O’Qubuss is being run in secret. That’s because it’s likely a reboot of the twice collapsed IX Inversors Ponzi scheme.

A visit to O’Qubuss’ website reveals a blank page. Apparently the signup form and backoffice are only accessible with an O’Qubuss referral link.

This is an attempt to hide the scheme from authorities.

O’Qubuss’ website domain was privately registered on June 23rd 2022.

O’Qubuss marketing confirms ties to Alexander Hernandez:

Hernandez was CEO of the IX Inversors Ponzi scheme.

Launched in 2021, IX Inversors began to attract the attention of authorities in February 2022. Both Spain and Ecuador issued securities fraud warnings against the Ponzi scheme.

IX Inversors would eventually go on to collapse, with Hernandez framing it as a “liquidation”. This saw the brief reboot of DIA, which was followed by an even briefer Hyperuincap reboot.

In March 2022 Ecuador escalated its investigation into IX Inversors and Hernandez.

The Superintendencia de Bancos had forwarded its findings to the Financial and Economic Analysis Unit (UAFE), with the aim of further investigating money laundering and financial crimes.

That saw IX Inversors, DIA and Hyperuincap officially collapse. Well, at least until Hernandez resurfaced in June with O’Qubuss.

Hernandez, originally from Ecuador, is believed to have fled the country. His current whereabouts and status are unknown.

Like its predecessors, O’Qubuss is primarily being promoted across Latin America.

O’Qubuss scammers are primarily recruiting investors through shady WhatsApp and Telegram groups:

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…]

BehindMLM first reviewed IDLife back in 2014. Back then IDLife was fronted by founder and CEO Logan Stout.

Of note was IDLife wading into dangerous regulatory territory, by representing itself to be a pharmacy equivalent.

The clear implication was IDLife’s supplements were comparable to prescribed medication.

Back in April IDLife issued a press-release announcing Josh Paine had signed on CEO of the company.

To support his vision for the company, Josh Paine has solidified the IDLife executive team and has begun to outline key initiatives.

Logan Stout had been looking for four years for someone “with the same core values IDLife stands for and someone with excellent operational and financial expertise and a proven background. Josh Paine is exactly what I prayed for.”

Before joining IDLife, Josh Paine has been credited with scaling six notable companies, building profitable organizations on a global scale while following the principles of Conscious Capitalism.

Not being familiar with Conscious Capitalism, I looked it up.

Conscious Capitalism is the integration of beliefs in pro-capitalism & systems improvement, personal & business advancement, and social & environmental impact.

Doesn’t seem harmful, so sure.

Noticeably absent from IDLife’s press-release is the MLM company Paine made a name for himself in the industry with, WorldVentures.

Paine was appointed CEO of WorldVentures back in 2017. Prior to that he was involved in the business through Rovia.

Under Paine’s leadership WorldVentures was run into the ground, collapsed and eventually filed for bankruptcy in late 2020.

WorldVentures had of course been operating as a pyramid scheme for over a decade before Paine signed on. Given his prior involvement through Rovia and then signing on as CEO however, Paine’s role in WorldVentures’ collapse shouldn’t be ignored.

Oh and turns out Conscious Capitalism and Paine go way back.

Why this DFW company is steering toward conscious capitalism (Oct 2018)

After a year at the helm of WorldVentures Holdings, a Plano-based direct seller in the travel industry, Josh Paine is looking to stay.

That’s significant because Paine is known as a turnaround specialist. Typically, after months of eliminating inefficient processes and people, along with implementing new strategies, Paine’s work is done.

A private equity firm then will come in for a major investment, and Paine is off to the next adventure with a troubled company.

“Companies only call me when stuff hits the fan,” Paine said.

I’m trying not to read too much into that with respect to Paine’s appointment at IDLife.

Logan Stout is still around as IDLife’s Chairman.

Half of of IDLife’s top executives however appear to have been replaced by WorldVentures refugees.

Given how WorldVentures ended, I’m not sure if that was the smartest of moves on Stout’s part.

In any event, eight years later, today BehindMLM is revisiting IDLife for an updated review. [Continue reading…]

VCCP was a “click a button” Ponzi scheme targeting Colombia

The scheme recently collapsed, leading to a new type of exit-scam. [Continue reading…]

Coinaxium fails to provide company ownership or executive information on its website.

Coinaxium’s website domain (“coinaxium.com”), was privately registered on March 11th, 2022.

SimilarWeb reports an uptick of traffic to Coinaxium’s website beginning June 2022:

Top sources of traffic are France (36%), the UK (21%) and Switzerland.

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…]

Tedy Teow, head of the MBI International Ponzi scheme, has been arrested in Thailand.

Authorities allege Teow was caught laundering money from his online gambling business. [Continue reading…]

AOL918 provides no information on its website about who owns or runs the company.

AOL918’s website domain (“aol918.com”), was privately registered on March 10th, 2022.

If we look at the source-code of AOL918’s website, we see it is localized to Chinese:

This strongly suggest whoever is behind AOL918 has ties to China.

SimilarWeb shows a large uptick in traffic to AOL918’s website, mostly originating out of Turkey.

It should be noted that AOL918 operates from multiple domains, these include:

• aol518.com
• aol988.com

There are possibly others.

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…]

South Africa attempting to regulate MLM Ponzi schemes through a broken liquidation system is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever had to report on.

In the latest show of stunning incompetence, South Africa’s Revenue Service, the country’s tax regulator, is looking to steal the entire balance of recovered funds. [Continue reading…]

Tectum operates in the cryptocurrency MLM niche.

The company represents it is part of CrispMind LTD. CrispMind purportedly has both US and European offices.

Tectum’s provided Illinois corporate suite address is shared by a number of other companies, suggesting it’s virtual in nature. Tectum’s European office is represented to be in Ireland.

Tectum’s website has an “our team” section, on which fourteen individuals are listed.

In what appears to be a UI design failure, executive roles aren’t available unless you click through on each team member’s name.

I wasted my time clicking through every provided Tectum team member’s profiles, only to find who actually owns and runs the company isn’t disclosed.

The only name I recognized of Tectum’s fourteen team members was David Track.

BehindMLM noted David Track (right), as founder and President of PrepayCPA in 2011.

PrepayCPA is long gone. Wondering what Track has since been up to, I headed over to his LinkedIn profile.

In addition to running Track Companies, who “specialize in high-risk merchant credit card services”, Track was Senior Vice President of Growth & Strategy for Tryp.

BehindMLM reviewed Tryp in January 2019, noting a pyramid business model with an illegal stock offering.

Tryp collapsed as an MLM company in January 2020.

Track appears to have reinvented himself as a crypto bro in 2020. Track’s LinkedIn cites him as a Bitlocity “Member of the Board of Advisors”.

Bitlocity was an MLM crypto gifting pyramid scheme. The scam collapsed in early 2021.

In late 2021 Track jumped on the NFT grift bandwagon as co-founder of NFT Tycoons.

That went nowhere, leading Track to sign on as Tectum’s Director of Mass Adoption in April 2022.

Still wanting to know who was running Tectum, my next port of call was CrispMind’s website.

There I learned Alex Guseff (right) is CEO of CrispMind. Presumably this means Guseff is also running Tectum.

Guseff is the last Tectum team member listed on their website. Why his running of the company isn’t disclosed is unclear.

Guseff appears to be a random crypto bro from Russia. As opposed to either the US or Ireland, a June 2020 PR puff piece on Medium places Crispmind in Kazan, Russia.

Alexander Guseff is a career software development executive from Crispmind, a software development startup located in Kazan, Russia.

Why Crispmind and Tectum are pretending to be based out of the US and Ireland is also unclear.

SimilarWeb currently ranks top sources of traffic to Tectum’s website as the UK (37%), Russia (31%), Switzerland (20%) and Canada (7%).

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…]

Genusity is an MLM company co-founded by Tim Sebert and Randy Thomas.

BehindMLM reviewed Genusity in late 2017. We noted an MLM opportunity built around the sale of bluetooth spam devices.

Today Genusity markets a bunch of white-label supplements…

…as well as a $195 in, $10,330 out Ponzi cycler. [Continue reading…]

Young Living has received a warning from the FDA, advising its CBD products “are drugs … intended for use in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease.”

The classification has been made following observation of marketing by Young Living and its distributors. [Continue reading…]