better-living-global-marketing-logoDespite reports of Better Living Global Marketing failing to pay affiliates for months now, it’s an opportunity that continues to push on.

A relic of the Zeek Rewards penny auction Ponzi scheme craze, Better Living employs the familiar affiliate-funded 99 day ROI model. Under the guise of purchasing penny auction bids, new affiliate money is used to pay out existing investors.

Based out of Hong Kong, despite launching in August 2012 (the month Zeek Rewards was shut down), local authorities have refused to acknowledge the scam. For reasons not entirely clear, Hong Kong regulators appear to be unable or unwilling to tackle the growing tide of online global Ponzi fraud originating out of Hong Kong.

Appearing to make some inroads into the situation, is a report from eKantipur about Hong Kong based Nepalis and the companies KaChing Holdings, RSE Bid and Better Living Global Marketing.

Estimating that the local Nepali population have sunk RS 2 billion ($20,756,000 USD) into the schemes, eKantipur writes

Hong Kong Police’s Commercial Crime Bureau has started an investigation into these companies and the police have asked the deceived people to furnish details of their investment.

None of the three companies appear to be related, but all three investment schemes have now collapsed

RSE Bid has collected an estimated HK$ 7 million (around Rs 86.6 million) from 300 Nepali members. In a statement to the police, the proprietor of the company, who is now in police custody, has expressed inability to pay back the money.

Better Living and KaChing are still in operation, but are crisis-ridden. Better Living came into operation about one and half years ago, while KaChing was established nine months ago.

As mentioned earlier, we’ve received ongoing reports of BLGM failing to pay affiliates for some time now.

While I’m doubtful anything will come of the Hong Kong investigation just yet (tracking down Luke Teng can’t be that hard), I suppose it’s a step in the right direction. With not only Nepali people affected (“thousands of Chinese have taken memberships of these companies”), the authorities are sooner or later going to have confront the problem head on.

All too often now I’m reading that suspicious business are turning to Hong Kong (often cited as simply “China”) for their payment processor needs. And that’s something only the local authorities can do something about.