OneCoin, being the Ponzi scheme that it is, was never going to risk launching in the most tightly regulated market in the world.

Despite stringing early OneCoin investors along with promises of a US launch, the charade was quietly dropped in October, 2015.

Spear-headed by Sal Leto, Maurice Katz and other affiliates, US OneCoin recruitment went underground.

While publicly OneCoin wasn’t operating in the US, through offshore shell companies and bank accounts, unofficially US residents were still being recruited into the scheme.

OneCoin management were of course fully aware this was going on, but money is money so they turned a blind eye to it.

Fortunately having to go through that many hoops to join an MLM opportunity sets off alarm bells in all but the most determined Ponzi scammers. And so recruitment of affiliates in the US ground to a halt.

That killed off recruitment commissions, with the situation further deteriorating when OneCoin cancelled all Ponzi ROI withdrawals back in January.

Unable to recruit new victims or cash out their Ponzi points, OneCoin’s US investors desperately began looking for a way out.

Enter iPro Network. [Continue reading…]

Back in December the Antitrust and Consumer Protection Authority (AGCM) ordered the suspension of OneCoin promotion in Italy.

In early January OneCoin responded to the AGCM’s promotional ban by claiming they’d ‘never promoted OneCoin and/or OneLife in Italy‘.

In late January police raids on recruitment events revealed OneCoin was still being promoted locally.

This prompted the AGCM to confirm OneCoin was a pyramid scheme and ban the company from operating in Italy entirely. [Continue reading…]

Pay Diamond provide no information on their website indicating who owns or runs the business.

The Pay Diamond website domain (“paydiamond.com”) was first registered on the 26th of December, 2014. The registration was last updated on November 27th, 2015.

“PayDiamond Marketing & Sales Limited” is listed as the domain owner, with a virtual office address in Hong Kong also provided.

Alexa traffic statistics reveal that with the exception of Japan (12%), the majority of traffic to the Pay Diamond website originates out of South America.

The Pay Diamond website itself is hosted in Brazil and the default language of the Pay Diamond website is Portuguese (primary language of Brazil). Given this, it’s extremely likely that whoever is running Pay Diamond is also based out of Brazil.

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…]

SportArb provide a UK Companies House registration certificate on their website, which reveals Sport Arbitrage LTD was incorporated in August, 2016.

An office address in Birmingham is provided in SportArb’s incorporation documents. Further research reveals this to a suite of offices, with the same address belonging to over three hundred businesses.

Four executives are named on the SportArb website; Ronald Wald (CEO), Sid Clive (Senior IT Engineer), Mitch Stew (customer service) and Andres Martin (trader).

The SportArb website domain (“sportarb.com”) was registered in August, 2016 by Wald.

A LinkedIn profile is provided for each SportArb executive. They all seem pretty suspicious though, with only Sport Arbitrage LTD listed under “experience”.

If it were possible to see when LinkedIn profiles were created, I wouldn’t be surprised to find all four were created on or around the same date.

Outside of SportArb, none of the named executives appear to exist.

Suggesting whoever created the SportArb executive profiles might have slipped up, I found one discrepancy in the company’s corporate filings.

Ronald Wald’s LinkedIn profile his location as Dresden Area, Germany. In SportArb’s incorporation filings Wald’s nationality is “British” and through a London residential address, his stated country of residence is the UK.

This isn’t definitive by any means but when combined with the complete lack of information available about any of SportArb’s named executives, is highly suspicious.

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 March 2nd the SEC filed a lawsuit against Vizinova and owners Renato Rodriguez (full name: Pablo Renato Rodriguez Arevalo) and Gutemberg Dos Santos.

Vizinova launched in March, 2014 and for all intents and purposes was a reboot of Phil Ming Xu’s WCM777 Ponzi scheme.

Both Rodriguez and Dos Santos were affiliates in WCM777. [Continue reading…]

The SEC’s fraud lawsuit against Wings Network (Tropikgadget) began back in February 2015.

Last year several final multi-million judgments were entered against Wings Network and its top affiliates, with a recent $7.7 million dollar judgement now bringing litigation to a close. [Continue reading…]

Yesterday the Congress of South East European Women Entrepreneurs held their annual event in the Croatian capital of Zagreb.

As part of a sponsorship agreement the Ministry of Economy, Business and Trade and Congress organizers, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović and Deputy Prime-Minister Martina Dalic were scheduled to speak at the event.

On the day of the event it was announced Grabar-Kitarović and Dalic had cancelled their respective appearances.

Why?

In addition to the Croatian government, OneCoin was also a primary sponsor of the event. [Continue reading…]

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

The Skyllex website domain (“skyllex.com”) was first registered on July 31st, 2015. The registration was last updated on June 2nd, 2016.

The Skyllex domain registration is set to private, providing no information about who owns it.

Despite the registration of SKYLLEX PTY LTD (ACN: 612 788 600) with the Australian Securities & Investments Commission, Skyllex otherwise appears to be run by anonymous Russians.

Evidence supporting this is as follows:

• Russia is the first offered language on the Skyllex website
• posts on the official Skyllex Facebook page are predominantly in Russian
• the sole admin of the official Skyllex Facebook page is “Peter Waidman”, an evidently bogus account that predominantly follows Russian accounts
• two company “representatives” are provided on the Skyllex website, both from Russia
• Skyllex has Odnoklassniki and VKontakte social media profiles (two of the largest social networks in Russia)
• the corporate address provided on the Skyllex website belongs to the Australian Securities Exchange Ltd (ASX)
• the Skyllex website was designed by a Russian developer

The hyperlink for the Skype support contact on the Skyllex website reveals the name “Tomas Jankauskas”.

Further research reveals Skyllex affiliates citing Jankauskas as “General Director” of the company.

On the official Skyllex YouTube channel, Jankauskas has been hosting official corporate webinars in Russian since July 2016. Webinar footage reveals Jankauskas is using a Russian-language desktop and webinar platform:

For all intents and purposes, Tomas Jankauskas appears to be running Skyllex. Why this information is not provided on the Skyllex website is unclear.

What is clear is that other than a shell company registration, Skyllex exists in Australia in name only.

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…]

There is no information on the GladiaCoin website indicating who owns or runs the business.

The GladiaCoin website domain (“gladiacoin.com”) was privately registered on November 26th, 2016.

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…]

While James Merrill has plead guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced on March 23rd, investigations into TelexFree continue down in Brazil.

The latest has seen five money laundering charges filed against fifteen individuals connected to TelexFree. [Continue reading…]