Italy’s top financial regulator has declared Corsair Group illegal nationwide.

CONSOB’s declaration follows complaints filed by Italian resident Corsair Group investors, who together lost €440,969 EUR. [Continue reading…]

Ride2Success, which also goes by “R2SInternational”, launched in late 2021.

The company’s website domain (“r2sinternational.com”), was registered on November 14th, 2021.

Heading up Ride2Success is Ariel Sunga (right).

Sunga’s FaceBook profile places him in Manila, Philippines.

Sunga appears to have a history of running Ponzi schemes:

Team Boss Manager touts a passive 270% to 400% ROI. Sunga represents Team Boss Manager has been running since 2016.

Team Boss Manager appears to have collapsed in late 2021. This would make it the precursor for Ride2Success.

On January 13th, the Philippine SEC issued a securities fraud warning against Ride2Success and Ariel Sunga.

This appears to have impacted operation of the scheme. At time of publication Ride2Success’ company website was mostly inaccessible.

Read on for a full review of Ride2Success’ MLM opportunity. [Continue reading…]

Earlier this month a reader reached out with details of a business opportunity run by Bob Schafer.

Update 6th April 2022 – A reader in the comments has let me know Schafer also goes by “Bob Shaffer”.

Bob and Jan Shaffer (his wife) run their scam out of their modest home in upstate New York.

/end update

A pitch of the scheme, which doesn’t have a name, was uploaded to YouTube on March 2019.

In my own research I discovered marketed for Schafer’s scheme dating back to 2018. [Continue reading…]

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

KIWIsmart’s website domain (“kiwismart.org”), was privately registered on August 20th, 2021.

At time of publication KIWIsmart’s website advises a “zoom launch event” taking place on January 29th.

This seems odd, seeing as KIWIsmart promotion videos started going up four months ago:

If I didn’t know any better, KIWIsmart already launched and it flopped. They’re now rebooting with a second launch.

In any event, names attached to KIWIsmart’s launch webinar are Rick Fleshman, Alex Ruiz, Syed Jawad Haider, “Tatjana”, Jonas Todorovic, Mike Soh, Malik Atif, Christi Chitic and Gian Luca Gallo.

Of the group, Rick Fleshman appears to be running KIWIsmart as its founder:

Rick Fleshman is based out of California in the US.

Fleshman (right) first popped up on BehindMLM’s radar in 2017, as one of Ormeus Global’s founders.

Ormeus Global was a Ponzi scheme that went through three incarnations, Ormeus Global, IQ Chain and IQ Legacy.

The Ponzi scheme collapsed in 2019, following John Barksdale’s arrest in Thailand that same year.

Following his release, Barksdale has continued to maintain the scheme as “Ormeus Ecosystem”

Interest is virtually non-existent.

Rick Fleshman is tied to John Barksdale through iAM Marketing.

Fleshman is iAM Marketing’s CEO:

Barksdale is iAM Marketing’s founder and Chairman:

If Barksdale is involved in KIWIsmart he’s keeping a low profile.

Update 30th January 2022 – Another former Ormeus Global executive involved in KIWIsmart is Javier Canales.

Canales headed up Ormeus Global’s compliance department:

What we also learn from the first screenshot above is that KIWIsmart went into soft launch in August 2021. /end update

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

DeFinity FI Academy provides no information on its website about who owns or runs the company.

In fact as I write this, DeFinity FI Academy’s website is locked behind a referral form:

DeFinity FI Academy’s website domain (“definityfi.io”), was privately registered on October 6th, 2021.

Further research reveals official DeFinity FI Academy marketing videos hosted by Toan Nguyen and Wayne Marcel “Blockchain Wayne”.

Nguyen refers to himself as DeFinity FI Academy’s “lead consultant”. Marcel is cited as the company’s “head educator”.

Toan and his partner Van appear to have gotten involved in MLM through Legal Shield over a decade ago.

Nerium was next (2015), followed by Wor(l)d Global Network (2017), ByDzyne (2019) and BioReigns (also 2019).

Promotion of BioReigns seems to have stopped around October 2020.

Nguyen’s crypto bro journey appears to have started in mid 2018.

After starting out promoting various shitcoins through “PIG” or “Passive Income Group”, Nguyen began promoting “yield farm” Ponzi schemes about six months ago.

This led to MLM crypto Ponzi schemes, starting with BNBBusiness in October 2021.

Yesterday Nguyen began promoting Meta Bounty Hunters, an MLM NFT crypto Ponzi.

Wayne Mancel (right) is co-founder of Crypto Experience.

Crypto Experience is an annual crypto bro event held in Florida.

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…]

Eighteen TelexFree “victims” have won the right to “challenge the accuracy of TelexFree’s records”.

It’s a bit of an odd decision, seeing as the “victims” have had plenty of time to prove their claims. [Continue reading…]

Nepal’s top financial regulator has issued an illegality warning against Crowd1, HyperFund and Solmax Global. [Continue reading…]

Meta Bounty Hunters provides no information on its website about who owns or runs the company.

Meta Bounty Hunters’ website domain (“metabountyhunters.io”), was privately registered on November 30th, 2021.

In the FAQ section of Meta Bounty Hunters’ website, we learn

MBH Community has secured an exclusive agreement with Calli.Finance, a digital asset staking pool company.

Calli.Finance is currently nothing more than a password protected website:

With a bit of poking around we learn Calli.Finance is an off-the-shelf website template.

The template is called “DeFi X” and was “was designed & developed by the team of Webflow Experts at BRIX Agency.”

Calli Finance’s website source-code also points to “The Startup Kit”:

The Startup Kit is a dead digital marketing business. On LinkedIn Matthew F. Greene (aka Matt Greene), cites himself as President of The Startup Kit.

Greene also claims to be a Platinum 5000 in IM Mastery Academy. He signed up in 2016.

Getting back to Calli Finance, the company’s website domain was privately registered on December 12th, 2021.

Given the proximity to registration of Meta Bounty Hunters’ domain, and there obviously being no existing business, it follows that the same people are behind both.

Meta Bounty Hunters herds its affiliates into a discord group, which serves as the company’s official channel of communication.

Update 2nd February 2022 – It is increasingly looking like Meta Bounty Hunters is an iBuumerang spinoff.

This would tie Holton Buggs to Meta Bounty Hunters’ ownership. /end update

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…]

BizzTrade is the third Ponzi reboot from serial scammers Rehan Gohar, Rizwan Gohar (brothers) and Gurpreet Dhaliwal.

The Gohars and Dhaliwal launched BizzTrek under the guise of it being an Amazon competitor.

In reality BizzTrek was a short-lived pyramid scheme.

In mid 2020 BizzTrek was rebooted as BizzTrade, a Ponzi scheme attached to BizzCoin.

The Gohars and Dhaliwal solicited €50 to €25,000 investment into their shitcoin, on the usual “we’re gonna be the next bitcoin!” nonsense.

BizzCoin began to fall apart in late 2020. Most of 2021 was spent coming up with excuses why BizzCoin’s public trading value was in the toilet.

In December 2021 the plug was finally pulled on BizzCoin. The Gohars and Dhaliwal weren’t done scamming people though.

BizzTrade Pro was announced, marking the third BizzTrek reboot. [Continue reading…]

Zeus’ Bounty provides no information on its website about who owns or runs the company.

Zeus Bounty does however claim its admin team has “100 years of combined business experience (with) 100+ crypto scams”.

If you want company ownership information, you have to watch Zeus’ Bounty’s embedded marketing video.

In the video Tim Bentley crediting himself as “the creator of Zeus’ Bounty”.

According to his FaceBook profile, Bentley is based out of Colorado in the US.

Prior to founding Zeus’ Bounty, Bentley was promoting iHub Global.

Bentley appears to have reinvented himself as a crypto bro circa 2015.

Zeus’ Bounty’s website represents the company has four admins.

Bentley identifies them as Nicole (his wife), Nico (his son) and Raaj Menon.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Raaj Menon is a web and crypto bro dev from South Australia.

Whether Menon has an MLM history is unclear.

Update 7th February 2022 – As revealed by Daniel Toth in the comments below, Raaj Menon is behind the “Crypto Passive” YouTube channel:

Menon has used Crypto Passive to promote one crypto scam after another over the past eleven months. /end update

Zeus’ Bounty’s website domain (“zeusesbounty.com”), was privately registered on October 22nd, 2021.

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