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…]

MLM companies attached to robotic trading software make little sense.

If you owned robotic trading software capable of generating legitimate and consistent returns year in year out, why would you share it?

The normal thing to do would be to feed it seed money, let it do its thing and reap the profits.

Opening your golden goose to the public in such a competitive environment makes little sense.

A good example of this is the collapsed MLM opportunity Cool Trader Pro. [Continue reading…]

Back in January Cleber Rocha, an accomplice of TelexFree owner Carlos Wanzeler, was caught trying to launder over twenty million dollars in stolen investor funds.

An indictment on two counts of money laundering followed in March, which Rocha initially plead not guilty to.

As of June Rocha was still contesting the indictment, however earlier this month it was revealed Rocha intended to change his plea.

On October 19th a hearing was held, during which Rocha officially plead guilty to two counts of money laundering. [Continue reading…]

Back in July it was revealed the Norwegian Gaming Board had reopened its pyramid scheme investigation into Lyoness.

The investigation was reopened following a continued stream of complaints from the public, which prompted the Gaming Board to contact Lyoness in April.

The Gaming Board sought to have Lyoness address concerns it was running a pyramid scheme in Norway.

Lyoness’ response was filed in late May but failed to satisfy the regulator.

In July the Gaming Board requested “further information” from Lyoness, and that’s when we became aware of the renewed investigation.

In a letter dated October 6th, the Gaming Board has provided updates on their investigation since July. [Continue reading…]

While gullible USFIA investors were lead to believe they were investing in GemCoin points backed by valuable amber, on the back-end Steve Chen was siphoning off millions of dollars to enrich himself and his family.

One recipient of stolen USFIA investor funds was Wei He, Chen’s ex-wife.

The USFIA Receiver alleges He received over five million dollars of invested USFIA funds is seeking full recovery. [Continue reading…]