myWorld Review: Cashback World, Lyconet & Lyoness in 2021
Lyoness is based out of Austria. The company was founded by Hubert Freidl all the way back in 2003.
BehindMLM first reviewed Lyoness in 2012. An updated review of Lyconet was published in 2014.
In between reviews and since then, we’ve been following significant developments. And there’s been quite a few.
To keep thing simple I’ll restrict covering Lyoness’ history to the last few years.
2015
the ACCC stuffed up a pyramid scheme case brought against Lyoness in Australia
- Lyoness and Hubert Friedl (right) were cleared of criminal charges in Austria
- the Philippines took a look into Lyoness, found there wasn’t much retail going on but left it at that
2016
- Lyoness was found guilty of deceptive business practices in Austria
- Swedish police dropped a pyramid scheme investigation into Lyoness because it was too hard
- a Vienna court found Lyoness’ affiliate terms and conditions to be illegal
- the Portuguese Consumer Protection Association issued a warning against Lyoness
- a Swiss Court ruled Lyoness was a Ponzi scheme, invalidating affiliate contracts in the process
- new criminal charges were filed against Lyoness and Friedl in Austria
2017
- Norway reopened its pyramid scheme investigation into Lyoness
- Poland groups Lyoness with a bunch of notorious Ponzis and issues a warning
2018
- Norway finds Lyoness to be an “illegal pyramid scheme” and bans the company
- Lyoness responds to Norwegian finding by changing its name to myWorld, ushering in confusing Lyoness/Lyconet/myWorld/Cashback World era
- Lyoness announces plans to jump on cryptocurrency bandwagon, ultimately leads nowhere
2019
- Italy finds Lyoness to be a pyramid scheme, issues 3.2 million EUR fine
- criminal case opened up against Lyoness in Norway
2020
- Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection finds Lyoness to be a pyramid scheme
- Norwegian police abandon criminal case due to lack of resources
2021
- Lyoness resurrected in Italy, again found to be a pyramid scheme and fined another 3 million EUR
Despite all of that and numerous cases, some of which are still playing out, Austrian authorities seem unable to shut Lyoness down.
Every few months I’ll read updates on what’s going on in Austria, yet none of it seems to stick.
Note that in the spirit of keeping up with Lyoness’ attempts to evade regulation, this review will focus on the MLM business opportunity as myWorld.
Lyoness and Lyconet are still operational, and the cashback shopping portal operates as Cashback World.
Read on for a full review of myWorld’s MLM business opportunity.
myWorld’s Products
myWorld has no retailable products and services of its own, with affiliates only able to market affiliate membership itself (Premium membership).
The Cashback World shopping portal is free to use for both affiliates and retail customers.
Cashback World provides access to discounts at various retailers. Whether myWorld uses a third-party discount platform has never been clarified.
It’s likely that on some level Cashback World is its own platform, as myWorld offers a white label version to qualifying businesses organizations.
myWorld’s Compensation Plan
myWorld’s compensation plan revolves around acquisition of shopping points.
Shopping points can be acquired via
- purchases on Cashback World made by a myWorld affiliate or a personally referred customer
- purchases made by a Cashback World affiliate’s recruited downline (whether downline customers also count towards an upline’s shopping points is unclear)
The specifics of how shopping points are calculated is a guarded secret. To the best of my knowledge myWorld do not publish this information anywhere.
Based on monthly acquisition of shopping points via the above methods, residual income is earned as follows:
- generate 600 shopping points a month and earn €50 EUR
- generate 1600 shopping points a month and earn €200 EUR
- generate 6000 shopping points a month and earn €500 EUR
- generate 20,000 shopping points a month and earn €1200 EUR
- generate 50,000 shopping points a month and earn €3000 EUR
- generate 200,000 shopping points a month and earn €8000 EUR
- generate 500,000 shopping points a month and earn €20,000 EUR
- generate 1,250,000 shopping points a month and earn €50,000 EUR
Marketing Bonus
The Marketing Bonus pays “up to 1%” on Cashback World purchases made by a myWorld affiliate and their personally referred customers.
I believe the “up to 1%” is calculated on the cashback amount myWorld receives from a merchant.
The specifics of “up to 1%” (e.g. the exact percentage paid out) is not disclosed.
Rank Achievement Bonuses
myWorld’s latest compensation video states:
Lyconet also has an incredible reward program that honors each milestone on your path to success.
From life-changing seminars held at breathtaking locations to unique incentives that will help increase your lifestyle.
These are assumed to be Rank Achievement Bonuses. As with the Marketing Bonus, no specifics are provided.
Joining myWorld
myWorld affiliate membership is free. This is misleading however, as discussed in the conclusion below.
Conclusion
I was anticipating another headache reviewing Lyoness. Turns out the compensation plan itself has been greatly simplified – but I still got a headache tracking it down.
Lyoness are very cagey about providing a simple, easy to understand and complete copy of their compensation plan. Obtaining this has always been a struggle, and I maintain this alone should turn you off as a potential Lyoness affiliate.
With myWorld, Lyoness has ditched the structured ROI formula that we slammed as Ponzi scheme since our initial 2012 review. It now more closely resembles a pyramid scheme.
To be clear Lyoness has always had a pyramid element. Recruitment of new Premium affiliates is what triggered ROI payments, with Lyoness collapsing in every market recruitment inevitably fizzled out in.
The monthly payment differs from unit-based structures, mixing in cashback shopping with recruitment. Since inception however, cashback has served as nothing more than a ruse.
The quickest and most efficient way to earn in Lyoness has traditionally been recruitment of “Premium” affiliates. These are affiliates who back in the day put down-payments on “account unit” investment positions.
These positions, later renamed “shopping units”, paid a return once enough subsequent investment had been made by recruited affiliates.
Today the same process is utilized, only now with greatly diminished returns.
Premium myWorld affiliates sign up and purchase e-vouchers;
This will enable customers to have funds available on their Cashback Profile to purchase vouchers.
This feature will most likely only be used if members paid money over and they don’t want to place an order right away.
This provides shopping points for whoever recruited them and their upline. It’s the same idea behind accounting/shopping units.
Stories of myWorld affiliates being recruited into Lyoness are out there. Just three days ago a Reddit user requested help in recovering 20,000 GBP spent by a family member.
With payments made monthly based on shopping unit production, the difference between now and the investment unit era is there’s no accumulated balance.
What this boils down to is I can recruit someone and get them to spend thousands on e-vouchers, but that will only count towards that month’s commission calculation for me.
For residual commissions I’m relying on repeat spending by those I’ve recruited, recruiting new affiliates and/or recruitment activity by my downline.
Shopping by non-affiliates is of course there but seeing as its been negligible when it comes to building Lyoness as a business, there’s no reason that has changed.
Perhaps the best example of this was back in 2018 when Italy announced it was investigating Lyoness.
At the time Lyoness’ unit investment scheme had and was spreading like wildfire throughout italy.
Lyoness responded to the investigation by disabling the investment scheme in Italy. Cashback shopping was still allowed.
By the time Italy fined and banned Lyoness for being a pyramid scheme in Jan 2019, Lyoness had already collapsed.
In 2018 a regulatory investigation by Norway, based on information submitted by Lyoness, revealed that only 21% of issued Cashback World shopping cards had actually been used.
Furthermore you can plot any country Lyoness has temporarily taken off in over the years, and see that once recruitment tanks, so does the business.
If anything the cashback niche has become more competitive over the years, what with the rise of free browser apps. This equates to Lyoness’ cashback offering in 2021 being more irrelevant than ever.
To date Lyoness has failed to maintain a sizable business in any country where affiliate recruitment has run its course.
Will the court cases in Austria ever go anywhere? Who knows.
In mid 2020 or so myWorld was all but resurrected by renewed recruitment activity in Italy.
After the second fine it’s likely business there will collapse again. This has prompted Friedl to roll out an IPO marketing plan.
According to the marketing video the above screenshot is taken from, myWorld affiliates will receive “myWorld share points” (MSP).
MSPs are acquired “by buying and redeeming benefit vouchers” (e-vouchers with a new name?).
MSPs “can be converted into company shares during the planned IPO”. Friedl insists Lyoness will list as a “multi-billion dollar company”.
Bear in mind Lyoness isn’t registered to offer securities in any country it operates in, so marketing virtual shares is already a new chapter of securities fraud.
In addition to the unit investment scheme securities fraud, Lyoness again committed securities fraud in 2015 with its Customer Cloud scheme.
I’m not holding my breath on whether Austrian authorities capitalize on Lyoness’ newly announced public offering.
In the meantime Lyoness, Lyconet, myWorld, Cashback World and any other names they come up with, are subject to the rules of MLM pyramid schemes; namely that the majority of participants are guaranteed to lose money.
@ Oz
A little correction (year 2015 in your review). The fraudster’s name is Hubert Freidl, not Herbert Friedl.
share-your-photo.com/6c84efa776
Thanks for that!
Lyoness – a never ending story.
Everyone has a hobby, including Hubert Freidl. He is constantly founding new companies. The names are new, but the contents are old and familiar.
A newspaper from Austria wrote on April 11, 2018:
share-your-photo.com/b00ed5ca91
The full article here:
kleinezeitung.at/wirtschaft/5404014/mWS-myWorld-Solutions_Lyoness_Neuer-Name-gleiches-Geschaeftsmodell
Video from the Austrian TV channel ORF with subtitles:
share-your-photo.com/f68adeb126
The following screenshot shows the data from BE Conflict Management Inc. from Miami:
share-your-photo.com/9068065925
youtube.com/watch?v=X5CAQ5vlqkc
Of course, successful fraudsters have – at least – their own yacht. This applies to Ruja Ignatova (OneCoin / OneLife) and Hubert Freidl too. He owns four yachts:
share-your-photo.com/cd494472b6
picuki.com/tag/hubertfreidl
What is happening with Lyoness, hundreds of people in UK invested thousands of pounds in different countries as instructed by Lyoness and leaders from Austria.
When do everyone get their money back? In fact will people get their money back?
@Veena
Money goes into Lyoness, it doesn’t come out. Why would the UK be any different?
so what are you saying? please advise.
are we or anyone getting our money’s back?
If you signed up as a Premium member when Lyoness was operating as a Ponzi scheme, your money was stolen by Ponzi scammers.
If you signed up as a Premium member recently, your money was stolen by whoever recruited you, whoever recruited them etc. etc.
How exactly do you think your money is going to magically be returned to you?
“Hubert Freidl’s Fairy Tale Hour”: Once upon a time……New York stock exchange experts forecast high-digit billion value for myWorld? Blocktrade is said to be worth 200 million EURO already?
During an “online sensation” at a “BST – Black Strike Team” Hubert Freidl said the following in the video: (Text from video transcreated verbatim).
Hubert Freidl: ” For all of us together have no idea on what we are sitting on here and you have no idea what the company is already worth today. And now I’ll tell you how I came up with it.
Most of you know the Blocktrade project, right? A super project, built on in chaos, strong! That was evaluated in a written form with a value of 200 million euros, the company.
That’s not a little money! As I heard that, I figured, then what is myWorld worth around the world? Because we are not just one website, we have 55 country companies, millions of customers and partner companies. So the company is really worth a lot!
Therefore everyone can put their own number in their head, but the stock exchange experts from the people have also said that – of course we’re talking about billions – it will be a higher-digit amount of billions in 30 months.”
The mentioned “Blocktrade project” is a rather fragile product of the “EliteClub Foundation” based in Dubai and this “website” is supposed to be worth 200 million EURO? Do they think everyone else is stupid!
Please, who has given Blocktrade a written review here? We have asked Blocktrade, maybe Hubert Freidls friend and former Lyoness employee can publish this written review.
If an evaluation by a renowned company had actually been available, this would have already been published on “a rolled out red carpet”.
It would also be interesting to know which ” people’ s stock market experts” have predicted that myWorld will be worth billions of euros in higher figures.
Dear Mr. Freidl, that you see yourself on par with Bill Gates, Steven Jobs and Marc Zuckerberg and compare your Lyoness/Lyconet/myWorld pyramid scheme with renowned companies like Amazon, Apple and Microsoft is obviously megalomania.
A little self-reflection and the reconnection to reality would be appropriate.
bekm.us/hubert-freidls-fairy-tale-hour-once-upon-a-time-new-york-stock-exchange-experts-forecast-high-digit-billion-value-for-myworld-blocktrade-is-said-to-be-worth-200-million-euro-already/
This review is so full of shit – unbelievable!!!
No one loses money – you idiots who think you made an investment you should look after what an investment is about
You just bought vouchers with additional benefits – it’s up to you to use them! You cannot blame the company for not using your vouchers!
I have a friend who started back in the days (2009) he was active a little while but then stopped
We looked at his account a few month ago – all his money was and is there !
He even collected commissions who were paid out then!!
So stop Talking shit about a Company you don’t have Full Information & Knowledge about !!!
This company is making a constantly process of becoming better and better – sure there was some mistakes in past – as every fucking big company on the planet!!
The compensation plan is so easy – my best friends son aged 12 understands it !
No more units, no more clouds,
Only shopping shopping shopping !!!
Here comes the lYoNeSs Is aBoUt ShOpPiNg! bullshit…
Except that they do. You dump money into Lyoness, recruitment collapses and you’re left holding the bag.
This has happened in every country Lyoness spreads to. Furthermore victim losses have been acknowledged in both Italy and Austria.
Attaching vouchers to a Ponzi scheme, now pyramid scheme, doesn’t make it any less of a scam.
If Lyoness was actually about shopping it’d be a success story countries where recruitment has collapsed.
Seriously, Lyoness launched in 2013 – it hasn’t built a long-term shopping network in any country to date.
Your friend gave up because he invested in a Ponzi scheme and recruitment collapsed. New investors eventually onboarded, long after he’d stopped paying attention.
Sorry, your point is what? Definitely not that Lyoness is about shopping, as evidence by your friend fucking off when they’d been scammed.
You can’t even acknowledge Lyoness was a fraudulent investment scheme. Let alone it’s now a blatant pyramid scheme.
Lyoness CEO: “It’s all about positions!”
Through myWorld Enterprise Program, Lyoness is still “all about positions!”
Fraud doesn’t disappear just because you go from one scam model to another.
Hello. I’ve been told resently about the IPO of My World and about that Deloitte has done a review or a statement about My World. Stating that it is a global marketing agency.
I tried to find info about this, but could not find anything. Could you have a look in to it? Thank you.
Sure, after you explain what Deloitte’s statement has to do with Lyoness/myWorld operating as a pyramid scheme.
Legitimacy via association isn’t a thing.
I have also been involved in this, until my situation of life made me the other tasks.
Yesterday the same team where I have been approached me telling “good news”.
this post in the chain revealed everything but this “insider information, the NASDAQ listing agreement which will be released“ soon ”“ operated by this Deloitte Touche Company that prepares the Exchange for going.
Until tomorrow, you will get an additional benefit when you follow the instructions to accept the new rules in your Lyconet account.
After tomorrow, It will still be eligible for the shares without the small incentive bonus that I would now immediately accept the change. I will keep an eye on whether my post is the last one in this thread ☺️
– FACTCHECK : Miss Leading title
– the Portuguese Consumer Protection Association issued a warning against Lyoness.
It’s a private association name DECO.
In the National Paper “SOL” the “NEWS” was launched and ended with the business model review from the most well know lawyer firm in Portugal PLMJ.
The Legal Review was OK.
-Premium myWorld
Don’t exist such thing.
-“by buying and redeeming benefit vouchers” (e-vouchers with a new name?).
No, with a simple search you can find that.
Promising virtual shares to solicit investment in vouchers whilst not being registered to offer securities = securities fraud.
@Mentiros
You are terrible at fact checking.
Lyoness == myworld == cashback world == lyconet == any other shell company Hubert Friedl sets up
And? Legal opinions mean dick. At the time Lyoness was operating as a Ponzi scheme.
Signing up and investing in vouchers = premium myWorld affiliate membership. This replaces signing up and investing in accounting units back in the day.
Does it matter? Same shit, different name.
“Hubert Freidl’s Fairy Tale Hour”: Once upon a time…… New York stock exchange experts forecast high-digit billion value for myWorld? Blocktrade is said to be worth 200 million EURO already?
During an “online sensation” at a “BST – Black Strike Team” Hubert Freidl said the following in the video: (Text from video transcreated verbatim).
READ MORE: bekm.us/hubert-freidls-fairy-tale-hour-once-upon-a-time-new-york-stock-exchange-experts-forecast-high-digit-billion-value-for-myworld-blocktrade-is-said-to-be-worth-200-million-euro-already/
Have you fallen for Hubert’s Stock Exchange ‘FAIRY TALE’?
Do you still believe in the TOOTH FAIRY?
Hubert Freidl’s myWorld Shareholder Proposition And It’s Terms And Conditions.
⛔️ A MUST WATCH VIDEO:
youtu.be/LPdpvTWqcFQ
READ MORE: facebook.com/111229294013747/posts/265865448550130/?vh=e&d=n
facebook.com/1059417467/posts/10222148801723240/?d=n
BE CAREFUL!
Hubert’s UPLINE LEADERS are in full flight encouraging Lyconet/ Lyoness/ myWorld/ Cashback World members to just accept the new ‘MYWORLD SHARE PROGRAM’ T&C’s.
Make sure you read the FINE PRINT, particularly Clauses 13.1 as it may severely impact on your legal rights and seek independent legal advice!!
^^ Scam T&Cs don’t hold up in court.
LYCONET UPLINE LEADERS UNDER THREAT
If you believe the comments that appear under this media article by leading Austrian investigative journalist Ben Ecker, serious threats are being made against Super Hubert’s LYCONET Leaders, by ANGRY Member Victims.
The German TV Report has certainly caused chaos in Monaco , the Austrian Graz global headquarters and for many member victims across the world.
READ the comments under: bekm.eu/in-eigener-sache-nach-der-tv-ausstrahlung-vorsicht-falle-vom-30-01-2021/
(Open in Chrome to translate)
*** German TV Report
The interview with Ben Ecker begins at 26:35 minutes (no English subtitles):
zdf.de/gesellschaft/vorsicht-falle/vorsicht-falle-192.html
PONZI PIMPS just hate being EXPOSED!
MYWORLD/ LYCONET/ CASHBACK WORLD/ LYONESS!
MEMBER VICTIMS CLAIMS being lodged under the Austrian Court verdicts against Lyoness in favour of member victims across the world through Austria law firms and BECM Inc.
With MEMBER VICTIMS Claims across the world reportedly now exceeding €130million and growing quickly everyday, (particularly since Hubert’s unlicensed/ unlisted IPO myWorld ‘Share Program’ announcement) this video update is a MUST
No wonder Hubert Freidl and Co are making more changes to deliberately mislead and deceive members to raise much needed funds to pay all these member victims CLAIMS.
Are you going to help Hubert by recruiting new SUCKER money?
A MUST WATCH 3 minute video: youtu.be/VxO-c21TTGg
(Select the arrow at the bottom right hand corner of the video for more information)
READ MORE: facebook.com/111229294013747/posts/277203467416328/?vh=e&d=n
SILVIO SPANGL – Former Lyconet Presidents Club Career Level 8+ Leader EXPOSES Global SCAM in a revealing interview that has sent shockwaves in Monaco, the Austrian (Graz) global headquarters and throughout the Lyconet/ Lyoness/ myWorld community: youtu.be/3IrS7tIyh6c
READ MORE: facebook.com/111229294013747/posts/219793299824012/?vh=e&d=n