Hassan Mahmoud accused of raiding Iqonic to launch Noa
A lawsuit filed by Brian McMullen has accused former business partner Hassan Mahmoud of raiding Iqonic to launch Noa.
McMullen’s lawsuit also fills in some gaps with respect to the formation of Iqonic, which we’ll go over before getting into the lawsuit itself.
BehindMLM reviewed Iqonic back in April. Company ownership details were absent on Iqonic’s website but marketing cited Hassan Mahmoud as founder and CEO.
To this day there is no mention of Brian McMullen on Iqonic’s website. This is and continues to be a significant disclosure failure on Iqonic’s part.
McMullen is a former Modere promoter (Modere collapsed in August 2025). After BehindMLM’s Iqonic review in April 2025, McMullen turned up as founder of Nueva a month later.
Given Iqonic’s continuing ownership and executive disclosure failures (potential FTC Act violations), it’s unclear whether McMullen is running both Iqonic and Nueva (Nueva also hides ownership and executive information from consumers).
Iqonic is run through the company Icon Academy LLC, a Delaware company owned by McMullen and Hassan Mahmoud.
Instead of suing Mahmoud himself, McMullen has done so by opting to have Icon Academy as the Plaintiff. Obviously Mahmoud isn’t suing himself, so to keep things simple we’ll cite McMullen as the suing party (plaintiff).
For reference, McMullen’s lawsuit names Mahmoud and Noa Techs – FZCO as defendants.
FZCO denotes a Dubai registered company with multiple owners. These owners are not disclosed on Noa’s website.
Furthermore, as a matter of general due-diligence, any MLM company representing ties to Dubai raises immediate red flags.
One last note, in addition to owning Iqonic through Icon Academy, McMullen alleges Mahmoud also has “maintained multiple affiliate accounts” within Iqonic. These are assumed to have been placed at the top of Iqonic’s MLM promoter structure.
McMullen alleges Mahmoud used at least one of his affiliate accounts to “embezzle significant funds from” Iqonic.
It’s unclear whether McMullen also has multiple Iqonic affiliate accounts positioned in a similar manner.
Troubles within Iqonic, at least publicly, appear to have begun around July 2025. In his lawsuit, McMullen cites a social media post from Mahmoud dated July 15th, 2025;
Out of the public eye, McMullen alleges Mahmoud “began developing plans to raid Icon’s business and launch a competing direct sales company” in “early 2025”.
This is a bit confusing, seeing as Iqonic’s website domain was only registered in March 2025 (Iqonic itself didn’t launch until April 1st).
Mahmoud developed these plans while purporting to serve as Icon’s President and Chief Executive Officer.
Further, on information and belief, he began having secret conversations with certain affiliates to undermine McMullen’s managerial authority and to ensure they remained loyal to Mahmoud.
In addition, Mahmoud began making numerous false claims and excuses for failing to perform his commitments to the Company.
Coinciding with his cited social media post, McMullen claims Mahmoud registered Noa’s website domain, “joinnoa.io”, on June 28th, 2025.
McMullen alleges member testimonials provided on Noa’s website are fabricated.
Similarly, although Noa has not yet launched, Defendants make numerous representations that could only be true based on an established business record.
For instance, Defendants represent Noa has a “95% Customer Satisfaction” record, that it is “#1 Rate for Innovation”, that it has “200K+ Lives Impacted Worldwide” and that it is the “No 1 editor’s choice.”
On information and belief, these claims are blatantly false.
McMullen claims he discovered Noa in July 2025.
On July 23, 2025, after discovering information about Mahmoud’s plans, Icon sent a cease-and-desist letter to Mahmoud.
Icon reiterated Mahmoud’s contractual obligations under the foregoing agreements, demanded that he cease all misconduct, and requested that he confirm his full compliance in writing.
Mahmoud refused to do so.
Shortly thereafter, as part of his plans, Mahmoud indicated he would be discontinuing all Affiliate access to one of [Iqonic’s] primary products, knowing Affiliates had already paid for the use thereof.
Mahmoud did so to further disrupt Icon’s business while misappropriating its products, materials, and Confidential Information.
With respect to how Mahmoud launched and runs Noa, McMullen alleges;
On information and belief, Mahmoud has used and continues to use Icon’s Confidential Information to target and solicit Company Affiliates on a wide-scale basis, including its key leaders and most effective Affiliates.
On information and belief, Mahmoud has done so in authorizing access to his Telegram chat, directing Icon’s Affiliates to Noa’s site, and using messaging applications and video conferences to raid and recruit Icon’s Affiliates.
On information and belief, Mahmoud is using the Database or information therein to transfer and re-recrate the genealogy for his competing venture.
He is engaging in this scheme as a means to avoid the time, expense, and years of effort that would have otherwise been required to develop Noa’s own affiliate network and to acquire a sales force already trained to sell competing products.
This is a bit of a grey area as, to the best of my knowledge, Iqonic launched as a reboot of Eaconomy – an MLM company Mahmoud founded in 2019.
Unless Mahmoud explicitly sold the Eaconomy promoter database to McMullen (McMullen doesn’t allege so in his lawsuit), I don’t see how McMullen is claiming Iqonic’s promoter database isn’t already tied to Mahmoud.
As further evidence of Defendants’ blatant efforts to raid Icon and its business, Mahmoud copied verbatim the Icon’s materials and agreements, including the [promoter] User Agreement and [promoter] Terms & Conditions.
On information and belief, Mahmoud is coordinating with departing Affiliates to maximize the harm caused to [Iqonic].
McMullen alleges Mahmoud’s efforts to gut Iqonic “have been successful”.
Mahmoud knows his actions are patently unlawful and has nonetheless proceeded with this misconduct in a conscious disregard for Icon’s rights.
Specifically, during his tenure with the Company, Mahmoud initiated numerous claims and lawsuits against other former Company executives and Affiliates for engaging in precisely the same misconduct, based on the same contractual provisions, and for the same violations and tortious conduct, including claims for punitive damages and injunctive relief.
Indeed, Mahmoud got into a legal spat with former Eaconomy business partner Sal Leto in 2020. Mahmoud claimed Leto was raiding Eaconomy to develop his own company, Auvoria Prime.
In 2023 Mahmoud went after Ali Saleh, claiming Saleh was raiding Eaconomy to build other MLM opportunities.
Across ten causes of action, McMullen is suing Mahmoud and Noa Techs FZCO for
- violations of the Defend Trade Secrets Act;
- false advertising;
- breach of fiduciary duty (Mahmoud only);
- breach of contract (Mahmoud only);
- intentional interference with contractual relations;
- fraud and deceit (Mahmoud only);
- unjust enrichment; and
- violations of Business & Professions Code
As per McMullen’s case docket, Mahmoud was served on August 23rd, 2025.
In a September 29th motion requesting additional time to file an answer to McMullen’s lawsuit, Mahmoud revealed he intended to file his own lawsuit (note Plaintiff refers to Iqonic/McMullen).
The Complaint purports to assert ten causes of action against Mahmoud, accusing Mahmoud of committing fraud, stealing trade secrets and otherwise harming the company that Mahmoud founded and built before he was ousted.
While Plaintiff filed its claims first, Mahmoud has his own claims to assert against Plaintiff and third parties related to Plaintiff based on a failed hostile takeover and a conspiracy to force Mahmoud out of his ownership and leadership role with Plaintiff.
In response to Plaintiff’s lawsuit, and to prepare his own claims against Plaintiff, Mahmoud engaged a litigation support vendor shortly after he engaged counsel, to begin the process of collecting documents relevant to this lawsuit. Given the nature of the case, the breadth of claims, and the need to present his own claims based on facts and not speculation, Mahmoud respectfully requests an additional 30 days to respond to the Complaint.
The court granted Mahmoud’s motion on October 2nd, giving him until October 29th to file an answer.
On October 29th Mahmoud filed a motion to dismiss. No answer has been filed, nor has Mahmoud filed a lawsuit against Iqonic/McMullen.
Pending further updates, stay tuned as BehindMLM tracks legal proceedings between McMullen and Mahmoud.
Re. a BehindMLM Noa review, along with everything else, Noa compensation details are hidden from consumers.
In addition to being yet another potential FTC Act violation, this means I can’t put together a Noa review.
This is the first time I’ve heard Brian McMullen associated with Iqonic. I received an unconfirmed personal communication that McMullen also owns a small Latin American iGenius/Iqonic clone called Impact Global. I’ve also received an unconfirmed personal communication that McMullen (a US native) cannot return to the US. The circumstantial support for that claim is that he did not attend his mother’s funeral in person and that he appears at iGenius events only outside the US. There’s much more to this guy than meets the eye.