEY BUY. They earn on bids they sell.
NOT, Wrong again.
After a bid is purchased in Bidify and commissions are paid out on them 15 levels up the uni level they are now have a new cost. ie 1 Premium Bid = €1 less @40 cents (sales commissions paid to affiliates) A “Bid” is an instrument in which one uses to make an offer on an item.
The new cost of the “bid on hand” (@60 cents), when used in Bidsson, generates revenue (documented). These bids spent on brand new brand named items at Bidsson which also happen to generate profits. Profits are also created when items are “sold back” to the auction.
This daily revenue less product, shipping and admin costs (yes legitimate companies do carry an overhead, salaries, etc..) is the daily surplus (an excess of receipts over disbursements). Bidify Distributes up to 60% of that Surplus.
When these bids are spent in Bidsson, a percentage of the “bid sale” that generated these bids are awarded to the selling affiliate and their up line 15 levels in the uni level (uni level: the most “just” and most accepted pay plan in the industry, rewards personal efforts) in the form a customer acquisition point (as they were generated from a sale).
An equal number of “caps” to commissions paid out on bid sale are awarded. ie €25 in commissions made on a bid sale in Bidify when bid is sold also generates 25 “caps” when those bids sold are actually used in Bidsson.
These “caps” are awarded a daily bonus (CAB) from up to 60% of the surplus on a daily basis for 60 days. Any company many distribute their surplus as they see fit. Please remeber where this surplus comes from, documented Auction activity.
Smell the coffee guys, Bidify, never a ponzi and now, Bidify2.0 has a powerful traditional mlm compensation plan that pays affiliates commissions when their product “bids” are sold and then when they are used they also are rewarded additional bonuses (for 60 days).
Now, I don’t see xyz coffe or juice company rewarding their affiliates when their “customers” drink their juice or coffe. They get a commission when the product is sold and thats it. “Ain’t that a shame” hmmm, doesn’t that make you want to question some of the legendary companies in this industry.
This makes Bidify’s new 2.0 comp plan potentially more powerful, lucrative and rewarding than any other legit plan out there.
Get paid a commission when your product is sold, and then when it’s consumed, you get awarded additions bonuses for 2 months. Great commissions and bonuses for selling a great product, the way all companies should work.
Yet again, WRONG.
A “cap” is acquired by an affiliate when a bid is used in Bidsson. A bid that was a result of a personal sale or a sale within the affiliates 15 level organization. The cap is commensurate of the commission earned on the original sale of those bids. These “caps” CANNOT BE BOUGHT. Again, you can not by your way to an income, it must be earned by sales of bids and the use of bids by the final consumer.
CAB is the “Customer Acquisition Bonus” and is how an affiliate gets paid. The CAB is made up of the money generated by bid sales (bids must be used in an auction to count towards the CAB) and any income generated by won auctions.
Subtracted from this amount are company costs (paying out Executive staff salaries etc.), shipping and auction item costs. What is left at the end of each day is then split a further 40%/60% between affiliates and the company, with 60% making up the daily CAB.
This CAB is then redistributed out to affiliates with each CAP paying out a daily ROI over 60 days. Essentially the more CAPS you have, the higher your daily payout through the CAB will be.
Bidify also state that the percentage value of each CAP is dependent on an affiliate’s unilevel tier rank, with higher tiers earning an affiliate a higher percentage of the CAB per CAP point they have generated.”
You are yet agin WRONG:
A cab is one stream of income. The CAB is a bonus that consists of bids that are USED in Bidsson on that day, income generated from “won” auctions on that day, and 20% of items that were sold back on that day less product, shipping, and administrative costs. The CAB that is paid out on that day is distributed between all affiliates who hold “caps” and they share up to 60% of that days surplus.
The CAB is NOT RE Distributed as it has just been generated for the first time that day and it is NOT NOT NOT paying out an ROI as NO investment was made, instead the rewards for the next 60 days are a result of HARD WORK, DEDICATION AND GOOD SALES SKILLS.
Bidify then shares another 20% of the days surplus with all affiliates who hold the “old bonus points” as they continue to honor their commitment they made to affiliates after the first plan was changes. This leaves the company @ 20% from the days surplus.
You are right about the more “caps” you have, the more you can earn HOWEVER, you can NOT BUY them, you have to WORK for them.
Oh, and yes, like most REAL companies with a great Compensation plan, we have QUALIFICATIONS to achieve a greater level of commission.
(Ozedit: removed irrelevant comments, personal attacks and insinuations)
@janbids
What does accounting have to do with it? The money all came from affiliates, that’s what made it a Ponzi.
As per the compensation plan material I viewed, yes they do.
Affiliates buy bids, dump them on customer accounts, use them in the auctions and earn a 60 day ROI on their bid purchases.
As above, I beg to differ.
Except for the fact that they earn a 60 day ROI when the bids they bought are used in the auctions. This is made very clear in the new compensation plan material.
Please don’t waste my time with psuedo-complaine ala Zeek Rewards.
Bidify affiliates buy bids and that money is used to pay out existing ROI liabilities owed to affiliates who have CAPS, via the CAB – which history has demonstrated will be mostly made up of affiliate money (redistribution of affiliate money as per a Ponzi scheme).
Yeah, and where did the “bid sale” money come from? Affiliates. Bidsson customers aren’t buying bids, they werne’t in the original Ponzi compensation plan and they weren’t when the entire compensation plan revolved around the sale of retail bids.
Yes, yes blahblahblah we get it. Redistribute 60% of the daily investments made by affiliates to those with CAPS. This is not rocket science.
As per the Bidify compensation plan material, all premium bids generate CAPS to the affiliate who bought them and then gave the bids away to be used.
More blahblahblah Zeek Rewards psuedo compliance bullshit.
A Bidify affiliate can buy bids, dump them on a customer account and spam them on the auctions, earning them CAPs. Effectively this is generating CAPS for themselves. That in itself is not the issue, it’s that the affiliates are the ones buying the bids (pumping money into the scheme), which is then paid out as a daily ROI.
How much of a ROI do affilaite’s get? Depends how much money they spent on bids.
Yes we can pretend there are retail customers but at the end of the day there aren’t, there aren’t. Bidsson’s last two business models have proven no retail customers exist.
The previous Bidify compensation plan only paid out affiliates on the sale of retail bids purchased by customers and it failed.
Do not waste mine and everybody elses time with your compliance garbage. Functionally the new Bidify compensation plan is a Ponzi scheme and if it catches on it’s going to be another disaster for the MLM industry.
I only hope this time I’m not the only one banging my drum about it with a whole host of people coming out of the woodwork and passing comment after the fact.
Fair warning Jan, the information in this review was sourced directly from the new official Bidify compensation plan material. Any further attempts to derail the discussion by insinuating the analysis is not genuine will be sent straight to the spam bin.
Here is one of many examples of inflated bidding taking place in Bidsson at this time.
•You can give a maximum of 250 bids to a customer per month. There are no financial benefits to giving bids away other than to generate customer activity. (Slide 11)
•When someone you have referred purchases premium bids and redeems the bids in Bidsson you earn CAPs. (Slide 13)
– Of course I suppose you could set up a dummy customer account (or an affiliate account) and purchase those bids.
Unless, of course, Jan can quote enough material to prove you wrong, instead of merely his “personal interpretation”.
I can *sort of* see Jan’s point, in that Bidify *seems* to have some sort of verification to make sure the affiliates are not just shilling the “customers” to dump the bids on like Zeek did (and in fact, half a dozen different services sprung up to do it for the affiliates for a monthly fee, both create the shill accounts AND to fulfill the ad posting environment).
The idea is the bids must be USED to get paid, which prevents the “blind dumping” that Zeek did.
However, with that being said, there’s really nothing preventing a whole group of affiliates collaborating to shill each other (i.e. buy bids for each other’s shill customers), which I believe was Oz’s point.
It’s a step in the right direction, but the goal’s a mile away.
To be honest, I think the Zeekheads said the same thing. 🙂
And yes, I hope Kevin Thompson vetted this plan.
Every dollar paid out came from members paying money in? 🙂
And most of the profit points “paid out” came from a VIRTUAL daily profit?
What did they do with the old Profit point balances? Did they convert them to CAPS?
“Must be earned by sales of bids and use of bids”. Do you mean PURCHASE of bids by affiliates, or do you mean affiliates SELLING bids to retail customers?
AUCTION PROFIT
1 bid used in an auction will raise the price for an item with €0.01. 250 bids used in auctions will raise the price with €2.50. And that’s all the “gross profit” those 250 bids will generate for the auction.
THE PRICE OF 250 BIDS
Bidify is using a “two price system” for bids, with two different prices for the same item. Some people will have to pay with real money (CASH EQUIVALENCE), while others can pay with some types of virtual currencies (e.g. “CAB”, “Credit”, “Commission”, “Bids”, “Daily profit”).
If a real customer is paying for those 250 bids, the purchase will generate a stream of money coming in to Bidify, money they can use to pay out.
If an affiliate is purchasing those 250 bids by reinvesting virtual currency, there’s no stream of money coming in.
The new compensation plan seems to protect the interests of the few on the top, on the expense of the many further down in the system. It will be very difficult to recruit new investors with that model. The new business plan has no incentives for new affiliates.
Bidify isn’t accounting for dollers paid in or out; Has anybody ever seen data for the financial status of cash flow of Bidify?
The only fact which is known, is that the flow of money to the members has practically stopped. This again leads to the conclusion that cash flow into Bidify is very small, because money generated by the penny auction is insignificant, and cash flow into a pyramid/Ponzi scheme is mainly what the members pay in.
So where can Bidify “account for” every dollar?
– Seychelles, location of original Bidify company:
The Seychelles are a well-known tax evation and money laundering haven; The company register is not publicly available, and compay informations are 100% secret.
– Wilmington, Delaware, official location of Bidify LLC and Bidsson LLC:
There is no actual Bidify presence at the official company address of 427 N Tatnall St #15902, Wilmington. A ‘virtual presence’ at this address is bought from the company Earth Class Mail for $ 16.95 per month. Therefore, no accounts.
– Reykjavik, Iceland:
The formal CEO of Bidify, Larus Palmi Magnusson lives in Reykjavik. However, Bidify has no official company presence in Iceland. As the Bidify LLC CEO lives outside the USA, US authorities has little leverage to force a disclosure of Bidify financials.
Moreover, Larus Magnusson is probably a ‘straw man’ or hired hand for the real Bidify bosses, who are living in Trondheim, Norway, and who belong to the Norwegian pyramid scheme community.
– Trondheim, Norway:
Home of Bidify bosses Jørn Davidsen (formerly in JuuGo pyramid scheme), Are Vinje (co-founder of JuuGo pyramid scheme and co-worker of ex-con pyramidster Frode Jørgensen), and Frode Jørgensen (probable real boss of Bidify, 2 1/2 years prison conviction in 2009 for operating the illegal pyramid/Ponzi scheme PlexPay).
It is highly probable that Bidify is atually operated out of Trondheim, Norway, as the core leaders are located there.
However, as the Bidify leaders live outside the USA (where most Bidify members are), US authorities has little leverage to force a disclosure of Bidify financials.
There are almost no Norwegian members of Bidify, so Norwegian authorities have little incentive to launch an investigation of Bidify, unless Frode & Co may be nailed for tax evasion or money laundering.
All in all, Frode Jørgensen & Co seem to have built a fairly impenetrable fence around themselves, which means that it will be very difficult for authorities to get at the illegal gains that these criminals have stashed away.
Unfortunately for the members, this means that when Bidify collapses or is shut down, there is practically no chance to recover the money which the members have lost.
In early November, rumors surfaced that Bidify was planning to return to a Ponzi-oriented compensation plan.
Bidsson CEO Liske and VP Robinson probably realised that this would increase the risk that the SEC might take action against Bidify/Bidsson leaders.
However, Frode Jørgensen and his straw man CEO Larus Palmi Magnusson are sitting relatively safely in Norway and Iceland, the companies Bidify and Bidsson LLC are just Delaware mailbox companies, and the money from Bidify are probably hidden in anonymous bank accounts in offshore money laundering havens.
Thus, Liske and Robinson probably realised that if the SEC or other US authorities should take action against Bidify/Bidsson, they would likely be the ‘fall guys’, risking charges of operating a pyramid/Ponzi scheme, wire fraud, money laundering etc.
A good reason to leg it fast!
@Kasey
Well it got rather silly when she quoted me quoting the Bidify compensation plan and claimed it was “wrong”.
As for using the bids, I don’t see how creating a few dummy customer accounts and spamming the bids on any auctions (burn through the bids as fast as you can click a mouse button) will legitimise things.
If anything it’ll drive retail customers away due to inflation and only compound the “only affiliates are buying bids” problem.
And again, “there’s no financial compensaton for affiliates buying bids”, what hogwash. If they give the bids away and they get used (dummy accounts or otherwise) they get 60 day Ponzi ROIs.
Affiliates near the bottom of a long downline will be paid less than affiliates near the bottom of a shorter downline? That system will make it more difficult for affiliates near the bottom to recruit affiliates under them. It will reward people for WHERE in a downline they joined initially, paying more rewards if they joined close to the top.
The new compensation plan seems to be heavily focused on paying the few at the top on the expense of the many further down in the system. They can’t expect many NEW people to join a system like that?
ONE EXAMPLE:
3 affiliates who joined Bidify at the same time and with similar investments and recruitments, but they joined at different levels in the existing downlines.
* “A” joined directly under someone close to the top in downline “X”, e.g. with only 2 levels over him and a couple of personally recruited. He will receive 90 CAP for 100 bids spent in auctions (100-10%). Affiliates joining under him will receive 85 CAP per 100 bids.
* “B” joined at the bottom of a short downline “Y”, e.g. with 6 levels over him and a couple of personally recruited. He will receive 74 CAP for 100 bids spent in auctions (100-26%). Affiliates joining under him will receive 71 CAP per 100 bids.
* “C” joined under someone near the bottom of downline “X”, e.g. with 12 levels over him and a couple of personally recruited. He will only receive 62 CAP for 100 bids spent in auctions (100-38%). Affiliates joining under him will receive 61 CAP per 100 bids.
Systems like that will make it extremely difficult for the majority of affiliates to recruit anyone, and the system will collapse rather quickly. Both “B” and “C” will feel this system is unfair, and that it makes it extremely difficult for them to recruit anyone.
It will take some time before the affiliates will realize the weaknesses, e.g. that joining a shorter downline will pay more rewards than joining a longer one.
@ M_Norway
Regarding your comments above… I’m not sure you understand how the Unilevel works.
Every downline starts with you at the top. You, as an affiliate, is the person sitting on the top of your downline.
Exactly a group of people colluding to be each other’s dummy … works even better if there are dozen people in the group. You can give to a different dummy every month, and since they’ll also give you bids, it comes out to be even.
So the question here is… how many affiliates who buy bids does one need to recruit to break even?
Which brings me back to my first comment here:
https://behindmlm.com/companies/bidify/bidify-v2-0-review-relaunch-of-a-ponzi-scheme/#comment-127674
If they can’t make it on unilevel commission alone, what makes *this* particular plan any better? Or is this a fancy way to encouraging affiliates to dump in their own money?
@Interested
Most affiliates will have an upline, too. 🙂
Each affiliate is normally a part of other affiliates’ downlines, and will generate unilevel commissions upwards in the system.
I may have misinterpreted janbids’ description, but I analysed some of the related parts first, e.g. the auction profit.
Having a shorter upline will either generate MORE or LESS CAP from the same amount of bids sold.
REVENUE AND PROFIT
Bids will generate revenue when they are SOLD, when people are PAYING for the bids with real money.
* Affiliates reinvesting some type of virtual currency will only generate VIRTUAL revenue and profit.
Penny auction bids will generate an additional “profit” when they are used in auctions, i.e. one bid will raise the price for an item with €0.01. The winner will have to pay a higher price for that item.
* The only bidder paying any money here will be the auction WINNER, if he decides to pay for the item.
* All the other bidders are only paying with bids, not generating any additional profit.
The auction example in post #4 probably generated a loss.
* 6,189 bids spent = €61.89 “potential revenue”, if the auction winner decided to pay for the item.
* the retail price for that item was €378.
@ M_Norway
“Most affiliates will have an upline, too.
Each affiliate is normally a part of other affiliates’ downlines, and will generate unilevel commissions upwards in the system.”
This is true but won’t affect your commission in any way.
The unilevel isn’t some sort of a fixed structure in the sense that the first level commission is reserved for the affiliates that signed up first with the company and if you come in later on, further down the line, you’ll get much less from your frontline.
The 1 level in the unilevel is your frontline, regardless of where you enter.
“Having a shorter upline will either generate MORE or LESS CAP from the same amount of bids sold.”
This is also true but only applies to the company. It won’t matter for you, one way or another.
When someone in your frontline purchases bids your earn commission of it. When someone in your 2nd, 3rd or 4th level purchases bids, your earn commission.
As I understand it, when those bids are then used at the auctions, you get CAP and CAB.
To purchase bids and use them yourself will not generate any CAP or CAB for you personally, but it will do so for your sponsor.
At least this is how I understand this new plan of theirs.
Due to Towah doesn’t work almost 2 months all the bidify members should fight against Towah for the stuck money until we get our money.
I have write several mails to warn them the importance of the services they afford.Otherwise all of us will leave, never make business with it.
Looks like the only ones left in this mess are the ones at the top trying hard to mess around with the comp plan to grease their pockets even more.
My guess is the comp plan was actually really written by the top scammers of the company. if they cared they would pay you. Do you have copies of your support tickets answered?
Anyone heard yet of who the board members might be??? Or was this just another Bla Bla Bla update from Bidify.
From my understanding, e-Wallets are “virtual accounts” designed for two purposes:
* money IN and OUT, through a real “MAIN” bank account, handling real monetary transactions. Transactions will normally require transaction fees.
* internal transactions, through a software program, only handling virtual transactions. Transactions can be free or low-cost.
Internal transactions, e.g. YOU –> BIDIFY or BIDIFY –> YOU will only require virtual transactions, adjusting the two related balances rather than transferring money.
External transactions will require real transactions of money, e.g. YOU –> MAIN ACCOUNT or MAIN ACCOUNT –> YOU.
Failure in withdrawals will normally be related to “transaction denied” one place or another, e.g. if there’s too little money available in the main account to meet the requested transaction.
In Bidify, most of the transaction problems started a few days or weeks after Zeek’s collapse, when the stream of money coming in was heavily reduced.
I think you are right. This is the last time i do business with Towah. And i will told my friend that if some company choose Towah as their PP. you had better not do this program.
Is you live in Norway? Do you know some thing about Towah and how to contact Towah with phone. And what about the other MLM companies use Towah as PP, in the same situation?
Oz and Mr Chang,
I must say that you are both completely wrong in your assumptions of how the new compensation plan works.
That’s why when you don’t do proper research and understand something you should say nothing until you do understand it.
This thread is making you look really incompetent in understanding compensation plans.
Firstly Jan is correct, you cannot purchase bids yourself to give away to a customer and expect to get CAP’s for that.
The only way you earn any CAP’s is by selling the Bids to someone that actually uses the Bids in the Auction.
So there is 2 actions here, firstly someone other than you has to purchase the bids, then secondly that person has to use the Bids in the auction before they generate any CAP’s for you to partake in the CAB bonus.
Also you don’t understand how the CAP’s are actually calculated to the affiliate.
The CAP’s are paid to the affiliate under the same % as the unilevel.
So as an example, let’s say that I sell a bid package worth 100 Euro and that person is on my first level, that sale will only generate 5 CAP’s for me when those 100 Bids are used. Because if you look at the Unilevel it pays 5% on the first level.
So as for you saying that people will generate dummy accounts to buy and spend the Bids, I am telling you that mathmatically that will not work for anyone trying.
They have made the compensation plan bullet proof.
According to the Bidify youtube video:
I live in Norway, but I’m not very familiar with Towah. Towah’s clients are mostly companies and people with “special needs”, i.e. network marketing.
I have read through the thread on MMG forum from page 134 to page 144. You have got an answer from Towah today in that thread.
http://www.moneymakergroup.com/Bidify-Bidifycom-t400387.html&st=2130&p=7383767#entry7383767
That answer should make Towah e-Wallet relatively safe to use. Tor Anders Petteroe has identified some specific issues, and he has basically identified “your funds in Towah” to be safe.
In case of trouble, you can sue him rather than Bidify if the information from him has been misleading.
@Harry
Before you weren’t paid if your downline bought bids, now you are. Downlines now count as customers whereas before Bidify affiliates had to sell bids to retail customers (and this failed miserably).
Whether you as an affiliate or your downline as affiliates are pumping money in is irrelevant, the fact of the matter is the daily ROI being paid out will be coming from affiliates.
There were no retail customers before, and getting affiliates to pump money into bids won’t generate any now.
Whatever the case, it’s still a 60 day ROI. If it was the same as the unilevel why have it at all?
Sure it will. Set up a dummy account in your “grandma’s” name, use your own money to buy bids, spam them at the auction and then earn a 60 day ROI.
The fact is they tried relying on retail bid sales to customers and it didn’t work. So now they are reintroducing commissions on affiliate purchases again (whether directly or indirectly it doesn’t matter).
It’s not only Towah’s trouble .Towah told me that some bad people used Bidify and bidsson system to cheat.
Actually i can’t understand the credit card fraud.Is that means some people used the card that Towah sent to us to cheat or they steal some others credit card to pay on bidify or bidsson?
Bidify is holding the money that its affiliates have rightfully earned. It seems some kind of collusion between Bidify and Towah.
Bidify is saying that its Towah fault and Towah says its Bidfiy’s fault. Now both came with a new story that there systems got hacked and so its security issue. This has been going for more than few months. Instead of solving the problem they have guts to come with new plan and rip off more people.
This needs to be stopped and Bidify needs to either pay its affiliate the money or cease it operation.
Firstly Bidify illegally raised money from founders as under SEC regulation it is not legal to raise money till they filed with SECS. Its big joke how these firms feel they can start their business in US , rip off the consumers and then get away with it.
Its time that all Bidify consumers whose money is stuck in Towah get Untied and complain. Top affiliates in bidify Rocoo and Linda have kept quiet and they haven’t done anything for their people to get their money back. They have showed their true colors.
According to Dictionary fraud can be defined as: “deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage”. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation.
Defrauding people or entities of money or valuables is a common purpose of fraud. It seems that Bidify is trying to recruit new people to fraud them when they haven’t even paid there old affiliates for the money that was already earned by them.
I will recommend behind MLM to start anew topic on how ” Bidify is not paying its affiliates” and inform the public why all the money that affiliates earned in Towah are stuck and there seems to be no solution to this problem. Both Towah and Bidify are committing fraud and need to be investigated.
Why the story that Bidify and Towah is spreading about security breach is no longer true? Just few weeks back few affiliates in Bidify were able to take their money out of Towah back to Bidify and then took it out of Payaza As soon as Bidify found that out they shut the transfer process so no one else could do the same.
I personally know the affiliates who took the money out of Towah this way. It seems there is some kind of collusion. How is that Bidify has the time to put new plans for its affiliates but no time to resolve the ongoing issues and see that its affiliates get paid.
This is because we all affiliates are so stupid that we just let these firms take us for a ride and believe in their BS story that they give us.
Frode already has bad reputation and one may think having been to prison once he should be given another chance as he would have learnt form his mistakes but it seem he hasn’t learnt a thing. Only thing he has learnt is how to use the law to his advantage and fool people.
I highly recommend all Bidify affiliates to get united and get Bidify and Towah management to Justice. We have an option to get our voice heard by complaining to DA office and FTC and SEC. Few people in my team have already started doing that.
Bidify has already ripped of lot of affiliates when its changed its plan after the zeek’s demsie.. At that time they should have refunded people their money and ceased their operation which they never did.
Since then they have tweaked their plans so many times just ripping off new affiliates who join. Its time to expose them. If you have not been paid by Towah, please also inform others on YouTube, Twiiter, facebook and other forums so as to educate the public .
To complaint to District Attorneys office in Deleware where Bidify’s is located and incorporated, email consumer.protection@state.de.us or mail to
Delaware Department of Justice, Consumer Protection Division, Carvel State Office Bldg. 820 N. French St. Wilmington, DE 19801
To complain to SEC, call SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower at (202) 551-4790.
To post on web go to ripoffreport.com
I challenge the Bidify and Towah management to come to this forum and answer these concerns and see that all affiliates money is paid to them ASAP before they try to get new money from existing and new affiliates.
I am glad that honest sites like Behindmlm exist that give an opportunity to bring such firms to light and expose them.
@qiaooo
It’s not the cards Towah has issued, but some other stolen credit cards. If you know where to look you can purchase those things online.
Blaming Bidify, or any other company they might service for that matter, to me is a lame excuse from Towah.
Towah is a payment gateway that should ensure that the cards being used are from the actual cardholder. There are measures like 3d Secure that could prevent, or at least, reduce the use of stolen credit cards.
To the best of my knowledge, Towah approves the transactions and on top of that allows transfers between e-wallets up to a certain amount for Towah account that have not been KYC approved.
So if Towah as a payment gateway, authorizes a payment with a stolen credit card, allow its users to operate without KYC documents and allow transfers between accounts without actually making sure it’s not just one person with multiple accounts, then it’s Towah that has security issues and is not doing its job.
Then to top it up by putting the blame on the merchant….
Everything about the Bidify video above is a typical MLM lure. This alone should scare anyone away from the ponzie.
The fancy dream car, the pretty girl on the beach, the high rise buildings(implying their head offices,400,000 +plus customers (Really only affiliates not customers).
Like,like seriously! Are people that blind?
The natural suspect is convicted criminal Frode Jørgensen, who has promoted and operated a number of pyramid and Ponzi scams in the last 10 years; T5PC, PIPS, WGI, PlexPay, AmityFunds, JuuGo and Bidify.
In 2009 the Norwegian Supreme Court sentenced Frode Jørgensen to 2 1/2 years prison, for establishing and operating the illegal pyramid scheme PlexPay Network, which was raided and shut down by Norwegian police in September 2005.
Additionally, the Kansas and Alabama securities authorities issued Cease & Desist Orders against PlexPay, and an (unpaid) fine of 50 000 $ by Kansas.
The explanation why Bidify is not paying money to its members is simple:
Bidify is a pyramid scheme with a Ponzi element. When practically no new members are joining the pyramid, almost no money is flowing into the scheme, and there is no money in Bidify to pay to the older members.
Whatever little money that is paid into Bidify these days, probably goes straight into the anonymous offshore bank accounts of Frode J and the other scheme owners.
The income from the penny auction is next to nothing; Its purpose is to function as a ‘product alibi’ for the pyramid/Ponzi, just like the international postal reply coupons in Charles Ponzi’s 1920 scam.
It seems that Linda Helin has several different accounts under user names linda, linda2, joe (her husband) jjsgang and also jjsgang2 . It might be that Frode also has an account under user name frode.
Dunno if it is just my computer acting up but, on the Bidify site terms, the only one with any info is the income disclaimer. All others are blank at this moment. Perhaps they are updating the site info. I was looking to see if members were actualy permitted to have multiple accounts within Bidify, if not, the above accounts would imply high ranked Bidify members are breaking the rules. If that is the case, how many others have created multiple user accounts.
One would have to also assume that these multiple accounts are generating multiple profits to the same account holders.
Under section 5.11 http://www.bidify.com/terms/policies_and_procedures.html it says 1 bidify business per affiliate.
So yes it appears that rules are being broken or “Bent” for personal gain. Especially if this person is at the top of the ladder.
Ponzis and pyramids have RULES ???
Who woulda thunk it ??.
Will be interesting to see who else on the top leaders of this Bidify scam are using multiple accounts. Wondering what user names Frode might be using or even if The lawyers have accounts!
Bidify – the worst company ever. An abomination.
Ponzis and pyramids have lots of rules. The main purposes of these rules are:
1) Confuse the members, the public and the authorities w.r.to the business model, cash flow and the actual goings-on in the scheme.
2) Discipline ‘disloyal’ members (i.e. members who reveal illegalities or who complain about not being paid), by excluding those members and preventing pay-out of promised ‘profits’ or ‘invested’ capital, while making these actions appear ‘legitimate’.
3) Prevent pay-out to members when the scheme is in the decay/collapse phase.
4) To be broken if it gains the scheme owners.
also scammed by the payment processor Towah
@qiaooo
Towah is not a BANK. It’s a small family company (or several small family companies), with hardly any employees at all except for the family members.
It has 3 company names registered in Norway. (I also found 3 company names registered in the UK (companieshouse.gov.uk):
06650343 TOWAH PLC (Dissolved)
05311994 TOWAH GROUP LIMITED
07829775 TOWAH MEMBERS CLUB LIMITED
Banking license for debit cards (as stated on one of Towah’s websites) is registered on IDT Financial Services Limited, Gibraltar – company no. 95716 – properly registered as a bank in Gibraltar with banking licenses in all the European countries.
Towah itself does NOT have the correct permissions to do any banking services, as far as I could see.
* it CAN sell the debit cards as “products”
* it can NOT accept deposits from clients
* it can NOT do any payment services for clients
* it’s NOT listed as a bank, financial services provider or agent in Norway, UK or Gibraltar, but those registries are difficult to check.
FINANCIAL REGISTRIES:
Gibraltar, FSC Financial Services Commission:
http://www.fsc.gi/fsclists/bnklist.asp
United Kingdom, FSA Financial Services Authority:
http://www.fsa.gov.uk/register/2EMD/2EMD_MasterRegister.html
Your “Towah e-Wallet” may potentially be a “Bidify e-Wallet”, where Towah has delivered the software and is delivering some services, but where Bidify has control over all external transactions.
I might be mistaken but I believe Frode was or is a good friend/associate/affiliate of the Towah gang.
Then what can we do ? Is our money in Towah dead? How to protect our legal rights?
Frode Jørgensen and Tor Anders Petterøe (founder, owner and CEO of Towah) are both well known/infamous characters in the Norwegian pyramid scheme community.
Their relations probably go back to 2002 – 2005, when Tor Anders Petterøe was ‘World Leader’ (a sort of super-member / semi-management) of the large pyramid scheme World Games Incorporated (WGI), and Frode Jørgensen was a promoter of the WGI pyramid.
In 2009 – 2010 Frode Jørgensen was one of the managers of the pyramid scheme JuuGo. This pyramid was founded by Jan Olav Øfsti, Ronny Nesset, Are Vinje, Linda Helin and Frode Jørgensen.
Towah was payment processor for JuuGo.
Frode’s name / role in JuuGo was toned down somewhat after December 2009, when the Norwegian Supreme Court finally sentenced Frode Jørgensen to 2 1/2 years prison for establishing and operating the pyramid/Ponzi scheme PlexPay Network.
Just amazing how these people manage to put their dirty hands in people’s pockets over and over again and still sleep at night without seemingly any remorse.
Towah was founded in 2004, as an off-shore payment solution for WGI, meeting some “special needs” that normally can’t be covered by normal banks.
“Special needs” are usually about tax evasion / avoiding control by authorities / allowing for payouts without having to report them as taxable income. Or it can be about individuals facing claims from creditors, or about other situations where people can’t receive any official payouts.
The typical “special needs clients” are either individuals or oompanies, e.g. pyramid schemes.
Towah’s initial role was to sell debit cards to participants in WGI, allowing for off-shore payouts to a card rather than to a bank account. Banking operations were probably handled by a real bank, the real transactions IN/OUT.
Towah’s current role is more vague. In some cases, it seems like they’re only delivering software and services, e.g. helping clients to set up their own “white labelled” or “branded” payment solutions, where the client controls the flow of money IN and OUT.
Payouts from Bidify e-Wallets seems partially or fully to be controlled by Bidify itself. According to the answer received from Towah (post #25):
Bidify decides whether or not money can be paid out. Towah is only following instructions from Bidify. Its main client is Bidify, while the individual e-Wallets are only sub-clients.
Towah allows its main client to mislead its sub-clients, e.g. about how safe the solution is for the sub-clients.
Thought you guys might want the Bidify Update, even though I’m not an affiliate. =)
Many words, and very little substance, except that the monthly fee, which had been increased to 50 Euro, will be reduced back to the original 25 Euro.
Quite typical of a pyramid/Ponzi in its final stage….
“Many industry veterans believe …”?
“Many private consultants believe …”?
Bidify should identify a couple of them, rather than hiding them as “one of many”?
ONE MAJOR FLAW
The compensation plan has one major flaw, in that most of it revolves around VIRTUAL payouts rather than real payouts. The correct description should be “fraudulent plan” rather than “powerful and exciting plan”.
Virtual payouts are any type of virtual transactions, e.g. where a computer program calculates different rewards but where there’s no real transaction of money involved.
In Bidify, most transactions are virtual, some types of “internal transactions of virtual currencies” rather than real transactions of money.
FRAUDULENT
The compensation plan is fraudulent, i.e. the virtual payouts are pretending to be real.
To pay money OUT, Bidify will need a stream of money coming IN, preferrably from external sources like real customers.
* a stream of “CAB”, “Sales Credits” or “Commissions” can NOT replace a stream of money.
* a stream of virtual transactions from e-Wallets can NOT replace real transactions.
But all of the bidify members have invested lots of money in. Almost no one get some money out.
I mean, for example: someone invested 1000Eur, but what he really get the money is less than 100Eur and maybe still stuck in Towah.
As far as i know, most of my friends get nothing out of Towah. So i think bidify still hold lots of money..
Have you been naughty or nice?
You can be certain that Linda Helin, her husband Joe, Rocco, Frode and some select others have been paying themselves. I am sure their money isn’t stuck!
Some people in this world are TAKERS and others are GIVERS.
That’s the way pyramid and Ponzi schemes work:
The owners get a large chunk of the money, a few early members / top recruiters get a chunk of money, and most of the members get very little money or nothing.
The remaining Bidify money is stashed away in the anonymous offshore tax-haven bank accounts of Frode Jørgensen & Co.
what about that high dollar attorney they hired to protect us….tim something…is he also a liar?
The new compensation plan tries to reward people close to the top, people with huge downlines. That’s a problem in itself. The people they already have recruited do not bring in any fresh money except for some membership fees and PV.
New investors will bring in fresh money, and so will some real customers. Normally it should be better to reward people for bringing fresh money IN than to reward them for being fraudulent and greedy.
Bidify is fraudulent in nature, and it will reward people higher up in the system rather than you or your friends. I’ll believe the best choice is to find a way out of it.
“A way out of it” can mean many different things, but
* avoid putting in more money yourself
* avoid recruiting more friends
* try looking for solutions where you can be able to withdraw money
Putting in more money will reward people near the top, rather than rewarding you. Paying membership fee to keep the account active should be done from the e-Wallet.
Recruiting more friends will bring in some fresh money, but the current compensation plan will reward the leaders rather than you.
Solutions where you can be able to withdraw money can be difficult to find, but some solutions have actually worked for a short period of time, e.g. withdrawing Towah –> Bidify –> Payza –> payout.
“Blame the payment processor” and “blame it on a hack” and “blame it on fraud” are all standard script for all these Ponzi scams.
It’s so predictable we should build a timeline and the next scam we can plot their current status on the timeline.
‘The MLM attorney’ Kevin Thompson was NOT hired to protect the members.
Kevin Thompson was hired to protect the Bidify pyramid scheme bosses, formal CEO Larus Palmi Magnusson and real boss and ex-con Frode Jørgensen (2 1/2 years prison sentence for pyramid scheme offences related to PlexPay Network).
Additionally, Kevin Thompson was hired to help the Bidify bosses create a thin veil of legitimacy for the scheme, including creating the two Delaware mailbox companies (no office, no US employees, no US based management) Bidify LLC and Bidsson LLC.
Could this be an insight on the new revamped Bidsson site? http://bidsson2prelaunch.net/index.php
@ Jimmy, I agree. My question is how do we prosecute firms like Bidify that has done nothing to pay people the money but has the guts to pull up a new plan to fool more people. Is there a European agency where one can complain bout Bidify and Towah.
I have already field complain with AG office in Deleware and SEC. I think its good ideas also to complain to IRS about Bidify and Towah.
Its sad that reputable MLM attorneys liek Kevin Thompson support such fraudsters like Bidify
They will surely also get investigated and all the key players will have to answer to justice. People are getting smarter by the second with this mlm scam. I am sure the bidify leaders are already having bad dreams as the new site is going up. Anyone notice it is also not secure?
The new bidsson site above is being worked on, kind of scarey looking at the faq’s and all!
It will probably be difficult to bring the Bidify leaders to justice, because:
* Bidify LLC and Bidsson LLC are Delaware mailbox companies, with no US based management or US employees; The owners/leaders are sitting relatively safely in Norway and Iceland.
US authorities can probably easily shut down Bidify/Bidsson LLC, but probably not take serious action against Lars Palmi Magnusson, Frode Jørgensen and Are Vinje, because countries normally don’t extradite their citizens to other countries.
* It is not known where the Bidify financial accounts are.
* The money from Bidify are probably transferred to anonymous bank accounts in offshore tax evasion havens.
* The Towah payment processor is officially a UK company.
* Icelandic authorities can theoretically go after Larus Palmi Magnusson for operating a pyramid scheme. But to my knowledge, Icelandic authorities have very little experience in investigating pyramid schemes.
* Norwegian authorities probably have little incentive to prosecute Frode Jørgensen and Are Vinje for fraud or pyramid scheme offences, because of the heavy workload involved, Bidify’s use of foreign companies, banks etc., and because very few Norwegians have been members of Bidify.
* Norwegian authorities may possibly prosecute Frode Jørgensen and Are Vinje for money laundering and tax evasion, if they are able to penetrate the secrecy of the relevant offshore tax evasion / money laundering havens.
Bidify is the most ridiculous company in the world
Ha most of us was cheated by the bidify and Frode Jørgensen
And also the Towah.
I think now we bidify members should take measures to protect our rights.
The stuck money in Towah.
@ qiaooo i agree with you.
We all need to get untied and put an end to Bidify if these guys wont return the money . We need to see that they don’t ripoff more people.
My team has already put a complaint to SEC. Anyway who has lost money with Towah needs to advertise them in every forum, in youtube, facebook , twitter, blogs everywhere so they cant rip off more people. Ask everyone to complain to SEC and to DA office in Delaware as they are accountable in US as they they have PO box there.
WE need to send these guys to Jail or see that this is the end and they cant do any more MLM rip offs ever. My team has already put a complain with ripoff.com and SEC. I request you all to put a complain with ripoff.com and other sites.
These guys have some guts to take peoples money and then keep on changing plans to keep on ripping people
The end of Bidify is near. They are holding lot of affiliates money in Towah and they are not allowing to reverse the transaction from Towah to Bidify to pyaza. That clearly indicates they have bad intentions.
These suckers need to go to jail and Punished. Frode is a damm thief.
Shame to Bidify, Linda, Roccoo, Frode and Larry. They are most ethical bunch of people that give MLM bad name. If any of these people are reading or you know them tell them to come to this forum. I challenge to save their face and pay all the affiliates the money back or face legal action.
All the top affiliates who made money need to be subpoenaed and return the money to other affiliates like what is happening in zeeks case presently. All the top affiliates need to be taught a lesson that they should not promote such MLMS scams that harm other people.
Those of you who joined Bidify, thinking it’s a legitimate business because they retain a lawyer ?? You deserve what you get. You’ll probably jump on the next scam ship as it sails your way.
Maybe the “You don’t need to recruit to make money and it only takes a minute a day” people need to take whats written here on this blog serious info to heart and get a REAL job.
Well the new affiliate-funded Ponzi plan went live today and curiously Kevin Thompson is still listed as Bidify’s legal advisor.
Still no word on why the Bidsson CEO and VP walked out on the company.
Hmm…
The new plan is sucks. Frode is a liar.
After much fanfare and offline time since December 20th, on Jan. 4th Bidify went back online. As of this evening (Jan. 6th) Bidify is now offline again for “System Maintenance.” Um, okay…
11.Jan 2013 Facebook Twitter
Bidify Newsletter!
That’s a great letter from corporate. Not sure if this really means anything but hopefully they can get things together. I hate to see any business fail.
I believe that someday, a penny auction company will make it combining the direct sales industry. Not sure if bidify is the one – but it will happen someday, I believe.
God damn the bad payment processor Towah.
I never joined Bidify after the fall of Zeek. I just get there e-mails because I signed up as a free affiliate. I’m just waiting for the “Sorry, we have bad news…” email when they get shut down for running a Ponzi Scheme.
Looks like bidsson bids are just being used by affiliates and their fake customer accounts.
After all this “we are legal” talk, is bidify now legal?
NO, for me it looks very similar to strategies I have seen before, where a company is paying a few people to delay the final collapse. The longer they can delay it before people realise they have lost their money, the lower the risk of being prosecuted.
The “trusted leaders” are not telling the truth here. In reality, Bidify collapsed shortly after Zeek’s shutdown, when the stream of money coming in from new investors suddenly disappeared. It has been kept virtually “alive” after that, only paying out minor amounts to the affiliates.
Strategies like that has been very common in most of the Norwegian schemes I have seen. I have seen several of them.
Schemes like Bidify will normally freeze all ordinary payouts before they are about to collapse (when money coming IN is less than money going OUT). Then they will pay a few “trusted leaders” to delay the final collapse for as long as possible.
I believe Bidify had problems even BEFORE the shutdown of ZeekRewards. Bidify never managed to get the momentum that is needed to grow a scheme quickly.
As Bidify was designed from the outset as a pyramid scheme (the penny auction is a flimsy ‘product disguise’) with a ponzi element, it has never been been legal, and it will never be legal.
Just the fact that Frode Jørgensen (2 1/2 years prison sentence in Norway for establishing and operating the Plexpay pyramid/ponzi scheme) is one of the Bidify leaders, is enough to tell anyone that this is a crooked scheme.
Frode jørgensen has been involved in a number of pyramid and ponzi schemes during the last 10 years.
Before my friend (let’s call him “B”) put $15,000 USD into Bidify during its beginning, I told him that Frode J. had a dishonest track record. I advised him that he might want to reconsider, that this company didn’t look good.
B thought that my information was “interesting”, but went ahead and got involved. Today his Bidify Bonus is .30 Euros. I thought it couldn’t get any worse than his previous low of .80 Euros. Since it now costs 75 Euros a month to belong to this circus, (last month these fees cost him 50 Euros from his bank account), at this time, I really don’t have much faith in this company.
I noticed that yesterday there were more than 120 Bidsson auctions active, but over 60 of those are just auctions for bidding to win more bids! Although some of the other items are very nice, the shipping charges are outrageous.
50 EU shipping cost for a tiny pair of headphones weighing probably an ounce at best?
I admit that I’m not the smartest gal on the block, but at least in this case, it seems that I had more brains than money. B, on the other hand, had a lot more money than brains.
Please, kids and adults alike, let this be a cautionary tale.
Does anyone out there see this situation improving?
Thanks for letting me vent.
Frode Jørgensen is from Norway.
Tor Anders Petterøe (TOWAH) is from Norway.
The “Central Investigation Agency for Economic and Environmental Crimes” in Norway is called ØkoKrim (okokrim.no).
http://www.okokrim.no/artikler/in-english
I’m not sure ØkoKrim is the right agency here. It depends partly on how BIG the case is, how much money involved in it.
It’s possible to get them or other agencies involved by sending some information.
* WHY you’re contacting them
* A description of the case, with all the facts they need to know about the company, where it’s registered, where it has operated, known organisers, other information they may need to fully understand the case.
Add some information to help them identify the case correctly, e.g.
* “Some Norwegians have told us that Frode Jørgensen has been involved in other frauds, e.g. PlexPay”,
* “Bidify has been identified to be a clone of ZeekRewards, a $600 million Ponzi scheme which was shut down by the U.S. SEC (Security and Exchange Commission) on August 17 2012”,
* “Bidify immediately changed its compensation plan within a week after Zeek’s shutdown”.
I don’t believe Bidify’s management will be able to solve anything. From my viewpoint, they’re only delaying the final collapse for as long as possible, to reduce the risk of being investigated and prosecuted.
When contacting authorities, use a 2-step strategy:
STEP 1:
Describe the case (focus on factual information), and ask for information. Don’t file a complaint directly, ask about HOW to file a complaint first. Try to get other meaningful answers that can help you make decisions for step 2.
STEP 2:
File a complaint, or whatever they have advised you to do.
Contacting Norwegian authorities is not an “advise” from me, it’s only “information” about how to do it. I don’t believe a method like that will solve anything, except for making Bidify collapse faster.
Does towah have a bad reputation in Norway? And why we still can’t get our money out of there ?
If bidify collapse, does towah pay our bidify affiliates? I think we should be protect by the law, after all Towah is a online bank.
@M_Norway
Thank you for your time and the information, very much appreciated.
Towah is NOT an online BANK. It’s not a registered agent for any banks either, as far as I could see. It has connections to a real bank in Gibraltar, but it’s not a bank itself.
Towah is selling debit cards (legally). In addition, it’s also organising reloading of the debit cards it sells (probably legal).
In addition, it’s also organising e-Wallets for clients. E-Wallets is a software used to organise virtual transactions, made to look like real banking services. Selling software is probably legit, but Towah is probably not allowed to receive any funds from clients.
Towah does not have any specific reputation in Norway. It’s NOT a banking service nor a “normal payment solution”. It’s a solution used primarily by network marketing companies, pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes and people with “special needs”. It had relatively good reputation in that specific market when I checked it in 2009.
Towah was added to the list because I haven’t been able to identify WHO it is that controls Bidify’s e-Wallets, whether it is Frode Jørgensen or Towah.
NOTE:
Contacting the Norwegian ØkoKrim will probably not solve anything when it comes to the investments.
A group of Americans used that method in 2005 to shut down PlexPay, according to some stories I found on the internet in 2009 or 2010. PlexPay was shut down and Frode Jørgensen and some others were prosecuted and convicted (jail / fines), but the money was lost.
The same group probably contacted local authorities first. Frode Jørgensen has a Cease & Desist order from one of the Attorney Generals in the U.S. in 2005.
What follows, if anyone is curious, is an update of Bidify activity for Tue., 22nd January 2013, in the account of aforementioned affiliate we’ll call “B”.
B’s profit/commission for today (after the initial $15,000 USD which was spent in joining this MLM) is:
.21 EU (28 cents) — Bidsson Bonus (incorrectly referred to in my previous post, as Bidify Bonus. My apologies.)
.04 EU (5 cents) — Frequent Sales Credits (cannot be accessed for cash, it’s only to purchase more bids and pay for monthly fees).
33 cents profit for today. At this rate, that’s slightly less than ten dollars a month.
Now, Bidify’s monthly fees are 75 bucks a month, and B’s commissions are no longer enough to cover it.
So far, at least, since 2012, B was able to recoup a little over $900 USD from Bidify via cash withdrawal to credit card. That was back in the day when the company was first launched, and B’s commissions were averaging somewhere around twenty dollars a day, give or take.
It would be nice if any of B’s 12,000 Bonus Points (which represented the initial 15 thou USD) could be converted to payment of monthly fees, but Bidify doesn’t allow that.
I won’t be posting any more of these updates.
Thanks again, and please keep up the great work.
The compensation plan will reward people with (huge) downlines, on the expense of all others. That’s one of the reasons for why Bidify is doomed to fail, because new participants will NOT get fair conditions. It’s not easy to recruit anyone if you can’t offer fair conditions.
The compensation plan could have worked in a NEW pyramid scheme, but introducing it into a failed Ponzi scheme doesn’t work very well. My response was to introduce ØkoKrim as a possible solution.
The compensation plan is set up to work exactly like that.
* People WITHOUT downlines will have to pay monthly fee in cash, bringing more money into the system.
* People WITH downlines can pay with Frequent Sales Credit or other rewards, they don’t have to bring more money into the system.
The compensation plan is reflecting a type of leaders eager to reward themselves on the expense of others, without having to bring in anything of value themselves. They probably FEEL they are the right persons to be rewarded. 🙂
Maybe it’s time to “reward” them properly?
So, out of the 15,000 USD that B originally “invested” with Bidify, he has managed to recoup an amazing 900 USD (6%)! And for paying in 75 EUR per month, B receives 0,25 EUR per day (7.5 EUR or 10% per day).
I guess Frode Jørgensen & Co can afford to pay 0.25 EUR to B, as B is receiving just a small fraction of what B himself pays in each month, probably in the forlorn hope that he will, at some point in time, manage to recover his initial 15,000 USD.
Oh well, 6 – 10% return on investment, with loss of the invested capital, is probably what you can expect when putting money into a pyramid scheme or Ponzi scam.
On the other hand, B can feel proud that he has helped to fill, and each month replenishes, Frode Jørgensen & Co’s anonymous bank accounts in offshore tax evasion and money laundering havens!
Bidify and Towah have now come up with a clever explanation why members are not being paid, and published it on the MoneyMakerGroup discusseion site:
With this alledged multiple credit card fraud, Bidify feel that they can make members accept not being paid for up to 1 1/2 years! This should give “Fraudy” and his companions ample time to cover their tracks and prepare a new pyramid or Ponzi scam.
Naturally, Bidify is careful not to name the bank which has been subjected to this “credit card fraud” and “frozen the accounts”, neither the police entity to which this “fraud” has been reported. It is best to avoid embarrasing questions (and even more embarrasing non-anwers) about such specifics …
In a follow-up posting on the MoneyMakerGroup thread, convicted criminal Frode Jørgensen (2 1/2 years prison sentence for operating the Plexpay pyramid scheme), who calls himself WealthySovereign on MMG, has the chutzpah to equate criminals with those who complain about not being paid the money he has promised them:
Something often overlooked by HYIP ponzi participants is the fact, even at an unheard of 1% per DAY return, it will take 100 days before the member breaks even.
That is IF the HYIP “pays” every day and not every business day as most do AND there are no delays in the payment plan.
So, in effect, the victim is giving the fraudsters a minimum of 100 days usage of his/her money before he/she can become “in profit” AND a minimum of 100 days before he/she can even begin to complain things aren’t as they should be.
Blame the bank… didn’t Zeek do that a couple times? 🙂
I’ll believe it’s time to shut it down? It will prevent alot of frustration among the members if the situation can be “solved” in one way or another.
It will give ANSWERS rather than money. So if people still believe Bidify eventually will be able to pay, they shouldn’t use a solution like that. That’s why I haven’t focused on “solutions” like that earlier.
I can put in more details about the ØkoKrim method, e.g. WHY I picked that agency, how to contact them, suggestions for what type of information you should send, and so on. But first of all, don’t drown them in hundreds of “unorganised victims” telling their personal part of the story without adding something to work on, stories that creates more work than results.
ØkoKrim is on top of the investigation foodchain for financial crimes. They will use LOCAL police authorities to do the most significant part of an investigation (e.g. interrogation of people involved in organising a crime).
ØkoKrim has the international connections, e.g. connections to investigating authorities in other countries. I don’t think they have DIRECT connections, but they have the knowledge about how to use authorities in other countries as part of their own investigations.
I can add more information to this topic, e.g. about how I would have organised the information and which information to send. But people will usually manage the situation better if they use their own ideas and methods.
Thank you for being such an outstanding source for the unbiased truth. K. Chang, M_Norway et al., in my eyes you all have a brilliant and solid grasp of the workings of MLM.
Though I focused strictly on B’s adventures, I also know numerous other “investors” who lost money in Zeek Rewards and Bidify, to the tune of almost a half million dollars. No, I’m not exaggerating (I don’t have to); unfortunately, it’s all true. I’m still amazed and shaking my head in disbelief at the dynamics of it all. All the while I did my own diligent research into both companies, and kept coming up with red flags. But my friends didn’t listen to me. Just brushed me off. I was even told not to create problems where there weren’t any. After multiple brush-offs, I gave up and started keeping my opinions to myself.
My investor friends are goodhearted and well intentioned but gullible. Admirably, they wanted to save the world and help people become financially independent (long story). The lure of easy money got the best of them. Ain’t no tune from that old saw. They got suckered, and they now know it. Most of them also take full responsibility for it, and blame no one but themselves.
I grew up in a family skeptical of anything that sounded too good to be true, and was taught to do my homework. Good things do happen, and rainbows are real, but don’t believe everything you hear or are told, without the obligatory sleuthing.
In regard to MLM, I admittedly know very little about it. But I do know how to research and connect the dots.
I think it’s time to bring down Bidify. It’s past time.
Behind MLM is a godsend.
Looks like those thieves split town!
So apparently Bidify are gearing up to relaunch themselves… again.
http://bidifyupdates.com/2013/05/31/scheduled-maintenance-and-upgrade-of-website/
Every compensation plan revision Bidify has launched since Zeek was shut down back in August 2012 has flopped. I wonder what they’re going to come up with for Bidify v3.0 (technically Bidify v5.0 with the Zeek changes).
“Hell is full of good wishes and desires.”
–St. Bernard of Clairvaux