Paraiba provides no information on its website about who owns or runs the company.

Paraiba’s website domain (“paraiba.world”) was privately registered on September 16th, 2019.

In an attempt to appear legitimate, Paraiba provides an incomplete corporate address in the Comoro Islands.

The Comoro Islands are a series of small islands off the south-east coast of Africa.

Needless to say Paraiba has no physical business operations there.

Paraiba marketing material cites Erich Ely as CEO of the company.

Ely (right) is supposedly from Germany. Possibly due to language-barriers, I was unable to put together an MLM history.

 

Update 7th September 2020 – BehindMLM reader PassingBy has uncovered that prior to founding Paraiba, Erich Ely was a German promoter of the OneCoin Ponzi scheme.

PassingBy also uncovered Paraiba received a securities fraud notice from BaFin in June. /end update

 

At the time of publication Paraiba appears to be primarily marketed in Honduras. Alexa cites Honduras as the only notable source of traffic to Paraiba’s website (43%).

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.

Paraiba’s Products

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

Paraiba’s Compensation Plan

Paraiba affiliates invest $25 or more on the promise of an advertised daily return.

  • invest up to $49,999 and receive 0.3% a day
  • invest $50,000 or more and receive 0.5% a day

Return are paid for 100 days, after which the initially invested amount is also returned (total ROI: 130%/150%).

Note that to qualify for commissions, a Paraiba affiliate must have an active investment of $100 or more.

Recruitment Commissions

Paraiba affiliates earn commissions on funds invested by personally recruited affiliates.

Recruitment commission rate are calculated based on the number of personally recruited affiliates:

  • recruit 1 to 4 affiliates and receive a 0.05% recruitment commission rate
  • recruit 5 to 9 affiliates and receive a 0.1% recruitment commission rate
  • recruit 10 to 19 affiliates and receive a 0.2% recruitment commission rate
  • recruit 20 or more affiliates and receive a 0.3% recruitment commission rate

Note that in order to count towards recruitment commission qualification, personally recruited affiliates must invest at least $100.

Residual Commissions

Paraiba pays residual commissions via a unilevel compensation structure.

A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):

If any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.

If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.

There doesn’t appear to be any unilevel team level restrictions, with residual commissions paid on the full unilevel team.

Residual commission rates are calculated based on the following qualification criteria:

  • invest $1000 and recruit 1 to 4 affiliates who also invest $1000 or more each = 0.01% residual commission rate
  • maintain a $1000 investment and recruit 5 to 9 affiliates who’ve also invested $1000 or more each = 0.02% residual commission rate
  • maintain a $1000 investment and recruit 10 to 19 affiliates who’ve also invested $1000 or more each = 0.03% residual commission rate
  • maintain a $1000 investment and recruit 20 or more affiliates who’ve also invested $1000 or more each = 0.04% residual commission rate

Rank Achievement Bonus

There are six affiliate ranks within Paraiba’s compensation plan.

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

  • Yellow – personally invest $1000, recruit at least one affiliate and generate $1000 or more in personally recruited affiliate investment volume
  • Blue – personally invest $5000, recruit two to four affiliates (two must be Yellow) and generate $2000 or more in personally recruited affiliate investment volume
  • Green – personally invest $10,000, recruit five to nine affiliates (one must be Blue) and generate $5000 or more in personally recruited affiliate investment volume
  • Purple – personally invest $15,000, recruit ten to nineteen affiliates (two must be Green) and generate $10,000 or more in personally recruited affiliate investment volume
  • Red – personally invest $20,000, recruit 20 or more affiliates (three must be Purple) and generate $20,000 or more in personally recruited affiliate investment volume
  • Paraiba – personally invest $50,000, maintain 20 personally recruited affiliates (five must be Red) and maintain $20,000 or more in personally recruited affiliate investment volume

Rank Achievement Bonuses paid out upon qualifying for the above ranks are as follows:

  • qualify at Yellow and receive $10
  • qualify at Blue and receive $100
  • qualify at Green and receive $1000
  • qualify at Purple and receive $5000
  • qualify at Red and receive $15,000
  • qualify at Paraiba and receive $25,000

Note that these are one-time bonuses.

Pool Share

Paraiba takes 0.35% of company-wide invested funds and places them into seven bonus pools.

Each pool is split 0.05% and paid out daily as per the following qualification criteria:

  • Pool 1 – personally invest $1000, recruit at least one affiliate and generate $1000 in total personally recruited affiliate investment
  • Pool 2 – personally invest $5000, recruit at least three affiliates and generate $5000 in total personally recruited affiliate investment
  • Pool 3 – maintain a $5000 personal investment, recruit at least five affiliates and generate $15,000 in total personally recruited affiliate investment
  • Pool 4 – personally invest $10,000, recruit at least ten affiliates and generate $35,000 in total personally recruited affiliate investment
  • Pool 5 – personally invest $15,000, recruit at least fifteen affiliates and generate $95,000 in total personally recruited affiliate investment
  • Pool 6 – personally invest $20,000, recruit at least twenty affiliates and generate $180,000 in total personally recruited affiliate investment
  • Pool 7 – personally invest $50,000, maintain at least twenty personally recruited affiliates and generate $500,000 in total personally recruited affiliate investment

Joining Paraiba

Paraiba affiliate membership is free.

To qualify for commissions however, a minimum $100 active investment is required.

Paraiba investment terms expire every 100 days. Reinvestment is required to continue earning.

Conclusion

Paraiba markets itself as a “unique private bank”. Beyond a shell incorporation for “Unique Private Bank” in Moheli (one of the Comoro Islands), that is meaningless drivel.

I’m not even going to get into the financial regulatory ramifications of pretending to be a bank, because beneath the marketing pitch Paraiba is your typical MLM crypto Ponzi scheme.

Paraiba represents it generates return revenue via cryptocurrency trading.

No evidence of trading is provided. Nor is there any evidence Paraiba uses external revenue of any kind to pay advertised returns.

Furthermore by offering passive returns, Paraiba is offering a security.

Securities in Honduras are regulated by the Central Bank of Honduras. Paraiba provides no evidence it has registered its securities offering with the Central Bank of Honduras, or any financial regulator for that matter.

This means that, at a minimum, Paraiba is committing securities fraud and operating illegally. Add banking fraud to that, and we’re still not done.

As it stands the only verifiable source of revenue entering Paraiba is new investment.

Using new investment to pay affiliates a daily return makes Paraiba a Ponzi scheme.

As with all MLM Ponzi schemes, once affiliate recruitment dries up so too will new invesmtent.

This will starve Paraiba of ROI revenue, eventually prompting a collapse.

The math behind Ponzi schemes guarantees that when they collapse, the majority of participants lose money.