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When US regulators came knocking on Phil Ming Xu’s door to ask about the WCM777 Ponzi scheme he was running, he kept it a secret until the state of Massachusetts went public. Xu claimed he was “suspending all US operations”, but continued to accept investment funds from and pay a daily ROI to US affiliate investors.

When California investigated WCM777, Xu again kept quiet about it but announced he was stepping into the background and changing WCM777’s name to “Kingdom777”. James Tenorio was named as Xu’s replacement.

Xu also promised Kingdom777 would eventually go public and “register its stock with the SEC”. In an “announcement” published on the Kingdom777 website in early January, Xu blamed WCM777 affiliates for his regulatory troubles.

Xu’s “blame the affiliates” announcement was made the day before California formally issued their cease and desist against Xu and WCM777. Following California’s cease and desist (January 8th), Colorado has issued their own notice and both Louisiana and New Hampshire have issued WCM777 investor alert notices.

Despite it being pretty obvious that Xu continuing to run WCM777 as Kingdom777 in the US will most certainly result in further regulatory action taken against him (if it already isn’t pending), on January 26th his successor, James Tenorio, published his first member announcement on the Kingdom777 website:

Dear Members,

It has been a busy few days for me. I have been in numerous meetings and will be in countless more as I attempt to gain a full understanding of all the details of the program we acquired from WCM 777.

Our first order of business is to ensure that we work within the guidelines of the law. In doing so, I will be officially suspending all U.S. based transactions throughout our Kingdom 777 system. I am sure with legal council that we will be able to restructure our company to be in direct compliance with all regulatory guidelines here in the US.

Our Kingdom 777 name and brand is something that I will protect and not allow people to create a negative image of our community. We will be moving towards removing those who use our brand and logo without authorization directly from Kingdom 777.

Whether or not Tenorio is stating he’ll “protect” Kingdom777 from Xu who created the Ponzi scheme, or the US regulators who have issued notices and alerts against the scheme is unclear. What is clear though is that US ROI payments to Kingdom777 affiliates have been suspended.

California, presumable after going over Kingdom777’s financials claimed WCM777 had taken in $20 million USD from its investors. How much of that was from US investors and where Xu and Tenorio have transferred that money too are no doubt questions investors will want answered.

Ditto on how Tenorio and his lawyers will modify Kingdom777’s business model to legally operate in the US. As it stands the company is still accepting investment funds from and paying out a daily ROI to non-US affiliate investors. How the company will operate in the US while Kingdom777 continues its Ponzi business model elsewhere around the world is a mystery to me.

Even if Xu and Tenorio ran a different business model in the US there’s still the mixing of funds at a corporate level. Not to mention that US affiliate investors aren’t going to play ball with a non-Ponzi “legitimate” model. Remember Bidify?

In addition to cutting off US affiliate investors from their funds, Tenorio also stated he was putting a stop to Kingdom777 affiliates changing their uplines and acknowledged that

there were recent updates to the system and that some people are waiting to hear the official statement from us of how it works. I will be releasing those shortly.

I’m guessing these are the new Kingdom777 “rules and regulations” Ming Xu stated he’d publish on January 31st (announcement was made when he blamed affiliates for his troubles).

Stay tuned…