Five Winds Asset Management, an attempt to keep the Questra World Ponzi scheme running a little while longer, has attracted the attention of Belgium’s Financial Services and Markets Authority.

The FSMA is Belgium’s top financial regulator and on October 2nd, issued an investor warning against Five Winds. [Continue reading…]

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

The Stargate LTD website domain (“stargate-ltd.com”) was registered on July 17th, 2017.

Sergey Frolov is listed as the owner, with an address in Saxony, Germany also provided.

Sergey Frolov first popped up on BehindMLM’s radar a few days ago as the owner of the Ensis domain.

Ensis is a recently launched 150% a day ROI Ponzi scheme.

Like Ensis, Alexa estimate Russia is currently the largest source of traffic to the Stargate LTD website (27.8%)

In addition to Ensis, Frolov is also the owner of a number of HYIP scam website domains.

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

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

Incloude claim to be ‘an Canadian company [sic], founded in 2012 and started trading on stock exchanges for the first time.‘

The Incloude website domain (“incloude.com”) was first registered in 2012. The domain registration was last updated on June 16th, 2017, which is likely when the current owners took possession of it.

A visit to the Wayback Machine confirms the Incloude website was hosting payday loan spam in 2012.

The domain was parked from 2013 till July, 2017, when the current owners uploaded the Incloude website as it is today.

In short, Incloude didn’t exist prior to June, 2017. Incloude’s claim it has been trading in Canada since 2012 is baloney.

A suite address in Calgary, Canada is provided on the Incloude website. A Google search reveals multiple businesses operating out of the same suite, suggesting this is a virtual address.

Corporate documents provided on the Incloude website purportedly represent ownership of “units” in Incoin Cloud LTD by Vianden Group S.A.

Incoin Cloude LP appears to have been incorporated in Canada at some point, 50% of which is owned by Vianden Group S.A and Diekirch Holding S.A.

Vianden Group S.A. and Diekirch Holding S.A. both appear to be a shell companies incorporated in Belize.

Similar shell company registrations are provided for Incloud Limited in the UK and Hong Kong.

None of the provided documents date prior to June, 2017, further cementing the claim Incloude has existed since 2012 is untrue.

Finally, Incloude cite “Darak Hughes” as “Director General” of the company.

In addition to this being a bizarre title for someone working at a commercial company (no doubt created by someone for whom English isn’t a native language), no information on Darak Hughes outside his mention on the Incloude website is available.

There is however a YouTube video featuring what appears to be a man from eastern Europe in a wig, sitting in front of a poster featuring the Canadian flag.

In the video the man visibly reads off a script and, in broken English and a thick accent, introduces himself as “Darak Hughes, head of the company Incloude”.

Alexa estimate Russia is currently the largest source of traffic to the Incloude website (14%). Germany is a close second, coming in at 13%.

Given the man who claims to be Darak Hughes’ accent and nothing connecting Incloude to Canada other than shell company corporations and lies, it’s a good bet whoever is actually running Incloude is from and based out of eastern Europe.

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…]

Multisure claim to be a ‘dynamic 100% South African “born and bred” company started in the year 2000.‘

Denton Goodford is the Managing Director of Multisure, and credited as the company’s “face, head and heart”.

According to Goodford’s Multisure corporate bio, he’s an

ex State Prosecutor and practising Advocate of the High Court of SA.

Denton started MultiSure in 2000, seeing the need in South African for legal cover with a difference.

His vision is to empower others and so he decided to create Multisure as a network marketing business to allow many people to benefit from the business and work towards their own financial freedom.

Goodford doesn’t appear to have an MLM history prior to founding Multisure.

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

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

The Yota website domain (“yota.biz”) was privately registered on November 22nd, 2016.

The domain registration was last updated on July 22nd, 2017, which is likely when the current owner took possession of it.

Despite this, Yota claim the

story of Yota starts in 2013 when we were one of the first ones to use our work experience in financial markets in country.

Years of working in financial market turned us into advanced, fast-developing and innovative investment company.

Naturally no evidence of Yota existing before July, 2017 is provided.

All signs meanwhile point to Yota run by Russians and/or based out of Russia.

• the Yota domain uses Russian name-servers
• testimonials on the Yota website are in Russian
• Alexa estimate Russia is currently the largest source of traffic to the Yota website (23%)

The official Skype support account linked on the Yota website is “nicholas_yota”. Whether this leads to whoever is running the company or just a dummy account though 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…]

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

The Ensis website domain (“ensis.me”) was registered on October 12th, 2017.

Sergey Frolov is listed as the owner, with an address in Saxony, Germany also provided.

Further research reveals Frolov is the owner of a number of HYIP Ponzi scam website domains, suggesting he’s heavily involved in financial fraud.

The Ensis website defaults to the Russian language. Alexa estimate Russia is currently the largest source of traffic to the Ensis website (34%).

A Russian language popup message active on the Ensis website invites participation in an Ensis thread on a Russian Ponzi website and a 100,000 ruble “reserve fund”.

Whether Frolov operates Ensis from Russia or Germany 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…]

GladiaCoin was (as far as I know) the first bitcoin doubler Ponzi to surface.

Launched earlier this year in March, GladiaCoin promised gullible affiliates a 200% ROI in 90 days.

Naturally GladiaCoin collapsed before even the initial 90 day maturity period was up, resulting in widespread investor losses.

Nonetheless GladiaCoin spawned a slew of clone bitcoin doubler scams, pretty much all of which have since collapsed.

Today the GladiaCoin website domain produces a “403 Forbidden” HTTP error.

Now someone is trying to resurrect the GladiaCoin scam as “GladiaCoin 2”. [Continue reading…]

Whereas we’re usually pretty on top of OneCoin affiliate arrests globally, this one from back in June slipped through the cracks.

Since the start of this year, Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service has

opened 27 investigations into cases of suspected infractions of the Act on the Regulation of Conducting Fund-Raising Business Without Permission this year.

One of those investigations was into OneCoin, which eventually lead to the arrest of five affiliates. [Continue reading…]

When Pierre Arens failed to appear at a recent OneCoin event in Portugal, host Kari Wahlroos claimed it was because he had a cold.

Far more likely is the fact that Arens was well underway with plans to abandon his position as OneCoin CEO. [Continue reading…]

Although it has likely been eclipsed by some of the scams currently doing the rounds, the SEC’s 2014 bust of TelexFree was at the time easily the biggest ever seen.

With three billion dollars purportedly pumped into the scheme by over a million affiliates, the size of TelexFree alone meant piecing together the fraud from a forensic standpoint post significant challenges.

Not helping was the fact that 80% of TelexFree investors were based outside of the US, and that many of them didn’t speak English.

Also not helping was a popular “scam within a scam” ruse run by top investors, wherein they’d directly solicit new investment on behalf of the company in exchange for backoffice credits (pins) they’d amassed.

Despite these significant challenges, as of September 28th the TelexFree Trustee’s team has processed 132,001 affiliate claims.

With the deadline for victim claims long passed, the Trustee is now looking to resolve disallowed claims and close the victim claim portal. [Continue reading…]