Over the past year I’ve noticed South Korea placing on an increasing number of MLM underbelly scams.

I suspect due to language barriers, the people pushing these scams and much of South Korea’s MLM underbelly community remains a mystery outside of Korea itself.

A large number of South Korean MLM activity has coincided with an increase in cryptocurrency fraud (Ponzi points or altcoin pump and dump scams), which hasn’t escaped the attention of local authorities.

On September 7th ten South Korean government departments held a meeting to discuss the matter. [Continue reading…]

I don’t know what it is about Nigeria and the MMM Global Ponzi scheme, but for some reason locally scam refuses to die out.

Despite having collapsed three times beginning last December and resulting in an estimated $57 million dollars in losses, MMM Nigeria continues.

Criminal action has been taken against at least one MMM Nigeria affiliate, however ringleader(s) have long since fled the country.

The current iteration of MMM Nigeria bills itself as “MMM Federal Republic of Nigeria”.

There’s even a Google Play approved app MMM Nigeria participants can use to track how much money they’re stealing.

The MMM Federal Republic of Nigeria website meanwhile is more of the same.

A perpetual 100% monthly ROI is offered, with dozens of gullible idiots testifying they’ve received infinity money from MMM Nigeria as promised.

In an attempt to prevent more losses when this version inevitably collapses, Nigerian authorities plan to lean on the banking sector. [Continue reading…]

Early last year Chinese authorities in Guandong arrested three top Chinese OneCoin affiliates.

The arrests eventually lead to the recovery of $45.7 million dollars in stolen funds.

In what appears to be a related investigation north of Guandong in Hunan province, thirty-five OneCoin affiliates were recently arrested. [Continue reading…]

When traffic to an online Ponzi scheme stalls, so too do newly invested funds.

Such is currently the case with Questra World and Atlantic Global Asset Management:

Both Ponzi schemes are run by the same group of scammers, predominantly based out of Russia but aided and abetted by puppet management in Spain.

In the wake of regulatory warnings against Questra World from Austria, Poland, Italy and Slovakia, continuing to the run the scam has likely proven problematic.

In an attempt to address this, last month Five Winds Asset Management was announced. [Continue reading…]

In the wake of declining affiliate recruitment and continued silence from OneCoin management, Muhammad Zafar and his troop of top UK OneCoin investors descended on Sofia, Bulgaria for answers.

OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova wasn’t there to meet them. Upon learning top investors were coming to Bulgaria to demand answers, Ignatova fled the country.

Explains Zafar;

We had a head-office meeting today. Initially it was planned with Dr. Ruja.

For some reason she couldn’t travel back to Sofia. She was out of (the) country.

Zafar’s troop were instead greeted by puppet CEO Pierre Arens, who revealed the much-hyped OneCoin IPO has been dropped. [Continue reading…]

Earlier this week the Chinese government announced it was banning Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).

The move is understandable as, while some might be legit, by and large cryptocurrency ICOs were and continue to be a front for financial fraud.

Those running them make promises based on nothing and gullible investors hand over their money (pumping the ICO).

What ultimately happens is those running the ICO cut and run with invested funds, or they launch a worthless altcoin which then proceeds to immediately crash (and then run away with invested funds).

OneCoin is a good example of this, with the Chinese government’s announcement having a significant impact on their ICO ruse. [Continue reading…]

International Markets Live, more commonly known as iMarketsLive, was first reviewed on BehindMLM back in 2013.

What I found was an MLM opportunity offering investment trading advice with zero retail. The company was so out of compliance it was comical.

As per an August 6th Facebook post, in mid 2016 CEO Christopher Terry told Alex Morton that ‘he had been through hell and back and his company at the time was barely surviving.‘

Having split with Vemma just before the FTC shut it down, Morton had been promoting Jeunesse for about a year or so at the time.

Morton claims Terry (right) told him

he knew it had the best products and services on the planet and that he had unwavering belief that he would take his company to the top one day no matter what.

Morton went on to sign as iMarketLive’s Vice-President of Sales.

All things aside, if there’s one thing Alex Morton is good at it’s generating affiliate recruitment for MLM companies.

While he might not be the only factor, Morton has obviously contributed to iMarketLive’s renewed growth over the past ten months.

That growth has corresponded with reader requests for an updated BehindMLM review.

Today we revisit the iMarketsLive MLM opportunity and suss out what’s changed. [Continue reading…]

New Life Sciences appear to be based out of Japan and operate in the weight loss and nutritional supplement MLM niches.

The company website lists product return addresses for the US and Europe (Germany), however Saitama, Japan is the only physical address provided.

New Life Science’s Terms and Conditions meanwhile suggest the company is actually based out of Texas:

The State of Texas is the place of the origin of this Contract and is where the Company accepted the offer of the Applicant to become a Distributor and where the Distributor entered into the Contract with the Company.

Why New Life Sciences don’t provide a corporate address in Texas on their website is unclear.

New Life Sciences initially launched as Asia Sciences back in 2014. The switch to New Life Sciences appears to have taken place around mid 2016. I was unable to find a reason for the name-change.

Heading up the company is CEO Rick Creighton (right).

As per Creighton’s New Life Sciences corporate bio;

Mr. Creighton has spent over 20 years in the Direct Selling industry as a distributor and building highly successful teams.

His largest team exceeded 250,000 distributors!

He is also a former owner of a Direct Sales Company with sales in over 70 countries.

On his LinkedIn profile Rick Creighton cites his location as Austin, Texas. He is also listed as the co-founder of New Life Sciences.

Prior to founding Asia Sciences in 2014, Creighton was involved in BodyExtreme.

BodyExtreme was a nutritional supplement MLM company Creighton co-founded in 2000. At some point BodyExtreme seems to have integrated with TelExtreme, a cell service MLM opportunity.

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

For his efforts in assisting William Apostelos defraud investors out of millions of dollars, attorney Steven Scudder was sentenced to fourteen months prison back in June.

How much Scudder would pay in restitution was deferred, pending legal arguments from both Scudder and the DOJ.

In his response brief, Scudder argued that he ‘should not be held accountable for restitution in this case‘. [Continue reading…]

Trevo launched in 2010 and operate in the nutritional supplement MLM niche.

The company operates out of Oklahoma in the US and is headed up by founders Mark (President and CEO) and Holli Stevens (Director of Finance).

Mark Steven’s Trevo corporate bio claims he’s a ‘well-known as a successful business owner, entrepreneur, leader, motivational speaker, best-selling author and humanitarian.‘

While still in high school Mark discovered his entrepreneurial spirit and passion for excellence as he became the owner of a soon-to-be nationally recognized music company.

Mark went on to build several successful corporations.

He has successfully built multi-million dollar companies as well as successful network marketing organizations of tens of thousands.

Holli Stevens’ bio states she

is an accomplished businesswoman in her own right. She has been nationally recognized as a top salesperson in the direct sales industry, having received a number of prestigious sales awards for consistently generating millions of dollars in sales.

Holli has also been recognized as a top recruiter in the industry, which is no surprise given her warm presence, her incredible business knowledge, and her unwavering integrity.

Prior to Trevo Mark and Holli ran Vision For Life, a natural supplement MLM company they founded in 1998.

Vision For Life marketed a similar product range to Trevo.

Whereas Vision For Life operated only in United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Philippines though, Trevo has more of a global presence.

I did try to suss out why Vision For Life shut down and was rebooted as Trevo but turned up nothing.

That said if Vision For Life was failing, then Trevo seems to have been a clean reboot.

One point of interest is Trevo getting caught up in a Nigerian money laundering scam mid last year.

One lonely widow from Kentucky was tricked out of more than $1 million by a man she met online at a dating website, the FBI says.

Another widow, from Missouri, withdrew $40,000 from her retirement account to send to an individual she met online, the FBI says. A Kansas woman lost $20,000.

An Oklahoma City man withdrew money from his business operating account, overdrew his personal bank accounts and used funds from a business loan to send money to a woman he met on a dating website before realizing he had been scammed.

The FBI alleges some of the money from those victims and others ended up in the bank account of Trevo LLC, an Oklahoma City-based multilevel marketing company.

The FBI seized $610,800 on July 12 from the Trevo LLC account at Wells Fargo Bank in Oklahoma City.

Not sure how that happened, but Stevens later clarified he himself was not under investigation.

At the time of publication Nigeria is the fourth largest source of traffic to the Trevo corporate website (7%).

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