On December 15th, Mark Scott finally filed his case for a OneCoin retrial.

Scott was convicted in November 2019 and seeks to overturn his conviction.

Arguments raised by Scott in favor of a retrial focus on two instances perjury by witness Konstantin Ignatov, and how the perjury allegedly impacted the jury’s guilty verdict. [Continue reading…]

Validus popped up on my radar as a result of its recent acquisition of AuLives.

AuLives being a Ponzi scheme, launched by former OneCoin scammers in mid 2018.

At time of publication Alexa ranks traffic to AuLives’ website as “N/A”, i.e. too small to measure.

What we take away from this is AuLives collapsed some time ago. AuLives’ official Facebook page was abandoned in November 2019.

What Validus in fact purchased was the AuLives affiliate investor database.

One last cash grab by AuLives founders Parwiz Daud and Mansour Tawafi.

There’s no mention of Parwiz Daud on Validus’ website or social media channels.

Frank Ricketts signed on for a brief stint as CEO of AuLives. Ricketts is currently on trial for OneCoin money laundering in Germany, so there’s no mention of him either.

Mansour Tawafi however has signed on as Validus’ “new VP of sales”.

Wait a minute… pre-launch call?

Validus’ website domain was registered on June 15th, 2021. The company created its official Facebook page on June 16th.

There’s nothing “prelaunch” about Validus. The company has been marketing for seven months.

About a month after it launched, Validus featured its CEO in a marketing video. A month later, in August, the CEO was introduced as “Howard Friend”.

Friend has a finance marketing history. Validus appears to be his first MLM gig.

Evidently Friend’s finance career didn’t work out. So he relocated to Dubai and here we are with Validus.

I’d be very surprised if Friend was actually behind Validus.

Update 3rd February 2022 – Parwiz Daud has crawled out of Dubai’s shadows. He’s appointed himself Validus’ Chief Network Officer.

Seeing as Daud part owns the company not sure why the facade but hey. It is what it is. /end update

Alexa currently ranks Nigeria as the only notable source of traffic to Validus’ website (93%).

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

After announcing a December 10th launch deadline that came and went, Hyperverse has delayed launch of its NFT Ponzi game until Q1 2022.

Rather than make the announcement themselves, owners Ryan Xu and Sam Lee had “community presenters” announce the delay. [Continue reading…]

Algotech was a Ponzi scheme that surfaced a few months ago.

The scam didn’t last long before it collapsed. At time of publication Algotech’s website has been disabled.

Before it was pulled, here’s what the footer of Algotech’s website looked like:

Here’s what the footer of WinWheel’s website looks like today:

Presumably former Algotech affiliates are also promoting WinWheel as a reboot of the company:

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

WinWheel’s website domain (“winwheel.com”), was first registered in 2013.

The private registration was last updated on November 10th, 2021. This is the assumed date the current owner(s) took possession of the domain.

As revealed in BehindMLM’s Algotech review, the company was owned by Klas Magnus Nilsson.

Nilsson likely owns or at least part owns the WinWheel reboot.

If Algotech’s Master Distributor Daniel Grenon is still on board, that’s being kept under wraps.

In Grenon’s place we now have Staffan Liback fronting WinWheel.

Liback is working with the Steinkeller brothers and Simon Le.

Liback, the Steinkeller brothers and Le are all notorious OneCoin Ponzi scammers.

A few months before Ruja Ignatova disappeared, the Steinkeller brothers abandoned their 2.5 million euro a month OneCoin position.

They left the position in the hands of Staffan Liback, who promptly tanked it (OneCoin collapsing in January 2018 didn’t help).

Having fled to Dubai, the MLM scam capital of the world, the Steinkellers maintained a low profile for a few years.

In mid 2019 they resurfaced with Planet Impact. Today Planet Impact is no more.

Staffan Liback’s departure was in stark contrast to the Steinkeller brothers. Liback slunk away and lay low in Thailand.

In 2019 Liback resurfaced alongside OneCoin money launderer Frank Ricketts, to front the Cloud Horizon Ponzi scheme.

Liback is believed to have cashed out and ditched Cloud Horizon in late 2020.

In December 2020 Liback was promoting OmegaPro, another MLM Ponzi scheme. He was also an original Algotech promoter.

Simon Le, one of OneCoin’s top earners (he pillaged south-east Asia), also quietly slunk away to Vietnam after the Ponzi collapsed.

In early 2020 Le launched his own OneCoin clone, OneLink.

OneLink lasted a few months before Le rebooted it as Global Sponsorship Network.

Le has rebooted Global Sponsorship Network three or four times now. It seems he’s finally given up and is now looking to funnel what’s left of his SEA following into WinWheel.

Overseeing Liback, the Steinkeller brothers and Le is Nigel Allan.

In one WinWheel marketing video, Liback states;

Today I will introduce to you one of the absolute reasons for us being on this call.

I know that this gentleman … Mr. Nigel Allan, has been introducing Connect to us.

Without him and his connection to it, we would not get this opportunity.

We’ll get into Connect in the conclusion of this review.

Nigel Allan served as President of OneCoin very early on.

Before OneCoin Allan fronted the Brilliant Carbon scheme. Allan either cashed out or was fired from OneCoin, it depends who you ask.

After OneCoin Allan positioned himself as Master Distributor for the Crypto888 Club Ponzi scheme.

In our published Crypto888 Club review, we suspected Allan was behind the scam.

After Crypto888 Club collapsed in early 2016, later that same year he launched Power On Network.

Power On Network saw Allan return to the “environmental” scam model pre OneCoin, this time with cryptocurrency.

Power On Network collapsed in mid 2017.

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…]

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

IX Inversors operates from two website domains; “ixinversors.net” and “ixinversors.world”.

IX Inversors’ .NET domain was privately registered on March 20th, 2021. The .WORLD domain was privately registered on May 5th, 2021.

IX Inversors’ website defaults to Spanish. The company’s marketing videos are also predominantly in Spanish.

Further research reveals IX Inversors marketing videos citing Alexander Hernandez as founder and CEO of the company.

Due to the name being common and suspected language-barriers, I was unable to establish Hernandez’s MLM history.

IX Inversors marketing appears to primarily target South America.

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…]

TheClub.Travel, one of the more awkwardly named MLM companies I’ve come across, provides no corporate ownership or management information on its website.

TheClub.Travel’s website domain (“theclub.travel”), was privately registered on July 26th, 2021.

Further research reveals Jonathon McKillip citing himself as CEO of TheClub.Travel on Facebook:

McKillip made a name for himself as WorldVentures’ Global Sales President.

In 2016 Malaysia went after WorldVentures for violating tourism laws. McKillip defended the company, inadvertently admitting WorldVentures was a pyramid scheme.

Our product is not travel packages. Our product is merely the (WorldVentures) membership.

McKillip resigned from WorldVentures in December 2017. He signed on as President of MaVie in January 2018.

In June 2018 McKillip was a named defendant in WorldVentures’ lawsuit against Ariix and MaVie.

The litigation pertained to unfair competition alleged against Ariix, MaVie, McKillip and several former WorldVentures employees.

In July 2018 an injunction was entered against McKillip, barring further use of confidential information obtained from his WorldVentures employment.

In late 2019, it emerged prosecutors in Taiwan had filed criminal charges against WorldVentures.

Taiwanese prosecutors alleged WorldVentures was a “classic pyramid scheme”. Then President Eddie Head and McKillip were named as defendants.

To the best of my knowledge neither Head or McKillip defended the charges.

McKillip left Mavie in December 2019. In February 2021 he was appointed President of Hapi Travel.

Parent company Elevacity Holdings, now The Happy Co., eventually launched Hapi Travel as Hapi Travel Destinations in October 2021.

Jonathan McKillip wasn’t part of the company. As per McKillip’s LinkedIn profile, he left Hapi Travel in August 2021.

That brings us to the launch of TheTravel.Club, McKillip’s own travel MLM company, on or around August 2021.

That’s not a typo. McKillip left Hapi Travel and launched TheClub.Travel in the same month.

Why McKillip isn’t featured on TheClub.Travel’s website is unclear.

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

Hyperverse affiliate investors are flooding official support channels with reports of withdrawal failures.

Other affiliates are claiming HDAO is working for them. [Continue reading…]

Matrix Pro Leads cites itself as “a division of Print Buyers Club Inc.”.

Print Buyers Club is a Florida corporate. Both it and Matrix Pro Leads are owned and operated by CEO Billy Hayes.

Specifically, Matrix Pro Leads claims to be

an emergent of Print Buyers Club Inc, a West Palm Beach, Florida based network marketing tools provider with over 12 years of experience in delivering world-class service in the multi-level, business opportunity, and network marketing industry.

Print Buyers Club operates as Print Founders and has its own website up.

Print Founders’ website states the company provides “tools designed to explore your business”.

In the “network marketing” section of Print Founders’ website, a combination of MLM gifting, pyramid and Ponzi schemes are featured:

These are grouped with otherwise legitimate MLM companies.

I wasn’t able to ascertain whether Hayes (right) is/was a promoter of these schemes. His participation in at least some of them is a likely probability.

Whereas Print Founders markets services to promote other MLM companies, Matrix Pro Leads is its own MLM income opportunity.

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

Sincere Systems launched in late 2019. It was a simple token Ponzi scheme, centered around “sincere tokens”.

Sincere Systems made a showing of being a “UK company”, but in reality was run by Russian and/or Ukrainian scammers.

Sincere Systems collapsed in mid 2021. In August 2021 the Ponzi scheme was rebooted as “S-Group”.

S-Group continues the UK company charade, referring to itself as a “British Investment” company.

It’s not that hard to catch S-Group out in its corporate lie:

S-Group provides no company ownership information on its website.

Scammers heading up the company’s marketing efforts are mostly from Russia and the Ukraine.

Alexa currently ranks Russia and the Ukraine as the only notable sources of traffic to S-Group’s website (57% and 15% respectively).

This is in line with Sincere Group’s Alexa traffic estimates, although it seems recruitment outside of Russia and Ukraine has mostly collapsed.

In August 2021, the Bank of Russia issued a pyramid scheme warning for Sincere Systems and S-Group.

Sincere Systems is referenced by name. S-Group’s website domain is included in the list of offending URLs.

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…]

Hyperverse has received its first securities fraud warning from the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority. [Continue reading…]