Crowd1 & QNet banned in Côte d’Ivoire for being scams
Authorities in Côte d’Ivoire have banned Crowd1 and QNet.
The stated reason for the ban is both companies operate as scams and facilitate money laundering.
The regulatory announcement was made as part of a July 8th Council of Ministers meeting.
Section three of the meeting agenda saw council members discuss a national “upsurge in illegal money investing activities”.
Despite the measures adopted by the Government to combat the phenomenon of illegal investments … new players have emerged in the form of network marketing.
These structures, which offer online subscriptions, accompanied by promises of significant returns on investment, through websites, have no known geographic location in Côte d’Ivoire.
Around 30,000 people nationwide have subscribed to the services of these structures.
in view of the real risks posed by these illegal financial investment activities and, in order to protect people’s savings, the Council orders the immediate cessation of all these activities as well as the closure of the websites concerned.
How the ban of Crowd1’s and QNet’s websites in Côte d’Ivoire will be enforced is unclear. Presumably the government is expecting both companies to comply by blocking access.
Speaking on behalf of the Council of Ministers, Sidi Tiémoko Touré cited Crowd1 and QNet as examples of banned scams.
Despite many measures, there are still new players who appear and who excel in network marketing.
In these companies you have Crowd1, QNet, Sahuiri etc.
Enforcement of the ban comes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, the Ministry of Security and Civil Protection, the Ministry of Digital Economy and Côte d’Ivoire’s national postal service.
An interesting directive from the Council is the order that
promoters fully return the subscribed capital to each member, on pain of legal proceedings.
Typically recovery efforts by victims of scams are civil proceedings. Here, the Council is suggesting if local promoters in Côte d’Ivoire do not refund their victims, criminal proceedings may follow.
For reference, BehindMLM reviewed Crowd1 in August 2019. Based on its business model, we concluded Crowd1 was a Ponzi scheme.
Our QNet review was published in 2017. Again based on its business model, we concluded QNet was a pyramid scheme.
I came across an interesting article from Le Monde (in French), which provides some background about why scams like this have become a problem in Côte d’Ivoire:
lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2019/10/11/en-cote-d-ivoire-les-cyber-arnaqueurs-se-reinventent-au-gre-des-nouvelles-technologies_6015132_3212.html
They couldn’t exist on any scale until the introduction of 3G in 2012, and the subsequent explosion of internet use.
In 2012, there were only 200,000 internet users, today there are over 10 million (on a population of 25 million). Online banking has grown at the same pace.
Before, online scammers in Côte d’Ivoire (and other Central African countries) mostly ran long-distance schemes, targeting Westerners, the kind of thing still often associated with Nigeria.
As Nigeria began cracking down on them, a lot of the people involved moved their activities to smaller Central African countries.
Cybercafés could provide all the internet access needed for those.
As long as the victims were rich foreigners, the authorities didn’t care much, and there was no social stigma attached to it.
I suppose the scammers were seen as Robin Hood figures, engaged in wealth redistribution.
But thanks to internet availability, scams targeting their own population are proliferating, and it’s often rich foreigners (as with Crowd1) running them. So now it’s being taken seriously.
Given Crowd1’s disgusting attempts to portray themselves as benefactors to the Third World, bringing them software which companies in the West are somehow cruelly depriving them of, it would be wonderfully ironic if it was action by a Third World country that set in motion the final, inevitable collapse.
I want to know crowd1 is a scam or fake company, in India this business is allowed by the Indian Government?
Please know me the details about crowd1,
Eagerly waiting for your response.
Thanks
Jayanta Dey
Crowd1 is a Ponzi scheme. All Ponzi schemes are scams.
And Ponzi schemes are just as illegal in India as they are everywhere else in the world.