Smart Desktop AI Review: Automated spam pyramid scheme
Smart Desktop AI, aka AI Profit, fails to provide ownership or executive information on its website.
Smart Desktop AI’s website domain (“smartdesktop.ai”), was privately registered on an unknown date
Smart Desktop AI marketing features present Corey Price as an owner of the company.
Price claims he’s working with other “owner guys” who he doesn’t reference by name. Price hiding who he’s working with is an MLM due-diligence red flag.
Price seems to have a digital marketing background. In addition to running Smart Desktop AI, Price is also attached to Fundwise.
Fundwise pitches itself on the premise of acquiring $360,000 “you don’t have to pack back”.
Prior to launching Smart Desktop AI Price was promoting Local City Places and TranzactCard.
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.
Smart Desktop AI’s Products
Smart Desktop AI has no retailable products or services.
Affiliates are only able to market Smart Desktop AI affiliate membership itself.
Smart Desktop AI’s Compensation Plan
Smart Desktop AI affiliates sign up for $97 a month. Commissions are paid when they recruit others who do the same.
Smart Desktop AI 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.
Smart Desktop AI caps payable unilevel team levels at ten.
Referral commissions are paid as a percentage of affiliate subscription fees paid across these ten levels as follows:
- level 1 (personally recruited affiliates) – 20%
- level 2 – 10%
level 3 – 5% - levels 4 to 6 – 3%
- levels 7 and 8 – 2%
- levels 9 and 10 – 1%
Joining Smart Desktop AI
Smart Desktop AI affiliate membership is $97 a month.
Smart Desktop AI Conclusion
Smart Desktop AI affiliate membership provides access to an automated spam platform.
Smart Desktop AI claims it generates leads by scraping business contact details from the internet:
Scraped leads are then bombarded with automated spam:
Not surprisingly, Smart Desktop AI affiliates have reported Google has restricted accounts due to spam.
In addition to automated spam, Smart Desktop AI also claims its platform can “tell other AIs what to do”:
Smart Desktop AI failing to disclose who’s behind its purported AI platform is an MLM due-diligence red flag. It’s also a violation of the FTC Act (disclosures).
Continuing on from that, the FTC warns that MLM companies without retail customers are illegal.
With nothing marketed or sold to retail customers, Smart Desktop AI operates as a pyramid scheme.
As with all MLM pyramid schemes, once affiliate recruitment dries up so too will commissions.
This will see those at the bottom of Smart Desktop AI (newly recruited affiliates), stop paying monthly fees.
This will in turn see those above them stop getting paid, leading to the upline affiliates also eventually ceasing payments.
Once enough Smart Desktop AI affiliates stop paying fees, an irreversible collapse is triggered.
Math guarantees the majority of participants in pyramid schemes lose money.
interesting review, but doesn’t seem to match anything I’ve seen about the project. They say initially they were going to do a monthly subscription, then changed to require a one time $20 sign up fee that was to pay 2 tiers of $60 and $15 respectively.
No idea how ya pay $75 from $20 in the world of speculation but that was the claim. Later they changed to FREE for everyone to join and still promising when launched will pay the same…. Then they added a separate optional $2/mo subscription to their Skool community.
So that’s where it stands, as a service promising to give folks 50 leads a day, free to join, and promising to pay 2 tiers even though the math doesn’t work. As for the leads there are actually no leads provided.. Basically they were building a buyers list willing to pay $20, and then changed to free
The other site mentioned in the review appears to be an affiliate trying to sell a separate funnel system.
As for those online saying they’re getting leads and sales from it already, 100% of them are lying as the system is not operational. So the only sales made are now signing up free members and haven’t been paid anything yet.
Fair call on the “AI Profit” domain. I think that was the original landing page I came across. I think I might have overlooked the marketing funnel seeing as there’s as “AI Profit” is used in Smart Desktop AI’s marketing pitch.
Seeing as it’s another marketing funnel I’ll omit it from the review proper.
Re: pricing, I can’t speak to the Skool group (it’s not part of the MLM comp plan) but the $27 a month becomes irrelevant if we take out “AI Profit”. That takes us back to $97 a month.
I didn’t see anything about free membership. I take it the $20 was a one-time signup fee and then $97 a month?
Sounds like a bit of a mess beyond Price building an email list through Skool group signups.
I’ll stick to $97 a month pending confirmation of any changes. Thanks for the input.
I just don’t understand where you get the numbers you all are referring to. I have never seen anything about a $97. a month to join.
It was $20. one time. The payout was $60. for referrals and $15. a month for them and their referrals.
Then it turned into $0. to join, $0. a month with the same payout. Those that paid the $20. would receive a refund at first payout, which is yet to come.
Although it does look ridiculous how that is even possible, think about this. The company’s objective is to build a million member membership. Ideally, when any company has a million members, they can introduce any number of paid products and make a killing of profits each time.
So, consider this, how do you get a milion members? One way is to spend a small fortune advertising, which does not guarantee any particular number of sign ups, or pay members to recruit members, which does create a guaranteed sign up. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not promoting this company nor advocating what and how they are doing it.
I agree, when ownersship is hidden and the fact that Corey Price was a principle in the Tranzact Card Scam, to me that raises a Double Red Flag. I am just Joey, 53 years of scammed experience in the networking space. :o)
I am going to say right now… First of all… Smart Desktop AI IS NOT an MLM if it was an mlm there would be several matrixes which there isn’t… Further more.. Corey doesn’t have to mention who the “Owners are” Because (Ozedit: snip, see below)
@Joey
The $97 a month was the original price when Corey Price was marketing Smart Desktop AI as “AI Profit”. This was ~Feb 2024 and the figure is from an AI Profit marketing presentation given by Price.
AI Profit dropped to $27 after it became Smart Desktop AI. Now apparently it’s free with a bunch of promises but apparently that’s being hidden from consumers because I didn’t come across that in my research.
AI Profit = $97 a month. AI Profit rebooted as Smart Desktop AI –> $27 a month. That was where my original $97 to $27 came from.
@Scott
In the interest of not spreading misinformation I’ve cut you off.
Whether Smart Desktop AI uses one matrix or a million, if you’re getting paid on multiple levels it’s MLM.
Smart Desktop AI pays on multiple levels. Smart Desktop AI is MLM.
If Corey Price is going to pretend he’s not running Smart Desktop AI, he absolutely does have to disclose who is and who developed the purported AI tool(s). Failing to do so is deceptive marketing and a violation of the FTC Act (disclosures).
I suspect Price is running the ol’ “company = me + hiring devs in a third-world country getting paid slave-labor rates” model.
Perfect! I was just about to cover this one today! It’s quite astonishing! It reminds me of a couple other MLMs, one that also came from Tranzact Card and another who’s CEO is being sued by the SEC! I believe you know them BOTH! Every time we speak out about one, another 3 come along!
Here are some information as far as I understand. Corey Price appears to be a “master distributor” with Smart Desktop AI. He has his own domain AI Profits (his marketing platform) and Youtube channel (same name).
You probably saw one of his videos about AI Profits and Pool Funding where it cost $187/month and get paid 10 levels deep. At the same time he was offering to use his AI Profits platform ($27/month) to promote Smart Desktop AI.
AI Profits and Smart Desktop AI are 2 different entities with respective URL’s. Corey claims in his videos that his AI Marketing concepts attracted investors. Their pooled $1M will be used to pay the $60 one-time per referral and $15 monthly 1st and 2nd levels. I
believe in July, the price was changed to $20 one-time to join. July 29th the FREE offer to join was announced. Websites used were updated but his videos still mention $20 one-time.
“I suspect Price is running the ol’ “company = me + hiring devs in a third-world country getting paid slave-labor rates” model.” You may be correct…time will tell. Same as if they’ll pay out, first payout is Aug. 10th.
Master Distributors don’t have domain-level email addresses.
AI Profit was the original name for Smart Desktop AI. Now it’s some separate market funnel thing but otherwise Price is behind both schemes.
I’ve recently been introduced to Smart Desktop AI. Of course it sounds great to have a system that, “Smart Desktop AI is an advanced web-based application designed to streamline your business operations through AI-driven email communication.”
It also sounds great to be able to Get Paid $60 For Every Referral… PLUS $15 Monthly Recurring Income 2 LEVELS DOWN.
Being very aware of MLM and Pyramid schemes even though it all sounds great THERE IS NO PRODUCT, there isn’t even a demo of a product, no release schedule, no test cases, I can’t find anything.
I would love to be able to be an affiliate for a program that sounds as amazing as this does but I have a huge concern. Even one of the videos was regurgitated from Millionare Manaics as tagged in the bottom right had corner.
Has Corey Price ever created and released a product?
Oh but there is a product.. back when I first joined for the one time $20 on July 14 something in the dashboard was showing that it was emailing info about the website offer I submitted to 50 leads each day and eventually got 103 replies.
Then sometime after it went free with the new dashboard it stopped functioning. I guess for whatever reason they stopped it while they complete more of the new dashboard. Also it’s said that Corey Price is a co-founder, not the main one.
Anyway, I really believe it is legit because of all I’ve seen about this. So I’m really glad I’ve been taking a chance at this.
At a basic level an MLM company without retail sales is a pyramid scheme. By definition pyramid schemes aren’t “legit”.
Via email (unverified):
There is NO $97.00 subscription – repeat, there is NO $97.00 subscription. Membership is free. I’m surprised that reviewers don’t get their facts right. The $2.00 a month is an option.
See $97 a month screenshot, repeat see screenshot.
I’m surprised pyramid scheme shills can’t read (not really though). Education is unfortunately an option.
Fake reassurances and stalling, changing terms to stop the pursuit of commissions and refunds has been the game.
Creatively make people jump through so many hoops that they just walk away or at least most of them. The check is in the mail.
SDAI became free only after the architects of the scheme got scared by the enormity of the scam’s success and decided to change the narrative to free just days before it all imploded — how could it be a scam if it’s free?!
The real question is how much was pocketed for a non-existent product prior to that?
MAKE NO MISTAKE, SOME MADE A LOT OF MONEY HERE AT YOUR EXPENSE AND THEN LIED REPEATEDLY TO YOU.
A “rich investor” throwing 1 Million dollars into paying ignorantly high commissions for a product that has not been released or even demonstrated is ridiculous – it is a lie.
There is increasing reason to believe that Corey Price, Scotty Mercker, and Bradley Oprendek are much more than simply “affiliates just like you” and strong reason to also believe that what has happened to many vulnerable people connected to this scheme may very well be criminal.
Taking advantage of people, censoring legitimate complaints and questions instead of leading paying clients to answers is always wrong.
Ask yourself, if you were innocent of wrong-doing and “just an affiliate” that was possibly scammed too, would you be censoring people? Deleting their comments and concerns? Kicking them off conversational platforms designed to encourage free dialogue?
Answer: No. YOU WOULD BE EQUALLY OUTRAGED.
Corey Price and Fundwise promoted the scam, start there: fundwisecapital.com.
A formal complaint and investigation are appropriate as is a class action suit — what will come out in discovery will be very interesting.
Someone needs to start collecting the names and email addresses of the thousands that have been scammed. The comment section of this page may be a good start.
Readers affected should individually report this scam to IC3, FTC, BBB, and their state AG. They cannot be allowed to count their cash and get away with this, just to do it again.
“Prior to launching Smart Desktop AI Price was promoting Local City Places and TranzactCard.”
The common denominators are Corey Price and Scotty Mercker: voiceamerica.com/guest/62694/tranzactcard-leadership-team
See: https://behindmlm.com/companies/nui/tranzactcard-hides-bank-details-from-consumers-ftc-act/
See: https://behindmlm.com/mlm-reviews/tranzactcard-review-richard-smith-returns-with-new-card-opp/
I was in the process of putting together my BBB complaint. I am not sure who I am to file this under exactly can anyone provide me with the appropriate consumer complaint claim for BBB?
BBB isn’t a regulator. You’re better off reporting pyramid schemes to the FTC.
Thanks. I did a report on FTC and the BBB. I feel that reporting this was the right thing to do.
I didn’t pay to sign up for the product they were selling that never even worked. Plenty of people did though. They never paid anyone any of the promised commissions.
I personally am not at all surprised by the outcome. Hopefully other people report Price, at minimum as being behind this scam. Hopefully anyone who paid, at least attempts a charge back.
If anyone has record of their payment and the merchant it displays on their bank charge, I wonder if that could help identify what business they are operating under.
Now he’s pushing unlicensed and unregulated money lending. Illegal.
I was drawn into this and paid my $20 and then never saw any evidence of a system at all.
Scary thing is that because it is in the US you think it will be safe (should have learnt my lesson with Cliqly and good old Bobby Jones) but these guys are even better as they have driven up the IP value of what rubbish software they may have because of the Affiliate traffic drive towards 1M subscribers and they can then get lots of cash from a VC.
I also think Corey Price and Scotty Mercker are in on the game.