MidasCorp Review: e-Publication revenue sharing
There is no information on the MidasCorp website indicating who owns or runs the business.
The MidasCorp website domain (“midas-corp.com”) was registered on the 27th of March 2013, however the domain registration is set to private.
The company does have an “About Us” page on their website but instead of providing any relevant information on the company owners, only the following vague marketing copy is provided:
We are a group of individuals and companies that came together in Midas Corp to dedicate our time and effort to help others.
Our staff and affiliated companies are extremely efficient and experienced in marketing on the Internet.
On the “Contact Us” page of the MidasCorp website, the company provides an address in the US state of Wyoming. This street address is virtual however, and actually belongs to “Wyoming Corporate Services Inc.”
On their website, Wyoming Corporate Services Inc. advise they will handle the incorporation of a company in Wyoming for $495.
As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.
The MidasCorp Product Line
MidasCorp advertise that they create what they refer to as “e-publications”:
We specialize in writing, publishing and promoting electronic publications for individuals, organizations and companies.
We will work with you through every stage of your e-magazine development to help you achieve the images, articles and mindset you wish to portray to your readers and customers.
The colors used, layout, typeface and images must all appeal to your customers for the best possible results.
MidasCorp provide the following retail pricing on their website:
- “e-Mag conversion” – $100
- Business (listing) – $100
- 4 page resume – $250
- 6 page resume – $450
- 8 page resume – $750
- Property (listing) – $1000
A hosting service is also mentioned but is not available at the time of publication. An email marketing platform MidasCorp calls “Cumada” is also offered to affiliates (“$10 per ePack”).
The MidasCorp Compensation Plan
MidasCorp offer affiliates commissions on the sale of e-Publications, along with a revenue-share based on “Bonus Points”. A Director Bonus is also offered to the company’s top performing affiliates.
e-Publication Commissions
MidasCorp offer a 20% commission on the sale of e-Publications to both retail customers and affiliates.
Global Community Bonus
MidasCorp claim that ‘up to 30% of all revenue earned” by the company is put into a Global Community Bonus pool.
This pool is distributed amongst MidasCorp affiliates every “pay period”, according to accumulated “Bonus Points” and “Activity Rating”.
A MidasCorp affiliate’s Activity Rating ‘can be increased by making direct purchases of services and products‘. Note that Platinum affiliates automatically qualify for a 100% Activity Rating.
A Bonus Point is generated by the purchase of products by recruited affiliates or retail customers, and for each dollar spent by an affiliate within the company.
- Silver affiliates generate 1 point per $4 spent
- Gold affiliates generate 1 point per $2 spent
- Platinum affiliates generate 1 point per $1 spent
Bonus Points Matching Bonus
MidasCorp offer a matching bonus on the Bonus Points generated by personally recruited affiliates.
How much of a Matching Bonus is awarded depends on how much a MidasCorp affiliate pays each month in membership fees:
- Silver – 25% bonus
- Gold – 50% bonus
- Platinum – 100% bonus
Director Bonus
The Director Bonus is a 30% revenue share, paid out to affiliates who have recruited the most affiliates and generated the most revenue for the company.
The bonus revolves around a “bonus percentage”:
Your Bonus Percentage is the difference between the Bonus Percentage of each affiliate that you have personally introduced and determines your Maximum Percentage for each leg.
The above doesn’t make much sense to me, but I think it’s tied into an affiliates own personal volume (their own spend in the company and that of their downlines) vs. their personally recruited affiliate’s group volume (what they and their downline spent within the company).
Each personally recruited affiliate results in a separate Bonus Percentage, which is then tallied up to create a total. The more recruited affiliates the larger the Bonus Percentage is likely to be.
Note that MidasCorp don’t pay out 100% of the bonus percentage, rather it is paid out depending on an affiliate’s Director rank:
- Junior Director (1000 PV in a month) – 10%
- Senior Director (2500 PV over two consecutive months) – 20%
- Executive Director (5000 PV over three consecutive months) – 30%
A $5000 cap is placed on each Bonus Percentage calculated off personally recruited affiliates, meaning that even if the Bonus Percentage exceeds a $5000 payout, only $5000 is paid out.
Joining MidasCorp
Affiliate membership to MidasCorp is available in four options:
- Free – only able to earn 20% commission on personal sales
- Silver ($19.95 a month) – 20 Bonus Points and then 25 Bonus Points a month
- Gold ($49.95 a month) – 50 Bonus Points and then 75 Bonus Points a month
- Platinum ($99.95 a month) – 100 Bonus Points and then 200 Bonus Points a month
Conclusion
In order to break down what is obviously an affiliate-funded Ponzi scheme, we need to first start with MidasCorp’s website.
The MidasCorp website runs on WordPress, with affiliate logins (and presumably the backoffice) powered by “S2Member”:
S2Member is a WordPress plugin:
s2Member is an extremely powerful (free) membership management plugin for WordPress. The s2Member Framework plugin (free) integrates seamlessly with PayPal Standard for businesses (also free).
I don’t know if S2Member handles the tracking of points, so there’s a possibility MidasCorp use something else to track affiliate’s Bonus Points.
As far as the MidasCorp website goes however, affiliates are most definitely logging into the company using S2Member (WordPress).
In their FAQ, S2Member advise that the default member accounts in the plugin ‘are Free, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum‘, the very same used by MidasCorp.
On the product side of things MidasCorp, listing themselves as “Midas Corporation”, advertise their e-Publications as a standalone service:
We publish your house photos and descriptions in eye-catching flash e-magazine design that stands out of the crowd.
Provided on the page is a link to a “sample property brochure”, hosted on the domain “my-mag-design.com”. The MyMagDesign domain (registered anonymously less than two weeks before MidasCorp’s domain), hosts a series of e-Publications.
I clicked through to Midas Corporation’s sample listing, and discovered it was “powered by aXmag”:
aXmag is available for either $380 (standard) or $499 (pro). The software
converts your existing PDF as online magazine with stunning 3D page turning effect, then streaming access it with various devices such as PC, Mac, iPad, Android phones, tablets, etc.
This is what MidasCorp use to create their e-Publications, which they charge up to $1000 for… each.
Putting together what we have so far, some guy with a WordPress website installed a free membership plugin, bought some PDF magazine software for a few hundred dollars and attached it to a revenue-sharing business model.
Let me be blunt in suggesting that the notion of retail customers paying MidasCorp hundreds of dollars to create PDF galleries from their photos, is obviously baloney. All we’re then left with is your typical Ponzi points MLM revenue-share.
Affiliates buy into the scheme at either the Silver, Gold or Platinum levels, with the more they spend on membership having a direct impact on their earnings.
The ultimate goal of an affiliate is to generate Bonus Points, which entitles them to a share of newly invested affiliate money.
Naturally the notion of affiliates buying e-Publications would mean that actual e-Publications would have to be created to keep up the front-end facade, so alternatively MidasCorp offer email spam epacks:
$10 a pop (the standard Ponzi buy in these days), gets you 10 points at the Platinum level, 5 at Gold and 2.5 at Silver.
Convince those you personally recruit to invest in ePacks and affiliates can earn referral commissions (matching bonus).
Convince enough affiliates to invest and the Director Bonus opens up, providing those who recruit the most a second revenue-share to participate in.
Oh and if you’re not paying MidasCorp $100 a month for Platinum membership, you’re going to be paying them about that much anyway in Activity Rating fees, sorry “ePack purchases”:
Additional Activity Ratings may be achieved by purchasing services at the rate of $1.00 equals 1%. Therefore, if you make a purchase for $10.00 you receive 10% added to your Activity Rating.
Same old story, whack on a non-viable but somewhat legitimate looking front-end to the now truly tired Ponzi points affiliate buy-in scheme.
As with all Ponzi schemes, the cashouts by existing MidasCorp affiliates will exceed the new affiliate money coming in. The monopoly money existing affiliates are re-investing into the scheme for more points will only speed up this inevitable implosion.
Throw all of this together with anonymous business ownership who can cut and run at anytime and well, you get the picture.
Even the slogan and title doesn’t say “e-Publishing”, but “income opportunity”, pretty hilarious. Cart goes before the horse and all that crap. Nobody’s going to use them for e-pub, even without that crap WordPress and XMag plugins.
If people really want to publish good stuff they’d go to ConstantContact for real e-Newsletters and such maybe Zenio for real magazines.
So is the “Empower Now” official online magazine of the 2013 failed Club Asteria HYIP ponzi fraud.
Come to think of it, there are eery similarities between MidasCorp and Club Asteria.
Coincidence ?
Wasn’t it Horatio Caine of CSI fame who was always quoted as saying he didn’t believe in coincidences ??
Midas Corp uses the same fax number Club Asteria did. Been wondering what Andrea and the gang have been up to.
Just to flesh that out a little, the fax #703-832-0772 was used by Club-Asteria and back in 2006 it was used by a company called Celera Financial, both of which were owned by Andrea Lucas.
MidasCorp uses Cumada as their “proprietary CUstomer MAnagement DAta system.” Cumada is owned by Hank Needham who was Andrea’s partner in Club-Asteria, he was also her upline sponsor in Ad View Global and there’s a rather long list of other “programs” the two have played in.
So general consensus is we’re looking at a Club Asteria reboot?
CA was before my time covering MLM so I’m not too familiar on it.
Same leadership but the programs seem to be structured differently. Club-Asteria was an interesting program in so far as it was a somewhat limited ponzi with a big pyramid built on top.
It’s been a few years but I ~think~ the ponzi portion was capped at about a $400/week max payout but you could earn many times that if you built a big enough downline. We did about 15 pages on it over at RS:
realscam.com/f8/club-asteria-club-asteria-com-456/
MidasCorp looks more like a “traditional” online ponzi. Virtual “product” sales as a fig leaf covering a compounding ponzi point scheme. Not sure if they have or will add some two minute a day make work task to help try and pretend that securities laws don’t apply.
The really sad thing here is that the pimp forums do confirm the MidasCorp/C-A tie but instead of treating it as the warning it is they’re casting it as a chance to get in on the ground floor of something that could get big.
Basically was an offering fraud promoted on the Ponzi boards that “averaged” a Zeek-like weekly payout sometimes advertised to be 10 percent. “Ken Russo,” later of Zeek, was a key Ponzi-board pitchman.
In a sense, CA might be considered a precursor scam to other “programs” purportedly operating from Hong Kong in whole or in part. CA, though likely Virgina-based, purportedly was part of a Hong Kong-based enterprise.
CA also was a bit like AVG and BidsThatGive in the sense the “programs” purportedly existed to help disadvantaged people pile up a bunch of cash while creating philanthropic opportunities.
Among other things, CA traded on the names of the World Bank and the American Red Cross. It also traded on the name of actor Will Smith and the late Mahatma Gandhi.
CA also reminds me a bit of TelexFree in terms of rank disingenuousness. The World Bank, for example, had a 25-year-old employment record for Andrea Lucas. Promoters turned that into an endorsement by the World Bank of CA, rather like TelexFree promoters have implied that TelexFree was given the greenlight in the United States by the U.S. government and the state of Massachusetts.
Naturally former ASDers and cash-gifters were in CA, including Hank Needham (as noted by Glim Dropper above).
While Zeek had the RPP, CA had “asterios.” CA also had ASD/AVG like “matching bonuses,” something Zeek appears to have been rolling into the crime plan toward the end.
Like Zeek. CA was promoted as a “passive” income opportunity. And like Zeek, CA appears to have made an effort at pseudocompliance by trying to take that word off the table after the fact.
CA promoters eventually came under the lens of CONSOB, the Italian securities regulator — a fate later experienced by promoters of the JSSTripler/JustBeenPaid scam.
There were other stops, of course. But the racketeers/steroidal puppeteers basically proceeded from ASD to AVG to Club Asteria to JSS/JBP to Zeek to Profitable Sunrise.
PPBlog
Thanks for the background information PP. Certain sectors of this industry seem to spin round and round and round.
People such as those behind MidasCorp and Club Asteria are no more part of the MLM “industry” than hold up artists are part of the banking “industry”
I tend to include anything with an MLM compensation plan (multiple levels) within the scope of the industry.
I do draw the line at single level Ponzi schemes but anything that involved multiple levels is included. There’s obviously a definite distinction between legitimate and illegitimate, but other than that it’s all the same industry to me.
I guess it could be said unless the MLM “industry” itself moves against the rogue elements within its’ ranks, the MLM industry itself will be forever tainted with its’ association with criminals.