An iX Global promoter has been arrested in Wardha, a city in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

Following an EOW Nagpur investigation, Preeti Nilesh Raut stands accused of stealing Rs. 25.9 million through iX Global (~$309,000 USD). [Continue reading…]

Almarai USDT fails to provide ownership or executive information on its website.

Almarai USDT’s website domain (“almarai-usdt.top”), was registered with bogus details on July 4th, 2024.

Of note is Almarai USDT’s website domain being registered through the Chinese registrar Alibaba (Singapore).

Almarai USDT has already attracted the attention of financial regulators. The Central Bank of Russia issued an Almarai USDT pyramid fraud warning on July 11th, 2024.

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…]

BryteLyfe operates in the travel MLM niche. The company does not provide a corporate address on its website or social media profiles.

Heading up BryteLyfe is founder Wesley Melcher (aka Wes Melcher, right).

Both BryteLyfe and Melcher are based out of Texas.

As per his LinkedIn profile, Melcher (right) started his MLM career off with Cutco in 1997. In 2005 Melcher cites himself as a co-founder of WorldVentures Holdings.

WorldVentures Holdings was behind WorldVentures, a travel-niche MLM pyramid scheme.

As the regulatory fraud warnings began piling up, WorldVentures began to collapse in 2018.

Around this time Melcher filed suit against WorldVentures Holdings in September 2018. I don’t have access to any filings but Melcher abandoned the case a few months later.

WorldVentures would go on to eventually file for bankruptcy in late 2020.

Around the same time Melcher joined IM Mastery Academy.

Despite fraud warnings from Colombia, Curaçao and Sint Maarten, the UK, the CFTC in the US and Peru, Melcher claims he did “months of due-diligence and investigation” before joining IM Mastery Academy.

Describing IM Mastery Academy as “the next legacy company” when he joined, Melcher quietly ditched IM Mastery Academy in late 2023/early 2024.

During Melcher’s time at IM Mastery Academy;

• IM Mastery Academy received a securities fraud warning from Columbia;
• IM Mastery Academy promoters were arrested in Spain;
• IM Mastery Academy received a pyramid fraud warning from Poland;
• the FTC revealed it was investigating IM Mastery Academy;
• IM Mastery Academy received a securities fraud warning Luxembourg;
• IM Mastery Academy promoters were arrested in Luxembourg; and
• IM Mastery Academy promoters were charged with promoting a pyramid scheme in Poland;

After ditching IM Mastery Academy in late 2023 or early 2024, Melcher published a video titled “The REAL TRUTH about WorldVentures, DreamTrips, Seacret, and all TRADING and CRYPTO MLM Companies!!” on his YouTube channel.

In the March 23rd video, Melcher claims he left WorldVentures because he and others “weren’t getting paid”. Melcher also confirms this was the reason he filed suit against the company.

Notably, Melcher doesn’t address WorldVentures being an unsustainable pyramid scheme. Instead, Melcher blames WorldVentures’ management decisions.

[25:53] In the beginning the trips were good, the discounts were good, the culture was good. Everything was working.

But then we started to realize that the trips were not scalable. And the other thing was that we were continually trying to build a search-engine to compete with Travelocity and Expedia.

That is a bottomless pit that is a for sure loser … there was absolutely no way that we were gonna ever compete with Travelocity and Expedia.

But we still haemorrhaged millions of dollars in the beginning, trying to build a search-engine that never worked. It was broken from day one and it never worked.

And we were never able to do it and we wasted millions of dollars, millions of hours of resources. Okay?

And on top of that, we couldn’t spend properly. Because, y’know, they wanted to be like Google. They read the book, “The Google Effect”, and so we needed to have this big office and, y’know, Wayne [Nugent] just had to have a building with WorldVentures’ name on it.

And so we’re spending hundred plus thousand dollars a month for office space. We hired all these fancy, y’know, degree people.

Half of the executive team over about a ten year period had no experience in network marketing.

And then we go buy Rovia, we go buy Putnam Travel, a guy who doesn’t even believe in the MLM industry, who doesn’t even believe in our model, who’s a traditional travel agency.

And you go get all these people to come in and try to run a company that have no MLM experience, that have no direct sales experience.

[27:50] We went through like three or four CMOs over like a three or four year period. We had a new CMO like every six months, nine months.

And you know what’s crazy? At the end in 2017, we had a higher payroll for severance than we did for the employees that were actually still working there. Because we hired terribly.

[28:17] I remember coming into a meeting and having to explain [to] somebody who was the new CEO, how MLM worked. What? Are you serious?

And so literally, these were just the beginnings of the problems.

Melcher claims that he “brought people to the company … that could have saved the company”, but wasn’t listened to.

[29:59] I knew we were hemorrhaging money. I brought it up, I was shunned in meetings for bringing it up.

People didn’t care because the company was growing.

While WorldVentures’ management and poor financial decisions no doubt contributed to its collapse, at the end of the day it was still recruiting inevitably drying up that ultimately killed WorldVentures off. Financial overextension and a reduction in revenue tied into each other.

I also want to stress that, despite being a co-founder, Melcher didn’t leave WorldVentures until the money dried up.

Melcher also briefly touches on his time at IM Mastery Academy. From a regulatory perspective, Melcher claims joining Im Mastery Academy was “a mistake” ([56:33]).

Towards the end of March 2024, the same month Melcher released his video, BryteLyfe launched.

Arguably Melcher’s video is long enough to perhaps warrant a separate article. I’ve included it here though as the video is basically a preamble to BryteLyfe. And it is through the lens of Melcher’s words that we will analyze BryteLyfe in our conclusion.

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

TronCoin fails to provide ownership or executive information on its website.

TronCoin’s website domain (“tron-coin.net”), was privately registered on June 23rd, 2024.

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…]

Asignat fails to provide verifiable ownership and executive information on its website.

While Asignat does provide a list of executives…

…none of them exist outside of Asignat’s own marketing.

Asignat’s website domain (“asignat.com”), was first registered in 2019. The private registration was last updated on January 31st, 2024.

Through the Wayback Machine we can see Asignat’s current website went live in or around October 2023. This syncs with the creation of Asignat CEO Ruben Hogarth’s FaceBook profile on or around October 6th, 2023.

Prior to the current website Asignat was some Russian website. We also find Russian in Asignat’s website source-code:

Whoever is running Asignat appears to have ties to Russia.

Further supporting this is the Central Bank of Russia issuing an Asignat pyramid fraud warning in October 2022.

It appears Assignat is a long-running scam that, after initially scamming Russians, is now targeting potential investors outside of Russia.

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…]

TronSun fails to provide ownership or executive information on its website.

TronSun has two known website domains; “tronsun.cc” and “tronsun.top”. Both domains were privately registered on April 29th, 2024.

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…]

Crown Bankers fails to provide verifiable ownership or executive information on its website.

While Crown Bankers does provide a list of executives, these are fictional identities represented by actors:

I originally thought these might be stolen photos but the actors actively appear in Crown Bankers’ promotional material:

Update 16th November 2024 – Following publication of this review Crown Bankers has ditched its original cast of actor executives.

Today they’ve recycled “Adrian Cadiz” and found a new actor to play CEO:

Any reference to or appearance of Crown Bankers’ original actor executives has been scrubbed from its website and socials. /end update

In an attempt to appear legitimate, Crown Bankers provides incorporation details for Crownquest Asset Management LTD.

Crownquest Asset Management LTD was incorporated in the UK on June 19th, 2024. Whether this company has anything to do with Crown Bankers is unclear.

In researching Crown Bankers’ fictional executives I found a common thread in the use of stolen photos of actors with ties to India.

This syncs with Crown Bankers’ official FaceBook page being managed from India:

Whoever is running Crown Bankers appears to be based in and/or has ties India.

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…]

Rodan + Fields has announced it is abandoning its MLM business model as of September 1st.

In its place Rodan + Fields will operate what it calls a “simplified business model”, aimed at “unlock[ing] growth and reach[ing] new customers”. [Continue reading…]

Australian BitConnect scammer John Bigatton has avoided prison.

Following a guilty plea in May, Bigatton faced up to forty-seven years in prison.

On July 15th, Bigatton was convicted but “released on a recognisance to be of good behaviour for three years.” [Continue reading…]

After stealing millions from consumers through cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes, and allegedly aware of federal investigations into him, HyperFund’s Rodney Burton believed he was above the law.

As part of that process, Burton fell down a sovereign citizen rabbit hole.

Upon his arrest at a Florida airport back in January, US authorities seized a “27-page packet documenting [Burton’s] participation in the sovereign citizen movement”.

Burton was caught attempting to flee to Dubai. Dissecting that part is easy, Dubai has no extradition treaty with the US and is notorious for sheltering criminals from all over the world.

Unpacking Burton’s descent into sovereign citizen nutjobbery requires deeper analysis. [Continue reading…]