The SEC has filed a federal fraud lawsuit against Daniel F. Putnam, Jean Paul Ramirez Rico and Angel A. Rodriguez.

The SEC alleges the defendants defrauded consumers out of at least $12 million through cryptocurrency securities fraud. [Continue reading…]

Crowd1 has been identified as a “pyramid scam” by Gabon’s Ministry of Economy and Finance. [Continue reading…]

The Trump ACN lawsuit has come to a halt, following a granted stay on proceedings.

On May 26th the Trump defendants filed an appeal against a decision to deny a motion to compel arbitration. [Continue reading…]

In the lead up to his resignation as “captain” of OneCoin on April 1st, Simon Le claims to have “many sleepless nights”.

Details of what he was worried about are revealed in Le’s leaked OneCoin resignation letter. [Continue reading…]

MOBE’s payment processor QualPay has settled fraud charges with the FTC.

The settlement includes a $46.7 million dollar suspended monetary judgment. [Continue reading…]

SwissGold Market’s website provides no information about who owns or runs the company.

In SwissGold Market’s Terms and Conditions, the company represents it is incorporated as a shell company in Belize.

For the purpose of due-diligence and regulation, this is meaningless.

SwissGold Market’s website domain (“sg.market”) was first registered in June 2018.

The registration information isn’t available due to EU law, however we do get a city and country of registration – the Republic Adygea, a federal subject of Russia.

This ties in with SwissGold Marketing videos narrated in Russian.

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…]

Uhuru Tribe provides no information about who owns or runs the company on their website.

Marketing copy on Uhuru Tribe’s website suggests the company is run by someone from South Africa.

UHURU is a Stokvel that will empower you to change your financial security forever.

A stokvel is

invitation-only clubs of twelve or more people serving as rotating credit unions or saving schemes in South Africa where members contribute fixed sums of money to a central fund on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis.

That’s not what Uhuru Tribe is but we’ll get into that later. The important thing to note is the use of South African terminology.

Further research revealed official Uhuru Tribe marketing videos presented by this guy:

I was able to identify this individual as Coenraad “Coenie” Botha.

In another official marketing video, Botha is revealed to be in control of the Uhuru Tribe admin account (click to enlarge):

Thus it follows that Botha owns and runs Uhuru Tribe.

In his Facebook profile, Botha claims to be from Swakopmund, Namibia.

Uhuru Tribe however is using South African bank accounts:

Whether Botha is running Uhuru Tribe from Namibia or South Africa is unclear.

I was unable to put together an MLM history on Botha (right).

In 2013 Botha was the subject of a corruption investigation by Namibia’s Anti-Corruption Commission.

Allegations of corruption saw Botha resign as Chairman of Erongo Red, a Namibian utilities company.

I couldn’t find anything on the outcome of the allegations.

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

XOXO Network’s website provides no information about who owns or runs the company.

In fact as I write this, XOXO Network’s website is nothing more than an affiliate login form.

XOXO Network’s website domain (“xoxonetwork.io”) was privately registered on May 23rd, 2020.

One thing to note is that despite the recent registration of XOXO Network’s website domain, promotion of the company began last month.

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…]

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

CliccXAds’ website domain (“clicxads.com”) was first registered in 2017. The domain registration was last updated with private details on February 16th, 2020.

Through the Wayback Machine I was able to verify that ClicXAds’ domain was previously used to market a PTC script.

Although the the February reg update is the last recorded update, ClicXAds promotion began in late 2019. This suggests the domain was acquired prior to Feb 2020.

That said, promotion of ClicXAds appears to have only taken off recently. Alexa recorded an uptick in traffic to ClicXAds’ website beginning February 2020.

Update 2nd June 2020 – Marketing videos on ClicXAds’ official YouTube channel reveal the company is run by CEO Frank Nii Okanta Ankrah.

Ankrah describes himself as an “expert in the field of digital marketing sales” and, according to his Facebook page, is currently based out of Quintana Roo in Mexico.

Ankrah is originally from Ghana and appears to target his marketing efforts across Africa.

A Facebook post dated December 2019 suggests that, prior to launching ClicXAds, Ankrah was involved in the collapsed Dunamis Network Ponzi scheme.

Dunamis Network was launched by BitClub Network scammer Joe Abel. In December 2019 Abel was gearing up to sell Dunamis Network’s affiliate-base to theOnyx Lifestyle Ponzi scheme.

Five days after Ankrah’s Facebook post, news broke that Joe Abel had been arrested by US authorities for his role in BitClub Network.

This appears to be around the time Ankrah split and went off to launch ClicXAds.

Prior to Dunamis Network Ankrah was promoting iMarketsLive for a few months.

Going back further, in 2017 Ankrah was promoting the Global Dynamic Marketing Ponzi scheme and Appi Travels (then operating as a pyramid scheme).

In 2016 it was Vida Divina, which as far as I can tell was Ankrah’s first “serious” MLM venture. /end update

Alexa currently cites India (29%), Egypt (16%) and Malaysia (5%) as the top three sources of traffic to ClicXAds’ website.

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…]

OXI Corp provides no information about company ownership on its website.

There is an “Our Team” section available, however none of the roles suggest executive positions.

There’s also no external information sources tying any of the names provided to OXI Corp.

Supposedly OXI Corp is incorporation in Labuan, a Malaysian tax-haven.

Whether the company is owned and run by Malaysians is unknown. OXI Corp claims “100% ownership and control of the company by foreign persons”.

At the time of publication Alexa ranks Switzerland as the largest source of traffic to OXI Corp’s website (67%).

This suggests whoever is running the company is likely based out of Europe. That said, OXI Corp’s official marketing videos feature a number of languages (English, Russian, Indonesian).

OXI Corp’s official Facebook group has one admin, Flor Harger. Flor Harger appears to be a dummy account set up in early May.

OXI Corp’s website domain (“oxi-corp.com”) was privately registered on April 3rd, 2020.

Update 23rd March 2021 – Since this review was published OXI-Corp has thrown up a bunch of stock photo executives on their site:

In what appears to be a piss-poor effort to hide the fact that stock photos have been used, OXI-Corp has watermarked each image.

Also someone with a poor grasp of English seems to think western executives have corporate positions for surnames. /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…]