Tectum operates in the cryptocurrency MLM niche.

The company represents it is part of CrispMind LTD. CrispMind purportedly has both US and European offices.

Tectum’s provided Illinois corporate suite address is shared by a number of other companies, suggesting it’s virtual in nature. Tectum’s European office is represented to be in Ireland.

Tectum’s website has an “our team” section, on which fourteen individuals are listed.

In what appears to be a UI design failure, executive roles aren’t available unless you click through on each team member’s name.

I wasted my time clicking through every provided Tectum team member’s profiles, only to find who actually owns and runs the company isn’t disclosed.

The only name I recognized of Tectum’s fourteen team members was David Track.

BehindMLM noted David Track (right), as founder and President of PrepayCPA in 2011.

PrepayCPA is long gone. Wondering what Track has since been up to, I headed over to his LinkedIn profile.

In addition to running Track Companies, who “specialize in high-risk merchant credit card services”, Track was Senior Vice President of Growth & Strategy for Tryp.

BehindMLM reviewed Tryp in January 2019, noting a pyramid business model with an illegal stock offering.

Tryp collapsed as an MLM company in January 2020.

Track appears to have reinvented himself as a crypto bro in 2020. Track’s LinkedIn cites him as a Bitlocity “Member of the Board of Advisors”.

Bitlocity was an MLM crypto gifting pyramid scheme. The scam collapsed in early 2021.

In late 2021 Track jumped on the NFT grift bandwagon as co-founder of NFT Tycoons.

That went nowhere, leading Track to sign on as Tectum’s Director of Mass Adoption in April 2022.

Still wanting to know who was running Tectum, my next port of call was CrispMind’s website.

There I learned Alex Guseff (right) is CEO of CrispMind. Presumably this means Guseff is also running Tectum.

Guseff is the last Tectum team member listed on their website. Why his running of the company isn’t disclosed is unclear.

Guseff appears to be a random crypto bro from Russia. As opposed to either the US or Ireland, a June 2020 PR puff piece on Medium places Crispmind in Kazan, Russia.

Alexander Guseff is a career software development executive from Crispmind, a software development startup located in Kazan, Russia.

Why Crispmind and Tectum are pretending to be based out of the US and Ireland is also unclear.

SimilarWeb currently ranks top sources of traffic to Tectum’s website as the UK (37%), Russia (31%), Switzerland (20%) and Canada (7%).

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.

Tectum’s Products

Tectum has no retailable products or services.

Affiliates are only able to market Tectum affiliate membership itself.

Tectum’s Compensation Plan

Tectum affiliates invest in Tectum token (TET).

TET is then used to purchase SoftNote licenses, through which Tectum advertises an “up to” 300% annual return.

SoftNote licenses are bundled in packages costing between $1 and $500,000:

We’ll get into what SoftNote is in the conclusion of the review.

The MLM side of Tectum pays on recruitment of affiliate investors.

Referral Commissions

Tectum affiliates earn a 10% commission on SoftNote license investment by personally recruited affiliates.

Residual Commissions

Tectum pays a 5% residual commission on SoftNote license investment down three levels of recruitment (unilevel).

If a Tectum affiliate qualifies as a Team Leader, they earn residual commissions down six levels of recruitment:

  • level 1 (personally recruited affiliates) – 10%
  • level 2 – 5%
  • level 3 – 4%
  • level 4 – 3%
  • level 5 – 2%
  • level 6 – 1%

Team Leader qualification requires a Tectum affiliate to convince others to invest $100,000 in TET.

Regional Leader Bonus

Tectum takes 5% of company-wide SoftNote license investment and pays it out to Tectum Regional Leaders.

Tectum does not provide Regional Leader qualification criteria.

Joining Tectum

Tectum affiliate membership appears to be free.

Full participation in Tectum requires investment in TET tokens.

TET is currently being internally sold to Tectum affiliates at $2.50 each.

Tectum Conclusion

Tectum’s crypto claim to fame is having “the world’s fastest blockchain”.

Don’t know if that’s true, and it doesn’t matter.

Some random company developing the world’s fastest blockchain is like building a highway to nowhere without speed limits.

Nobody cares.

Likely desperate to recover whatever they’ve sunk into the failed project, we now have CrispMind repurposing Tectum as a 300% ROI Ponzi scheme.

The ruse behind Tectum’s Ponzi scheme is investment in SoftNote licenses.

Before we get into that we should explore why CrispMind and Tectum, companies that have seemingly been around for a while, are launching a Ponzi scheme.

Referencing the Medium puff piece article cited in the introduction of this review, we learn;

For over seven years, a team of mathematicians, programmers & AI specialists in Russia have been perfecting the lightning-fast logistical Tectum Blockchain — and it’s finally ready for prime-time.

That piece was written in 2020, so scammers in Russia have purportedly been working on this since ~2013.

I don’t believe that, seeing as Tectum’s website domain was registered in 2018. CrispMind’s own website was registered in 2019.

I also want to note that in the Medium article, Alexander Guseff is cited as a Tectum software executive.

I joined the team about a year and half ago, and when I started writing a white paper on it.

I don’t know when Guseff was promoted to CEO of Tectum and CrispMind.

In any event, this presents us with two scenarios:

  1. Tectum is being run by unknown Russian scammers and Guseff is a puppet executive; or
  2. Guseff is lying and has been behind Tectum and CrispMind all along.

Either scenario raises red flags.

 

Update 28th April 2023 – Russell Sean has been in contact to advise;

Alexander Gussef and cripspmind took full ownership of the tectum blockchain shortly after the article you are referencing was published, thus Guseff for an interim became CEO of the Tectum project.

Tectum was purportedly owned by Gumar Kadyrov prior to Gussef purchasing it. /end update

 

While I can’t rule out Tectum is a continuation of other failed blockchain projects (this is pretty common), it certainly didn’t exist prior to 2018 at the earliest.

Prior to joining CrispMind and Tectum in 2019, Guseff ran a cell phone repair shop in Russia.

Not being upfront about the origins of CrispMind and Tectum is another red flag.

With that out of the way, back to Tectum’s SoftNote license Ponzi scheme.

SoftNote is a crypto wallet attached to Tectum.

SoftNote is the flagship product of Tectum and is positioned as the first transactionless payment system boasting truly instant payment capabilities and zero-fee policy for an end user, transactionless means that no transaction actually takes place on native network.

SoftNote is more anonymous than Bitcoin wallet because BTC transaction can’t be traced by public address.

The payment is not registered in the native network ledger while the balance is handed over.

TL;DR: SoftNote promises anonymity on the blockchain. Perfect for running a Ponzi scheme through.

The license baloney is just that, baloney. It obviously makes no sense for investors to be dumping thousands of dollars in licenses for a freely available crypto wallet.

The SoftNote license ruse of course isn’t supposed to make sense though, it’s a paper-thin Ponzi marketing ruse. Tectum investors aren’t supposed to think about it.

And the real kicker is SoftNote hasn’t even launched yet.

Once the SoftNote System has launched, price of a TET will be defined by profits of Mint Licenses being purchased all over the world.

Up in the compensation section of this review, I provided a chart on Tectum license package investment.

The document that chart is from dates back to late 2021.

The Pre-sale offer started on September 15th 2021 and is valid through April 15th 2022.

The initial Ten Million SoftNote Bills will be minted on or before October 31st 2021 by Genesis Smart Contract as one-time event and distributed among Minting License Holders.

At the beginning SoftNote Bills are going to be priced at 1% of its face value (see below) as of September 15th 2021 with expected gradual price increase as demand grows. SoftNote profitability potentially allows for up to 5% price increase.

Pre-sale Offer ends in April 2022.

This’d be when the early scammers were onboarded, with the general public now expected to fatten their wallets.

The initial presale phase 1 of the Tectum Token (TET) had a price of $1 and 2.5 million TET were sold. TET tokens at phase 2 were then sold for $2. We are now in phase 3 with TET priced at $2.5.

Not surprisingly, to sell the scam Tectum’s website and marketing material are draped in promises of riches:

This is an excellent investment that will allow you to receive up to 300% per annum.

MLM companies marketing passive investment opportunities constitute a securities offering.

In representing it is based out of the US, and having at least one US executive (David Track’s LinkedIn places him in Delaware), Tectum’s securities offering falls under the jurisdiction of the SEC.

A search of the SEC’s Edgar database reveals neither CrispMind, Tectum, Alexander Guseff or David Track are registered with the SEC.

This means that, at a minimum, all parties involved are committing securities fraud.

MLM companies committing securities fraud lend themselves to running Ponzi schemes.

The current price of TET is the equivalent of $2.00 soon to start going up, leveling to $7.60 at the point of reaching the Soft Cap – the Unlock; when the SoftNote System has launched the price of TET will start being defined by the profitability of Mint License and that’s when it will go to the MOON.

In lieu of registering financial regulators and filing legally required audited financial reports, Tectum claims its been vetted by “leading American and Canadian auditors”.

Putting aside the claim most certainly being baloney, this is not a substitute for registering with regulators and operating legally.

Taking CrispMind and Tectum’s financial fraud one step further, the company isn’t registered to offer securities in any jurisdiction.

This includes the UK, Russia Switzerland and Canada, countries Tectum is primarily being promoted in.

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

This will leave Tectum unable to pay TET token withdrawals, eventually leading to a collapse.

The math behind Ponzi schemes guarantees the majority of participants will lose money.

 

Update 28th February 2024 – Andrew Erikashvil, Tectum’s CMO, writes in to advise that Tectum has dropped its MLM opportunity. David Track also no longer works for the company.

Tectum’s website does market an “ambassador program”, however Erikashvil assures me it isn’t MLM.

Regarding the ambassadors program you get it wrong. Its more for small influencers to share a word about Tectum and there is no refferall [sic] program.

A development I’ll add since this review was published is Tectum offering Ponzi staking on its TET token.

While staking involves a passive investment opportunity funded by subsequent investment, specific details of Tectum’s staking Ponzi are hidden from consumers.

As of January 2023, SimilarWeb ranks the US as the top source of Tectum’s website traffic. Tectum and its executives are still not registered to offer securities in the US or any other jurisdiction.