Paymony Review: Digital currency Ponzi scheme
There is no information on the Paymony website indicating who owns or runs the business.
Launched in late 2013, the Paymony website domain was registered on the 28th of November 2013 however the domain registration is set to private.
Paymony does have an “About Us’ section on their website, but only the following vague marketing copy is provided:
The Paymony is a company of Andpry Inc Group focused on developing products and technology services, partners in Silicon Valley (Silicon Valley – California – USA) having a differential ease of usage.
All marketing is done electronically, where we enjoy the Relationship Marketing as main channel, generating a distribution fair and equitable.
Formed by experts of wide experience in the areas of technology, marketing, knowledge management, information architecture, usability and web solutions.
Right.
As always, if a 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 Paymony Product Line
Paymony has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market affiliate membership to the company itself.
“Mining technology” (in the context of mining digital currencies) is mentioned frequently throughout the Paymony site, but appears to have little to nothing to do with the business opportunity.
The Paymony Compensation Plan
The Paymony compensation plan revolves around affiliates depositing money with the company, with residual commissions primarily paid out using a binary compensation structure.
Recruitment Commissions
Paymony pay out recruitment commissions when a new affiliate joins and deposits money with the company. 10% of the initially invested amount is paid out as a commission, which translates into a payment of:
- Mining Package ($300) – $30
- Virtual Farm Package ($1500) – $150
- Paycoin Package ($15,000) – $1500
Binary Commissions
As new affiliates are recruited into Paymony, they are placed into a binary compensation structure. A binary compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of two binary teams, left and right:
These binary teams are filled via the recruitment of new members, either directly or indirectly via the recruiting efforts of an affiliate’s up and downlines.
As affiliates in the binary invest in Paymony’s three “packages”, they accumulate Business Volume (BV) for their binary team. At the end of the month, 50% of the BV from the team that generated the lesser total BV is paid out to the affiliate.
Eg. If the left team generates 5000 BV and the right team 3000 BV, 50% of 3000 BV is paid out to the affiliate ($1500), with all 3000 BV flushing off the right team and 2000 BV being carried over to the next month.
BV is allocated as follows:
- Mining Package ($300) – 100 BV
- Virtual Package ($1500) – 500 BV
- Paycoin Package ($15,000) – 5000 BV
Percentage Bonus
The Paymony compensation plan material I cited for this review was in Portuguese so I’m not 100% sure how it works, but there’s a performance bonus that pays up to 5%.
What the bonus pays out on (matching binary commissions?) isn’t clear but it’s tied into affiliates accumulating BV in their binary teams. The bonus starts at 0.5% at 6000 BV and caps out at 5% for 25,000,000 BV.
Joining Paymony
When an affiliate joins Paymony, they have to purchase one of four packages:
- Partner – $50
- Mining Package – $300
- Virtual Package – $1500
- Paycoin Package – $15,000
The “Partner” package appears to be basic affiliate membership, and is also charged when an affiliate purchases any of the other three packages.
Note that outside of generating BV within an affiliate’s own binary, I’m not sure what the benefit is of purchasing the upper tier packages (this wasn’t explained in the Spanish compensation plan material I cited).
Conclusion
With no retailable products or services and 100% of the money flowing into Paymony sourced by affiliates, however they pay out the commissions is going to fail on the compliance front.
As it stands, affiliates buy in with one of the packages, on the expectation of a greater than 100% ROI, paid out via the binary. A pyramid scheme element exists in that affiliates are also directly compensated when personally recruited affiliates invest in packages.
Slap on a “mining technology” facade and that’s pretty much Paymony summed up.
You “paymony”, the person who recruited you keeps it.
Looking at the Paymony website, it appears the scheme is heavily targeting Brazilians:
Putting two and two together, I’d classify Paymony as one of the TelexFree reload scams currently doing the rounds. Don’t expect too much from Paymony in the long-run.
President Group AndPry: FRANCA BONFIM, JOSE MARCUS (EX TELEXFREE)
https://www.facebook.com/presidentemarcusfranca?fref=ts
AndPry Documents:
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail/EntityName/domp-p11000089148-4662e354-820f-474b-bcd5-38f26d13fa08/andpry/Page1
As you can see here (youtube.com/watch?v=ZvtAxEgtW0A) Marcus França (ex-Telexfree “top promoter”) is heavily promoting this new scam. In Brazil, people say this is HIS new scam. What I know so far is that he’s been bragging about how congressman “Acelino Popo” (present in the video) is supporting that scam, I mean, oportunity…
When asked by iG news site (economia.ig.com.br/telexfree/2014-03-10/popo-faz-propaganda-com-promotor-da-telexfree.html) about how could a public person as Popo support such scheme, he said that he was there as “Popo, former boxer” and not “Popo, the politician”.
The article also states they tried to reach Marcus França, who only said he would not comment on the settlement with former boxer because “iG portal is known to tarnish the image of multilevel marketing in Brazil”.
Oh, one more thing: what we hear from the “paymoners” is that in order to mine “emony” (I guess that’s the currency they talk about) all you have to do is let your PC on. That’s all… You earn money by doing nothing. At all.
Thanks for the additional information guys. English info on Paymony is scarce (they seem to be in the initial seed stage).
That is all that is required to mine some digital currencies, Bitcoin for example, however these days you’re competing against large clusters of servers. What that means is your dream of mining your way to digital riches is a fallacy.
And yeah, what that has to do with Paymony as an MLM business opportunity I have no idea. Nor do I know what that has to do with depositing $15,000 with them.
Some “paymoners” are already out there deffending their scam. When some experts said it was IMPOSSIBLE to mine such large amount of virtual currency as promissed by Paymony in a month, they are now saying that “emony” is not the same as bitcoin and, as its value is lower, they can indeed mine thousands of millions of “emony” monthly.
Oh please… As Oz said: WTF does minning e-currency have to do with MLM?
These “get rich quick” scams are sickening me.
this is the only site in the world where you can check the value of the currency and-mony: coinscotation.com (probably the company’s own site)
The price of E-mony today in this $ 105.06. But it is clear that this amount of money is not real. Just compare with other virtual currencies.
The prices of other virtual currencies that appear on this site, are copied from the site: btc-e.com/
If the system had it paymony sustainability with worthless mining emony currency – leaving your PC on for 6 hours because the company does not buy computers to do this? Mark France has a bad reputation here, yet there are people who still fall through his things.
Acelino Popo is not parliamentary, handed the job earlier this month – was a substitute. Then he came out because the owner returned to Congress. Yet even said he will fight for MLM. Fine example by joining this pyramid.
Sorry I’m using google translator.
As already said, Marcus França is the owner of Paymoney. He was one of the top earners of telexfree. In the video below, he is with Sandro Rocha (brazilian actor of the movie Elite Squad, a huge suscess in Brazil) and with Carlos Wanzeler.
What is “e-mony”? A digital currency set up for exclusive use within Paymony?
How on Earth can it have any intrinsic value outside of the opportunity itself???
So uh what, pay Paymony $15,000 to mine their own inhouse digital monopoly money currency?
Riiiiiiiiight.
Here’s someone (possibly a promoter, or whatever name those scammers have) deffending that “it is more advantageous mining emony than bitcoin”: feelingmmn.blogspot.com.br/2014/02/e-mais-vantajoso-minerar-emony-do-que.html
PayMony is an ultra-ridiculous scam. Check out the following video. You’ll see a guy with a hat trying to convince people to join the scam. The other guy, bald and in grayscale, pretends to be dumb, and pushes the scammer to keep explaining how it works, for 4 hours!! Of course, making A LOT of subtle fun of him.
At 33:33, he makes the scammer show his Windows Task Manager to check if the mining software was really “mining”. For the scammer’s shame, that software used around 5% of his CPU, hardly achieving 10%. It is shown exactly at 34:15.
Bitcoin mining requires VERY HEAVY processing, with hundreds of CPUs working in parallel. All that only to mine a few Bitcoins. The scammer’s CPU is weak, and only 5% of this weak CPU is being used. Probably only enough to run the animation of a rotating pie chart. Just that. No mining. No nothing. Total scam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6RHREWE2Ho&t=33m33s
@Oz
That’s it. This currency is not recognized in virtual currency market.
In the presentations, they always speak of Bitcoin, but has nothing to do with the e-mony. There is no real price for that currency.
Hi. This people is so lame that if you use Google, you can find this file: http://archive.today/z0ezE
Maybe a little backup: s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=54727579565952927080″
Why not use Hashcat? This guide show how to do.
I just found one because was easy:
Name: Igor Emmanuel Lima De Jesus
E-mail: (removed)
Login: bitcoin
Password: 66aa89a3664c9422f95e8a1d300567bf:aL1Yez6MRAX2FHscgfS3j3h3JsgOoobI Second Pass: 123456
The decrypt pass is: 123456 (very dificult… tsc..) But now it are not working.
So it show the formula is just: md5($pass.$salt). Very easy.
Who need to be a hacker when we can easily found it on google? They need spend more money in TI guy. The system is so… weak.. I can’t even imagine how can someone create a so bad pyramid scheme!
In a previous video made by this guy (youtube.com/watch?v=7oNFTTAIJis) he plays a fool to allow a Paymony promoter to explain to him how it works. The video is quite funny and long (guess I’ve seen it here in BehindMLM).
One of the funniest moments is when the Paymony “expert” try to show the CPU resources being used by the program and it is using almost nothing, meaning the software is just sitting there rolling some random numbers on the screen.
Anyway, in this last video the guy explains what happened and say that after publishing the other vídeo, Paymony promoters were told by Marcus França (ex-telexfree “top” promoter and owner of Paymony) to report the vídeo to YT as a privacy violation. They are just trying to censor it, since it shows how ridiculous this new scam is.
In fact, that’s Paymony promoters mantra: “don’t mess with us, because we will sue you”.
It’s quite funny how people who can barely use Facebook are calling themselves “virtual coin mining and laws experts”. Also funnier is the fact that Paymony talks about BitCoin all the time, but in fact they mine “e-Mony”, their own Monopoly-worth-nothing currency.
but isnt it true that they earn money and have money coming into their accounts. i have been introduced by a friend and i am still not sure if i can totally count on this.
i saw in my freinds account that had 600+ balance and i asked him to transfer it to his account. if its a scam why do people still keep investing ==???
Ponzi schemes “earn” money as long as new investors pump funds into them.
Exactly what your friend is trying to get you to do. Your ROI will then be contingent on new suckers investing after you.
Complete absolute FRAUD. Only more of what Telexfree was. That’s it.
Now I have seen a withdrawal of 400$ from my friends paymony to his local bank account. So now I know it’s legit.
(Ozedit: This is not the place to ask for investment advice)
Paymony company closed ….
And now ???
http://search.sunbiz.org/Inquiry/CorporationSearch/SearchResultDetail/EntityName/domp-p11000089148-4662e354-820f-474b-bcd5-38f26d13fa08/andpry/Page1
There was a little side note on some article about Telexfree (on “A Gazeta” or “Veja” Brazilian news portal) telling Paymony closed their Florida office, but no further detail was provided.
Anyway, they are still operating (or pretending to be). In light of what happened to Telexfree, where Paymony owner was a top pimp at, they must have thought “the US is good no more to operate scams from”.
“MLM is tought at Harvard”, “in the US we can work because, contary to Brazil, the government and justice are not corrupted”, “# place a scam name here # is totally legit and legal in the US and SEC backed it up”. Those are just a few of the bunch of BS Brazilian scammers used to spread everywhere.
After Telexfree being raided and chased by US authorities, those are things they just stop saying. Now they blame it on the US too.
It seems scammers are running like cockroaches to find a new hole to hide.
I did tell you that’s a myth, not reality, right? 🙂
http://amlmskeptic.blogspot.com/2013/07/mlm-mythbusting-did-harvard-business.html
It just need to look legitimiate enough to fool the casual observer.
The Payment web server is offline, bye bye money.
Paymony onwers are now publishing internal e-mails and documents on Paymony’s website. Looks like they are really trying to convince people the scam went down because of some discussions and false accusations.
LOL.
The bottomline? It is quite clear that Marcus França, former Telexfree top-pimp, wanted to play “it is not my fault that MY OWN BUSINESS collapsed” (as we Brazilians aready saw Multiclick owner-scammer doing) and sent his two partners in crime, Rafael Targino and Anderson Lima, to Spain just to start all this exit strategy.
Those two get a lot of money, and França himself too, but França will then be able to start another “miraculous” business to save people who got scammed by his two evil partners.
What a ridiculous plot.
Is there no Portuguese translation for “we ran out of new money to pay everyone with”?
I guess in “Scammish” that is usually translated as “we are restructuring our company and will be back much stronger than before and you just wait a few weeks so we can finish processing the data that was hacked by one of ours evil employees so we can send the payment orders to the bank, which will then take some time to process it because you know how banks are. And don’t worry about our website not working because we have someone fixing it and it is just a minor technical failure thank you” (breath).
Why are there no criminal charges against no one? This França guy has been stealing systematically for years and seems to be getting away with it once again.
Start complaining to the authorities. When enough people complain (dozens, hundreds, all over the country) police have to act.