Americans Serving Americans are extremely coy about the business opportunity side of the business.

A visit to the Americans Serving Americans website reveals a lot of “coming soon” messages. What is presented is a “movement” marketing pitch, complete with Trump’esque red caps, fundraising, franchisees, investment plans, sponsorships…

ASA’s Mission is to raise billions of dollars, through fun and exciting fund-raising events as well as commercial businesses, in order to provide hope, financial relief, and job opportunities to millions of Americans.

There’s a lot to digest and underneath it, the opportunity to make money.

Today we take a look into Americans Serving Americans’ income opportunity.

Americans Serving Americans are based out of Georgia in the US. The company is headed up by Vice-President David Ashby.

In 2010 Ashby (right) was promoting The Bold Approach pyramid scheme. In 2012 he started promoting another pyramid scheme, Penny Matrix.

Other than running something called “Team Fam mini banks” in 2013 and promising “something big is coming” over the past few years on Facebook, Ashby doesn’t appear to be recently active in the MLM community.

Ashby serves as the public face of Americans Serving Americans. If anyone is above him within the company’s corporate structure it is not publicly disclosed.

Before signing up as an affiliate, Americans Serving Americans makes you take an “ASA Certification Course”. This is done through the company’s “ASA University” website.

Americans Serving Americans provide those that complete the course with an “access code”, which along with $299 is required to sign up as an affiliate.

Americans Serving Americans refers to new affiliates as “candidates”. And this is where it gets weird.

Candidate affiliates have to decide what level of “ASA government” they wish to run for.

Affiliates can opt to run as a delegate, a house representative, a senator, a mayor or a governor.

Whether there’s any additional fees attached to any of these roles is unclear. What we do know however is that each role is attached to qualification criteria.

This qualification criteria (referred to as a “campaign”)  pertains to fundraising, advertising and community service monthly quotas.

Fundraising sees an Americans Serving Americans affiliate set up a fundraiser for the company.

In exchange for soliciting funds from the general public, an Americans Serving Americans affiliate hands out little cards with a corresponding dollar amount on them.

These cards have a QR code that can be scanned. The website the code redirects to a website that the holder can direct the dollar amount on the card to.

Funds are directed to “entrepreneurs”. One example provided in an Americans Serving Americans marketing video is “William”.

William receives $50,000 to fund a beverage that purportedly aids heroin addicts with cravings. David Ashby claims the Americans Serving Americans will help distribute and market the product, in exchange for a percentage of sales revenue.

Whether Americans Serving Americans affiliates can nominate themselves as entrepreneurs is unclear.

A Facebook post by David Ashby dated 19th February certainly seems to suggest so:

In 2016, the two Presidential Candidates collectively raised approximately 2.4 BILLION Dollars (not to mention what their parties also raised). That was enough money to give 120,000 Households a check for $20,000.

Would a check for $20,000 have made your Year 2016 much better? The politicians raise money for themselves. Who’s raising money for “We The People?” Who’s raising money for you?

Thousands of people are coming together to raise money for you!

Americans Serving Americans affiliates raising money for other Americans Serving Americans affiliates sounds an awful lot like cash gifting to me.

Other “projects” raised funds can be directed to include a Krispy Kreme in Texas, Little Caesars in Florida and Subway in Georgia. At the time of publication these projects have 16 days remaining and have as of yet received no funds.

One example featured on David Ashby’s Facebook page is a car wash. Footage of the event shows multiple Americans Serving Americans affiliates washing cars in a carpark.

Once campaign qualification criteria is met, Americans Serving Americans affiliates qualify for “election”. This grants them access to an annual “financial relief check”.

This check is touted as a full-time or part-time income equivalent for Americans Serving Americans affiliates.

The problem as I see it, is that the only source of revenue entering Americans Serving Americans are affiliate fees and funds raised from the general public.

External revenue can be generated via funded projects, but I’m as of yet to see any proof or documented accounting.

Moreover, if Americans Serving Americans affiliates can nominate themselves as entrepreneurs, there’s a possibility that affiliate fees and funds raised will be used to pay affiliates.

This is probably already happening with the annual financial relief check, which runs the risk of being pyramid recruitment if there’s any recruitment requirements attached to the relief check qualification criteria.

Personally I can’t see why Americans Serving Americans wouldn’t disclose this information openly if everything was above-board.

Whereas generally there’s a sense of “something’s not right here”, in some aspects of the business there does appear to be a genuine attempt at legitimacy.

In the “investment plans” section of the Americans Serving Americans website, for example, investors are able to invest a minimum of $10,000 with the company.

Pending registration with the SEC however, Americans Serving Americans are as of yet not accepting investment.

We are not accepting investments at this time. We must complete necessary steps with the S.E.C. Once we are fully ready to accept investors, we will release a Detailed Video explaining our different Investment Plans.

Overall though it sounds as if downline funds are being used to pay “elected” affiliates. The whole government angle is convoluted, but underneath it is an income opportunity that does appear to pool funding over multiple levels.

At the time of publication Americans Serving Americans claim to be in prelaunch. Regardless of whether the company wishes to be taken seriously as an income opportunity, full disclosure needs to happen.

As it stands affiliates are expected to take a course, hand over $299 and then raise money. Providing specific information to people only after they’ve handed over $299 is not a reputable business practice.

There is currently no launch date provided on the Americans Serving Americans website. Clearly there’s a lot to be done before then.