crowd-rising-logoThere is no information on the Crowd Rising website indicating who owns or runs the business.

Rather than disclose management details, Crowd Rising instead only provide the following:

Crowd Rising is a semi-automated system created by a group of 5 individuals who are funding and Founding members referred to as the 5 Horsemen.

The Crowd Rising website domain (“crowdrising.net”) was registered on the 26th of March 2016, with Gerhard Rempel listed as the owner. A residential address in Manitoba, Canada is also provided.

gerhard-rempel-admin-fast-perpetual-cash-cycloneRempel (right) first appeared on BehindMLM’s radar back in 2013, as co-owner of Belizers.

Belizers, now long since collapsed,  saw affiliates invest between $10 and $25 on the promise of an advertised 150% ROI.

In mid-2015 Rempel resurfaced as the admin of Fast Perpetual Cash Cyclone. Also collapsed, Fast Perpetual Cash Cyclone was an ad-credit Ponzi scheme.

Rempel purportedly launched the scam to ‘raise funds to get surgery to sow and patch up (his) nasty groin hernia‘.

Read on for a full review of the Crowd Rising MLM business opportunity.

The Crowd Rising Product Line

Crowd Rising has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market Crowd Rising affiliate membership itself.

The Crowd Rising Compensation Plan

Crowd Rising sees affiliates purchase $20 positions in a 5×10 matrix.

A 5×10 matrix places an affiliate at the top of the matrix, with five positions directly under them (level 1):

5x5-matrix-mlm-compensation-plan

These initial five positions form the first level of the matrix. The second level of the matrix is generated by splitting each of the first five positions into another five positions each (25 positions).

Subsequent levels of the matrix are generated in the same manner, with each level of the matrix housing five times as many positions as the previous level.

In total, a complete 5×10 matrix has 12,207,030 positions.

Positions in the matrix are filled via recruitment of new Crowd Rising affiliates, with each $20 signup filling one position in the matrix.

Funds are gifted between Crowd Rising affiliates within the matrix.

An affiliate starts by gifting $20 to the affiliate who recruited them. This qualifies them to receive $20 from five subsequently recruited affiliates.

Once the first level of their matrix is filled, they then need to gift another $40 to the affiliated who recruited them.

In this manner all ten levels of the matrix are unlocked as follows:

  • level 1 – gift $20 to your upline and receive $20 from five subsequently recruited affiliates
  • level 2 – gift $40 to your upline and receive $40 from 25 affiliates
  • level 3 – gift $60 to your upline and receive $60 from 125 affiliates
  • level 4 – gift $100 to your upline and receive $100 from 625 affiliates
  • level 5 – gift $200 to your upline and receive $200 from 3125 affiliates
  • level 6 – gift $300 to your upline and receive $300 from 15,625 affiliates
  • level 7 – gift $400 to your upline and receive $400 from 78,125 affiliates
  • level 8 – gift $500 to your upline and receive $500 from 390,625 affiliates
  • level 9 – gift $700 to your upline and receive $700 from 1,953,125 affiliates
  • level 10 – gift $990 to your upline and receive $990 from 9,765,625 affiliates

Joining Crowd Rising

Affiliate membership with Crowd Rising is tied to the purchase of at least one $20 matrix position.

Conclusion

The rhetoric on the Crowd Rising website is similar to the cash gifting scheme MMM Global before it:

(Crowd Rising) is not a Company or a Business or a Corporation.

The Crowd Rising System is not owned by any one individual.

MMM Global was essentially the same concept, only it exclusively used bitcoin and was run by a convicted Russian criminal.

MMM Global collapsed last month. Around the time the Crowd Rising website domain was registered, MMM Global affiliates were experiencing trouble withdrawing funds out of the scheme.

In Crowd Rising marketing videos on YouTube, Pete Redekop identifies himself as one of the “five horsemen” behind Crowd Rising.

On March 31st, 2016, Redekop uploaded a video to his YouTube channel titled “Zewang English support, how to confirm a GH Get Help”.

Zewang is another cash gifting scheme, again modeled on MMM Global.

On April 3rd, 2016, Rempel uploaded a video titled “CrowdRising migration tutorial”. The video instructs iCharity Club affiliates on how to “migrate” over to Crowd Rising.

iCharity Club is… you guessed it, yet another cash gifting scheme.

If you dug deeper there are likely links between cash gifting schemes among all five founders of Crowd Rising.

One or more were almost certainly involved in MMM Global, with the scheme’s collapse having likely prompted the launch of their own reload scam.

Under the guise of crowdfunding, Crowd Rising offer up a cash gifting/Ponzi hybrid.

Affiliates gift $20 to the affiliate who recruited them, which in turn qualifies them to receive $20 from subsequently recruited affiliates.

There are no refunds allowed since all payment are sent directly from one person’s processor to another person’s processor.

Affiliates paying affiliates in MLM is cash gifting, which is illegal the world over.

Using a matrix, funds from newly invested affiliates are funneled up to Gerhard Rempel and friends, as each new level of the matrix requires a portion of gifted funds to be passed up the company matrix.

Sitting at the top of the Crowd Rising company matrix are a bunch of preloaded positions belonging to Rempel and his fellow admins.

This makes the following statement from the Crowd Rising FAQ all the more disingenuous:

The donation payments are NOT collected by the administrator nor are the payments automated by the system, rather sent directly and personally from one member to another member, from one member’s payment processor to another member’s payment processor.

Affiliates do pay eachother, that much is true, but the statement that Crowd Rising administrators do not “collect funds” is patently false.

Through participation fees charged to unlock matrix levels, the admin(s) of cash gifting schemes like Crowd Rising always receive the largest share of funds deposited into the scheme.

This is pure math, based on the fact they sit at the top of the company-wide matrix which, at any given time, has the most levels unlocked and positions filled.

As with the collapse of MMM Global, the majority of participants lose out. This is probably what happened to Rempel and friends, and so here we are with Crowd Rising – a reload scheme launched in an attempt to recoup their losses.

Guess who they expect will foot the bill?