zeekrewards

Whether pegged to penny auctions, third-party travel affiliate deals, advertising credits, ebook libraries, health and nutrition products, casinos or what have you, for the most part the MLM “revenue-sharing” niche is dead.

Bar a few offshore companies based out of Hong Kong still taking affiliate investments, every other revenue-sharing based MLM company has either collapsed, stalled or voluntarily shut themselves down.

The reason for this of course is the SEC shutdown of Zeek Rewards, which pretty much cemented that the offering of revenue-sharing points in exchange for money, regardless of how it was described, boiled down to nothing more than a Ponzi scheme.

Under the MLM revenue-sharing model affiliates pump money into the scheme under a variety of guises, with affiliates who have previously deposited money into the scheme receiving a share of this money, typically by way of a daily payout (ROI).

Retail is usually attached to the model, however if affiliates are able to fund themselves is a negligible source of revenue, regardless of the product or service the opportunity attaches itself to.

On the rare few occasions a company has prevented affiliates from funding their own points, we’ve seen a general lack of interest from the industry and subsequent stalling (lack of revenue to pay out to those that participate) or outright failures (a previous incarnation of Bidify that was quickly dropped comes to mind).

Despite all of this however there are those that would have you believe the model is still viable.

The catch?

Secret patents that will provide ‘the right combination of legal and excitement‘, and also protect ‘protect the hard work, legal dollars and teams that have invested so much‘ into the model.

Zeek Rewards CEO Paul Burks was notorious for claiming the act of him personally deciding how much of a daily ROI percentage he would pay out each day was a “proprietary secret”.

Here we go again…

In the latest ZTeamBiz email, dated October 29th, Robert Craddock reveals an upcoming revenue-sharing MLM opportunity he’s “real excited” about.

The company I’m real excited about is one the owner has a 30 year plus history in this industry, has a huge personal wealth prior to starting this company, employed quality teams in legal, web design, operations and customer service that is top notch.

I’m asking for a corporate bio from them and will be posting it sometime next week, as I want to provide only the facts and not fluff.

Other than the filing of super secret patents however, Craddock fails to directly address or explain how this latest revenue-sharing opportunity will not just be yet another MLM revenue-sharing investment opportunity failure.

robert-craddockWhat Craddock (right) does reveal however is that he’s

had the opportunity to review the program, meet with the owner, speak with most all the key leaders and have even discussed the key parts with several attorneys that specialize in SEC litigation.

Right. Meanwhile here’s the real take away from Craddock’s update:

This new compensation program is one the SEC is unaware of and
can confuse it as the sale of unregistered securities.

The SEC merely “confusing” the shuffling of affiliate money via a Ponzi points compensation plan as mere “confusion” with that of a Ponzi scheme, how convenient.

The fact of the matter though is that, regardless of how they do it, if this new opportunity takes affiliate money and simply shuffles it around to those who have previously deposited money, via way of a points based system, it too will nothing more than a thinly disguised Ponzi scheme.

The only people who would appear to be confused about this are Craddock and anybody else who hopes the SEC will look at things differently a second time around.

Taken from various paragraphs in Craddock’s updates, I’ll leave you with one last “moment of zen”:

Now that 14 months have passed from that dark day in August 2012, we can all count the companies that sprang up, promised the world, compared themselves to Zeek and in the end they took a lot of money, and have closed up, leaving a lot of people shocked and confused.

There is one company that popped up that on the surface sounds like a great idea, captured everyone attention with the catchy videos, materials, and compensation plan.

This company duped many including myself and the ones left are like the kids still thinking Santa is going to come down the chimney on Christmas night.

Well if we just looked close enough we would have seen the owners have criminal records, a history of defrauding good people, a published corporate office that if you pull it up on Google earth it is nothing more than a private mail box store, and last and this is a big one, no one outside of a handful of people have even been to their office which measures close to 16 X 25 about 400 SQ. FT.

Now that would not be that big of a red flag as this is a startup and everyone on has to start somewhere, but the biggest flag is the number of people that have requested a refund and after months of stalling tactics the people are still waiting.

I guess some people just never learn…

 

Update 8th November 2013 – No upate from Craddock this week on his “really good” opportunity, however he has extended a rather curious offer:

Folks, most of you are waiting for the claims process the receiver for Rex Venture Group has started. Others are looking for new opportunities.

For the ones that are looking for information to complete the claims process with the receiver, like missing username or email used with Zeek Rewards. I wanted to extend an offer to assist anyone here with that request.

If you email me at (email removed) and clearly state your request, I will be glad to assist you. I need your name, address used when you signed up for Zeek, and email you may have used.

We will cross reference our database and 99.9 % of the time I have that data and can provide you the username or multiple usernames you may have used for Zeek Rewards.

I wonder if only those who send in an email get pitched on anything. And I also wonder whether the Receiver knows Craddock has a “99.9%” complete Zeek Rewards database… perhaps it might be of some use?