Viiva operates in the weight loss and travel MLM niches and are based out of Utah in the US.

Viiva’s website fails to provide management details, however a linked press-release identifies Joe Zhou as its founder.

Zhou appears to have bought into Viiva about a year ago, which is when the company changed its name from Tavala.

Tavala launched back in January 2017 and was headed up by CEO Kent Wood. Viiva’s October press-release identifies Wood as Viiva’s ‘chairman and one of the company’s co-founders.’

Steinway Huang was recently appointed CEO of Viiva, after previously serving as Chief Security Officer.

Joe Zhou appears to have his MLM roots in NuSkin China. Viiva distributors “Dave and Joy” claim Zhou was

the top distributor for NuSkin in China during the time China represented 30-32% of NuSkin’s revenues and 80% of that came from Joe’s downline.

Nu Skin would later come under fire in China for operating as a pyramid scheme.

Dave and Joy claim Zhou (right) then

moved to an executive position with another company and set up a direct sales network team that grew a feminine hygiene product to over 1 Billion in sales.

Oddly enough, the company name is not disclosed.

In 2009 Zhou launched JM, which would later go on to merge with Ocean Avenue in 2014.

By 2015 the merger had devolved into a corporate disaster.

BehindMLM reviewed what was left of JM Ocean Avenue a year later in 2016.

Based on its business model, we concluded JM Ocean Avenue was a pay to play autoship recruitment scheme.

Although its completely dead in the US, JM continues to operate elsewhere in the world. Whether Joe Zhou is still involved is unclear.

Analysis of Tavala’s old website properties suggest nothing much was going on prior to the Viiva reboot.

According to Viiva’s website, the company is active in the US, Canada, the Bahamas, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand.

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

The BitConnect class-action isn’t going to well, following dismissal of the second amended complaint and several defendants. [Continue reading…]

The Norwegian Lottery Authority has revealed it has an active investigation into Crowd1. [Continue reading…]

Wantage One claims it has filed appeal against a decision by Austria’s Financial Market Authority. [Continue reading…]

Rise Network operates in the marketing tools MLM niche.

The company provides a suite address in Texas on its website. The same website cites Rise Network’s founders as Hitesh Juneja, Kevin Hokoana and Jason Rose.

Long-time readers will recognize Juneja, Hokoana and Rose from their DS Domination days.

DS Domination launched in 2013 and combined dropshipping training with pyramid recruitment.

Two years later recruitment slumped. This prompted Juneja, Hokoana, Rose and partner Roger Langille to launch Options Domination.

A few months later Roger Langille, largely credited as DS Domination’s dropshipping guru), cashed out and left.

Options Domination saw Juneja and Hokoana pivot into securities fraud. This continued with the launch of Infinii in late 2015 (Options Domination was launched earlier that same year).

A month after BehindMLM published its Infinii review, the company announced it was dropping its securities fraud offering.

By mid 2016 Infinii was on the rocks, prompting a reboot launch of Options Domination as Infinii Digital Signal Forge.

For the most part, Infinii and its associated companies appears to have gone under or been wound down by the end of 2016.

Not really sure if Juneja, Hokoana and Rose launched anything MLM related over the past three years. Things had been rather quiet until the recent Rise Network launch announcement.

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

Phoenix Fund owner Amer Abdulaziz Salman is feeling the heat after Konstantin Ignatov shed light on his involvement in OneCoin.

According to the former OneCoin CEO, Abdulaziz used Phoenix Fund to help mark Scott launder $110 million dollars. [Continue reading…]

It’s official; the Skyway Capital Ponzi brand is toxic.

So toxic that Skyway Capital has outright banned affiliate investors from publicly mentioning its name. [Continue reading…]

CoopCrowd provides no information on its website about who owns or runs the business.

CoopCrowd’s website domain (“coopcrowd.com”) was first registered in 2011. The domain registration was last updated in January 2019.

David Rosen is listed as the owner of the domain. Through the Wayback Machine I was able to verify that CoopCrowd’s domain was for sale in 2018.

This suggests that Rosen (right) acquired the domain on or around January 2019.

David T. Rosen first popped up on BehindMLM’s radar in 2015, as founder of the PIE 24/7 pyramid scheme.

In early 2018 Rosen launched Cooperative Crowdfunding, a matrix-based gifting scheme. This was followed by 50/50 Crowdfunding in late 2018.

On or around mid 2019 Rosen appears to have rebooted Cooperative Crowdfunding as CoopCrowd.

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

ATMxNet provides no information on its website about who owns or runs the business.

The company does provide a UK corporation number, which corresponds to ATMXNET Limited.

As per Companies House records, ATMXNET Limited was incorporated in May 2017 and dissolved in October 2018.

The stated reason for dissolving the company was compulsory strike-off.

Note that UK incorporation is dirt cheap and for the most part unregulated.

It is a favored jurisdiction for scammers looking to incorporate dodgy companies.

ATMxNet’s website domain (“atmxnet.com”) was registered in May 2017. Thomas Prince is registered as the owner, through a street address in London.

No information on Prince exists outside of ATMxNet’s UK incorporation data. Whether he actually exists is unclear.

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…]

Zhunrize and owner Jeff Pan have been hit with $132 million dollar final judgments. [Continue reading…]