Bitcoin Penny Auction identify Ton van Houten as founder and CEO of the company.

This matches up with the Bitcoin Penny Auction website domain (“bitcoinpennyauction.com”) registration, which lists van Houten as the owner.

Van Houten is based out of Gouda in the Netherlands. As per his Bitcoin Penny Auction corporate bio;

Through the years he has developed himself into a specialist regarding Internet and has followed several courses, which led to his extensive online experience.

In the past Ton has held several positions, among as a director for a Dutch based search engine.

Possibly due to language barriers, I was unable to put together an MLM history on van Houten.

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

When I first reviewed Ultimate Business World late last year, it struck me as odd that the company’s public Chairman, Paal Aschjem, had no MLM history.

Surely he wasn’t working alone, however the question of who was really behind Ultimate Business World went unanswered.

Following an investigation by Norwegian and Estonian journalists, turns out UBW was conceived by a notorious Norwegian scammer. [Continue reading…]

CONSOB, Italy’s SEC equivalent, has determined CoinSpace’s cryptocurrency offering to be a “financial product”.

Seeing as CoinSpace are not registered to promote financial products in Italy, CONSOB has effectively issued a ban on promotion of the company. [Continue reading…]

Bitcoin Funding Team provide no information on their website regarding who owns or runs the business.

The Bitcoin Funding Team website domain (“bitcoinfundingteam.com”) was privately registered on February 3rd, 2017.

Bitcoin Funding Team is hosted on a private server that hosts the domain “2forsuccess.com”.

2ForSuccess launched in late 2016 and offered some type of “blog mastery” course. The company flopped, with a visit to the 2ForSuccess website today revealing the domain is parked.

Research into 2ForSuccess reveals those promoting it are now promoting Bitcoin Funding Team. These affiliates name Thomas Dluca as Bitcoin Funding Team’s founder.

Dluca seems to have a history of promoting MLM underbelly scams.

In 2015 Thomas Dluca was promoting the Magic 10 Marketing pyramid scheme. Earlier this year Dluca was also promoting the Fund My Cause bitcoin gifting scheme.

The realization that running a scam is far more profitable than losing money in one has likely promoted the launch of Bitcoin Funding Team.

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

Any notion that James Merril might get off lightly for cooperating with authorities has been dashed, following the filing of a ten-year recommended prison sentence.

And that’s with full consideration of his cooperation. [Continue reading…]

Multibuy World provide no information on their website about who owns or runs the company.

On its website Multibuy World claims it was initially launched in Italy as Promo Italia.

Multibuy Srl was founded 23 years ago in Italy under the name PromoIitalia and was renamed to Multibuy srl in 2014.

Today, Multi-Buy is a very successful Travel/E-Commerce Company in Italy!

This appears to be porky pies for a number of reasons:

• I couldn’t find any information about Promo Italia within the MLM space
• the Multibuy World website domain (“multibuyworld.com”) was only registered on October 31st, 2016
• Multibuy World claims to be “very successful” with 150,000 customers, yet Alexa statistics for the Multibuy World website domain match the template of a newly launched and previously unknown company

The listed owner of the Multibuy World domain is Giancarlo Santigli (right), with an address in Catania, Italy also provided.

For reasons unknown, Multibuy World provide a corporate address in Malta on their website. Needless to say it appears Multibuy World exists in Malta in name only.

On his Facebook profile Santigli cites his location as Rome, Italy, which is presumably where Multibuy World is actually being operated from.

Possibly due to language barriers, I was unable to put together an MLM history on Santigli.

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…]

Stella & Dot launched back in 2003 and operate in the fashion and jewelry MLM niche.

The company was founded by Jessica Herrin and originally began life as Luxe Jewels.

According to an interview with The Everygirl, Herrin came up with the idea for Luxe Jewels in an elevator at a Mary Kay convention.

it wasn’t until Jessica met fellow Stanford grad, Blythe Harris, at an alumni event that they realized with Jessica’s original vision and Blythe’s creativity that they could re-launch this social-selling model under a new name, Stella & Dot (named after their grandmothers).

Herrin (right) serves as Stella & Dot’s CEO, Harris as Chief Creative Officer.

Prior to Stella & Dot Herrin created the bridal registry themed website, which was purchased by the Wedding Channel website (in turn sold to The Knot five years later for $78 million).

I wasn’t able to confirm if Herrin was a Mary Kay affiliate herself. At the time she launched Stella & Dot Herrin was working as a Marketing Manager for Dell.

Read on for a full review of the Stella & Dot MLM opportunity [Continue reading…]

Big Profit System provide no information on their website about who owns or runs the business.

The Big Profit System website domain (“bigprofitsystem.com”) was initially registered on June 17th, 2012. The registration was last updated on June 3rd, 2016.

The Big Profit System domain was registered privately, so it provides no information on who owns it.

As per the Big Profit System terms and conditions, the company feeds signups into a third-party business.

The Company referenced in the BPS videos is an independent entity and BPS simply provides a marketing system for that company’s Independent agents to use to assist them in producing sales.

The name of the business is not disclosed on the Big Profit System website.

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…]

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

The WelFunding website domain (“welfunding.com”) was first registered on the 5th of March, 2016. The registration was recently updated on the 13th of March, 2017.

The WelFunding domain has been registered privately and doesn’t provide any information on who owns it.

At the time of publication Alexa estimate the top two sources of traffic to the WelFunding website are Japan (69%) and Germany (14%).

It is highly likely that whoever is running WelFunding is also based out of Japan and/or Germany.

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…]

Back in January a proposed $145.4 million dollar settlement between Steve Chen and the SEC was filed.

On March 13th Judge Klausner approved the settlement proposal and ordered Final Judgement against Chen. [Continue reading…]