Melius operates in the forex and cryptocurrency MLM niches.

The company provides corporate addresses in Dubai and the UK on their website.

The UK address is a virtual office, I wasn’t able to verify the provided Dubai address.

Somewhat curiously, early Melius marketing material claimed the company had a third office in the US state of Nevada:

Melius has since removed any reference to their Nevada corporation and office from their website and marketing material.

Speaking of Melius’ website, on it the company identifies Jeremy Prasetyo as CEO and co-founder of the company.

Melius’ other co-founders are not disclosed.

As far as I can tell, Melius is Prasetyo’s first MLM venture as an executive.

Prasetyo’s social media profiles suggest he has spent much of the past year speaking at and promoting various cryptocurrency events (non-MLM).

Read on for a full review of the Melius MLM opportunity.

Melius Products

Melius markets forex and cryptocurrency trading package subscriptions:

  • Melius Adventure – Forex Mastery Course, trading strategies, analysis daily live sessions and a video library, $450 for 90 days
  • Melius Escape – blockchain course, coin analysis, weekly coin magazine, daily live cryptocurrency trading sessions and a video library, $450 for 90 days
  • Melius Experience – combines Melius Adventure and Melius Escape, $600 for 90 days, $999 for 180 days or $1800 for 365 days

As far as I can tell there is no passive ROI opportunity within Melius Adventure or Melius Escape themselves.

There is an iGoTrade app bundled with any Melius subscription, through which affiliates can set trade with signals provided by Melius (copy and paste).

Melius also markets “GoPro Forex” on a $3000 90 day subscription.

Each GoPro Forex subscription supposedly provides access to a $50,000 trading account, through which a passive ROI can be received (50% of the total ROI generated by the account).

The Melius Compensation Plan

Melius pays commissions on subscription purchases by retail customers and recruited affiliates.

Note that to qualify for commissions detailed below, each Melius affiliate must maintain active qualification.

To be and remain active, a Melius affiliate must invest and/or convince others to invest 120 PV worth of funds each month.

The Melius compensation plan doesn’t specify a dollar amount for 120 PV.

Melius Affiliate Ranks

There are eleven affiliate ranks within the Melius compensation plan.

Along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:

  • IBO – sign up as a Melius affiliate
  • Executive Team Trainer – recruit and maintain two active IBOs and generate 120 GV a month in weaker binary team volume
  • Executive Team Leader – recruit and maintain four active IBOs or two Executive Team Trainers and generate 1500 GV a month in weaker binary team volume
  • Executive Coordinator – recruit and maintain four active Executive Team Trainers or two Executive Team Leaders and generate 5000 GV a month in weaker binary team volume
  • Executive Director – recruit and maintain two Executive Coordinators and generate 15,000 GV a month in weaker binary team volume
  • Senior Executive Director – recruit and maintain two Executive Directors and generate 30,000 GV a month in weaker binary team volume
  • Vice President – recruit and maintain two Senior Executive Directors and generate 150,000 GV a month in weaker binary team volume
  • Senior Vice President – recruit and maintain two Vice Presidents and generate 300,000 GV a month in weaker binary team volume
  • Ambassador – recruit and maintain two Senior Vice Presidents and generate 1,000,000 GV a month in weaker binary team volume
  • Senior Ambassador – recruit and maintain two Ambassadors and generate 2,000,000 GV a month in weaker binary team volume
  • Crown Ambassador – recruit and maintain three Senior Ambassadors and generate 5,000,000 GV a month in weaker binary team volume

Recruitment and Retail Commissions

Melius affiliates are paid a 20% commission on funds invested by retail customers and recruited affiliates.

An indirect 10% commission is paid on investment by second level retail customers and recruited affiliates.

Residual Commissions

Melius pays residual commissions via a binary compensation structure.

A binary compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a binary team, split into two sides (left and right):

The first level of the binary team houses two positions. The second level of the binary team is generated by splitting these first two positions into another two positions each (4 positions).

Subsequent levels of the binary team are generated as required, with each new level housing twice as many positions as the previous level.

Positions in the binary team are filled via direct and indirect recruitment of affiliates. Note there is no limit to how deep a binary team can grow.

At the end of each week Melius tallies up new investment on both sides of the binary team.

Melius affiliates are paid a 10% residual commission on funds invested in their weaker binary team side.

After the weekly residual commission is paid out, paid investment volume is flushed from both sides of the binary team.

Leftover volume on the stronger binary team side carries over into the following week.

Note that to qualify for residual commissions, each Melius affiliate must recruit and maintain two active affiliates (one placed on both sides of the binary team).

The following weekly residual commission caps also apply:

  • Executive Team Trainers can earn up to $4000
  • Executive Team Leaders can earn up to $8000
  • Executive Coordinators can earn up to $16,000
  • Executive Directors can earn up to $20,000
  • Senior Executive Directors can earn up to $30,000
  • Vice Presidents can earn up to $40,000
  • Senior Vice Presidents can earn up to $160,000
  • Ambassadors can earn up to $400,000
  • Senior Ambassadors can earn up to $1,000,000
  • Crown Ambassadors can earn up to $2,000,000

Matching Bonus

Executive Coordinator and higher ranked Melius affiliates qualify for a Matching Bonus.

The Matching Bonus is paid out on residual commissions earned by personally recruited affiliates.

  • Executive Coordinators earn a 10% match
  • Executive Directors earn a 15% match
  • Senior Executive Directors earn a 20% match
  • Vice Presidents earn a 25% match
  • Senior Vice Presidents earn a 30% match
  • Ambassadors earn a 35% match
  • Senior Ambassadors earn a 40% match
  • Crown Ambassadors earn a 50% match

Rank Achievement Bonuses

Melius reward affiliates who qualify at the Executive Director and higher ranks as follows:

  • qualify as an Executive Director and receive a “holiday retreat”
  • qualify as a Senior Executive Director and receive a Rolex watch
  • qualify as a Vice President and receive a Porsche Macan SUV
  • qualify as a Senior Vice President and receive a Bentley or Audi R8
  • qualify as an Ambassador and receive a Ferrari or Lamborghini Huracan
  • qualify as a Senior Ambassador and receive a Lamborghini Aventador
  • qualify as a Crown Ambassador and receive a “dream house” or $1 million dollars

Leadership Global Pool Bonuses

Melius take 3% and 5% of company-wide investment volume and respectively place the funds into a President and Ambassador Pool.

Vice President and Senior Vice Presidents earn a share of the President Pool.

Ambassador and higher ranked affiliates earn a share of the Ambassador Pool.

Shares in both pools are paid out weekly.

Joining Melius

Melius affiliate membership is $45.

Conclusion

Let’s cut to the chase, Melius’ lower tier subscriptions are designed with one goal in mind – to get punters to fork over $3189 for a GoProForex subscription.

The notion that Melius is handing over $50,000 trading accounts for $3189 is absurd.

Even more so when you consider the holder of the account can request it be doubled ($100,000, $200,000) every time they increase the account by 10%.

This is supposedly capped at a million dollars, begging the question – where is this money coming from?

If Melius had access to that kind of capital and was able to auto-trade successfully, why would they be wasting their time shilling access for a few thousand?

In the lower subscription tiers there’s no direct trading, but I believe through the iGoTrade app that passive trading is possible.

This drags all tiers of Melius’ MLM opportunity into unregistered securities territory, as the company isn’t registered to offer securities in any jurisdiction it operates in.

On the trading side of things, Melius represents affiliates and retail customers will be “learning from industry experts”.

The two names provided are Brad Alexander and Jonathan Morgan.

According to a May 2017 Finance Magnates article, Brad Alexander signed up CEO of FX Large a year and a half ago.

FX Large appears to have since collapsed. The company’s website has so little traffic visiting it that Alexa doesn’t even bother to rank it.

Jonathan Morgan’s LinkedIn profile cites him as a day trader for Shield Wall Trading.

Shield Wall Trading’s website is little more than a graphic and Morgan’s email address. It is also unranked by Alexa.

Yet these are supposedly the two geniuses Melius are counting on to train subscribers to the point Melius is willing to hand over the keys to a $50,000 trading account (which they swear is not a demo account).

Unfortunately Melius’  insurmountable regulatory non-compliance overshadows the company’s token effort at pseudo-compliance.

Retail subscriptions are offered with no retail volume requirement, it’s clear Melius’ compensation plan is merely there to incentivize affiliate recruitment.

To operate legally Melius would need to register its securities offering in every jurisdiction it operates in. Considering Melius claims to be active in 160 countries, that’s a lot of jurisdictions.

Registering with regulators would in turn see Melius provide full disclosure regarding the source of its trading education, iGoTrade app, claimed $50,000 trading accounts and anything else pertaining to use of a Melius subscription to generate a trading ROI.

One particularly important disclosure I couldn’t find anywhere was what if a Melius affiliate blows through the entire $50,000 trading account.

Unfortunately rather than operate legally, Melius appears to have chosen to targeting victims in third-world countries.

As I write this Alexa cites Nigeria (56%), Benin (10%) and Togo (3%) as the top sources of traffic to the Melius website.

Spearheading these efforts are the brothers Monir and Moyn Islam:

Originally from the UK, after scamming people out of millions in OneCoin, the Islam brothers now spend most of their time hiding out in Dubai.

Which is coincidentally where Melius claim it operates from.

On his LinkedIn profile Jeremy Prasetyo cites his location as Frankfurt, Germany. Gee, I wonder who Melius’ other co-founders could be…

In summary, Melius is yet another dodgy MLM company specifically targeting low-hanging fruit across Africa…

Here we go again.

 

Update 6th July 2020 – Melius collapsed in the first half of 2020. As of late May/early June, the company has been rebooted as Be.