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…]

Cellements operate in the personal care MLM niche and are based out of Tallinn, Estonia.

The company was founded in late 2017 and is headed up by CEO Anders Karlsson.

Other MLM opportunities Karlsson (right) promoted prior to Cellements include Vemma and Nature’s Own.

Karlsson, originally from Sweden, was a top-earner in Vemma and focused on the Italian market.

In 2012 Business For Home reported Andersson had a Vemma downline of about 8000 affiliates and was making around $20,000 a month.

In 2014 Italy’s Competition and Markets Authority ruled Vemma was a pyramid scheme.

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

The road to holding two of TelexFree’s biggest promoters accountable has been a long one, but the SEC is one step closer following a dismissal of two motions to dismiss. [Continue reading…]

Crypto-Builder provide no information on their website about who owns or runs the business.

The Crypto-Builder website domain (“crypto-builder.com”) was privately registered on November 23rd, 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…]

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

The iCenter website domain (“icenter.co”) was privately registered on July 1st, 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…]

On February 22nd Baltazar Avalos filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against BitConnect.

In the lawsuit Avalos sought to hold defendants BitConnect, Joshua Jeppesen, Glenn Arcaro, Trevon Brown (aka Trevon James), Ryan Hildreth, Craig Grant, Nicholas Trovato (aka CryptoNick) and Ryan Maasen liable for $110,000 in losses.

On March 14th Avalos informed the Californian Northern District Court he was voluntarily dismissing the case. [Continue reading…]

Hot on the heels of North Carolina authorities going after Frank Edward Calabro Jr., another regulatory lawsuit against serial promoters of scams has emerged.

On February 16th the FTC filed suit against Thomas Dluca, Louis Gatto, Eric Pinkston and Scott Chandler.

According to the FTC, Dluca, Gatto, Pinkston and Chandler have violated the FTC Act by ‘advertising, marketing, and promotion of purported money-making schemes‘. [Continue reading…]

Provided details of New Tycoon Plus’ management are sketchy.

Founders cited on the New Tycoon Plus website include Richard Tan (Chairman), Michael Burnett (CEO), Veronica Tan (General Manager) and Patrick Liew (Adviser).

The same names appear as founders on the Success Life website.

Success Life claim to be based out of Singapore and are gearing up to launch a pointless “Success Tokens” ICO next month.

New Tycoon Plus marketing material claims the company is

a fully owned Subsidiary of Success Resources Global Media as Listed on ASX.

Why a Singapore company is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange is unclear.

The actual company name appears to be “Success Global Media”, who are indeed listed on ASX.

There is of course nothing about New Tycoon Plus as part of Success Global Media’s ASX listing.

On their website, Success Global Media claim to be ‘one of the leading global providers of educational resources‘.

Success Global Media provide a corporate address in Singapore on their website, suggesting the company has no actual physical presence in Australia.

Things get even more murky when you consider New Tycoon Plus refers to itself as a “Hong Kong limited company” in its Terms and Conditions.

At the end of New Tycoon Plus’ provided “privacy policy”, there’s a support email address on the “newtycoon.com” domain.

A visit to this domain reveals a marketing page for Success Resources “live seminars and workshops”.

There’s an MLM business opportunity attached to selling these seminars and workshops to a recruited downline.

The Alexa traffic ranking for the New Tycoon website suggests it’s a failed venture.

As far as I can tell Richard Tan is an actual person, although no information about him is provided on the New Tycoon Plus website, ditto the SuccessLife website.

According to promotional material, Tan has recently been speaking at free “Cryptocurrency investor summit” events held around the world.

New Tycoon Plus appears to be Tan’s second MLM venture behind the failed New Tycoon attempt.

Read on for a full review of the New Tycoon Plus MLM opportunity. [Continue reading…]