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…]

SuperOne launched in 2018 as a simple smart-contract Ponzi scheme.

Said Ponzi scheme was run through SuperOne tokens (SRX), of which 2 billion were created out of thin air.

SuperOne owner Andreas Christensen owns half of the two billion SuperOne tokens created. Needless to say he has a vested financial interest in getting the tokens to pump so he can cash out.

SuperOne’s original iteration collapsed shortly after launch. In 2020 the Ponzi scheme was rebooted with a mobile trivia app.

This was essentially an integration of Mowjow, a failed quiz app development company Christensen launched in 2013.

To summarize, the idea was that new trivia app users would eventually spend money, allowing Christensen and the original SuperOne token bagholders to cash out.

That didn’t happen. SuperOne’s reboot was as much a failure as the original smart-contract Ponzi.

Since 2020, SuperOne rode the NFT and metaverse grift trains by integrating both into its Ponzi scheme.

We have released 150,000 NFTs, which will be integrated into the game and the community. And now, we are building up our Fandom Metaverse, where fans can interact, connect, and compete with each other.

The vision is to have a Fan Metaverse where all the different fan communities can see and visit each other and to gather as many fans as possible to construct a virtual city.

The above is quoted from a June 2022 article published on SuperOne’s website.

Fast forward to 2023 and metaverse and NFT grifts are as dead as a doornail.

As per yet another reboot in mid May 2023 (deceivingly being pitched as a “prelaunch”), SuperOne is returning to their failed trivia app roots.

The hope now is to pump SRX by specifically targeting football players. [Continue reading…]

TafaBot operates in the MLM cryptocurrency niche.

TafaBot’s website domain (“tafabot.com”), was first registered in June 2021. The private registration was last updated on August 19th, 2022.

Heading up TafaBot are co-founders Samuel Benedict Ogbonnaya (CEO) and Victor Otubo (aka  Otubo Victor Ogemdi and “Dr. OVO”).

Ogbonnaya, who for some reason has omitted his surname as head of TafaBot, is originally from Nigeria.

Circa 2013, Ogbonnaya was running an ecommerce platform called “ShopKudi”.

ShopKudi appears to have collapsed on or around late 2013.

After ShopKudi, Ogbonnaya reinvented himself as a crypto bro. This saw him launch the blockchain development firm Blockchain Tech Hub in 2015.

Blockchain Tech Hub went nowhere but did lead to Ogbonnaya launching SatoWallet in 2017.

SatoWallet was a “staking” model Ponzi scheme built around an inhouse SATOS shitcoin.

Through “SatoWallet Shares” investment positions, SatoWallet investors were pitched on returns as high as 40% a month.

SatoWallet collapsed in late 2019. Ogbonnaya blamed the collapse on “technical issues”.

How much Ogbonnaya stole through SatoWallet’s exit-scam is unclear but has been pegged at over a million.

Sometime between 2017 and 2019 Ogbonnaya relocated to Dubai.

Such to the extent Ogbonnaya might have continued to defraud consumers after SatoWallet’s exit-scam, it was kept low-key.

In mid 2021 Ogbonnaya launched TafaBot from the domain “tafabot.trade”.

Tafabot’s original incarnation saw Ogbonnaya sell a trading bot to unsuspecting consumers.

Tafabot is an automated cryptocurrency futures trading robot that earns you passive income of your capital without your capital leaving your wallet.

Tafabot was built by traders with unique trading strategies that has been proven for over 8 years to give consistent profit and minimize loss even up to 0% .

The losses Ogbonnaya scammed his SatoWallet investors out of were not disclosed.

Sometime after launching TafaBot, Ogbonnaya appears to have gotten involved in the Russian Skyway Capital Ponzi scheme.

The original TafaBot collapsed sometime after Ogbonnaya’s February 2022 Skyway Capital PR appearance. If I had to guess, probably around the time of the Terra/Luna collapse in May.

This saw Ogbonnaya reboot Tafabot through the “tafabot.com” domain, which up until July had redirected to TafaBot’s original “tafabot.trade” domain.

Just shy of a year on out from the reboot, Ogbonnaya still runs TafaBot from Dubai. This review is based on “version 4.0” of TafaBot’s compensation plan, which suggests TafaBot has already been rebooted multiple times over the past year.

Ogbonnaya is joined by TafaBot “co-founder” Otubo Victor Ogemdi (aka Dr. OVO), also a Nigerian national.

Ogemi appears to be a failed “certified life coach” turned crypto bro.

Due to the proliferation of scams and failure to enforce securities fraud regulation, BehindMLM considers Dubai to be the MLM crime capital of the world.

BehindMLM’s guidelines for Dubai are:

1. If someone lives in Dubai and approaches you about an MLM opportunity, they’re trying to scam you.
2. If an MLM company is based out of or represents it has ties to Dubai, it’s a scam.

If you want to know specifically how this applies to TafaBot, read on for a full review. [Continue reading…]

Fintoch has received a securities fraud warning from Malaysia.

On June 8th, the Malaysia Securities Commission added Fintoch to its Investor Alert List. [Continue reading…]

The Bank of Namibia successfully overturned a court decision, requiring it to fund Coenraad Botha’s collapsed CBI Global Ponzi scheme.

I know that’s an utterly ridiculous sentence but uh… welcome to Ponzi regulation in Namibia. [Continue reading…]