Wilmington city councilman Vash Turner is running for treasurer.

His involvement in the Karatbars Ponzi scheme has raised questions among his constituents. [Continue reading…]

Neora’s “we want to legalize pyramid schemes” lawsuit against the FTC has been dismissed. [Continue reading…]

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

Qtrex’s website domain (“qtrex.io”) was privately registered on June 30th, 2020.

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…]

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

Fortron’s website domain (“fortron.io”) was privately registered on August 14th, 2020.

Based on the company name and nature of the business, I suspected Fortron to be a reboot of the Forsage gifting scheme.

I was able to confirm this by way of Forsage owner and top scammers discussing Fortron on the official Forsage YouTube channel.

Forsage launched earlier this year on the ethereum blockchain.

It was founded by Lado Okhotnikov and combines gifting with a Ponzi business model.

Over the past few weeks traffic to Forsage’s website has flatlined:

For a gifting Ponzi, this begins the road to collapse. Hence the launch of Fortron.

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

NuLife Ventures’ fails to provide information on who owns or runs the company on their website.

I found the following infographic on NuLife Ventures’ official Facebook page:

As above, Bill Resides (CEO), Bob Doran (EVP) and Joey Bird (CSA) are cited as NuLife Ventures’ co-founders.

Why this information isn’t provided on the company’s website is unclear.

Prior to founding NuLife Ventures, Bill Resides and Joy Bird were involved in the Flexkom pyramid scheme. In 2014 Bill Resides was named Flexkom’s Country Manager for the US.

Bob Doran was promoting North American Power, which collapsed in 2015.

Establishing when NuLife Ventures launched is a bit of a challenge.

The company’s website footer marks copyright from 2014 but NuLife Ventures’ website domain itself wasn’t registered till 2016.

NuLife Ventures’ official Facebook page wasn’t created until early 2019. The company’s YouTube channel first videos were uploaded eleven months ago.

What is clear is that NuLife Ventures is based out of Tennessee, and operates in the health and wellness MLM niche.

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

Avacen has been denied a requested TRO against NuLife Ventures.

The ruling means that, at least for the foreseeable future, NuLife Ventures will retain exclusive rights to market Avacen’s products. [Continue reading…]

Rather than clear their names at trial, the 8 Figure Dream Lifestyle defendants have settled with the FTC.

As per the proposed settlement, John A. Bain, Alex Dee (aka Alex S. Dowlatshahi), Brian M. Kaplan and Jerrold S. Maurer will cop a $31.9 million judgment.

The proposed settlement also applies to corporate defendants 8 Figure Dream Lifestyle LLC, JL Net Bargains Inc., Kappy Enterprises LLC, Millionaire Mind Enterprises LLC and Spirit Consulting Group. [Continue reading…]

Uforia Science launched in late 2018. The company is part of LaCore Enterprises and is essentially a reboot of Foru International.

Following a failed merger between Uforia Science and MaVie earlier this year, things appear to have further deteriorated. [Continue reading…]

Paraiba World has received a securities fraud notice from the German regulator BaFin.

As per BaFin’s investigation earlier this year, Paraiba World operated through Paraiba World and NeoMoc Global LTD. [Continue reading…]

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

Paraiba’s website domain (“paraiba.world”) was privately registered on September 16th, 2019.

In an attempt to appear legitimate, Paraiba provides an incomplete corporate address in the Comoro Islands.

The Comoro Islands are a series of small islands off the south-east coast of Africa.

Needless to say Paraiba has no physical business operations there.

Paraiba marketing material cites Erich Ely as CEO of the company.

Ely (right) is supposedly from Germany. Possibly due to language-barriers, I was unable to put together an MLM history.

Update 7th September 2020 – BehindMLM reader PassingBy has uncovered that prior to founding Paraiba, Erich Ely was a German promoter of the OneCoin Ponzi scheme.

PassingBy also uncovered Paraiba received a securities fraud notice from BaFin in June. /end update

At the time of publication Paraiba appears to be primarily marketed in Honduras. Alexa cites Honduras as the only notable source of traffic to Paraiba’s website (43%).

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…]