Back in April Karatbars International affiliates reported receipt of an email from AcuaWellington.

AcuaWellington represented they’d “taken over all receivables and liabilities of the Karatbars group of companies”.

Further research reveals Acua Wellington is in all likelihood a recovery scam. But not your typical recovery scam. [Continue reading…]

Emile Parfait Simb, owner of the Liyeplimal Ponzi scheme, was arrested in Cameroon last month.

Cameroonian authorities apprehended Simb as he attempted to board a plane bound for Morocco.

Despite being charged with “serious fraud”, Simb was released on condition he hand over his passport.

Upon being released, Simb and his family promptly fled Cameroon. (Curb Your Enthusiasm theme.mp3)

Initial reports tracking Simb claimed he had fled to the Cenral African Republic. The latest is Simb turning up in Russia. [Continue reading…]

The USFIA Receivership and IRS have reached a settlement regarding tax claims held by the IRS.

Pending court approval, this paves the way for USFIA victim distribution payments to go out. [Continue reading…]

ZetBull has received a securities fraud warning from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. [Continue reading…]

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

Revelates website domain (“revelates.io”), was privately registered on March 25th, 2022.

In an attempt to appear legitimate, Revelates provides incorporation details for “Revelates Group LTD”.

Revelates Group LTD was incorporated in the UK on April 1st, 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.

On May 15th the Central Bank of Russia issued a Revelates financial fraud warning.

SimilarWeb also currently ranks Russia as the top source of traffic to Revelates’ website (21%). Ukraine (13%), Brazil (12%), Ecuador (5%) and Vietnam (5%) are also significant sources of traffic.

Between the Central Bank of Russia’s warning and Russia being Revelates top source of traffic, it is highly likely whoever is running Revelates has ties to Russia.

Admin of Revelates takes place through shady 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…]

Real Rise Academy operates in the forex training MLM niche.

The company was founded in 2021 by CEO Raphael Vargas.

One of the first things I came across in researching Vargas is this unbelievably cringe sob story.

If you don’t want to risk that click (I don’t blame you), here’s a taste;

Showing up to a party that was shortly after busted by the police turned out to be a life-threatening day for him.

As he was leaving the party, 3 men started to approach him, which caused him to turn around and go back into the party.

Little did Raphael know the owner of the house was a gang member as well. Raphael was jumped by multiple gang members, getting hit with bats, brass knuckles, and getting his face broken from the impact.

Scarily enough, it didn’t end there. He was then cornered in a room filled with 10 to 15 guys holding guns, bats, and other weapons, telling him, “you’re not going anywhere.”

As they started to approach Raphael, he knew that was it. At the age of 18, he was going to see his life end right before his eyes.

By the grace of God, it just so happened, there was a window by his feet that for some odd reason led to the basement of the house.

Raphael quickly broke the window and fell through into the basement, where he would find his way out of the house and make it to the hospital, where he spent 2 days getting patched up.

Police show up and shut a party down. As Vargas is leaving fifteen armed gang members “corner” him in a room.

Vargas hits pause, jumps through a window and lands in the basement. Fifteen scary armed gang members do nothing and Vargas escapes. Oh and the police disappeared too.

Something something god, real-estate and then Vargas makes $1 million by 24.

And the best part is Vargas wrote that spiel himself.

Anyway, Vargas does seem to have made a career for himself in real-estate. Soon enough though he turned it into a business opportunity.

Through faith, prayer, and an insane work ethic, Raphael became a Multi-Millionaire in his early 20’s and knew he could help others do the same.

Soon came 2019, where he would start teaching over 1,300 investors and become recognized by Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies for Real Estate Investment Education.

Turning countless students into millionaires, he would run into yet another roadblock.

With every good entrepreneurial story comes inevitable obstacles. Another bad partnership pushed Raphael out of the real estate education business and caused him to rethink what it was that he wanted to do next after making his fortune.

To hear Vargas tell it, after his real-estate business fell apart he got into shilling ecommerce automation.

I found marketing though suggesting Vargas started his ecommerce training business in “late 2018”:

In any event, that didn’t last long and by early 2019 Vargas was back to his real-estate origins.

This time it was Real Empire, operated through parent company Real Advisors.

That lasted until March 24th, 2020;

One year ago, Real Advisors set out to create and launch a program to help active real estate investors grow and scale their wholesaling businesses through REAL, proven actionable training that would yield REAL results.

Shortly after Real Advisors signed Raphael Vargas as our newest expert, and Real Empire was born.

We launched the Real Empire brand in early 2019, which was a huge hit for our company and we changed a lot of lives through our collective efforts.

We are announcing today that the Real Empire brand has determined it necessary to commence the process of winding down the brand and consolidate all business operations under its parent company and publisher, Real Advisors, who will continue to fulfill all previously purchased training events, products and services…

For those currently enrolled in our Real Advisors coaching program, we have made changes to improve the program, and those changes go into effect today, starting with the updated daily coaching schedule, taught by REAL active real estate investors/coaches…

The subtle dig at the end suggests it wasn’t an amicable split.

After Real Empire Vargas claims he rode the ecommerce COVID-19 wave, after which he got into forex.

Deciding to get into e-commerce such as Shopify and Amazon, Raphael quickly saw massive successes once again.

Not knowing that Covid-19 was coming, it did everything but hurt his business.

He says, “When covid came, E-commerce blew up. I had no idea that covid was coming. All I knew is that God told me to do it. We literally did over $10,000,000 in 7 months.”

If there’s one thing Raphael knows how to do, it’s how to be a success in anything that you do with no exceptions. Never falling short of building more financial freedom, he took a portion of his profits to invest in Forex.

He stated, “I gave my Forex fund manager $300,000, and he turned it into $1,200,000 in 4 months.

So we raised a bunch of capital, and I put more money in myself. Now we have a multi-million dollar forex fund.”

Now Raphael is giving back once again with his all-new mastermind group giving away all of his knowledge on forex, real estate, marketing, and e-commerce.

That saw Vargas launch Ace Equity Pros circa mid 2020 (just after Real Empire collapsed).

By early 2021 Vargas was back to shilling real-estate, which Stephen Cornelia pegged as mortgage fraud.

A few months after that expose, Real Rise Academy was launched.

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

LaCore Enterprises has merged its Perfectly Posh and Innov8ive Nutrition MLM companies.

As per a recent communication sent out to distributors, Perfectly Posh’s “Home Office” advised; [Continue reading…]

Aufin has received a financial fraud warning from Russia.

As per the Central Bank of Russia’s June 10th warning, Aufin exhibits signs of a “financial pyramid”. [Continue reading…]

Holton Buggs’ descent into MLM crypto securities fraud continues.

The latest is iBuumerang distributors now being fed into his NFT Ponzi factory. [Continue reading…]

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

MC Football’s website domain (“mc858.com”), was privately re-registered through a Chinese registrar on January 26th, 2022.

Visiting MC Football’s website reveals it’s just a gateway to the company’s app.

If we take a look at MC Football’s website source-code, we find it is set to Chinese localization:

Despite this, MC Football is primarily marketed to Spanish-speaking investors.

SimilarWeb reports top sources of traffic to MC Football’s website are Venezuela (58%), Spain (20%), Argentina (10%) and Colombia (4%).

Traffic to MC Football’s website took a slump in April but grew across May.

Robo narrated MC Football marketing videos represent MC Football stands for “Manchester City Football Club”:

The online platform was founded in 2017 and has launched online football investment. It is a joint venture holding company between the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and China.

Needless to say MC Football has absolutely nothing to do with Manchester City Football Club, or any “joint venture holding company”.

MC Football was launched in early 2022 by serial Chinese Ponzi scammers.

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…]