Apex Financial operates in the cryptocurrency niche.

The company’s website domain is “theapex.app”, which was privately registered on January 12th, 2021.

Apex Financial provide a number of executives on their website. The only person who actually seems to exist is James Ward.

Rather than disclose ownership of Apex Financial, Ward has set himself up as Head of Marketing.

James Ward is the face of Apex Financial and hosts the company’s marketing videos:

James Ward (right) first popped up on BehindMLM’s radar in 2010, as the CEO of LGN Prosperity.

LGN Prosperity marketed travel vouchers, with each voucher generating a position in a matrix 2×2 cycler.

Following months of affiliates not getting paid, in mid 2011 LGN Prosperity morphed into LGN International.

This name-change brought on the addition of commissions paid on travel services booked through LGN.

LGN International eventually collapsed in mid to late 2013, with Ward heading up iBizWave as CEO and co-founder in early 2014.

In 2015 Ward launched 2SL Start Living, which saw him return to the travel MLM niche.

2SL Start Living was short-lived, prompting Ward to launch Pangea in 2016.

Pangea’s original business model was a matrix cycler hiding behind travel.

By early 2017 Pangea had collapsed. Ward rebooted Pangea with a new compensation plan.

The only material difference was the cycler expanded to three tiers, so it’s not surprising that Pangea 2.0 also didn’t last long.

In late 2019 Ward resurfaced with Sports Trading BTC, a crypto Ponzi scheme.

Sports Trading BTC collapsed by December 2019, prompting Ward to reboot the scheme as Global Credits Network.

As per website traffic charts provided by Alexa, Global Credits Network collapsed in or around April 2020.

In late June 2020 Ward launched his first smart-contract Ponzi scheme, Lion’s Share.

One can safely assume that the launch of Apex Financial means Lion’s Share has or is on the verge of collapse.

In an attempt to appear legitimate, Apex Financial bangs on about incorporation and having registered with the SEC.

For the purpose of MLM due-diligence, basic incorporation anywhere is meaningless.

Incorporation in jurisdictions chosen specifically for their lack of MLM securities fraud regulation is even more meaningless.

The BVI, Cyprus and Dubai are all scam-friendly jurisdictions.

To evaluate Apex Financial’s SEC regulation claim, I hit up the SEC’s Edgar database.

Apex Financial Institute filed a FORM D Notice of Exempt Offering of Securities on March 16th, 2021.

There is nothing about Apex Financial’s passive investment opportunity in this filing.

What the filing does confirm is James Ward is a co-owner of the company. Apex Financial’s other two owners are Jason Rose and Hitesh Juneja.

The last time we came across them Rose and Juneja were launching Rise Network. This was back in November 2019.

Rise Network’s website is still active, however Alexa traffic estimates reveal a collapse beginning mid 2020.

Why James Ward is the only Apex Financial owner mentioned on the company’s website (and even then Ward isn’t credited as an owner), is unclear.

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

Onward Capital represents it is headed up by founder and CEO Oscar Finnigan.

To that end Onward Capital provides an elaborate backstory for Finnigan, dating back to 2000.

The future founder of Onward Capital, Oscar Finnigan, was educated at the University of Sherbrooke (Quebec, Canada) under Professor Esteban Chornet, PhD.

In 2000, the professor became the founder of Enerkem and announced an exam that selected the best out of 200 applicants.

More than 20 finalists received a position in this innovative new environmental business area, and Oscar Finnigan was among them, as well, in the top 10.

Naturally none of Finnigan’s backstory is verifiable.

On Onward Capital’s official YouTube channel, Oscar Finnigan is played by some guy definitely wearing a wig… and probably a fake beard too:

The actor playing Finnigan has a distinctive eastern European accent, marking him as a prime Boris CEO candidate.

Update 27th April 2021 – BehindMLM reader Tomas has outed Oscar Finnigan as Russian actor Oliver Siou (lit: Оливье Сиу).

According to his professional bio, as of January 2021 Siou is “actively filming in Russia, and has about a dozen projects on his account.”

Evidently one of those projects was playing CEO for a Russian Ponzi scheme. /end update

Despite Finnigan and other actors in the marketing videos having eastern European accents, Onward Capital represents it is based out of Canada.

To that end Onward Capital provides an address in Toronto, Ontario on its website. Basic Canadian incorporation documents are also provided.

This has attracted the attention of Canadian authorities. On January 19th the British Columbia Securities Commission issued an Onward Capital securities fraud warning.

Not withstanding that for the purpose of MLM due-diligence, basic incorporation anywhere is meaningless.

Onward Capital’s website domain (“onward.capital”) was registered on November 11th, 2020. “Onward” is listed as the domain owner.

Alexa currently ranks the top sources of traffic to Onward Capital’s website as Canada (15%), Ecuador (15%) and Russia (11%).

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…]

Trading Insight claims to be “officially registered in the UK and Hong Kong.” Certificates of incorporation for both jurisdictions are provided.

For the purpose of MLM due-diligence, basic incorporation is meaningless. Both incorporation certificates should be ignored.

Trading Insight represents it is headed up by CEO Paul Matthews.

Matthews features both on Trading Insight’s website and in the company’s official marketing videos.

Matthews has a strong eastern European accent, marking him as a prime Boris CEO candidate.

I was able to pin down “Paul Matthews” to Evgeny Savvin, a teacher at the Lotus Model modelling school.

Lotus Model is based out of Donetsk, Ukraine.

As per Savvin’s Lotus Model bio;

At the moment he collaborates with photographers of Donetsk, participates in advertising filming, shooting music videos.

He is engaged in the preparation of television projects on Donetsk television.

In addition to teaching modeling, Savvin appears on numerous websites through stock photos:

And when he’s not fronting Ukranian Ponzi schemes, Savvin can be found on YouTube dancing to Justin Beiber songs.

Trading Insight’s website domain (“tradinginsight.ai”), was privately registered on March 5th, 2021.

Alexa currently ranks the top sources of traffic to Trading Insight’s website as Russia (31%), Vietnam (18%) and Pakistan (13%).

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…]

Legend Holdings serves up quite the unverifiable company history on its website;

Legend Holdings Corporation was founded in 1984 by Liu Chuanzhi and 10 other researchers with funding from the Computing Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Starting from the IT industry, Legend Holdings has gone through the development of over three decades, and now it is a leading diversified investment holding company in China.

It builds up a unique business model of “strategic investments + financial investments” with synergy between the two-wheel-drive businesses.

Naturally no information on Liu Chuanzhi is provided. Legend Holdings Corp’s website does have a “from the Chairman” link but, rather conveniently, it’s currently broken.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences is an actual institution, but there’s no link with Liu Chaunzhi.

Liu Chuanzhi is the name of Lenovo’s founder. If I didn’t know any better I’d say whoever is behind Legend Holdings Corp has “borrowed” the name.

Supporting this is Legend Holdings Corp’s website domain (“legendholdingscorp.com”), being first registered in March 2020.

The domain registration is private and was last updated in March 2021.

Looking a little deeper into the name, it seems there’s an actual Legend Holdings operating from “legendholdings.com.cn”. This Legend Holdings is headed up by Liu Chuanzhi

Legends Holdings Corp’s website appears to be modeled after the genuine Legend Holdings website. It has nothing to do with the actual Legend Holdings or Liu Chuanzhi.

One breadcrumb I found was a Facebook page titled “Legend Holdings”. Up until February 2021 it was going by SmartWorkz.

SmartWorkz appears to be a short-lived 2019 Ponzi scheme that targeted the Philippines.

References to the SmartWorkz Ponzi scheme have been scrubbed off the internet over the past month or so.

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…]

Last month BehindMLM reviewed EzyTRX. We noted at the time that a reboot, EzyTRX II, had just been announced.

Today we revisit EzyTRX to see how the EzyTRX II reboot is going.

As opposed to a replacement, EzyTRX II was launched in tandem with EzyTRX. This is despite the original EzyTRX smart-contract having collapsed.

Of note is EzyTRX II is not promoted or even mentioned anywhere on EzyTRX’s public-facing website.

Information appears to only be made available to those who have signed up as affiliates.

Both EzyTRX and EzyTRX II are run by Nicklaus D’Cruz, who operates the companies from Singapore. [Continue reading…]

Exp Realty operates in the real-estate MLM niche. The company described itself as “the first cloud-based brokerage”.

Heading up Exp Realty is founder and CEO Glenn Sanford.

Sanford’s LinkedIn profile ties him to a number of real-estate and ecommerce ventures.

In addition to Exp Realty, Sanford (right) is Chief Strategy Officer of VirBela and CEO of eXp World Holdings.

VirBela has a platform they claim helps “move businesses forward while minimizing travel and person-to-person contact.”

Exp World Holdings claims it “develop(s) next generation Cloud-based organizations”.

Outside of Exp Realty, Glenn Sanford doesn’t appear to have any MLM experience. [Continue reading…]

Project Lantern has no website or public presence. The company is promoted in secret.

Inspired Enterprises Ltd is the marketing entity responsible for the promotion of the project and interacting with users involved with the project. The Brand name is Project Lantern.

What Project Lantern does have is an affiliate login page, which is hosted at a specific domain as per the company’s FAQ:

What URLs are associated with the company?

The URL associated with this project is inspiredenterprises.club. The log in URL for users is inspiredenterprises.club/login. The URL for the Support Team is support.iebo.club.

The three executives behind Project Lantern are Michael Faust, Chris Thomson and Azli Noor.

Michael Faust (right) is a serial promoter of Ponzi schemes.

In his Project Lantern corporate bio, this is reduced to

36 years in business, 20 years of that working online.

Has developed referral networks compromising of tens of thousands of people in 100+ countries multiple times; founded, co-owned, and managed companies, and consulted internationally.

Through his Digital Tycoons team, Ponzi schemes Faust has promoted include USI-Tech, Ormeus Global and Wenyard.

Faust also promoted SilverStar Live, a trading scam that collapsed in 2019.

Owners Hassan Mahmoud, Candace Ross-Mahmoud and David Mayer, have each been sued by the CFTC for SilverStar Live related fraud.

Prior to the CFTC crackdown, Faust threatened BusinessForHome for suggesting SilverStar Live was committing securities fraud in the US.

According to his Facebook profile Faust, originally from Australia, is hiding out in Chonburi, Thailand.

There’s a few Chris Thomsons in the MLM industry. I wasn’t able to pin down Project Lantern’s Thomson specifically.

Azli Noor is based out of Malaysia. He doesn’t appear to have any MLM experience, at least nothing he’s willing to share publicly.

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

Although it’s been on my radar, BehindMLM hasn’t covered the AMG v. FTC lawsuit as it isn’t itself an MLM related case.

That said, on April 22nd the Supreme Court handed scammers a victory. That victory has ramifications for MLM fraud related lawsuits. [Continue reading…]

While South African authorities continue to twiddle their thumbs and do nothing, liquidation proceedings against Mirror Trading International’s ringleaders continues.

The latest decision has seen provisional sequestration granted against Johann and Nerina Steynberg. [Continue reading…]

Following a successful appeal last month, the Kristijan Krstic extraditions were punted back to a Serbian High Court.

That High Court has now reaffirmed that “that all legal preconditions for extradition have now been determined”.

This means that extradition is once again on the cards, pending the outcome of another new appeal. [Continue reading…]