Marketing wellness, energy and weightloss products, Visi launched in April 2012 and are based out of Utah in the US.

Visi’s parent company is ‘Cloudberry Nutritionals’ with both headed up by CEO and President Kent Lewis, who the company claims ‘is a veteran of the direct selling industry with over twenty years of experience as a corporate executive, consultant, and distributor‘.

Lewis (visual approximation below right) was previously “International Vice-President” of Zija (2011) and before that was an “international consultant” at something called iLearningGlobal (2009), a company that doesn’t appear to exist anymore.

In their company bio, Visi claim to be inspired by Scandanavia’s Vikings of old:

During the period of dramatic Viking expansion, the Norsemen of Scandinavia travelled in long ships to unknown territories. These rigorous, overseas expeditions demanded strong, bold, intrepid, fearless, and adventurous conquerors.

Always in search of new opportunity, the leader of these daring quests was differentiated from the others with a title of great honor – Vísi.

Following the tradition of leadership and excellence of the Vikings, Vísi offers you a unique path of personal triumph.

And if I’m reading that right, Visi are pretty much inferring they’re the modern-day leader of the Vikings.

…well, that’s all very well if you want to hit the high-seas and plunder but how does Visi shape up as an MLM company?

Read on for a full review of the Visi home-based business opportunity. [Continue reading…]

Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting a lot of requests to review some of the recently announced MLM penny auction opportunities that have gone into pre-launch.

Information on these opportunities is scarce and often quite confusing (as it’s pooled from multiple sources). With the ongoing controversies surrounding established MLM penny auction company’s investment like compensation plans, most of the soon-to-be-launched penny auctions that have been announced are keeping details close to their chest.

As such, I’ve simply been advising people that until further information comes to hand, writing up a formal review is not possible for the time being.

Where possible, if I’ve been able to see a compensation plan or piece together most of it from a variety of sources I’ve gone ahead and put up a review and analysis of the business. Existing MLM penny auctions that have already been reviewed on BehindMLM include Bids That Give, One Penny More, Zeek Rewards, Bidify and AwardsW.

Given the sheer number of MLM penny auctions that have been announced over the past month and the fact that they’re all in restricted pre-launch (one even claims to be in “pre-prelaunch”), I thought an article cataloguing each of these MLM penny auction prelaunches as they’re announced would be of value to people.

Below you’ll find the information I’ve currently got on a number of MLM penny auction prelaunches with the idea being that when they eventually launch (or a full compensation plan is made available for analysis), that they will be formally reviewed with the review linked to from this page.

This page will be naturally updated as more information comes to hand. If you have information that is not provided here on any of the listed opportunities (or a new MLM penny auction opportunity I haven’t yet listed), feel free to leave a comment at the end of the article. [Continue reading…]

NuCerity launched in late 2009 and operates out of Houston in the US state of Texas.

The company, who market skin and eye wellness products, is headed up by NuCerity President Kevin Allen with Lonnie McKinney, David Dillingham and Richard Jaenicke all credited as company founders.

Kevin Allen (photo right) is credited with ‘more than 25 years in the network marketing industry‘ and has served in executive positions in a number of MLM companies, including Fortune 21 (IT dept) and more recently, Kyani (VP of North American Sales).

Allen also appears to have been involved in MLM company ACN prior to taking up his position at Kyani, although I haven’t been able to establish whether that was as a distributor or in an executive position.

Read on for a full review of the NuCerity MLM opportunity. [Continue reading…]

Attorney General Roy Cooper’s Consumer Protection experts protect North Carolina consumers.

We fight unfair business practices like scams and frauds. We’ve helped hundreds of thousands of consumers like you get more than $80 million of your money back.

If you were to call the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office Consumer Protection Division today, regardless of your enquiry, you’d be met with a curious recorded message that presumes you’ve called to either file a complaint against Zeek Rewards, or ask the NC AG’s office for investment advice regarding the opportunity.

Incase you might not be familiar with US law enforcement hierarchy,

the Attorney General is elected by the people of North Carolina every four years as the state’s top law enforcement officer and top lawyer.

Powers and duties of the Attorney General are set forth in the Constitution and Statutes of North Carolina.

As head of the North Carolina Department of Justice, the Attorney General provides legal representation and advice to all state government departments, agencies and commissions.

The Attorney General also provides legal opinions at the request of other public officials and handles all criminal appeals from state trial courts.

When the state’s public interests are at stake, the Attorney General can take legal action on behalf of North Carolina’s citizens.

Below is a transcript of the message you’ll currently hear if you call the NC AG’s office of Consumer Protection Division at the time of publication: [Continue reading…]

Match Rate Plus went into prelaunch around late 2010 and officially launched in early 2012. The company operates out of Florida in the US and is headed up by CEO Clay Fishman and company President, Dowe Kaufman.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Fishman (photo right) has worked (and still does) as a Deputy for the Collier County’s Deputy Office since 2006. Prior to this he was a Business Analyst for the berry wholesaler “Naturipe”. Fishman doesn’t appear to have been involved in the MLM industry prior to the launch of Match Rate Plus.

Dowe Kaufman also seems to have no prior experience in MLM. Kaufman’s company bio claims he has

over eight years of experience in the electronic payment processing industry (and has) built multiple independent sales organizations (with) a successful portfolio of over 500 hundred merchants processing over $100 million annually.

He also co-founded courtpay.org, which is an online system that processes payments for stateand local government entities (and has) served as the National Sales Manager for the largest serviceprovider of Elavon, the world’s second-largest processing switch provider.

Read on for a full review of the Match Rate Plus MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]

One Penny More is a penny auction MLM business opportunity that was launched in July 2012 and operates out of the US state of Nevada.

One Penny More is separated into two divisions, a penny auction site (onepennymore.com, registered in May 2012) and attached MLM business opportunity (onepennymore.biz, registered in July 2012). Both domains have their domain registration information set to private.

Whilst the One Penny More penny auction website merely credits who’s behind One Penny More as ‘the Staff of OnePennyMore.com‘, the MLM business opportunity website credits ‘Joseph Zyskowski’ (also known as ‘Joe Zyskowski’, photo right) as being the founder of One Penny More, claiming that Zyskowski has been involved in the ‘network marketing industry since 1989‘.

On his Facebook page, Zyskowski writes:

I graduated from WMU in 1989 with a Bachelors of Science degree in Education, certified to teach K-8.

Unable to find a teaching position immediately out of college I was recruited into one fo the greatest network marketing organizations of all time … A.L. Williams.

After A.L. Williams I taught third grade for 2 years, then started a comic book publishing company with my brother, Steve, after which I became a real estate agent in Las Vegas.

When the real estate market changed I had to change with it and remembered back to my first experience with network marketing. I believed in the network marketing model but wanted a younger company that offered more opportunity due to timing.

After three years of getting my teeth kicked in working for network marketing companies that changed their compensation plans, changed their products, or went out of business owing me commission I had it, and decided to start my own network marketing company.

Zyskowski goes on to reveal that network marketing company was “5 Dollar Money Bomb“, a recruitment driven scheme which paid out 100% of its commissions from membership fees. 5 Dollar Money Bomb “bombed” shortly after launch and is no longer operating.

Curiously, the domain ‘5dollarmoneybomb.com’ is currently redirected at something called ‘Get Paid to Learn 101’, which appears to be some sort of $15 a year training scheme that also pays out commissions solely from membership fees.

Despite making no mention on his Facebook profile of launching any companies prior to 5 Dollar Money Bomb, in 2011 Zyskowski launched two schemes, Silver1up and Silver2up.

Both schemes revolved around members signing up and paying monthly membership fees with no products or services sold other than company membership.

Both schemes required members as part of their qualification to gift 100% of their membership fee commission (one sale with Silver1up and two with Silver2up) to their upline before they could earn money (by signing new members up).

Also launched in 2011 by Zyskowski was a “gold/silver penny auction site” called “One Penny Gold”.

Today, all three businesses are no longer operational.

Read on for a full review of the One Penny More MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]

Early yesterday morning a Zeek Rewards affiliate reported their downline had been contacted by the North Carolina State Employee’s Credit Union (NCSECU):

I had one of my downline call me yesterday and tell me that the (NC) State Credit Union called his wife and told her (since she got her money order there) that they were giving her a call because it had come to their attention that Rex Venture Group, LLC was fraudulent.

His wife went on to tell the bank employee why Zeekrewards is not fraudulent! Yearly 1099, Compliance Testing, can not be a pyramid in the way it works. And the bank employee said she had no idea how Zeekrewards truly worked.

Then tonight another downline called me worried because (NC) State Credit Union had apparently gotten a letter stating Rex Venture Group, LLC is fraudulent and they wanted to pass that on to their customers.

The report came hot on the heels of ex-Zeek Rewards paid consultant Keith Laggos, warning the FTC has ‘put out letters to the top big four banks asking them not to open up accounts for penny auctions‘,

The reported message was published on Zeek Rewards’ Facebook page on Thursday but has since been deleted by the company.

NCSECU operate out of North Carolina (where Zeek Rewards is based) and state they are a ‘not-for-profit financial cooperative owned by its members, founded June 4, 1937 with 17 members and $437 in assets’.

As of March 2012, SECU serves 1.7 million members with just under $25 billion in assets through 242 branches, 1,100+ ATMs, six Contact Centers.

Naturally when an official banking institution starts calling up and warning their customers that a company is fraudulent, twice no less, people take notice and want to investigate for themselves. [Continue reading…]

One of the most enduring pyramid schemes over the last decade or so has been that of TVI Express. Originating in India, TVI Express has slowly spread like a virus from continent to continent, sucking in new members to fund commissions paid out to existing members.

Using a reverse matrix compensation model, the commissions structure relies on a constant influx of new members being fed into a series of matrices so that a single member at the top can cycle out. Once this happens, the member at the top receives a commission and the process starts again.

One of the more prominent markets of late TVI Express have been targeting is that of Africa, with authorities in Namibia, Lesotho and South Africa leading the charge against the scheme.

Whilst the current status of investigations and action against TVI is unclear in Lesotho and Namibia, the South African Reserve Bank been making steady progress in their investigation, with some interesting developments recently coming to light. [Continue reading…]

As for the asinine comment on Dr. Laggos… Yes he is a paid consultant. However, with a little due diligence, it is easy to see his reputation as an expert in his field is second to none.

–Troy Dooly, MLM Helpdesk

Keith Laggos credits himself as a ‘marketing and management consultant‘ and claims to have worked with ‘dozens of direct sales companies as well as to  other sales and distribution companies outside of the (MLM) industry‘.

Laggos joined Zeek Rewards as a paid consultant around June 2011 and shortly after the company switched from guaranteeing a 125% ROI on every bid purchased, to paying out a variable ROI over 90 days.

Laggos largely credits himself for instigating such changes, claiming on a recent promotional call for MLM company Lyoness that he’s ‘been able to help them (Zeek Rewards) change the comp plan to keep within the pyramid scheme and Ponzi scheme laws‘.

With Zeek Rewards still refusing to divulge whether or not the daily ROI they pay out to affiliates contains mostly affiliate money (this is “proprietary information”), Laggos’ claims of being within pyramid scheme and Ponzi laws are naturally still questionable.

That said, Laggos appears to believe that as far as being a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme, that Zeek Rewards are in the clear and has since shifted his focus to the penny auction side of the business.

This shift in focus ultimately resulted in the abrupt and completely unexpected parting of ways between Laggos and Zeek Rewards last week.

So just what happened between Keith Laggos and Zeek? [Continue reading…]

Solavei (which is supposed to mean “sun in your veins” strangely enough), is a telecommunications MLM company, operating out of Bellevue in the US state of Washington.

Solavei was founded by Ryan Wuerch in late 2011, with Wuerch also serving as the company’s CEO.

Wuerch (photo right) was the Senior Vice President of ShapeRite (a nutritional supplement company) between 1995 to 1998. In 1998 Wuerch joined education software company ‘Learning 2000’, serving as President until 2001.

2001 saw Wuerch launch his own wireless company, Motricity. Weurch served as the CEO and Chairman of Motricity, with the company going public at $10 a share in 2010.

Just over a year later Weurch was terminated by Motricity in August 2011 after the Motricity share price plunged from $30.74 down to $2.28.  In the wake of the aftermath, eight law firms announced plans to and/or initiated shareholder lawsuits against the company.

Today Motricity shares are trading at 54 cents a share.

Taking some time off to rethink his next career move, Weurch decided to build on what he’d learnt at Motricity and after raising 4 million dollars in startup financing, announced plans to launch Solavei. To the best of my knowledge, this is Weurch’s first MLM venture.

Read on for a full review of the Solavei MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]