Wish Club Review: Magazine-based TelexFree clone?
Wish Club claim to be part of the “Asblkeu Group”, which was launched in late 2013. Asblkeu Group is apparently based in Spain, however no further credible information is known about the company.
The Wish Club website only provides the following vague marketing spiel:
Asblkeu Enterprise was founded in September 2013 in Madrid (Spain), with the mission to bring the consumer a great revolution in the world of information demand.
Asblkeu is the enterprise who controls a group of companies created with the same goal as Asblkeu’s : take care of every one of the processes, particularly quality control focused on the potential global markets businesses, as well as trading, multi-services, MMN, international publishing or advertising industry segmented in print and digital media, online shopping , e- commerce and its own brands.
A link to what is supposed to be Asblkeu’s website is provided on the Wish Club website (“asblkeu.com”), however clicking it reveals nothing more than a diagnostic message:
Credited as the President of Wish Club is a one Mr. Ezequiel Hipólito (right).
Despite the claim that Hipólito”came into contact” with the MLM industry “from a very young age”, I was unable to find any online record of MLM business activities prior to the launch of Wish Club.
Exactly when Hipólito started in the MLM industry and what companies he has previously belonged to are a mystery. Whether or not he actually owns Wish Club is also unclear (I doubt it).
Read on for a full review of the Wish Club MLM business opportunity.
The Wish Club Product Line
Wish Club has no retailable products or services.
When an affiliate signs up to the company and pays membership fees, they are given subscriptions they can then resell. Wish Club set a suggested retail price of 29.90 EUR for an annual subscription.
Whether this takes place within Wish Club or if an affiliate is left to conduct external transactions is unclear.
Each Wish Club magazine subscription includes one printed edition (a single month) and 12 digital editions (for the other eleven months). Why only one printed edition a year is available is unclear.
The Wish Club Compensation Plan
The Wish Club compensation plan revolves around the recruitment of affiliates who spend money on packages:
- Standard – 225 EUR (generates 100 points)
- Master – 1125 EUR (generates 500 points)
In exchange for their money, Wish Club pay affiliates a passive weekly ROI and various recruitment-orientated commissions.
Wish Club Affiliate Membership Ranks
There are nine affiliate membership ranks within Wish Club. Along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:
- Bronze – generate 1000 points
- Silver – generate 3000 points
- Gold – generate 6000 points
- Sapphire – 20,000 points
- Ruby – 50,000 points
- Emerald – 100,000 points
- Diamond – 200,000 points
- White Diamond – 400,000 points
- Black Diamond – 1,000,000 points
Subscription Resell Commissions
Wish Club affiliates earn retail commission on the sale of Wish Club magazine subscriptions to non-affiliates.
How much of a retail commission is earnt per subscription resold, depends on how much a Wish Club affiliate paid in membership fees:
- Standard (225 EUR) – 8.90 EUR
- Master (1125 EUR) – 13.03 EUR
Whether this commission is tracked within Wish Club or is external to the business opportunity is unclear.
Investment ROIs
Each package purchase acts an investment position within Wish Club. The company advertises a 15 EUR ROI per Standard package invested in, and 75 EUR ROI per Master package.
Wish Club state this ROI is paid in exchange for “managing advertising campaigns for BackMidia”, but fail to state what this involves. I suspect it can be translated into “spam the internet with useless classified ads”.
Recruitment Commissions
Wish Club pay out a direct commission on the recruitment of new affiliates. Commissions are paid out when a newly recruited affiliate pays their membership fees, with how much they pay determining the commission paid out:
- Standard (225 EUR) – 15 EUR ($20 USD)
- Master (1125 EUR) – 75 EUR ($100 USD)
Residual Binary Recruitment Commissions
Wish Club pay recruitment commissions using a binary compensation plan. A binary compensation plan places an affiliate at the top of two positions. These two positions form the start of two binary sides, left and right:
Each filled position on either side of the binary represents a recruited Wish Club affiliate. Commissions are paid using a 1:1 pairing ratio, paying out 15 EUR ($20 USD) each time a new filled position on the left is matched with a new filled position on the right.
Wish Club cap binary positions at 22 pairs a day (330 EUR).
An additional “Trio Bonus” is paid out for every three new positions matched on either side of the binary (a 3:3 ratio). The Trio Bonus pays out 44 EUR per Trio pairing (2 groups of three on either side), and is capped at 768 pairs a day.
Note that both binary commissions are calculated daily. All filled binary positions can only be used once per commission payout (once for the single pairing and again for the Trio pairing).
Unilevel Recruitment Commissions
Each package purchase comes with a series of “advertising center” positions. A Standard package comes with one advertising center, a Master comes with five.
Each advertising center generates an 8 EUR per month passive commission in the Wish Club compensation plan. This equates to an 8 EUR per Standard package affiliate and 40 EUR per Master package affiliate.
Wish Club track these commissions using a perpetual 1-up pay plan. An affiliate’s downline is tracked using a unilevel compensation structure.
A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team. All personally recruited affiliates are placed directly under them (level 1).
If any personally recruited affiliates go on to recruit new affiliates of their own, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team. If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.
Commissions are paid out depending on what membership package is purchased (either 8 EUR for a Standard or 40 EUR for a Master).
An affiliate receives a monthly commission for the first, third and fifth unilevel position they generate under them. The second, fourth and sixth position commissions are passed up to their upline (the affiliate who recruited them). From the seventh position onwards, every perpetual fifth position created is passed up to an affiliate’s upline.
This continues down newly recruited affiliates, with all affiliates passing up the same second, fourth, sixth and every fifth position thereafter to the affiliate who recruited them.
Note that positions are ranked in the order they are recruited, irrespective of whether a Standard or Master package is initially purchased. Also note that if an affiliate purchases more packages (and thus advertising centers) after joining, they stay within the unilevel position (a new position is not created).
A 22% matching bonus is available on the earnings of recruited affiliates, payable down 8 levels of recruitment.
How many levels an affiliate is paid down depends on their Wish Club affiliate membership rank:
- Sapphire – 22% on three levels
- Ruby – 22% on four levels
- Emerald – 22% on five levels
- Diamond – 22% on six levels
- White Diamond – 22% on seven levels
- Black Diamond – 22% on all eight levels
Rank Achievement Bonus
Upon hitting affiliate rank promotion in Wish Club, the company rewards affiliates with following bonuses:
- Bronze – 50 EUR ($68 USD)
- Silver – 100 EUR ($137 USD)
- Gold – 160 EUR ($220 USD)
- Sapphire – a Mont Blanc fountain pen
- Ruby – a Macbook Air and iPhone 5s
- Emerald – a “Caribbean cruise”
- Diamond – (a trip to) Hawaii
- White Diamond – (a trip to) Singapore and Thailand
- Black Diamond – 33,000 EUR ($45,431 USD)
Joining Wish Club
Affiliate membership to Wish Club costs 49 EUR ($67.50 USD).
Wish Club affiliates are also required to purchase one of two “packages”:
- Standard – 225 EUR ($309 USD) or
- Master – 1125 EUR ($1548 USD)
A monthly fee is also attached to each package:
- Standard – $16 USD
- Master – $80 USD
Which pack an affiliate chooses to purchase dictates how much they can earn in the Wish Club compensation plan (see above).
Note: Apparently there is an unadvertised higher membership level called “Star Master” or “Starred Master”, it costs in excess of $7000 upfront and then $400 a month to maintain. It is supposedly the equivalent of five standard Master accounts in a bundle.
There is no information on the Star/Starred Master account in the official Wish Club compensation plan material.
Conclusion
It’s not at all surprising to realize that if you calculate Wish Club’s required payments and ROIs in USD, you pretty much get a clone of TelexFree.
Affiliates pump in $300 or so per position (TelexFree was $299), or $1548 for an AdCentral family a “Master package” position, and then collect a $20 or $100 a week passive ROI. The binary commissions Wish Club offer act as your standard Ponzi referral commission on investments.
Granted TelexFree didn’t have the whole pass-up component to their compensation plan, but then they didn’t charge monthly membership fees either, which are quite obviously being used to fund that the pass-up commissions (they’re monthly recurring, and so is the membership fee payment).
Oh and you’ll of course have to replace the facade of TelexFree’s VOIP packages, with the facade of Wish Club’s magazine subscriptions.
Supposedly Wish Club’s magazine is being published by the company “Wish MZ” (who also come under the awkwardly named Asblkeu Group. There’s no mention of what’s in the Wish Club magazine over at the Wish MZ website, however a bunch of seemingly random “news” articles do appear on the site.
I checked a few of them and found they were just ripped from third-party sources, often without citation. You can verify this yourself, head over to “wishmz.com”, click a random article and highlight a random sentence or two. Punch this into Google and you should be able to work out where the Wish MZ “author” copy and pasted from (note that the articles don’t appear to have one source in some cases, they are Frankenstein articles mashed together).
One thing I did notice was the “magazine” subdirectory to serve content off the Wish MZ website:
I imagine the content is reflective of what one can find in Wish Club’s magazine.
The take-away?
Nobody is paying Wish Club 29.90 EUR a year for rehashed information that’s available for free.
Had Wish Club magazine of been a legitimate publication, they’d no doubt soon find themselves swimming in plagiarism related cease and desists. One must of course remember however that Wish Club’s magazine exists solely to act as a cover for what is otherwise a blatant Ponzi scheme.
Wish Club affiliates join the company, pay their participation fee and then invest in one of the offered packages. These packages deliver a weekly ROI, with new affiliate funds simply used to pay off existing affiliate’s weekly ROIs.
An additional pyramid scheme element exist, by way of the monthly membership fees and pass-up component of the compensation plan.
Given that Wish Club are exclusively targeting Spanish, Portuguese and English-speaking demographics, it’s more than obvious this it was designed as a “competitor” to TelexFree.
I suspect those running it were participants of TelexFree (or one of the other clones out there), and figured they were ready to try their own hand at scamming people.
As with all Ponzi schemes, once new affiliate recruitment stops or slows down, the company will run out of funds to pay out existing ROIs. Packages in Wish Club don’t seem to have a ROI cap, so this is likely to happen sooner than later.
That’s if regulators don’t step in first, which is a strong probability given the recruitment cross-over between Wish Club and TelexFree – and the fact that regulators are now likely to be on heightened alert for reload scams, following the SEC shutdown of TelexFree.
Have the Portuguese, Spanish and English-speaking demographic TelexFree targeted learnt anything from what for many was their first Ponzi experience?
Time will tell…
Here you have more info about Wishclub and Asblkeu:
Wisclub is the relaunch of a pyramid scam blocked in Brasil in 2013, the name was Blackdever and you can find info bout them in http://www.vcartigosenoticias.com/2013/07/blackdever-e-bloqueada-por-recomendacao.html
If you search in Google Wishclub blackdever you will find a lot of results that inform Wishclub is the new Blackdever.
https://www.facebook.com/cadastrarblackdever
The owners of wish club are the same Brazilian people Ezequiel Hipólito and Rogelio Alves:
http://i.imgur.com/mfkOjIz.jpg?1
Rogelio Alves with Joao Batista in the promotional material from Blackdever:
http://i.imgur.com/ccTclkR.jpg?1
The other guy Gerardo Vallejo was Herbalife’s General Director for Spain since 2003 to 2010, in 2011 he was named Amway’s General Director for Spain an Portugal and now is Wishclub’s International General Director and you can see him in videos like this one:
http://youtu.be/EusFMSiVLDo
Similar to the Carlos Costa’s videos for Telexfree.
About the company ASBLKEU SA:
ASBLKEU SA is registered in Spain, not in Madrid like some promoters say, it’s in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, it’s an spanish island with special tax benefits like Madeira in Portugal:
http://www.infocif.es/cargos-administrador/asblkeu-sa
http://www.boe.es/borme/dias/2014/01/17/pdfs/BORME-A-2014-11-38.pdf
Their social objective is to sell “Home textile products”
Well I guess if there was any remaining doubt as to the nature of the scheme, the above should remove it.
Cheers for the additional information.
Hello !
Related to WISHCLUB… Their TOP Promoters claim the Adds on the Magazine plus the Adds on the Internet will end up Generating MORE REVENUE than GOOGLE’s !!!
Yes, they claim (believe it !) they will SOON make MORE MONEY (external from advertisement) than GOOGLE does !!!!
I saw one of them stating their Magazine is poised to be the most printed one all over the Globe ! They are completely Crazy …. And there is no way to convince them what they claim is a complete BS !!!
But watch out, I am afraid this “Ponzi company” will cause a LOT of financial damage to many people before it goes down !!
A correction on Wish. You lie when you say:
A monthly fee is also attached to each package:
Standard – 16 EUR
Master – 80 EUR
before posting anything, you have to confirm the accuracy of all your article to be credible.
Dues are:
11,90 EUROS Standard
59,50 EUROS Master
and indeed there is a Star Master you pay each month: 299,50 Euros
thanks. I trust their news but I think I’ll have to contrast with other sources to believe everything he says. Greetings!
@Roberto
Nobody is reading their magazine except affiliates.
And what’s there to read? Random articles pulled from third-party websites (likely without their permission)?
That is not something legitimate advertisers are going to want to participate in.
Thanks for the pickup Nuzman, should read $USD not EUR in my review. If you do the conversion yourself, you’ll not the figures are correct, they’re just in USD not EUR.
I’ve changed them over in anycase now.
I had a hard time switching between the two currencies (they provide both currencies randomly in their comp plan material instead of a uniform standard).
PS. Wish Club do not provide compensation plan material on their website. I had to go to a bit of effort to put together the comp plan breakdown.
If an MLM company hides its comp plan, there’s usually something suspicious going on. Worse still if they’re intentionally hiding information about higher investment levels in it. Reeks of an attempt to dodge regulatory scrutiny.
maybe you can serve this:
(Ozedit: no affiliate recruitment sites please)
I’ve been following this scam (WISHCLUB) for some time now… They have a more sophisticated “cover” than the Average Ponzi Business. And their “official” teasers in the internet (Youtube and so on) are attractive.
They have just released a second magazine (Wish Motors, about fancy cars) and they claim they will soon have other active companies (that will be rivals to Amazon and Groupon) and also their own Brand of Products.
So, they have worked hard to disguise the “Ponzi Scheme”, which is actually the main source of revenue for the ASBLKEU (what a stupid name) GROUP !
Speak ASBLKEU can cause damage to your mouth 🙂 I have not been very lucky with this choice, and buffered with company logo, reminds me of the Christmas star. And even has a resemblance to the Amazon
I wonder what the Anti-Ponzi laws in Spain are like… Are they “light weight” (like in Brazil) or “heavy weight” (like in the US, as demonstrated by Merrill’s arrest) ?
Spain supposed is in the EU and follow EU law on pyramid schemes and such, right? I guess it depends on local prosecution. From what I understand, each country is supposed to pass the “common EU” law in local form. Actual prosecution is up to the local justice system though.
I looked at WishClub 2 weeks ago, and I wasn’t very impressed. It’s about glossy photos (backgrounds) and exaggerated marketing claims (the few sites I checked).
It all looked “unfinished” or “half finished”, e.g. multiple pages with no function at all (other than showing background photos).
Many of WISHCLUB’s Top Promoters are ex-Telexfree ! (I wonder why, hahaha)
The law in Spain about MLM says it’s legal if the compensation plan is over the sales made to final customers and consider as pyramidal sells and ilegal if the compensation is based FUNDAMENTALLY over the recruitment of new members to the plans and not over the selling of goods or service.
In the case of Finanzas Forex, German Cardona was arrested and he passed 2 years in prison, now he is free and scamming again.
I’ve noticed that SPAIN is becoming the New “Eldorado” for Ponzi-Scammers… WISH CLUB moved from Brazil to there… TELEXFREE had a big Convention in Madrid in January… I’ve seen a few other scams working with headquarters in Spain also…
Probably this is a way to pass some “credibility” to potential WW victims from Portuguese/Spanish Speaking Countries…
That’s because i think they have Gerardo Vallejo, they want a white european facade for the latinamerican victims. But the real owners are Brazilians.
The reason for choosing Spain: a country with a very slow justice, and with a high level of corruption among political authorities and officials. For the Spanish government does not care about the victims only the popularity of the measures to take and people who can benefit and profit than political or senior can get.
With this background we can expect a total impunity in Spanish territory, measures against Wish Club come from Europe or other countries, but the Spanish state.
I found nobody can join this from China, strange
I tried the same search methods today, and they have removed 440 “empty pages” (552 pages have been reduced to 115).
The search method “site:website” can be used to look at how a website is organized, e.g. to identify what the website primarily is about. It can be combined with search string filters +keyword or -keyword.
WishClub is still primarily about “travel agency magazine photos”, but it was much more visible in the first search 17 days ago.
Some other signs of “half finished” …
Wishclub.com.es (Spain) and wishclub.com.mx (Mexico) seems to be abandoned projects. Both received links and traffic from “clickfarms” or something similar, e.g. “buy 100 backlinks for $4.88 per link”, “free traffic”, “pay to look more popular than you really are”.
In short, the footprint wishclub.com has on the internet is very small, but it tries to look like a giant.
HABLEKEU.SLU
When I tried to search for ASBLKEU, I found a domaintools.com reverse-IP listing “HABLEKEU.SLU shares address with 12 other domains”, all of them registered between December 2013 and January 2014. HABLEKEU is the registrant for ASBLKEU.COM.
WISHCLUB seems to be pretty active in Spain and Portugal regarding live events at least (those where the would-be scammers get together with a somewhat large crowd of potential victims) to explain the “business opportunity”.
There are also some Top Promoters with weekly Conferences over the Internet. They are claiming their network is expanding at a fantastic speed all over the world !! They really seem to be fanatic about this…
I went to meeting here in Dominican Republic a few weeks ago in a house full of people all around and looks like the main leaders here are a couple of guys that were blue diamonds Julio lama and Ana Cantera in a company named organo gold, at least is what they say.
My friend told me that they left the company because this one is better and pays like Telexfree but this time its legal.
The guy named Julio said to my friend after a presentation that they are connected to the owner of the company and that they have the whole country in their network. I am guessing they will be famous very soon.
I think this business is already paying alot because those guys earned alot of money from the other company and they say this pays better.
Thanks for sharing that Juan. I really hope people in the DR learnt from TelexFree.
^^ Anyone being pitched this would do well to observe TelexFree is a Ponzi scheme, there is nothing legal about them.
This month WISHCLUB is having a big live conference in “Ilha da Madeira”, in Portugal.
That island is now famous for being the “Fantasy Island of Ponzi Schemes” ! 🙂
As if they will say anything else… And given their recent record, why should ANYBODY believe what they say? Right?
Organo Gold sells coffee mixed with bitter Chinese LingZhi mushroom extract. In other words, they ruin perfectly good coffee and sell it at exorbitant prices for unknown effects.
AND they were recently fined in Italy
http://amlmskeptic.blogspot.com/2014/03/breaking-news-italy-fined-vemma-organo.html
You think it’s the water or the diet?
My favorite Ponzi-Scheme strikes again !! WISHCLUB (formerly BLACKDEVER) held a Conference Call (it’s on Youtube) on May 21st.
They “sell” Magazines (full of adds) instead of Voips. They are like an elaborate clone of Telexfree.
In this Conference their “leader” (Rogério Alves) stated that their Goal is to have a Total MONTHLY PRINT of 50 MILLION MAGAZINES (printed !!!). Again… That’s 50,000,000 PRINTED MAGAZINES per MONTH !!!
With this, they will have the MAGAZINES with the HIGHEST CIRCULATION in the WHOLE PLANET !!!
Come on, this MUST be Among the WW TOP 10 LIES EVER !!!!
That’s why I follow these guys… Their ability to Tell Lies is Impressive !!!! 🙂
Somebody might want to tell them the magazine industry is in decline…
They’ll have to come up with a better Ponzi cover story than that.
I tried to warn them (comments in Facebook and Youtube)… But, you know, they don’t want to be warned at all…. They simply deleted my comments 🙂
They are not “truth seekers” …hahaha
Roberto i would like to contact you in private but i don’t know how we can do it.
Hi Dragon, if you wish you can email me at:
HAL9000-2001@BOL.com.br
Regards.
I sent you an e-mail in spanish.
I’m getting multiple reports of “executives” (top-affiliates?) leaving or being terminated from Wish Club.
Treating the information as unconfirmed for now but I’ve had a few different sources report similar things so it seems something is up.
Here’s the gist of it from one reader:
They report credit card processing is currently broken and there’s also problems with payment delays and inaccuracies.
Again, treat this as unconfirmed for now.
Have you confirmed this?
I’m getting alot of posts in my FB page, inviting me to join WishClub…
my FB friends list is getting smaller by the day…lol
I’m sure as the “reality” of what’s happening with Telexfree starts to sink in some thick sculls of these leaders and promoters of other scams that they’re re thinking the fast money. Ummmm the option of jail, finacial and personal ruin may be a motivator to “GET A REAL JOB”
Their leader continues to claim they will have the best selling magazine WW, with 50 million copies per month ! What a liar !!!
New Compensation Plan 28/07/2014.
wishclub.com/wishpanel/publications_files/compensation_plan/plan_compensacion_20140728.pdf
Aw it’s in Scamanese.
I notice they’re still pushing the fictional magazines, so I’m guessing any changes were cosmetic.
You know it’s BS when 18 pages into the compensation plan document you still have NFI about the plan…
I see the usual affiliate investment packs, some crap about an energy drink and then binary payouts (based on pairing investments), unilevel commissions (paying out percentage of affiliate fees)… and that’s it.
Looks like they’ve just deployed the old binary investment model the survey scams used. Only this time round it’s a magazine and energy drink bundle.
And now Wish Club is moving its HQ from Madrid to Dubai, all of a sudden… This comes a few weeks after a big newspaper in Spain published an article mentioning the suspicious origins of this company (they started as a MLM that got closed by Brazilian justice). They are scammers ! And their leaders still insist on pushing those Magazines… As if someone would subscribe to them…
Any news on this scam?
Nothing on my end.
They are changing their name and their products… In other words, they are “re-launching” soon, in order to steal more money from stupid people…
…and their Magazine, by the way, is dead (not published any longer)…
Sounds like it’s well and truly collapsed then. Keep us posted and I’ll review the reboot if it ever eventuates.
I think 2015 is going to be the year of a alot of these TelexFree reload schemes going kaput.
bngworld.com is their new interface apparently