With the South African Department of Trade and South Africa Reserve Bank both conducting continuing criminal investigations, TVI Express is South Africa is all but dead.

With arrests already made over the promotion of TVI Express in South Africa, those participating in the scheme risk fines and arrest themselves.

Despite the regulatory crackdown and arrests however, supporters of TVI Express still exist in South Africa. This was clearly evidenced when recently arrested TVI Express promoters Irwin and Glenda Shirindzi were given hugs and support from TVI Express members once released on bail.

Not withstanding one South African female member of TVI Express, who wished to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, stated that ‘nothing will stop us from going ahead and investing in TVI Express’.

In my last article about TVI Express in South Africa and the subsequent arrests, I reflected on this stubbornness by TVI South Africa members to accept that TVI is indeed a pyramid scheme.

In the face of such criticism and regulatory crackdown, one can only wonder exactly what it will take to shut down TVI Express in South Africa. And furthermore, just how mindlessly brainwashed are TVI’s supporters there?

At the time I placed my criticisms squarely on the supporters of TVI, rather than the company itself.

If the latest press release from TVI Express is anything to go by however, turns out I might have been a tad too hasty in my judgement.

TVI Express promoters Ross Kaspi and Vanessa Jackson from increasemymonthlyincome.com write

Preparations are in full swing to add an office in every corner of the globe.

This is to provide you reliable and speedy service. We are soon opening offices in the Philippines, Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, South Africa, and Dubai.

Plans are on to assign a dedicated country manager for each region. With the wealth of experience and expertise these managers bring to the table, we can ensure that your business will scale new heights.

Despite the press release being issued just yesterday (over two weeks since the initial South African arrests over TVI), South Africa is still listed as a country set to get its very own local office.

Something which I’m sure both the South African Reserve Bank and Department of Trade would be very interested to hear about.

Bangladesh also made the cut, despite recent calls by the Bangladesh MLM Alliance to shut down TVI Express in Bangladesh. The Bangladesh MLM Alliance claims TVI Express is nothing more than a ‘get rich quick‘ scheme that participates in ‘illegal banking‘.

Given the open hostility towards TVI Express, it’s hard to believe that either South Africa or Bangladesh were chosen for local offices.

Local offices aside, TVI also announced the introduction of

  • increased social media integration
  • a ‘quarterly newsletter‘
  • the setting up of a ‘huge call centre with state-of-the-art infrastructure in Asia which will serve as the centralized customer support base for the entire world‘
  • an exclusive partnership with travel website bookmytrip.com (which doesn’t exist yet)

The last announcement is kind of interesting as it marks an established move away from just offering Travelocity deals.

Interestingly, the whois information for the BookMyTrip website lists the Administrative and Registrant contact information as

V2 International Private Limited

Tarun Trikha (tarun.trikha@bookmytrip.com)

+91.9818735748

Fax: +1.5555555555

7/6369, Street Number 3,

Dev Nagar, Karol Bagh

New Delhi, Delhi 110005

IN

Note that Tarun Trikha is the CEO and owner of TVI Express, indicating that there’s a closer integration between this new travel company then is being publicly let known.

Most likely this partnership is in the form of a higher affiliate kickback then TVI is currently making from their Travelocity partnership.

The bigger question here of course is who is Tarun and TVI partnering up with?

Looking at the technical contact information for the BookMyTrip whois entry, we can see a clue –

Derek Brent (derek@vacationcentral.net)

+1.2015678500

Fax: +1.2014901721

Travel Network

560 Sylvan Ave

Englewood Cliffs, NE Jersey 07632

US

Looking at the email address listed for Derek Brent, a quick plug in of vacationcentral.net into an internet browser reveals that Vacation Central is an affiliate based online travel company.

Given that BookMyTrip utilises the services of a third party company, the partnership of TVI Express and Vacation Central through BookMyTrip.com does little to alleviate the problem that TVI is still just offering membership to other company’s services, whilst paying commissions solely on recruitment to TVI itself.

Personally I’d take the above announcements with a bucketload of salt. Since writing about TVI Express I can’t help but notice there’s been promise after promise broken, delayed or simply ignored.

Whether any of these recent announcements by TVI eventuate remains to be seen.