On the 26th of October Columbian news network Noticias Uno (“News One), aired on the “Canal Uno” (Channel One) network), ran a story about Ponzi investment scheme WCM777 being a pyramid scheme.
Noticias Uno’s report (screenshot below),
showed footage of a meeting in a hotel located near the airport of Bogota Eldorado, during which was announced the launch of a new investment system that would allow investors to multiply their money in a few days.
During the meeting, as demonstrated by the images, it presented a video of the founder of the company 777 World Capital Market, Chinese Ming Xu who explained the investment model, referring to the need for people to deal with the collapse of the economy world.
A few minutes later the speaker of the event, Renato Rodriguez told the 400 attendees pyramid scheme with promised benefits and profits.
“Every time you enroll someone is six, six, six, when full forward averaged 396,000 dollars”, he said.
WCM777 offers affiliate investors five levels to invest at, each guaranteeing a >100% ROI after 100 days. The Ponzi element comes into play as WCM777’s ROIs are paid out of newly invested affiliate money. With no other recorded source of revenue, WCM777 simply takes newly invested affiliate money and pays it out to existing investors.
Additionally WCM777 also pays out referral commissions on the investments made by recruited affiliates, paid out down six levels of recruitment. This introduces a pyramid scheme element to the business model, rendering it a Ponzi pyramid hybrid (see full BehindMLM WCM777 review here).
In response to Noticias Uno’s WCM777 report, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos took to Twitter to personally request a WCM777 police investigation.
Certainly different to how we usually find out about MLM investigations, points to Colombia for transparency. Whether or not anything comes of the investigation however remains to be seen.
Personally with WCM777’s operations based out of Hong Kong (the company recently fled the US citing problems ‘abiding by local laws’), I don’t see the Colombian police being able to do all that much.
Still, I suppose if they go after those ringleaders promoting WCM777 at the hotel event then at least that’s something. Better to put a stop to WCM777 duping potentially thousands of Colombians before they lose their money than trying to sort out the aftermath of a Ponzi collapse, or worse still doing nothing at all.
Stay tuned…
Update 28th October 2013 – In addition the Colombian police investigation taking place, the “Superintendency of Companies and the Financial Supervisory” have also opened a separate investigation into WCM777.
Slight correction: It’s “Colombia” (no U)
Thanks for the pickup! Bit of a hot year in South America for the underbelly of the MLM industry and quite the education I’m receiving covering it.
Oh, and you got the wrong link. This is link direct to their story.
(Ozedit: link hijacked, removed Nov 2019)
The link you have is from another newspaper, the Spectator covering that coverage.
There’s a tweet highlighting this URL as well.
General Palomino is Head of Colombia National Police Rodolfo Palomino.
I chose that particular link as they broke the President’s investigation call first. The Notcias Uno article however does name the Columbian ringleaders though so thanks for adding the link.
I wonder if Mr. Rodriguez has had a knock on his door yet. Maybe he can email Paul Darby and ask for some FBI protection…
Renato Rodriguez apparently is an official rep, even shared stage with Ming Xu at one time:
https://www.1and300.net/menupage/DetailNews.aspx?NewsId=23
Apparently RR was just in Las Vegas, but had to rent a minor conference room at Hampton Inn.
http://lasvegas.craigslist.org/vnn/4151669968.html
I am 90% sure this is the SAME Renato Rodriguez that was pushing Herbalife with Twitter handle @Capitalife
Investigation confirmed, although the auto-translation (Spanish) doesn’t make much sense:
http://www.elpais.com.co/elpais/judicial/noticias/policia-nacional-investiga-supuesto-banco-chino
On second thought, the French Renato is much more handsome than the central american one.
The general was referring to the Latin American version of “There ain’t no free lunch”. In Spanish it’s “Cuando la limosna es grande, hasta el santo desconfía”, or literally, “When the alms offering is too much, even God distrusts”. Though sometimes the word ‘sospeche’ (suspicion), is used instead of desconfia (distrust). And sometimes, grande becomes “muy grande” (very big), or “tanta” (much/a lot).
It’s interesting that he said the same thing when he helped the regime cracked down on the DMG Pyramid only 5 years ago. Back then he was Police Chief of Bogota, the capital.
http://www.semana.com/economia/negocios/articulo/dmg-aplaza-movilizacion-clientes/96838-3
Oops, bad translation. That should have been “the offering is so great, even a Saint suspects (something’s wrong)”.
There’s a twitter war going on the hashtag #wcm777. Proponents are still posting spam and word weasel “WCM777 is not MLM, it’s social capital’ or some crap like that. Opponents and skeptics are posting links to my blog, to behindmlm, and so on.
Was this the reason the US office was shutdown? BBB already put WCM777 under the “Ponzi Scheme” category:
http://www.bbb.org/los-angeles/business-reviews/ponzi-schemes
Wow. The BBB must be reading BehindMLM
@Kasey
I’ve just cleaned up a mountain of spam from presumably a WCM777 affiliate. All sorts of nonsense from anonymous “SEC lawyer” letters, religious seven mountains bullshit and how “WCM777 is not MLM, it’s a revolution” etc. etc.
All sent to the spam bin.
These Chinese Ponzi pushers are a new breed of stupid. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
If you want to publish a comment that is an obvious copy and paste job from somewhere, cite it with a source. Do not attempt to republish unverified WCM777 marketing spam on this website.
Somebody claiming to be Phil Ming Xu tweeted a link to WCM777 claiming that their points are *NOT* securities, as explained by some US lawyer. I’m requesting comment, as he’s just an hour or so away. 🙂
In other news, Financial Supervisory Agency also opens inquiry into WCM777
http://noticiasunolaredindependiente.com/2013/10/27/noticias/autoridades-investigan-a-la-piramide-internacional-wcm777/
Reading WCM777.me shows that a ton of people are already complaining of “cannot log into backoffice”.
OMG! It’s Zeek ALL OVER AGAIN! Deja Vu!
I called WCM’s telephone number. Its a big phone tree, one option is for purchasing units, another is for purchasing stock. I pushed the button to make a complaint and the line went dead.
The general impression here is that these guys have no idea of the law. They are just collecting money as fast as they can and in any way they can.
If they are shut down you can not tell by dialing the number you put up
@Kasey
I’m currently going through this as an affiliate tried to blindly link to it here too. Article should be up within an hour or so.