OneCoin acquires Bonofa pyramid scheme
Bonofa launched in mid 2013 an MLM opportunity attached to the Cube7 social network.
Cube7 failed to take off, with Bonofa by and large functioning as a chain-recruitment pyramid scheme.
Bonofa affiliates paid up to 2490.90 EUR to join the company and were paid to recruit others who did the same.
Regulatory troubles for Bonofa began in 2013, following the arrest of an executive in Lebanon.
Last month, the owners of Bonofa were apprehended in Germany. German authorities have so far recovered €1.1 million EUR, with around 60,000 affiliates estimated to have lost over €100 million EUR.
No doubt seeing the collapse of Bonofa as easy pickings, earlier this month OneCoin purchased the Bonofa affiliate-base and effectively bought the company.
A video uploaded to to a Youtube channel bearing the name “Chris Bouillet” on June 16th, features Christian Goebel (a top Bonofa affiliate), Ruja Ignatova, Sebastian Greenwood and Juha Parhiala.
In the video, purportedly shot in London, Goebel announces OneCoin’s acquisition of Bonofa.
[0:13] The biggest part of Bonofa is joining now this amazing company, OneLife and OneCoin.
Goebel attended OneCoin’s recent CoinRush event, also held in London.
Addressing Bonofa affiliates, Ignatova capitalizes on its collapse and affiliate losses.
[1:12] Hello, I’m very pleased to see you all and to invite you all to join the OneCoin network.
I know that you are currently facing not an easy time, and to support you to join us we have agreed for 30 days to give you an extra incentive to join us.
So if you send to customer support of OneCoin a screenshot of your (Bonofa) customer account, we will give you your cash account balance and also we’ll give you a status in the OneCoin system so you can earn bonuses immediately.
This offer is only valid until the end of July.
[2:12] I’m very, very happy that the leadership of Bonofa has so much trust and is so interested in our company, which is why we invited you to join us any time.
After a translation into French by Goebel, Greenwood reveals he is familiar with the Bonofa pyramid scheme.
[3:31] I know Bonofa from before … now when you join OneLife, you join this opportunity … on the development of this company and we’re gunna take it four million, six million distributors.
Juha Parhiala closes out the video by “welcoming the Bonofa family” to OneCoin.
Goebel and Parhiala have a history in MLM together, with Parhiala claiming the pair
[4:48] We have done this one time before in a former company. We break the company record so much that nobody could ever, ever do that again.
Prior to joining Bonofa, Christian Goebel was an affiliate with SiteTalk. SiteTalk was also recently acquired by OneCoin.
How much OneCoin paid Bonofa’s owners for the company is not disclosed. Ditto whether or not Christian Goebel was cut a backroom deal as a former top Bonofa affiliate.
mariska langenberg, current promoter of 5starsignals [suspected pyramid scheme], was a bonofa affiliate 2 years ago.
she left bonofa after differences with the management regarding lack of integrity and compliance.
16 hours ago she has commented on the onecoin/bonofa merger on facebook [i have edited her post a bit for brevity]
the ‘master distributor’ mentioned in the post above is christian goebel, who lives in dubai, and thus escaped the bonofa arrests/regulatory action in germany.
so, according to langenberg, bonofa affiliates are being promised the conversion of their bonofa ‘compoints’ to onecoin ‘tokens’ in 90 days, after they invest fresh money into onecoin!
top bonofa ‘leaders’ will profit again with onecoin, while the victims at the bottom will get fleeced for the second time around.
fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me….
a german TV channel ‘tvthek’, appears to have reported on onecoin on 6, june, 2016.
anybody understand german?
there’s someone from mastercard making a comment at 5:15 and references to ‘pyramid’ scheme.
tvthek.orf.at/program/heute-konkret/4660549/heute-konkret/12996039/OneCoin/12996042
“AT” is an Austrian domain extension. The program is in German though.
@anjali… it’s austrian, not german. precision, my man! whatever happened to that amazing school system the raj used to bestow?
anyhow, they talk about onecoin using unauthorized master card, being a pyramid scheme, being looked at by financial regulators AS WELL AS an agency dealing with sects (like scientology). That last one i find interesting.
It also says that a consumer agency did file a complaint with the authorities in Tirol. mastercard rep stated that they contacted onecoin weeks ago and are in the process of taking steps to block them from using them.
Interviewed here are mastercard, consumer agencies, a crypto consultant. it also states that contact info has been removed.
The Mastercard segment start at about 5:10. I know it’s an ask buy any chance a reader could provide me with a literal transcript of 5:10 to 5:31?
Specifically what the announcer and then Mastercard rep state.
There’s a couple things worth noting
1) Is that Rujamama shedding crocodile tears? 😀
2) This sounds EXACTLY like PMX’s reload in China… Those that lost money in WCM in China can “convert” their old points into whatever points in his NEW scheme in Shenzhen if they pay him 1% in cash as “activation fee”.
3) Those that didn’t understand the current “Ethereum hack”, there’s an article on Verge that explained it pretty well, but there’s a TL;DR
The way DAO works is it’s virtual, but those with DAO Tokens can vote, like stock owners, on DAO should do to make money. DAO then contracts “contractors” to perform activity to generate profit. The tokens are sold and capital is added to DAO’s capital, and tokens can be traded.
Any way, someone apparently wrote a contractor that got DAO to pay them almost infinite amount of money (albeit, a little at a time) and so far 53 million USD worth of Ether had been drained.
There’s a feature that forced the money into a “holding account”, but only for 30 days (and 7 days have passed). And right now, there’s HUGE debate on what should be done.
It can be reversed… If the community agrees, but there’s some people who argued like the bank bailout that this should be left alone, yet others claimed that they are ready to exploit the same bug… yet others claimed that attempting to reverse this would lead to the ability to reverse ANY transaction…
NOLINK://www.theverge.com/2016/6/21/11985832/ethereum-cryptocurrency-dao-theft-fork-buterin
It is this last thing that brings us to OneCoin. Sure, theft of 53 million USD worth of Ether is… bad, but the idea that any transactions can be reversed just because it’s… inconvenient, that may hurt the reputation of the DAO and Ethereum worse than losing the 53 million.
But OneCoin, being centrally managed, claims that it can reverse ANY transaction, and reportedly did it to MANY members already.
Think about it… when a real cybercurrency had to have a debate even when 53 MILLION is at stake… While OneCoin can arbitrarily take back money even if it’s just tens of thousands (or less)…
OneCoin is not a legit cybercurrency. It can’t be.
But we knew that all along. It’s the sheeple that need convincing.
thanks, my man! amazing school system of the ‘raj’ or not, its all bloody french to me, my man! 🙂
on june 17th, the german network magazine ‘network karriere’ has published an article about the onecoin/bonofa merger and the exact ‘deal’ which has been offered to bonofa affiliates:
this paragraph from the article is interesting as it mentions something about the ‘public prosecutor’ and ‘tax authorities’. coherent translation help please!:
network-karriere.com/index.php?module=News&func=display&sid=22394
They said there is supposedly a Mastercard coming in the near future.
They reached out to Mastercard and their Austrian rep says that MC never authorized this and that they have taken steps several weeks ago to stop the card distribution.
They also contacted Forbes. They confirmed it’s a paid for page.
Isn’t it something how all of these ponzi pimp scam artists start pulling out all the tricks when they get desperate…
Utoken did the same thing when they collapsed… after all the arrests, seized monies and fleeing from authorities… they still turn around and open a new scam UNASCOS where you can turn your old utoken points into an investment package with them.
Promising the same old thing… make your lost money back!
Of course you always need to add new funds… those old useless points are never good enough! Even these pimps know that!
You can just turn on CC and then copy the CC into Google translate.
I just found out today that Onecoin utilizes 3 banks. One in Singapore (United Overseas Bank), one in Africa (Bank of Africa), and one in Germany (Deutsche Bank). Am I just slow or is that not well known?
Please take a look at “uobchina.com.cn/cn/assets/pdfs/news20160510.pdf”, which was just released by United Overseas Bank (China) Ltd in May.
OneCoin-Bank in USA – I found this on “go-onecoin.com/one-coin/bankverbindung”:
@Mr P
A Singapore account makes sense for European businesses that want to avoid the CRS reporting that is coming into play at the moment. Basically Singapore doesn’t have a legal requirement to snitch on their clients to the tax inspectors of the beneficial owners claimed country of residence – yet!
A bank account in Africa makes sense if you want to con a few million ‘lower income’ peeps who are not too discerning about financial integrity, and desperate for money (= greedy)
Deutsche Bank makes sense as a main trading account – respectable (don’t laff!) and easily accessible for the European market.
A bank in the USA would be a sensible thing too, as per the German bank reasoning.
@tmfp
I ignore Sly’s comments as far as I can – I don’t think he’s posted a single fact to back up any of his overly cryptic, mostly vaccuous comments. No coincidence on the screen name he chose (lol)
No banks in the US will touch them. That much money coming in with it clearly showing signs of a ponzi scheme, wont pass any US bank’s KYC requirements.
Also, I would think they are going to have problems with any banking in the American hemisphere as all of it goes through the Feds in New York.
They probably are going to have any members from Latin America send funds to their european or asian bank.
@P
Looked at sunbiz and there seems to be just one active One LLC in their state records for an individual who lives in northern FL.
Cant find any company record for One Coin in Florida so probably a passthrough account using an individual temporarily.
Maybe someone else can enlighten me but thought that One Coin was not accepting US members because that then makes them fall under the SEC? So accepting funds in a US bank account will also make them liable to the US SEC IMO even if they say they dont accept US members.
Not accepting US members? There are hundreds if not thousands of people here in the US that have poured massive dollars into OneCoin. Doctors, Pharmacists, etc.
My friend tried to get me to join and I almost did, but I decided to investigate more closely. When I saw how xcoinx.com was created and sold so recently I new that was a bad sign.
I am not exaggerating about the dollar amounts. I know of one pharmacist who has convinced people to invest their 401K retirement accounts and has found a loophole for it to be tax free.
It’s really sad. I tried to convince my friend but he still brags about the new people he gets to join. What can you do?
Anything from sly not sourced is being marked as spam. He or she has a history of making up stuff.
Thats EXACTLY what UTOKEN so called leaders were doing… you sent in your real money to them… and then they transferred FAKE UTOKENS from their account to your account. And thats most likely EXACTLY what they are doing here in ONECON!!
Thats how they can pay their bills! Not because the company is paying out anything!
It’s not just Onecoin scamming the members.. its also all the self proclaimed leaders. Their fake coins double… they then sell them to their new recruits for cash… they know EXACTLY what they are doing!!!
@Melanie
The TD Bank account lasted less than a month (Dec 2015). It was one of the many accounts OneCoin bounced between over a few months.
@Rick
I suspect with OneCoin accepting bitcoin this will become more problematic. Inevitably US investors participating will lead to faster regulatory action so there’s at least that.
@jodi
Member to member payments are one way of circumventing company bank accounts and authorities tracking and unfortunately a lot if not most ponzi scheme members lose tons from this when the authorities get involved and shut down the company and freeze company and main owner accounts.
Authorities are just looking for company related transactions from and to members so “member to member” transactions get lost.
A big sign of a ponzi scheme is when members can transfer funds in their back office to others and directly receive the money.
Also, this way they avoid the tax authorities too as who is reporting monies received in their bank accounts and when the scheme collapses as they all do, everyone blames the government, the company etc and run for the hills.
@Oz
With onecoin basically being worthless, someone has to pay for the bitcoin transaction value or at least assign a value probably the company.
What would you think the value is of a bitcoin vs onecoin since onecoin is not on any exchange?
To put the whole new Ponzi affiliates paying existing affiliates directly into perspective, I’d hate to be the TelexFree Receiver right now.
If his team can’t verify funds were transferred, investors who transferred to their upline have no claim.
Such appears to be the volume of angry investors that fall into this category, that I’m receiving correspondence that was clearly intended to be sent to the Receiver (only because I’ve reported on the claim portal).
It’s bad enough losing your money in a Ponzi scheme, but getting again scammed by the person who recruited you? Good luck with that…
@jeffp
OneCoin are using the listed value of BTC. They just charge in BTC what their affiliate investment packages cost.
@ jeffp
what ? I can deposit money directly in your account via internet bank to bank, through email or interact, does that make it a ponzi?
OneCoin is a Ponzi pyramid hybrid.
Getting paid to recruit new investors is the pyramid side of the business. The Ponzi side is cashing out onecoins and receiving a ROI paid out of newly invested funds.
im tanzanian ihave joined yet in one coin and people told me that i will get more token after maturity tomorrow… is it true areal money if i want to draw from account.
@valentino
Tokens are monopoly money. OneCoin make you convert them to OneCoins, and even then they’re denying pretty much all OneCoin withdrawal requests.
If you’re not recruiting new investors, you’re not making money in OneCoin.
@ anjali – RE: comment #8
IT APPEARS THAT HERE IS SOME FURTHER TRANSLATION:
Alex 6 minutes ago
network-karriere.com has also a nice litte article about one of the “share holders”* of OneCoin, Christian Goebel and his Pyramide Scheme “Bonofa”: network-karriere.co…
In other words, he can extort them – as have done all the other ponzi-sheme predecessors when hauling their “marketers” into OC.
So they basically got nothing, besides the hope of hustling their way out of the money-hole the dug themselves.
* “shareholders” at OneCoin mean, persons that could buy themselves into the organization by using their mailing lists of “marketers/victims” as assets into the company stock.
Someone should make a “Onecoin Press Release Page (What they really mean)” and re-write all of their Releases with the truth!
onedream.team/2016/07/18/welcome-michael-thomale/#comment-3082
That’s a funny way to describe Bonofa shut down for being a Ponzi scheme and its management and owners arrested.
Having scammed millions from Bonofa victims, Michael Tomale will no doubt feel right at home in OneCoin.
The guy christian goebel is clearly mad (and dangerous).
Even the OneCoin woman looked embarrassed by him in the clip.
German serial fraudster Michael Thomale, who has been mentioned repeatedly in this thread, was introduced as Nexus Global CEO in this video from April 2019:
youtu.be/bhra6xuY_II?t=321
Apparently Michael Thomale is no longer creditworthy in Germany, because he had founded his dubious “companies” in Austria. The company construction is very confusing, but here is a first overview:
share-your-photo.com/60a573d2ec
northdata.de/Austro+NEXUS+Holding+GmbH,+Salzburg/370090a
Ted Nuyten presented him this way on his portal BFH.org:
share-your-photo.com/ac510d5715
businessforhome.org/2016/08/150000-reps-per-month-join-onecoin-onelife/
In this video from February 2017, Michael Thomale indirectly promotes GOFUSION:
share-your-photo.com/0bb41dc6a2
youtube.com/watch?v=0XgfXM2xwYg
The gofusion.info scam portal no longer exists and later redirected to gofusion.cc on Facebook. A screenshot from the web archive:
share-your-photo.com/0d97abc0e1
web.archive.org/web/20160324055125/http://www.gofusion.info/
The extraordinarily informative imprint of gofusion.info with an email address at GMX in Switzerland:
share-your-photo.com/274b57876e
In Switzerland, the mountains are very high and no telephone lines have yet been laid. Because all Swiss citizens still live in tents, there are no towns, villages, street names or house numbers there either.
Michael Thomale writes on Twitter that he has found a new home in the United Arab Emirates. There he also names three of his numerous websites:
share-your-photo.com/c0e3806bcb
twitter.com/michaelthomale
Does Michael Thomale live in the UAE and Florida at the same time? The “imprint” of michael-thomale.com without email address and phone number:
share-your-photo.com/d38e80f707
The imprint of thomale.cc also does not mention a phone number:
share-your-photo.com/ead5541e32
PS: German websites, which I don’t consider very serious, also claim that Michael Thomale is involved in OmegaPro. It would be just another stop in the criminal career of Michael Thomale.
German serial scammer Christian Goebel handled the sale of BONOFA to OneCoin. This was possible because Christian Goebel and Juha Parhiala knew each other well from the past. The scammers in MLM are always well connected and know each other.
On his YouTube channel “Freedom Mentor Christian Goebel“, this former BONOFA scammer describes himself like this:
Really funny is his video from May 18, 2022. 😀
share-your-photo.com/62db8fee56
youtube.com/watch?v=Bu7vwqQdHow
Why does Christian Goebel not call BONOFA? Was BONOFA not a scam? This video from June 14, 2016 has not been deleted:
share-your-photo.com/2bced60775
youtube.com/watch?v=8OWRywftlRg
This video from November 25, 2014 describes his role at BONOFA:
share-your-photo.com/5b74fb0207
youtube.com/watch?v=bcMf93HCxiw
I am not surprised that Christian Goebel and Eric Worre cheat together:
share-your-photo.com/04a3d5a78c
youtube.com/@freedommentorchristiangoebel/videos
Christian Goebel has been unsuccessful for a long time. His channel has only 28 subscribers and his videos reach only a few viewers.
share-your-photo.com/fefe46a315
Prior to the BONOFA fraud, Christian Goebel was involved in the TALK FUSION fraud:
share-your-photo.com/a3fd506885
youtube.com/watch?v=7MzCqLXdBJM
On Twitter, his role in TALK FUSION was confirmed thus:
share-your-photo.com/c0cc5b4272
twitter.com/talkfusion_che
In Germany, we describe people like Christian Goebel as, “Once a cheater, always a cheater!”
Christian Goebel is not only a nasty scammer, but also a huge nutcase. As usual in MLM, he will start a revolution. The announcement on Instagram is two months old, but nobody follows him. Only two likes…
share-your-photo.com/57e03d2121
instagram.com/p/Ckao9kAt59n/
I state: His own intelligence is not sufficient for a revolution! 🙂
Does anyone know what drugs Christian Goebel does do in Ibiza? Three quotes from Google:
share-your-photo.com/b6f63805df
I am not interested either, because I have already joined the revolution of Ruja Ignatova:
share-your-photo.com/eba053aa07
I am a poor woman and I know that every revolution in MLM costs a lot of money. Only the self-proclaimed “revolutionary” at the top of the pyramid gets rich.