Project Lantern Review: Michael Faust’s secret Ponzi scheme
Project Lantern has no website or public presence. The company is promoted in secret.
Inspired Enterprises Ltd is the marketing entity responsible for the promotion of the project and interacting with users involved with the project. The Brand name is Project Lantern.
What Project Lantern does have is an affiliate login page, which is hosted at a specific domain as per the company’s FAQ:
What URLs are associated with the company?
The URL associated with this project is inspiredenterprises.club. The log in URL for users is inspiredenterprises.club/login. The URL for the Support Team is support.iebo.club.
The three executives behind Project Lantern are Michael Faust, Chris Thomson and Azli Noor.
Michael Faust (right) is a serial promoter of Ponzi schemes.
In his Project Lantern corporate bio, this is reduced to
36 years in business, 20 years of that working online.
Has developed referral networks compromising of tens of thousands of people in 100+ countries multiple times; founded, co-owned, and managed companies, and consulted internationally.
Through his Digital Tycoons team, Ponzi schemes Faust has promoted include USI-Tech, Ormeus Global and Wenyard.
Faust also promoted SilverStar Live, a trading scam that collapsed in 2019.
Owners Hassan Mahmoud, Candace Ross-Mahmoud and David Mayer, have each been sued by the CFTC for SilverStar Live related fraud.
Prior to the CFTC crackdown, Faust threatened BusinessForHome for suggesting SilverStar Live was committing securities fraud in the US.
According to his Facebook profile Faust, originally from Australia, is hiding out in Chonburi, Thailand.
There’s a few Chris Thomsons in the MLM industry. I wasn’t able to pin down Project Lantern’s Thomson specifically.
Azli Noor is based out of Malaysia. He doesn’t appear to have any MLM experience, at least nothing he’s willing to share publicly.
Read on for a full review of Project Lantern’s MLM opportunity.
Project Lantern’s Products
Project Lantern has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market Project Lantern affiliate membership itself.
Project Lantern’s Compensation Plan
Project Lantern affiliates invest in 0.01 BTC units. This is done on the promise of a 6.5% “monthly interest” ROI.
Project Lantern Affiliate Ranks
There are five affiliate ranks within Project Lantern’s compensation plan.
- 1 Star – sign up as a Project Lantern affiliate, invest and recruit one affiliate
- 2 Star – recruit two affiliates
- 3 Star – recruit three affiliates
- 4 Star – recruit four affiliates
- 5 Star – recruit five affiliates
Note to count towards rank qualification, recruited affiliates must have an active investment.
Referral Commissions
Project Lantern pays referral 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.
Project Lantern caps payable unilevel team levels at five.
Referral commissions are paid out as a percentage of bitcoin invested across these five levels based on rank
- 1 Stars earn 5% on level 1 (personally recruited affiliates)
- 2 Stars earn 5% on level 1 and 2% on level 2
- 3 Stars earn 5% on level 1, 2% on level 2 and 1% on level 3
- 4 Stars earn 5% on level 1, 2% on level 2 and 1% on levels 3 and 4
- 5 Stars earn 5% on level 1, 2% on level 2 and 1% on levels 3 to 5
ROI Match
Project Lantern pays a 5%-25% match on returns paid to personally recruited affiliates.
- 1 Stars earn a 5% ROI match
- 2 Stars earn a 10% ROI match
- 3 Stars earn a 15% ROI match
- 4 Stars earn a 20% ROI match
- 5 Stars earn a 25% ROI match
There is also a residual ROI Match, paid out via the same five-level deep unilevel team used to pay residual commissions (see above).
- 2 Stars earn a ROI match on level 1 (see above) and 10% on level 2
- 3 Stars earn a ROI match on level 1 (see above), 10% on level 2 and 5% on level 3
- 4 Stars earn a ROI match on level 1 (see above), 10% on level 2 and 5% on levels 3 and 4
- 5 Stars earn a ROI match on level 1 (see above), 10% on level 2 and 5% on levels 3 to 5
Joining Project Lantern
Project Lantern affiliate membership is tied to an initial minimum 0.03 BTC investment.
Conclusion
Project Lantern markets itself as
a unique, lucrative and sustainable way … to put funds to work, leading to a residual, passive monthly revenue stream, with the capacity to also build cash reserves (wealth).
You sign up, invest bitcoin and collect a passive 6.5% monthly ROI.
Rather than just be honest and call Project Lantern what it is, a passive investment opportunity, Michael Faust and the gang have come up with “debentures”.
For those unfamiliar with a Debenture, it works similarly to a Bond (an unsecured loan certificate), where you apply to loan the Project funds for a designated period and, in return, are paid monthly interest.
The Debenture interest payments yield 6.5% per month which is a very attractive outcome.
Breaking down Project Lantern’s pseudo-compliance bullshit;
- “the project” = Project Lantern
- debentures = investment contract
- loan = investment
- interest = returns
So what about those loans hey?
In simple terms, you are applying to loan the Company your Euro or Bitcoin (the Advance) and being paid monthly interest for the life of that loan, after which, the Advanced (loan) is returned to you.
For this Project your advance is put to work for 12 months and at the end of that 12 months the initial Advance loaned is returned to you, and the Debenture expires.
It’ s important to note that a Debenture is NOT an Investment or a Security.
This is an important distinction in terms of regulatory compliance.
The thing about pseudo-compliance is regulators don’t pay any attention to it.
Project Lantern is soliciting investment in bitcoin, on the promise of a passive 6.5% monthly ROI:
That’s not a loan, that’s an investment made on the expectation of an advertised return.
If Project Lantern was to represent itself as a company legally soliciting loans from consumers as debentures, they’d have to provide explicit details as to what they are doing with the money.
Instead all you get is the same “trading” Ponzi bullshit Michael Faust has been scamming people with for years.
While raising the necessary seed capital to fund our R&D Projects, all available liquidity will be put to work in various financial sectors including trading forex, cryptocurrency and commodities, where highly skilled traders generate profits which will enable us to pay the interest on Debentures initially as well as grow the seed capital for this Project.
Trading will occur in both the Forex and Cryptocurrency sectors with some done using algorithmic software and EAs as well as trading done manually by very experienced traders.
Project Lantern is a passive investment opportunity, which constitutes a securities offering.
Neither Project Lantern, Michael Faust, Chris Thomson or Azli Noor are registered to offer securities in any jurisdiction.
Thus at a minimum, Project Lantern is committing securities fraud.
The only reason MLM companies commit securities fraud is because they aren’t doing what they claim to be.
With respect to Project Lantern, that’d be generating returns through trading activities.
To further illustrate how ridiculous Project Lanterns business model is, interest rates are at record lows worldwide.
Why on Earth would you solicit investment from the public at 6.5% a month?
Even if you pretended Project Lantern was generating external revenue (over 6.5% a month to cover returns and commissions), it’d make far more sense to just apply for a ~1% annual loan and compound 6.5% a month to pay it off.
I mean that’s exactly what Project Lantern recommends its investors do:
Project Lantern is yet another Ponzi scheme run by at least one serial scammer. You hand over your bitcoin, returns are paid until recruitment inevitably tanks, then Michael Faust and friends do a runner.
The secrecy alone is enough to raise red flags. Throw in Faust’s fraudulent past, securities fraud and cute “debentures” pseudo-compliance, you know how this ends.
Update 7th February 2022 – Project Lantern has collapsed.
Michael Faust. Quite funny that his name is an anagram of “Thai fuel scam”.
Absolutely right when you call him a serial scammer.
Michael Faust must be one real ponzi bada$$ if BusinessForHome called him out. Didn’t they like Ruja?
Looks like Michael Faust needs to invent a weight loss program.
@ Dewey; LOL. One too many dinners with the Steynbergs or Marks families of MTI fame maybe. Perhaps they swap recipes with King Size Jayms of OneCoin
MLM weight-loss products? Why has no one thought of this before?
I was sent this a few weeks ago and signed up for information.
There were so many red flags having spotted Michael Faust, so ignored immediately.
Think he was prime mover in 2010 behind My Lekker Life, Lekker World and Lekker International too.
I have a bookmark for the opportunity (ha ha) and here is one of the blogs from then, which had a comment in 2013:
lekkerinternational.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/good-bye-my-lekker-life-hello-lekker-world/
BTW in South Africa “lekker” means tasty or pleasurable or very excellent.
Anyone know where to find Faust? He has eluded legal action thus far, time to change that.
I got burned with Project Goose when he failed to raise funds with Lantern.
Faust is hiding out in Thailand.
Thankyou Oz.
Project Lantern is promoted very happily and aggressively as well investing in it by a Graham Laurie at Cash Masters.com, obviously not aware or ignorant to what is on the “behindmlm.com website.
Hope someone lets him know maybe behindmlm.com will cheers.
I don’t know who Graham Laurie is but anyone promoting Project Lantern obviously knows it’s a Ponzi scheme.
A friend of mine contacted Graham Laurie a while ago about this. I can forward you the email if you like @Oz.
Unless Graham Laurie has particular significance I’m good. But thanks.
Graham Laurie was also promoting Hyperfund aggressively, until September of last year when he removed all links to it on his website. He recruited many people to Hyperfund and made/stole lots of money.
He has bashed BehindMLM on several occasions, claiming that you make up stories to earn advertising revenue.
He is basically a ponzi pimp with deep pockets, who claims to promote legitimate opportunities and doesn’t care whether they’re scams – as long as he makes money.
This has now collapsed. Logged in just now and all withdrawals have been suspended.
Utter criminals these guys are. Going to the police.
Any chance of a screenshot of the disabled notice?
Here you go:
ibb.co/PTJywJn
ibb.co/hRtysNL
Thanks Tony, much appreciated.