StakeMine operates in the cryptocurrency MLM niche.

StakeMine represents it is operated through “Stakemine Solutions in Ore Tokenization”, a shell company registered in El Salvador.

Purportedly heading up StakeMine is CEO Junior Cardoso.

Other than a recently created LinkedIn profile, Cardoso doesn’t exist outside of StakeMine’s marketing.

This makes Cardoso a prime Boris CEO candidate.

As to who’s actually running StakeMine, my money is someone from South America.

StakeMine’s website features Portuguese…

And StakeMine was put together using Arbot Defi, a “drag and drop” smart-contract creator tool (i.e. whoever is running StakeMine is lazy and/or clueless).

Arbot Defi’s website is also presented in Portuguese.

Brazil is the only South American country where Portugal is an official language. I’m certainly not an expert, but the actor playing Junior Cardoso also speaks with an accent consistent with what I’ve previously seen from Brazilians.

Putting all of this together, my money is on StakeMine being run by admins from Brazil.

StakeMine operates from two known website domains:

• stakemine.tech – privately registered on July 7th, 2022
• stakemine.app – privately registered on August 30th, 2022

SimilarWeb tracks negligible traffic to StakeMine’s .TECH domain. Top sources of traffic to StakeMine’s .APP domain are Latvia (89%) and Poland (10%).

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…]

Likwel operates in the cryptocurrency MLM niche.

Likwel’s website domain (“likwel.com”), was privately registered on September 26th, 2022.

The company represents it is based out of Canada, but only provides a virtual address owned by Regus on its website.

Likwel’s Canadian virtual address corresponds to Likweil Limited, a shell company purportedly incorporated in Canada on October 19th, 2022.

Due to the ease with which scammers are able to incorporate shell companies with bogus details, for the purpose of MLM due-diligence shell incorporation in any jurisdiction is meaningless.

Heading up Likwel is CEO Hector Miles. No photo of Miles is provided on Likwel’s website, only a non-verifiable marketing bio.

My story began in 2010, when I finished my master’s degree, before going on to finish my postgraduate studies in computer engineering.

Since 2015, I’ve been actively working with corporate clients in the business industry.

We are however introduced to Miles on Likwel’s official YouTube channel.

Miles is played by Russian national Anton Kozlov (Антон Козлов).

Not surprisingly, Kozlov doesn’t work in the “business industry”. He’s a children’s book publisher from Nizhny Novgorod.

Who actually runs Likwel isn’t clear but it’s obvious they are in or at the very least have ties to Russia.

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…]

Gold2Patti fails to provide executive or ownership information on its website.

In fact Gold2Patti’s website homepage is nothing more than an affiliate sign in form:

Gold2Patti’s website domain (“gold2patti.com”), was privately registered on May 24th, 2023.

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…]

Trillant is under investigation for fraud in Germany.

BaFin disclosed it was investigating Trillant and EUPAC Digital Services Ltd. on November 22nd, 2022. [Continue reading…]

Following two securities fraud warnings and an interim stop order, Validus filed an appeal against New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority.

The High Court dismissed Validus’ appeal, meaning the Ponzi scheme is now permanently banned in New Zealand. [Continue reading…]

GPTCoin fails to provide verifiable ownership and executive information on its website.

None of GPTCoin’s provided executives exist outside of its own marketing material:

In fact, none of the marketing claims on GPTCoin’s website hold up:

GPTCoin is jointly created by the Goldman Sachs Bank Group of the United States and Silicon Valley Valleywise GS.

Notwithstanding “Silicon Valley Valleywise GS” not being an actual company, this claim only exists within GPTCoin’s own marketing press-releases:

Whoever is running GPTCoin has slapped together a bunch of baloney and slapped it on a website.

GPTCoin’s website domain (“gptcoinai.com”), was privately registered on April 29th, 2023. GPTCoin’s website was put together in May 2023.

GPTCoin has a YouTube channel but there’s nothing on it. It appears back in May the company intended to launch with a Boris CEO:

“Tom Mueller” doesn’t feature on GPTCoin’s fictional executive list so it appears plans to run with a Boris CEO were abandoned.

I couldn’t quite place Mueller’s accent but it sounded vaguely European.

One potential geo link comes by way of World Blockchain Summit sponsorship:

Dubai-based World Blockchain Summit hold crypto circlejerk events around the world. It’s next scheduled event is in Singapore in August.

Dubai needs no introduction as the MLM crime capital of the world. Personally though I’m leaning more towards GPTCoin being tied to Singapore.

The only languages provided on GPTCoin’s website are English and Chinese:

Also note the Chinese subtitles in GPTCoin’s Boris CEO marketing video above.

Scammers in Asia pretending to be based out of the US is a recent trend, with recently collapsed Ponzi Fintoch coming to mind.

Fintoch falsely claimed it was owned by Morgan Stanley. GPTCoin’s marketing claims feel eerily similar.

In any event if GPTCoin hasn’t collapsed by August, it’ll be interesting to note who shows up to the World Blockchain Summit event.

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…]

Versobot fails to provide ownership or executive information on its website.

Versobot’s website domain (“versobot.net”), was initially registered in September 2022. The private registration was last updated on May 8th, 2023.

Versobot’s social media profiles were created in March 2023, so presumably this is around the time the company launched.

For info on who’s running Versobot we turn to a June 3rd article from Brazil’s UOL.

In their report UOL explores “sub-celebrities” being used to promote Versobot. The publication also names Aldo Toledo as Versobot’s founder.

The creator of Versobot, Aldo Toledo, has already passed through several financial pyramids, including OneCoin of the “Queen of cryptocurrencies” wanted by the FBI.

BehindMLM last came across Toledo as CEO of the Quanticon Ponzi scheme earlier this year.

Quanticon appears to have collapsed shortly after launch.

Quanitcon’s website is gone and Toledo has deleted previously accessible marketing videos from his YouTube channel.

In addition to Quanticon, other MLM Ponzi schemes Toledo has promoted include:

• GetEasy (2014) – MLM Ponzi scheme that targeted Portuguese and Brazilian investors
• iGetMania (2015) – GetEasy reboot Ponzi
• Go2Up (2015) – another GetEasy reboot Ponzi
• ZyouCoin (~2017) – 200% ROI crypto Ponzi scheme (not reviewed on BehindMLM so unclear whether MLM)
• GladiaCoin (2017) – 200% ROI MLM crypto Ponzi scheme

UOL additionally ties Toledo to Monarch and the notorious OneCoin Ponzi scheme.

Versobot appears to be a straight reboot of Quanticon.

Toledo is originally from Venezuela but is now based out of Spain. He also appears to have ties to Brazil.

This is reflected in SimilarWeb pegging current top sources of traffic to Versobot’s website as Brazil (60%) and Spain (38%).

Read on for a full review of Versobot’s MLM opportunity. [Continue reading…]

With TranzactCard shaping up to be another pile of broken promises from Richard Smith, the company has trotted out Peter Rancie for a July 3rd Corporate Update.

While TranzactCard’s update does contain some information (more promises), Rancie takes up a good deal of the real-estate babbling on about a “war against inertia”. [Continue reading…]

CapitalX has received a fraud warning from Russia.

This appears to have prompted scammers behind the Ponzi scheme to pull the plug. [Continue reading…]

Blockchain Alliance operates in the cryptocurrency MLM niche.

Heading up the company we have CEO Joshua Denne.

As per Denne’s LinkedIn profile, he is also the CEO of Blockchain Funding.

Blockchain Funding was launched in 2017 and claims to “provide cutting-edge solutions for Web3, NFT, and blockchain projects”.

At time of publication SimilarWeb tracked negligible traffic to Blockchain Funding’s website domain.

Blockchain Funding’s Instagram profile hasn’t been touched since it was created in April 2022. Blockchain Funding’s Twitter profile is blank, indicating it too hasn’t been used since it was created in April 2022.

Together with no website traffic, it appears Blockchain Funding is dead.

It should be noted that the same people behind Blockchain Funding are behind Blockchain Alliance:

Prior to launching Blockchain Alliance, Denne was a promoter of the Daisy Forex Ponzi scheme.

In February 2023, Denne claimed his scamming with Daisy Forex was “just getting started”:

Not sure what happened there. A month later Denne announced Blockchain Alliance’s April 2023 prelaunch.

Of note is this March 2023 Instagram post from Denne, in which he represents serial scammers Rabu Gary and Avinash Nagamah as “business partners”.

Gary and Nagamah were recently outed as top net-winners in the collapsed $500 million Traders Domain Ponzi scheme. Whether Denne was a Traders Domain investor is unclear.

Circa 2021 Denne was promoting Chris Snook’s SDK Meta “organized crime tier privacy phone” grift.

SDK Meta appears to have collapsed in early 2022.

Going back further, in 2020 Denne was promoting Well Beyond.

Well Beyond came about after Jeremy Reynolds purchased what was left of MXI Corp after it collapsed in 2017.

Initially Well Beyond continued to sell MXI Corp’s Xocai chocolate supplements. In 2020 Reynolds began funneling Well Beyond distributors into Travis Bott’s Onyx Lifestyle Ponzi scheme.

Although he denies having “any power” in the company, Clif Braun was originally cited as an Onyx Lifestyle co-founder.

Braun is involved in Blockchain Alliance.

Onyx Lifestyle would eventually become Digital Profit in mid 2020. Jeremy Reynolds signed on as a Digital Profit co-founder with Travis Bott.

Digital Profit collapsed in August 2021. What was left of Well Beyond was sold off to My Daily Choice in September 2021.

As best I can tell, Denne’s descent into MLM crypto fraud began with Well Beyond.

Before he got a taste for crypto fraud, Denne made a name for himself in Seacret Direct (2011 – 2018).

Other names I recognized on Blockchain Alliance’s corporate team include Toan Nguyen, Wayne Marcel and Doug Kyle.

Toan Nguyen is co-founder of LaCore Enterprises’ Elomir.

Through his Passive Income Group YouTube channel, Nguyen has been promoting MLM crypto Ponzi schemes since mid 2018.

Eight days ago Nguyen uploaded a promotional review of the recently launched MuQuant MLM crypto Ponzi scheme:

Wayne Marcel and Toan Nguyen teamed up in early 2022 to launch Definity FI Academy, a collapsed MLM crypto Ponzi scheme.

Doug Kyle is co-founder of KulaBrands.

No corporate address is provided on Blockchain Alliance’s website. On LinkedIn, Joshua Denne cites his location as Arizona in the US.

Presumably this means Blockchain Alliance is also being operated from Arizona.

Read on for a full review of Blockchain Alliance’s MLM opportunity. [Continue reading…]