As we draw to the close of 2010, another major blow has been dealt to TVI Express’ operations in Africa.

On the 29th of December, 2010, South Africa’s Department of Trade and Industry not only officially confirmed TVI has been declared a pyramid scheme in South Africa, but also that they intended to launch criminal proceedings against the company and its distributors.

The Department of Trade and Industry said yesterday it had opened a police case against TVI Express “for operating a prohibited Pyramid Promotional Scheme”.

“This matter was reported to SAPS Commercial Crime Unit in Durban in September for further investigation and prosecution,” said Trade and Industry spokesperson Sidwell Medupe.

The scheme contravened Notice 1135 of 1999 promulgated in terms of the provisions of Consumer Affairs (Unfair Business Practices) Act 71 of 1988.”

According to South Africa’s Consumer Affairs Act,

Persons are not directly permitted to, directly or indirectly, promote or knowingly join, enter into or participate in pyramid schemes (receiving compensation, primarily from the respective recruitment of other participants).

As seems to be the continued trend now with TVI Express and regulatory action against it, the company has chosen to not respond to any of the allegations made against it. [Continue reading…]

A few days ago the Norwegian Gaming Board publicly announced that they’d completed a review of Wealth Masters International and had concluded that the company was a pyramid scheme.

The Gaming Board’s report at the time of release was only available in Norwegian and was uploaded as an image in PDF format. I requested an English copy from the Gaming Board directly but as of publication of this article have yet to hear anything back from them.

Thankfully a BehindMLM reader was kind enough to translate the entire 18 page report into English and send me a copy.

I thought the summaries of the report that I was able to read on the news articles were bad… the translated report however takes critical assessment of Wealth Masters International to a whole new level.

It’s quite possibly the most indepth government review of any MLM company I’ve ever seen. [Continue reading…]

Earlier this month Polaris Global held their Sovereignty Live event in Whistler BC, Canada.

So far, details of the how the Sovereignty Live event went have been pretty scarce. Naturally then when Polaris Global decided to publish some photos of the event on Christmas Day, I browsed over to take a look (link originally provided by BehindMLM reader ‘Boris‘).

As I browsed around the various photo galleries that had been uploaded last Saturday, I decided to have a deeper look at Polaris Global’s Facebook profile as it’d been a while since I last checked it out.

No further had I gone then their main profile page when I found myself amazed at what I was seeing.

Dead centre of the page was a quote referenced from none other than Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.

Polaris Global and Scientology? Not again guys! [Continue reading…]

When you begin to market your MLM business, one possible criteria you might have in the forefront of your mind is to keep costs down.

Be it through cheaper web design, slightly less than premium business cards or perhaps coming up with cost effective inventive ways to market your MLM business. Sure, there are various ways to keep costs down but going to extreme measures to cut costs can actually have the opposite effect in the presentation and perception of your business.

For the cost of a few A3 sized bits of plastic (or if you’re really cheap, cardboard that you then cover in sticky tape), some textas and petrol – you too can plaster your suburb and surrounding suburb with marketing for your MLM opportunity.

It’s not expensive but boy is it ugly, unprofessional and seriously – when was the last time you looked at someone advertising something with handwritten notes and thought it was credible?

Homeless people make signs in handwritten markers – and that’s because they have no money. How is anyone going to believe you’re rolling in the dollars or that you possess the slightest hint of success when you employ the same marketing a hobo does to market your MLM business? [Continue reading…]

As reported by BehindMLM readers B.F. and M_Norway, the Norwegian Gaming Board has today declared that Wealth Masters International is an illegal pyramid scheme.

The Gaming Board’s decision comes after nearly two months of investigation into WMI and the conclusion that WMI is in breach of section 16 of the Norwegian Lottery Act, (also I believe known as the ‘Gaming Act’). [Continue reading…]

As reported last week, Wealth Masters International have severed their longstanding partnership with Carbon Copy Pro to make way for their new in-house marketing platform, ‘WMI Marketing’.

As WMI Marketing is being rolled out WMI have begun to actively advertise the marketing platform and as we start to see the efforts of a greater campaign unfold, one aspect caught my eye.

Exclusively, the marketing for WMI Marketing relies on recruitment as a sales point. Retail sales… what retail sales?! [Continue reading…]

Hot on the heels of the regulatory crackdown on TVI Express by the Bank of Namibia a month or so ago,  Swaziland has since decided to launch it’s own investigation into TVI Express.

To be conducted by the Central Bank of Swaziland, the investigation revolves around the bank’s claim that TVI is a pyramid scheme. Governor Martin Dlamini likened to it to a now defunct pyramid scheme, Diamond Africa;

The Diamond Africa was doing the same thing, purporting to be selling diamonds and asking people to join at a fee.

It looks like they (TVI Express) are doing the same. If they do like that, it’s a criminal offence and we will facilitate their arrest very soon.

Thus far the allegations made against TVI Express are quite serious in nature and notably absent is the tin can ‘we deny any and all allegations’ and legal threats that we’ve thus far seen with TVI Express in Africa.

So… what exactly has been the response from TVI Express and its members? [Continue reading…]

For as long as I can remember now the name Carbon Copy Pro has been synonymous with Wealth Masters International. Wealth Masters International being business and Carbon Copy Pro a marketing platform to promote it with.

Despite being two separate entities, the two companies have shared a long and presumably prosperous relationship. This week however the relationship is set to end with the announcement from Wealth Masters International that they will stop taking orders from Carbon Copy Pro systems from the 10th of December.

In Carbon Copy Pro’s place, WMI is set to launch it’s own marketing system – uninspiringly called ‘WMI Marketing’.

WMI marketing no doubt will seek to replace the functionality of Carbon Copy Pro and in it’s place act as a fully fledged replacement. Although WMI Marketing hasn’t been released yet, WMI has released a feature list.

Here’s a snapshot of what WMI consultants can expect from the new system; [Continue reading…]

The Wealth Masters International Compensation plan is a hybrid compensation plan and uses elements of a matrix but combines a point system with it to determine how many tiers deep a consultant gets paid.

The points system determines the rank of WMI’s consultants and directly contributes to their position in the company.

In the following analysis I’ve included the details of WMI’s compensation plan covering the points allocated to their product line, the various consultant levels, the product line direct and tiered commissions on offer and a look at the three bonus pools WMI offers to its consultants.

Finally I’ve provided an alaysis of the compensation plan and highlighted what I believe to be the weaker points of the plan and important information you should consider when going over it. [Continue reading…]

About a week ago now, Wealth Masters International hired out SEO expert Ryan Nelson as Vice President of ‘Internet Strategy’ and launched a new website campaign ‘wealthjournals.com’.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for those unfamiliar with the concept is the optimisation of a web presence to dominate search engine rankings for particular chosen keywords.

SEO is an entire industry unto itself so I won’t go into further detail, suffice to say that in a business sense, SEO generally refers to manipulating the top search results for your business in your favour.

Naturally that’s the intention of WMI in launching WealthJournals but after browsing the site… surely pages of article fluff isn’t the best way to go about promoting your brand? [Continue reading…]