Hyperverse has received a pyramid scheme fraud warning from the Hungarian National Bank. [Continue reading…]

Cala AI provides no information on its website about who owns or runs the company.

Cala AI’s website domain (“bocalazer.com”), was first registered in 2006. The private registration was last updated on January 18th, 2022 – which I believe is when the current owner(s) took possession of it.

In an attempt to appear legitimate, Cala AI provides anti money laundering certificates for FinCEN (US) and SCUML (Nigeria). Basic incorporation certificates for the US (Colorado) and Nigeria are also provided.

Due to the ease with which scammers are able to incorporate shell companies with bogus details, for the purpose of MLM due-diligence these certificates are meaningless.

There is no regulatory verification or oversight when registering a company with FinCEN or SCUML.

Attempting to participate in Cala AI’s MLM opportunity punts visitors over to a subdomain hosted on a different domain; “web.sabrinascala.com”.

This domain, privately registered on June 27th, 2022, is a gateway to Cala AI’s app. It is through this app that Cala AI’s MLM opportunity is operated.

SimilarWeb currently tracks top sources of traffic to Cala AI’s “bocalazer.com” website as Taiwan (100%).

This is an odd traffic profile, strongly suggesting whoever is behind Cala AI has ties to Taiwan.

Top sources of traffic to the “sarbinascala.com” website are Nigeria (60%), Spain (21%) and India (19%).

Of note is Cala AI’s original (and still linked) YouTube channel was

terminated due to multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s policy against spam, deceptive practices, and misleading content or other Terms of Service violations.

A second Cala AI channel was hastily set up on August 16th. It should be further noted that ban evasion is a violation of YouTube’s TOS.

Cala AI’s marketing videos are a combination of stock footage with a robo voiceover. This is typical of scammers from non-English speaking 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…]

LiveGood operates in the nutritional supplement MLM niche.

The company is based out of Florida and is headed up by CEO Ben Glinsky.

Glinsky (right) made a name for himself in the MLM industry as founder and CEO of Skinny Body Care.

Skinny Body Care appears to have been abandoned in 2018.

The company was eventually sold off to Valentus in early 2019.

Glinsky has a mixed history spanning offline real estate, MLM lead generation (Pro Builder) and running various other MLM companies before Skinny Body Care (the last of which was Rejuvenate Worldwide).

Another name I recognized on LiveGood corporate was Director of Network Marketing, Nauder Khazan (right).

Khazan first popped up on BehindMLM’s radar in 2011, as founder and CEO of the pyramid scheme Stiforp.

BehindMLM came across Khazan again in 2019, as founder and CEO of AliveMax, and co-founder of Globallee. Both companies appear to still be in business.

Update 2nd March 2023 – As of December 2022 AliveMax’s website has been taken offline. It appears the company has shut down.

As at the time of this update, I wasn’t able to determine a reason for AliveMax’s collapse. /end update

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

Four and a half years after BitConnect collapsed, a victim has registered a complaint with police in India.

The victim, identified only as a lawyer in Pune, Maharashtra, claims to have lost “close to 220 bitcoin”. [Continue reading…]

Zeus’ Bounty started off in late 2021 as a simple BNB smart-contract pyramid scheme.

As of August 2022, here’s how that’s going:

As the pyramid scheme was collapsing, to keep the grift going, owner Tim Bentley announced ZeusCoin and and Zeus’ Chariots.

Zeus’ Chariots was an NFT game cash grab. The game was announced in February 2022.

Four months later, on June 19th, 2022, Zeus’ Bounty affiliates got their first look at the game:

Riveting. I can see that going straight to the top of the Steam charts.

Anyway, about a fortnight after that reveal Bentley launched Zeus Academy, through which affiliates are being funnelled into a new gambling scheme. [Continue reading…]

IM Mastery Academy has received a pyramid fraud warning from Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK). [Continue reading…]

CKB168 was a $200 million MLM pyramid scheme that targeted Asian-Americans in the US. Abroad, the majority of CKB168 victims were based in China.

The SEC shut down CKB168 all the way back in 2013. In total sixteen CKB168 executives and top promoters were sued.

Parallel criminal charges were also filed by the DOJ in 2015.

Over the years several CKB168 defendants settled the fraud charges.

Now, nine years later, the SEC has finally secured final judgment against the remaining non-settling defendants. [Continue reading…]

Now that members of its private FaceBook group have been onboarded above everyone, Awakend has opened its prelaunch to the public.

Awakend seeks to be the first product-based MLM company with an NFT gimmick.

And while more products are planned, Awakend’s flagship is a fat burner supplement first sold over a decade ago. [Continue reading…]

In a new August 17th MetaForce video, Forsage owner Vladimir “Lado” Okhotnikov states;

In this video I will talk about the actions that MetaForce is taking to defend its position in the context of the SEC.

Figuring this meant Okhotnikov had responded to the SEC’s August 1st securities fraud Complaint, I pulled up the case docket.

Nope.

So um, what’s Okhotnikov banging on about? [Continue reading…]

Nimbus Platform is an MLM crypto Ponzi that’s been around since August 2020.

The original Ponzi scheme was built around NMBT tokens, paying up to 0.5% a day.

This collapsed in less than a year, prompting Nimbus Platform to reboot with NBU tokens. The second iteration of Nimbus Platform offered a far more modest 7% a year.

Here’s how that’s going:

Now, in an attempt to resurrect the failed second reboot, Nimbus has upped the ante with a 100% annual ROI. [Continue reading…]