Premier Financial Alliance has reached a settlement in a pending class-action filed against it. [Continue reading…]

Maxpread Technologies has received a pyramid fraud warning from Russia.

As per the Central Bank of Russia’s March 24th warning, Maxpread Technologies shows “signs of a financial pyramid” scheme. [Continue reading…]

Generation Zoe scammers in Florida have been hit with an $847,159 judgment.

The judgment was issued earlier this month by a state-level Dade County Court.

Following collapse of the Generation Zoe Ponzi in early 2022, sixteen plaintiff victims from Florida, Spain, Chile and Colombia filed a case against their recruiters.

Named defendants in the civil suit were Zoe Global University and Florida-based individuals Pablo, Matias and Agustin Monteleone. [Continue reading…]

QZ Asset Management is using NASDAQ as a marketing tool.

The Hong Kong based Ponzi scheme also claims it has raised $100 million from the private selling of shares. [Continue reading…]

LedgerBlock operates in the MLM cryptocurrency niche.

LedgerBlock operates from the domain “ledgerblock.net”, privately registered on January 13th, 2023.

On January 12th, LedgerBlock uploaded an “International Key Leader’s Summit” promo to its official YouTube channel.

The individuals above identify themselves as “Romeo and Amanda”.

If LedgerBlock posting a leader’s summit video before its website domain was registered strikes you as odd, that’s because it is.

Note the “HyperLedger” logo in the top right of the above video. I believe LedgerBlock might have previously launched under this name.

LedgerBlock’s YouTube channel was created in October 2022, so HyperLedger’s launch would have been brief before switching over to LedgerBlock.

Whatever the story is, LedgerBlock appears to have held a marketing event in Malaysia on or around January 15th, 2023.

At the event LedgerBlock revealed CEO “Andrew James”:

Naturally James doesn’t exist outside of LedgerBlock’s marketing. That’s because he’s an actor, played by UK national and Malaysian resident Paul Sykes.

When he’s not moonlighting as a Boris CEO, Sykes runs his consultancy firm Humateca.

From Humateca’s website;

We partner with blochain [sic] businesses, one of our key strategic partners is Blockworq.io, a Malaysian based Blockchain solutions provider.

Sykes is also Blockworq’s Chief Marketing Officer (click to enlarge):

From what I’ve been able to piece together, Sykes transitioned from legitimate business interests to cryptocurrency in 2021.

Sykes’ Blockworq executive role came before Humateca, which was founded on or around September 2022.

What I’m not clear on is whether there’s any links between Blockworq and LedgerBlock.

What is clear is Paul Sykes is a Boris CEO playing Andrew James.

Executive co-conspirators on LedgerBlock’s website include Adam Lester and Dato Asmawey Bin Hussain.

Ironically, Hussain is cited as President of Crime Prevention & Awareness Board of Malaysia.

Be it these charlatans or someone else, whoever is running LedgerBlock is obviously based out of Malaysia.

Dubai, the MLM crime capital of the world, is another possibility:

Promoters are running around claiming LedgerBlock is holding an event in Dubai in May. At the event LedgerBlock will launch an “avatar” shitcoin and in-house crypto exchange.

On the corporate side of things, LedgerBlock cites itself as “SMB LedgerBlock China Group”:

Oh and just in case Paul Sykes tries to pull the ol’ “they stole my photo!” ruse, here he is playing Andrew James in-person at LedgerBlock’s January 2023 marketing event:

As of February 2023, SimilarWeb ranks top sources of traffic to LedgerBlock’s website as Indonesia (47%), Malaysia (21%, down 61% month on month), Sri Lanka (20%), Brazil (8%) and the UAE (3%).

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. [Continue reading…]

A $79 million final judgment has been entered against John Barksdale and sister Jonatina.

The Barksdale’s judgment follows a March 7th motion for default judgment by the SEC. [Continue reading…]

Gold Unicorn operates in the cryptocurrency MLM niche.

The company is headed up by CEO “Denis Milanovkiy”.

A search for Milanovkiy brings up Solarion, which appears to be a clone of Gold Unicorn’s website.

• Gold Unicorn operates from “gold-unicorn.com”, privately registered in April 2022 (last updated February 8th, 2023)
• Solarion operates from “solarion.biz”, privately registered on January 28th, 2023

Gold Unicorn predates Solarion, as evidenced by marketing videos uploaded to its official YouTube channel last November.

Milanovkiy has a typical eastern European accent. And you’ve probably noticed the hardcoded Russian subtitles.

Naturally Milanovkiy doesn’t exist outside of Gold Unicorn’s and Solarion’s marketing material. This and his accent make Milanovkiy a prime Boris CEO candidate.

I wasn’t able to pin down a name but circa 2017, the actor playing Milanovkiy’s then partner posted this photo to vKontakte:

The female in the photo above cites her location as Dnipro, Ukraine. The actor playing Milanovkiy is likely also from Ukraine.

In an attempt to appear legitimate, Gold Unicorn provides a random address in Washington on its website. Solarion provides a random address in the UK.

Gold Unicorn also provides a certificate for GoldUnicorn LLC, purportedly incorporated in Washington.

Given how easy it is to incorporate a shell company with bogus details (“Robert Daniel” in this instance), for the purpose of due-diligence basic incorporation in any jurisdiction is meaningless.

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. [Continue reading…]

BTCvest fails to provide actual ownership or executive information on its website.

Instead, BTCvest pretends it is run by AI generated fictional identities:

In a further attempt to appear legitimate, BTCvest provides incorporation details for “Bitcoin Investment Base LTD”.

Bitcoin Investment Base LTD was incorporated in the UK on June 15th, 2022.

An MLM company operating or claiming to operate out of the UK is a red flag.

UK incorporation is dirt cheap and effectively unregulated. On top of that the FCA, the UK’s top financial regulator, do not actively regulate MLM related securities fraud.

As a result the UK is a favored jurisdiction for scammers looking to incorporate, operate and promote fraudulent companies.

For the purpose of MLM due-diligence, incorporation in the UK or registration with the FCA is meaningless.

As to who’s actually running BTCvest, the official “company presentation” is titled in Chinese:

This suggests BTCvest’s owner is in or at the very least has ties to China. This could possibly extend to south-east Asia.

BTCvest’s website domain (“btcvest.io”), was privately registered on October 9th, 2022.

Despite existing for only a few months at best, on its website BTCvest falsely claims it “started” in 2019.

In 2019, we started our activity by creating a farm in Armenia to develop the cryptocurrency farm.

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. [Continue reading…]

Esom App fails to provide ownership or executive information on its website.

In fact as I write this, Esom App’s public facing website is nothing more than an affiliate login form:

Esom App operates from two known domains;

• es-glzx.com – first registered in 2014, private registration last updated on December 27th, 2022 (acquired on or around this date)
• esom.cc – privately registered on November 3rd, 2022

SimilarWeb currently ranks top sources of website traffic to Esom App’s .COM website as Ukraine (88%) and Russia (3%).

Top sources of traffic to Esom App’s .CC domain are Pakistan (40%) and Egypt (29%), Slovenia (12%) and China (8%).

This suggests whoever is running Esom App is using different domains to target different countries.

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. [Continue reading…]

Irina Dilkinska was OneCoin’s Head of Legal and Compliance. She worked closely with founder Ruja Ignatova and other OneCoin executives.

Dilkinska was secretly arrested in Bulgaria back in 2021. She was finally handed over to US officials on March 20th.

They promptly put Dilkinska on a plane, and she touched down in the US on March 21st. [Continue reading…]