Lyoness investors face pyramid scheme charges in Greece
Following similar charges filed against Lyoness in Australia, five Lyoness investors have now been charged with conducting pyramid scheme fraud in Greece.
At this stage only three of the investors have been named, Herbert and Anna Teissel, two Austrians and Fokion Fountoukidis, a Greek national.
Anna Tiessel has been identified as the current CEO of Lyoness Greece, following her husband’s holding of the position. Presumably Fokion Fountoukidis sits somewhere at the top of Lyoness’ Greek investor genealogy.
Public Prosecutors in Greece allege that all five Lyoness investors engaged in the offense of “fraud felony” in violation of consumer protection laws.
The charges stem from an investigation launched back in 2010, which uncovered five companies set up to defraud the general public, one of which was a direct local branch of Lyoness itself.
According to Public Prosecutors:
The aim of the companies was the active participate in getting potential victims to pay large amounts of money, into a deliberately complicated and obscure program that is open to various interpretations and has the potential to be amended according to the needs of the company.
Longtime followers of Lyoness here on BehindMLM will be familiar with the above, as what little shopping takes place is often used to justify the “large amounts of money” dumped into direct AU investment.
Conducting seminars and elaborate meetings at various venues, new partners were attracted – customers, who were promised a luxurious life and increased economic benefits, through a company with a global presence and activity.
Using pyramidal growth to form the company, they convinced professionals that their inclusion in this promotional program, which constituted affiliation with up to five of the aforementioned companies.
This would in turn widen their customer base and provide discounted services and products marketed between transacting businesses.
Moreover, with the assurance of the company to members that they could spontaneously depart anytime they wished, taking the original amount paid into Lyoness, they removed any potential prejudice from their victims, causing their immediate inclusion in the program.
Prosecutors allege the fraud took place between November 2010 to September 2013, with the five Lyoness affiliate defendants fleecing around twenty Greek Lyoness investors for around 81,000 EUR ($89,000 USD).
Investigations are ongoing to identify additional victims.
At present Prosecutors are seeking comment and information from victims of Lyoness in Greece, with the case against the five Lyoness affiliates set to resume on August 17th.
A decision on the Lyoness pyramid scheme case in Australia is also expected later this month.
Stay tuned…
Hi, some Lyoness fans from Poland had just written on their blog that Lyoness Mastercard is not available for order from the company website anymore and these delivered already do not work at all, were made invalid.
No big surprise here. I know of so many people that fell for the pitch, only to find out later that the smoke and mirrors had no product sales to stand on.
They have all since left, hopefully in search of something “real”.
I’d expect the legal issues to continue …
E-commerce is a HUGE and very lucrative market. You have to really go out of your way to screw that one up.
NONE of these companies will survive on affiliate commissions alone. The margins are way to small.
The Company that all these “cashback” and “e-commerece” deals are trying to copy has direct relationship with all the retailers for better margins but more importantly, they have thousands of their own products with healthy backend margins AND retail profits on them that sustain the business model.
Hell, more than sustain it. They have done nearly 7 Billion in sales on those exclusive products alone, and have paid out nearly 4 Billion dollars to less than 80,000 people.
They have paid out more in COMMISSIONS than ALL those Dubli, Lyoness, ShoppingSherlock etc, etc, companies have ever even MADE COMBINED. They take our left over scrap technology that we pioneered years ago and try to pass it off as something unique.. ha ha.
Hell some of the stuff they are using was antiquated TEN years ago. Tool bars, etc. Hell, You cant even price compare products.
They are so lame its not funny. NOBODY shops through them. Its HORRIBLE technology and their unique traffic is almost non existent.
The “affiliate” shopping is a great conversation starter, and great way for consumers to save some money BUT you will NEVER build a residual income from that alone with a MLM pay plan. NEVER! PERIOD!
E-commerce is my livelyhood but I would NEVER be foolish enough to think or say that affiliate kickbacks alone will support ANY company let lone, a company and 100’s of thousands of people.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is 100% clueless on how e-commerce works or what it actually takes to compete in the market.
They are also 100% clueless on how pay plans work. You would need 100,000 people in an organization to make anything significant on affiliate comissions alone.
People need to stop wasting time with this garbage and actually do some homework on a market before entering into it.
WKStA finished it’s 3 years long Lyoness investigation and submitted initial report to general prosecutor of Austria. No datails from the report content is known at the moment.
kleinezeitung.at/k/wirtschaft/4807933/Bericht-an-Oberstaatsanwalt_Causa-Lyoness_Ermittlungen-abgeschlossen