MPT Max Review: My Private Trade’s latest incarnation?
There is no information on the MPT Max website indicating who owns or runs the business.
The MPT Max website does have an “about us” page, however only the following vague information is provided:
MPT Max is a Williams Corporation brand.
When you trade with MPT Max, your counterpart is Williams Corporation Limited, Hong Kong.
Williams Corporation also manages MPT Max`s back office among other administrative tasks, and uses Simray AS (Simray AS) of Norway as its partner in processing transaction such as account fundings and withdrawals.
Established by veteran trading professionals, Williams Corporation empowers fast, secure and accurate trading execution for online foreign exchange businesses.
Simray AS appear to be a real company, who on their website claim to provide ‘trading technology for the finance industry‘.
In a warning issued to investors back in 2011, the Austrian Financial Market Authority wrote
Williams Corporation Ltd. (“My Private Trade”) is not authorised to carry out certain banking transactions requiring a licence in Austria. Trading for one’s own account or on behalf of others in financial futures contracts including equivalent instruments settled in cash as well as call and put options on the instruments listed in lit. a and d to f, including equivalent instruments settled in cash (futures and options business) pursuant to Art. 1 para. 1 no. 7 lit. c BWG is therefore not allowed.
My Private Trade appears to be an affiliate portal for Williams Corporation, with the company referring to its agents as affiliates.
It’s also likely what the “MPT” stands for in the company name “MPT Max”.
Things get murkier with regulators in Slovenia identifying My Private Trade as synonymous with Simray AS.
In 2010 the Slovenian Securities Market Agency (ATVP) issued their own warning against Simray AS:
Slovene Securities Market Agency is warning investors about activities of the company SIMRAY ASA.
SIMRAY ASA, which is offering their services thorough internet site “myprivatetrade.com”, has not obtained the Agency’s authorization according to Market in Financial Instruments Act (official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia 67/2007, 100/2007, 69/2008 and 40/2009) or any other securities law to carry out services in the financial instruments field in Slovenia.
SIMRAY ASA is not authorized under the MiFID directive to provide direct investment services and deals related to financial instruments on the territory of the Republic of Slovenia.
The Agency strongly urges investors considering dealing with company SIMRAY ASA to exercise the greatest possible caution before proceeding, bearing in mind the contents of this public notice.
So Simray AS is Williams Trade is My Private Trade is MPT Max. But who’s running the show?
Norwegian Wikipedia fills in the blanks:
My Private Trade is an Internet-based currency trading service operated in cooperation between the Norwegian company Simray AS and the Hong Kong -based Williams Corporation Ltd. The concept operated from Copenhagen and Dubai.
The company was founded by Ståle Fossberg and Morten Oseberg Andersen under the name Simray Holdings LLC, but later changed its name to Simray ASA and finally Simray AS.
Fossberg is a Norwegian radio worker and former co-owner of T5PC Travel who was affiliated (with the) pyramid game T5PC.
Andersen is also the president of Norwegian Business Group in the United Arab Emirates. Simray was also involved in online gambling concept Playroom4you which was discontinued in 2012.
In addition to offering its customers to make money on currency trading, it is also an income opportunity by referring new customers to the concept of business model multi-level marketing (MLM).
Several European countries have issued warnings to their citizens against placing money in the concept because it is not MiFID authorized.
On their websites rejects My Private Trade all these allegations and believes that these warnings is about misunderstanding of the business concept. They also deny that they engaged in pyramid schemes.
The authorities in Hong Kong have also warned Williams Corporation because they believe the company has no license to provide financial services.
Sure enough, a visit to the “legal” page on the MPT Max website reveals the following notice:
From time to time, MPT Max and its service providers Williams Corporations Ltd. and Simray AS receive enquiries from Financial Authorities about their operations and the services offered.
It is apparently not always clear the nature of this business and the services provided, but we are always happy to provide any information and clarification required.
However, in some rare cases our communications fail in such a way that financial authorities occasionally misinterpret the information we provide and believe that MPT Max and its service providers operate in a business sector that they do not.
In some extreme cases, the financial authorities even post a public warning indicating that we are offering services we are not actually offering.
MPT Max and its service providers do not offer services such as banking or futures or option trading.
When any financial authority inaccurately issues warnings against MPT Max offering such services, it results in negative and unjust publicity for MPT Max and its service providers.
If anyone becomes aware of any unjustified warnings, please contact us immediately so that our legal department can take action and try to clarify this with the relevant authority.
So with the above perhaps addressing the regulatory banking and options trading concerns, the question remains… is MPT Max, My Private Trade, Williams Corporation and Simray AS one big pyramid scheme?
Read on for a full review of the MPT Max MLM business opportunity.
The MPT Max Product Line
MPT Max has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market affiliate membership with the company itself.
Signing up as an affiliate with MPT Max provides access to Simray AS’s trading platform.
The MPT Max Compensation Plan
The MPT Max compensation plan revolves around signing up as an affiliate with MPT Max and then recruiting new affiliates.
Commissions in MPT Max are paid out using a 4×4 matrix.
A 4×4 matrix places an affiliate at the top of the matrix, with four positions available on level 1:
These initial four positions branch out into another four levels (level 2) and again twice more to make up levels 3 and 4.
Positions in the matrix are filled via the recruitment of affiliates, with commissions paid on their payment of affiliate fees or use of Simray AS’s trading platform.
MPT Max affiliates are charged €60 EUR a month to participate in the opportunity, with commissions paid out as a percentage of this fee as follows:
- level 1 – 4%
- level 2 – 8%
- level 3 – 16%
- level 4 – 32%
Note that the €60 EUR a month fee is waived if an affiliate has completed twelve or more trades in the previous month. The monthly percentage commission however is still paid out on these affiliates, regardless of whether they qualify for the fee-waive or not.
The same percentages are used to pay a 4 level deep commission on trading activity. Whether or not the commission is paid on the amount traded, any profit gained or any fees collected by Simray AS is unclear.
Joining MPT Trade
Affiliate membership with MPT Trade is €60 EUR a month.
As explained in the compensation plan analysis above, if an affiliate completes 12 or more trades in a month then the fee for the next month is waived.
Conclusion
I’m big believer in where there’s smoke there’s fire, and with warnings issued by multiple regulators and at least one of the founders having a history with a pyramid scheme – there’s probably something fishy going on behind the scenes.
At the very least the use of Williams Corporation in Hong Kong sticks out like a sore thumb for a business supposedly run out of Norway by a guy with connections in Dubai.
As for the Simray AS’s trading platform, whether it works or not I have no idea. Ditto how it integrates into the MPT Max compensation plan.
I’d assume if the affiliate makes money on a trade, then MPT Max share a cut of their fee as a commission. Paying out as a percentage of the amount traded makes little sense, so I’d be quite surprised to learn that was the case.
Looking deeper into the plan, basically one can ignore the trading altogether and treat MPT Max as a €60 EUR a month recruitment scheme.
You sign up, pay your €60 EUR a month and then earn commissions when you recruit new affiliates who do the same.
The waiving of the fee can be explained by twelve trades being the magical number either Simray AS collect in fees from an affiliate equal to €60 EUR, or what they collect from another party via their affiliate’s trading activity.
Either way €60 EUR is counted from each affiliate in the company wide matrix and paid out to affiliates who did the recruiting.
With nothing meanwhile being marketed to or sold to retail customers, that qualifies MPT Max as a pyramid scheme.
The offering of unregistered securities also looks set to become an issue, with recent marketing efforts by MPT Max mentioning “auto trades”:
Early 2015 we launch our Auto-trade. Auto-trade is an automatic trading program that was developed and tested for more than 10 years.
Expected profit = more than 10% per quarter!
Sign up, invest your money on an advertised “expected profit” and as long as everyone keeps paying their monthly fees – you get paid.
Interestingly enough, it appears Mortensen and Fossberg have previously tried this auto trade platform with The Opportunity Network (OPN):
OPN (originally Unaico), is a long-running recruitment-driven social media opportunity that’s struggled to take off since its inception years ago.
The addition of Simray AS’s auto trade platform in 2012 appears to have done little to boost OPN’s MLM business.
I predict should MPT Max take off, Slovenia, Austria and Hong Kong won’t be the only countries to issue regulatory warnings against them.
As with all pyramid schemes, once recruitment dries up so too will the monthly commissions. At this point those at the bottom of the scheme stop paying their monthly fees, meaning those above them no longer get paid.
They too then stop paying their fees and as this effect trickles up the company-wide genealogy, eventually an irrecoverable company-wide collapse is triggered.
I’m tipping that’s already happened at least once with My Private Trade, hence the recent rebranding as MPT Max and talk of auto trades.
So these guys offer to do “currency trades” for others, but refused to be called traders? What a bunch of weasels.
The only pyramid scheme information I found (in Norway) was a dead thread with 3 posts, from March 2014.
Simray AS seems currently to be a shell company with very little real activity, owned by other shell companies with very little real activity. It had some activity back in 2009 and 2010 = NOK 24 million in revenue in 2009 ($4 million). Revenue 2013 was NOK 328,000 ($55,000 in 2013).
Simray AS and Simrad AS are both probably meant to be sound-alikes to Simrad Optronics ASA, e.g. for the purpose of gaining some false credibility among investors in foreign markets.
SIMRAY AS, MANAGEMENT AND SHARE OWNERS
MANAGEMENT
CEO ___________ Eva Andersen Røraas (f 1955)
Chairman ______ Arne Haugseth (f 1947)
Board member __ Eigel Ingvar Thom (f 1962)
Board member __ Eva Andersen Røraas (f 1955)
SHARE OWNERS
Solbirs Ltd _______________ 497000 24.85%
William Corporation Ltd. __ 480000 24%
Abex Equipment ____________ 400000 20%
Left Lane _________________ 391230 19.56%
Simrad AS _________________ 196000 9.8%
Eric Moulin ________________ 20000 1%
Peter Vithus Jensen ________ 10000 0.5%
Unknown share owner _________ 5770 0.29%
SHARE CAPITAL
NOK 2 million ($270,000 current rate)
Pyramid scheme organizers in Norway have “learned the lesson”. Most of them will try to avoid being too visible in the local market. They will usually operate in other markets, and organize it via third countries.
They have also learned the lesson that investors will look at whether a company is registered. Investors will often interprete that as a “proof” of a legitimate business, e.g. “if it had been illegal, Norwegian authorities would immediately have shut it down”. 🙂
According to the history, Svein Ola Bråthen has tried to wipe out the controversial information in the Wikipedia article:
no.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=My_Private_Trade&diff=12681755&oldid=12680145
Bråthens involvment with MPT is unclear, but a quick Google search reveals this:
smaalenene.no/nyheter/article4225567.ece
I am an active client of MPTMAX and have only GOOD thing to report about MPTMAX.
The platform is user friendly, signals are sent out for 60€ per month and in my case I CAN USE THE PLATFORM FREE OF CHARGE, (12 trades required). You cab trade as low as from 60€ and further there is no fuss about it. Withdraw funds happens immediately, so no problems here.
What you write on your website AND use your own blog to ADVERTISE against MPTMAX is simply trying to ‘kill’ the competition. You are using 4 years old information which is completely irrelevant as well to attack MPTMAX.
Obviously your business is not running so well, otherwise you will invest your time in your own business and not in advertising AGAINST the competition. Shame on you. All other bloggers: try MPTMAX and see for yourself, before you judge anyone.
Stefan Desmet, active client MPTMAX
That’s not free, a portion of twelve suckers below you is put towards your participation bill. Someone is footing the bill.
Right, because BehindMLM is in serious competition with recruitment-driven pyramid scheme.
I used current information directly taken from the MPT Max website itself.
MPT Max offer no retailable products or services and all commissions are paid out on the recruitment of new affiliates.
That makes you (a butthurt) pyramid scheme scammer. Yawn.
PlanB4you, a mlm-scam that was covered here, is now working together with this scheme. If you enter MPT Max through planb4you, you get a bonus with MPT Max + PlanB4you superbricks + you get placed in the special “planb4you” matrix they have going on at MPT Max.
Irony: planb4you member is telling some of the Planb4you higher-ups on Facebook that they should watch out with MPT Max because he knows who’s behind it (and doesn’t trust him / has bad experience with him).
Hah I refreshed the Facebook page and his reactions were deleted already. Guess PlanB4you doesn’t tolerate criticism even on other scams.
It is now:
I can not agree with you.
The warnings that you show are not correct because they warn on activities that did not MPTmax. MPTmax offers Forex Trading and not the Stock exange or Future Options exange or any other type of banking products.
There is only a problem in the spirit of civil servant who do not do their job properly. Even if it’s staff members represent a great authority, nonetheless they have not done their job.
With regard to the commissions, they are a real job in MLM, not a subscription fee of €60. If you had you also done your job correctly you would have seen it.
€60 requested are a possibility to replace from time to time the 12 trades meet the month if you want to be qualified to receive commissions . Carrying trades offer important commissions and guaranteed the sustainability of MPTmax.
I invested a lot of my time to help people who join MPTmax, I offer a method of trading that helped MPTmax members realized a gain of 68% of their investmentin just 4 months. My tables proves it and you’ll never deny them.
Commissions and trading gains are paid in time without problem.
That you have created this site to warn people of scams is to your credit. But the doubt that you hover over MPTmax without a real survey, you simply search onthe internet and interpreting without knowing brings into disrepute the whole ofyour site and of this.
I invite you to really see what is MPTmax. You have my mail address, you cancontact me and I will answer bluntly.
The only thing I would ask at this point is to stay honest and recognise that youcould fool you.
Well to you.
^^ What does any of that have to do with paying 60 EUR and getting paid to recruit other affiliates who do the same?
We are not paid for recruiting other affiliates who are doing the same, you confuse everything.
We are paid on labor (in our case the trading) realize that people in our matrix.
It is simply MLM, it exists since 1895 if you think this is not legal, you are just 120 years late.
Yeah look chief, however you want to dress it up – I pay 60 EUR, which qualifies me to earn commissions when I recruit new MPT Max affiliates.
Simply put, I’m paid to recruit and there’s nothing legal about chain-recruitment schemes.
You do not pay if you recruit people.
What you say is false because you do not know what you mean.
I personally have never paid € 60 to receive my commissions. I can prove it with no problem.
I see daily commissions on trades made by my network. It is the same for everyone. There is an opportunity to qualify to collect commissions is to pay € 60 if you have not been able to achieve 12 trades in one month. This is exceptional and is not the goal. This is to allow such a person who is sick not to lose its committees.
But you can see evil everywhere, since that’s what you want. MPTmax is not a Ponzi scheme but a true MLM.
The problem is that you have decided otherwise and therefore whatever my answers you will always want to find against the foot to give you reason. You lose all credibilities by doing so.
So how much do you pay per trade? It ain’t free.
Come to think of it, are the 12 trades by you (i.e. PV) or it is by your downline (i.e. GV)? If it’s GV, there’s going to be a problem called “referral sales”. That’s illegal too.
NOLINK://www.mlmlaw.com/law-library/guides-reference/multilevel-marketing-primer/#referral
If you get 12 other people to trade and your dues are waived, that may be referral sales.
@DEP
Of course you pay, you just find other suckers to foot your membership bill. Somebody is pumping funds into the scheme so that you qualify to earn commissions on those you recruit.
In other words, you’re still getting paid to recruit new affiliates.
It’s a chain-recruitment scheme tacked onto a trading platform.
Because you and I both know you can’t weasel out of the fact that MPT Max pay recruitment commissions, thus making it a chain-recruitment driven scheme.
My cousin is registered with GTI-NET recently, they promised him a rent of 910 € per month for life.
My name is Abdulov, I work with various Russian organizations. We will invest in his business, since he promises a lifetime pension.
But if that were not right. We have already taken our information on the address of his gentlemen and their families we would not want him to disappear in nature with our money.
Their latest scam is cyrptocurrency pre-sales combined with a binary matrix. Just launched earlier this month. The company listed on credit card statements is TTP Norway and the phone number on the statement is for Stripe Payment Processor.
They claim to be operating in Hong Kong with an offices in the prestigious International Financial center Tower 2, yet they refused to provide me with a suite number. I wonder why? lol
They are working with Williams Corporation according the the website. Thanks to your blog, the Dubai connection is now clear, as R2B sent an email recently stating that payments were slow as the funds were being processed through Dubai.
Thank you again for this missing piece to the puzzle!
Cheers!
I forgot their crypto website url: r-2b.com
The TTP one is ttpnorway.com
Josef Tran just posted (a day or two ago) a video on Facebook where Ståle Fossberg is presented as the new CMO for Ormeus.
facebook.com/josef.tran
Great things is about to happen 😀
Speaking about Ormeus……. it is all a spiderweb…..
On the background they also have some “famous” puppet players, very well known as Juha Parhiala and the Steinkeller brothers.
Is true that steinklellers are in ORMEUS??
RE MPT MAX
As the relevant thread is over three years old, I thought it appropriate to mention some of the subscribers who took part in the last discussion:
I have been a client of MPT MAX for some time – gladly paying €60 per month as I’m a newbie to FX and like the simplicity of their Forex approach. I have no interest in the MLM side of their operation!
Due to problems with their “provider”, MPT MAX are now looking for a new one. In the meantime, the trading platform is no longer accessible and clients have been advised to withdraw all funds from their accounts until everything is running smoothly again.
Are there any current clients of MPT MAX who also subscribe to BehindMLM? Or any subscribers who may have some idea what’s happening?! For example, how long does it take to find a “provider”?!
Look forward to hearing from you!
Aj
If your that confident in the legitimacy of the company, have you tried asking them who the provider is and what the problem is?
There’s no legitimate reason for MPT Max to hide this information from their affiliates.