In a communication to his downline, top promoter George van Wijk has claimed Crowd1 is “unfair and unsafe”.

As per van Wijk’s communication, believed to have been sent out late last week;

Every journey must come to an end – EVEN if sometimes it is not the end we worked for, wished for or hoped for – and for me and my family this is one of these times.

I am therefore officially announcing that I, in good standing with the company, have decided to resign from my position as Ambassador 3 Star of Crowd1.

This is not a decision that is taken lightly or in haste. The reality is that this decision is the outcome of many months of countless attempts to steer the company in a direction that would make it fair and safe for the distributors.

Let me make it clear this is not a blame game but a simple realization that we have not been able to solve the issues in a way that we are comfortable with will serve the team members and for this I am deeply sorry.

As leaders we are challenged on a daily basis and our decisions are impacting every single member of the team. We must always find the correct balance between loyalty and reality.

In other words, leaders can not have a captain’s mentality and simply insist on being the last person on the sinking ship – that is not our job!

Our most important job is to LEAD – we are quite simply measured on how well we lead people to the benefit of everyone. Before announcing our next steps we want to give people the opportunity to reflect and adapt – we know that our decision will be a disappointment to some and for that we are sorry.

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank the many hardworking people in Crowd1. Not to mention all of our global leaders to whom we want to express our gratitude and ultimate loyalty.

George van Wijk

Van Wijk didn’t go into specific details, however Crowd1’s ongoing withdrawal delays have been well-documented.

In essence, the Ponzi side of Crowd1 collapsed in 2020. Top recruiters had been getting by on pyramid recruitment commissions, however Crowd1 recruitment has now also all but collapsed.

Another likely contributing factor is Crowd1’s complete collapse in western countries.

SimilarWeb tracks a decline in Crowd1 website traffic over the past few months. In September 2022 Crowd1 saw roughly 1.6 million visits to its website. In October and November that slumped to 1.4 million.

That’s not an insignificant amount of traffic, but for an MLM Ponzi scheme it’s stagnation. And stagnation leads to collapse.

Furthermore, SimilarWeb tracks top sources of Crowd1 website traffic as Russia (48%), Ukraine (13%) and Germany (5%).

Clearly, the majority of traffic to Crowd1’s website is originating out of eastern Europe. From this we can surmise Crowd1 has devolved into Russians scamming Russians.

And obviously that recruitment isn’t happening in van Wijk’s downline, leading to his exit.

Van Wijk, a Dutch national, joined Crowd1 early on. As per a Feb 2022 BusinessForHome puff-piece celebrating van Wijk’s three years of Crowd1 scamming;

George van Wijk from the Netherlands, is a leader who’s been with the company almost from the start and who, through hard work, determination, and passion, was the first to attain the rank of Ambassador.

George joined Crowd1 in early 2019, and was immediately inspired by the visionary thinking of company founder, Jonas Eric Werner. From the first moment, George was fully committed.

After 6 months of working long hours establishing his network, George and his wife took their work on the road. From Africa to the Philippines, South America to Europe they inspired thousands – growing his network with events and presentations, and taking an interest in others’ lives.

Internally van Wijk was also heavily promoted as a Crowd1 leader. This is from a Crowd1 blog post dated December 2020;

The Dutch Ambassador George van Wijk has been a part of the network marketing industry for more than 25 years.

He goes on to talk about how he has worked for many different network marketing companies in his 25 years in the industry but none of them is comparable to Crowd1.

He puts great emphasis that what Crowd1 has become and where the company is at today is amazing.

When asked what Crowd1 means to him, van Wijk is fast to reply with “everything”. He told CROWD that Crowd1 is the first thing on his mind, every morning.

He explains that it no longer is his profession, it has become his passion and a lifestyle. He laughs as he says that he feels like Crowd1 is part of his DNA; he lives it and loves it.

An accompanying video interview on YouTube has since been marked private.

How much van Wiljk has stolen through Crowd1 remains unclear. I estimate the figure very likely runs into the millions, if not tens of millions.

BehindMLM can’t speak to van Wijk’s “more than 25 years” in MLM. What we do know though is, prior to Crowd1, van Wijk was CEO of the thrice collapsed Nano Club Ponzi scheme.

Despite his long association with financial fraud, Dutch authorities have failed to take action against Wijk.

Crowd1 meanwhile is run by Jonas Werner, a Swedish national who fled to Dubai last year.

Through Metaversy, the Ponzi scheme recently announced it was migrating investor losses from virtual shares to crypto fraud.

Between ongoing payment delays, Crowd1 executives fleeing and now top promoters abandoning ship, Metaversy appears to have failed.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as nobody in Crowd1 cares about Werners’ attempts to role-play a tech CEO. They’re there for passive returns, which Crowd1 has failed to pay out for two years.

Like the Netherlands and van Wiljk, Swedish authorities have failed to take action against Werner or Crowd1.

As reflected in Crowd1 essentially being dead outside of eastern Europe, regulators elsewhere have clamped down on the Ponzi scheme.

This year alone:

Pending any further Crowd1 developments, we’ll keep you posted.

 

Update 28th December 2022 – George van Wijk’s “next steps” after Crowd1 is the Star Horizon Ponzi scheme.

 

Update 22nd July 2023 – The referenced blog post heavily promoting George van Wijk has a leader has been deleted from Crowd1’s website.

A link to this post was originally included in the article. Due to its deletion I’ve disabled the previously accessible link.