W10X provide no information on their website about who owns or runs the business.

The W10X website domain (“w10x.co”) was privately registered on April 20th, 2017.

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…]

Within 24 hours of the Department of Justice and Homeland Security seizing Payza’s .com domain, the payment processor reemerged on a .eu domain.

The “payza.eu” domain was registered back in 2012. Payza only activated in response to the domain seizure however on March 21st.

Payza’s parent shell company PH Millars is listed as the owner of the domain. The domain itself is registered through the US registrar GoDaddy.

Whereas Payza’s clients, many of whom the DOJ and HSI allege are criminals and peddlers of child pornography, were unable to access their wallet balances, after the .eu switch they were again able to transfer funds.

Considering Payza co-founder Firoz Patel is an indicted fugitive facing a $250 million money laundering case, this seemed a strange development.

Today we dig a little deeper and examine how, despite US authorities’ efforts, Payza and Patel are still servicing their clients. [Continue reading…]

Two prominent MLM cryptocurrency opportunities in the Philippines have received warnings from the Philippine SEC.

According to the SEC’s Enforcement and Investor Protection Department, neither OneCash Trading or PBB 150 are licensed to offer securities in the Philippines. [Continue reading…]

Following on from the news that Randy Crosby had entered into settlement negotiations with the SEC late last year, a stipulated settlement with the TelexFree Trustee has been filed. [Continue reading…]

US authorities have seized the Payza and AlertPay websites, as part of forfeiture in a $250 million money laundering case filed against co-founders Firoz and Ferhan Patel. [Continue reading…]

The specifics of Payza’s business operations have always been murky.

We knew the company was co-founded by brothers Firoz and Ferhan Patel, Canadian citizens, who operated Payza via the UK shell company MH Pillars.

Beyond that though specifics have been elusive… up until now.

Following a federal indictment of the Patel brothers earlier this month, the scope and magnitude of their criminal enterprise have been revealed. [Continue reading…]

FundsPay provide no information on their website about who owns or runs the business.

The FundsPay website domain (“fundspay.net”) was privately registered on March 15th, 2018.

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…]

For years Payza has been the defacto payment processor darling of the MLM underbelly.

Founded by brothers Firoz and Ferhan Patel, who weren’t above personally promoting their partnership with Ponzi schemes, Payza was operated out of Montreal, Canada. Both Firoz and Ferhan Patel are Canadian citizens.

Earlier this month the Patel brothers were indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia.

Ferhan Patel has since been arrested while Firoz Patel is still on the run. [Continue reading…]

A few weeks ago BehindMLM caught wind of Bitqyck’s plans to launch a securities offering through an offshore shell company.

Today we can reveal that company is Firstmover International.

A visit to the Firstmover International website reveals a .io domain.

This is your first red flag.

The only reason an MLM company operates from an .io domain is when they’re engaged in illegal activity and the owners want to cover their tracks (.io domain registrations by default do not provide ownership details to the public).

As dodgy as a .io domain registration might be however, it’s obviously not enough to conclusively tie Firstmover International to Bitqyck.

Not surprisingly, Firstmover International provide no information about who owns or runs the company on their website.

The Firstmover International website domain (“fmimining.io”) was privately registered on February 24th, 2018 – which does fit the Bitqyck announcement timeline (late February, early March).

For all intents and purposes, Firstmover International is presented as a stand-alone company.

There’s no mention of Bitqyck or any of its US-based management.

Perusal of the Firstmover International website source-code reveals it’s a simple front-end website hosted on Wix.

If you click “login” at the top of the page, you’re directed the back-end which is hosted on “myqy.io”.

Myqy is similar to Bitqyck’s “bitqy” altcoin, but again not definitive evidence of a relationship.

The Myqy website domain (.io) was privately registered on February 25th, 2018.

The domain itself is locked down (http error 403), and appears to only be used to manage Firstmover International affiliate signups and backoffice access.

If you click “home” from the Firstmover International “affiliate application” page hosted on the Myqy (.io) website, you’re redirected to “myqy.com”:

The Myqy (.com) website homepage is currently disabled (timeout).

What we do learn from the domain however is who Bitqyck are using to stage their “international mining” securities offering through.

The Myqy (.com) website domain is registered to Haoyong Zhang of Zhengde Tech, LLC.

Zhengde Tech are a tech firm based out of Shandong Sheng, China.

The company describes itself as ‘an Internet application service provider for enterprise informatization and e-government‘ (auto-translate).

I’m going to point out here that the Myqy (.com) domain registration was last updated in mid 2017, which doesn’t fit our timeline.

This could either be a pre-planned anomaly or a simple typo on the Myqy (.com) website, where someone set navigation links to Myqy (.com) instead of Myqy (.io).

In any event, I didn’t follow this particular rabbit hole any deeper.

Perusal of the Myqy (.io) affiliate signup page reveals the website uses assets hosted on “cs4000.net”:

The CS4000 domain itself is not active as a website. It is owned by Compu-sult, an American company who claim to be “leaders in custom MLM software”.

Through CS4000, Compu-sult provide affiliate backoffice services to a number of MLM companies:

As above, one of those companies is Bitqyck.

Although pretty coincidental, this still isn’t definitive evidence tying Firstmover International to Bitqyck.

It was at this point that I remembered something Scott Brewster said when he first announced Bitqyck’s foray into “international mining”.

According to Brewster, a few weeks ago Bitqyck co-founder Bruce Bise was

working on a replicated site for the Asian launch.

So when you speak to somebody in Spain and they sign up, you’re going to give them a different replicated site than Bitqyck.

That’s coming here in the next day or two.

A replicated site and Brewster’s inference that Bitqyck affiliates would be able to promote Bitqyck’s securities offering had to mean sharing of the Bitqyck affiliate-base.

I’d also noted the following at the bottom of the Firstmover International website:

NOTICE: New Affiliates must have their Sponsor’s ID to enroll

Given that Firstmover International public promotion hasn’t even begun, what Sponsor ID were they talking about?

That’s when I had the idea to punch in a Bitqyck affiliate ID to see what would happen.

I didn’t have one on hand so I just used the “763114” ID that came up in the “cs4000” Google search (screenshot above).

I didn’t want to create a dummy account to test whether Firstmover International would accept the ID.

I ran a Google search on the Myqy (.io) domain and found they had an affiliate login page:

I didn’t need actual access to the account, just confirmation the Firstmover International website would accept it.

So I clicked “click here to reset your password” and punched in “763114” Bitqyck affiliate ID:

It worked, although turns out the account hadn’t been used in some time:

You can verify this yourself by trying any active Bitqyck affiliate ID (referral code).

This is undeniable proof that Firstmover International is plugged into the Bitqyck affiliate database through shared Compu-sult assets.

And that’s important to establish because it confirms Bitqyck’s owners, Sam Mendez and Bruce Bise, are indeed behind Firstmover International.

Although not directly related but still part of my wider research, I’d also like to point Sam Mendez’s applications for “firstmover” and “firstmover rewards system” trademarks.

Read on for a full review of the Firstmover International MLM opportunity. [Continue reading…]

It seems Bitcoiin and its “Worldwide Ambassador”, Steven Seagal, are determined to press on despite receiving a securities fraud cease and desist.

While we already knew US promoters were continuing to promote Bitcoiin in secret, now we have confirmation the company itself has no plans to comply. [Continue reading…]