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

Recyclix provide the address of an accounting firm in the UK as their “headquarters billing address”, suggesting the company exists there in name only.

Sales and support are provided out of Poland, with this likely being where the owners of Recyclix are located.

Russia is another possibility, with Alexa estimating it and the Ukraine provide 32% of all traffic to the Recyclix 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…]

Chew The Fat Off launched in late 2015 and are based out of California in the US.

Heading up the company is Stuart Finger, who is credited as Chew The Fat Off’s Founder and President. Finger’s brother, Steve Finger serves as CEO.

As per Stuart Finger’s Chew The Fat Off corporate bio;

Stuart Finger, Founder of CTFO, has been a successful network marketer and company owner since 1989.

He achieved a high ranking position in his first company and the top position in his second company, building teams of many thousands of people.

He then owned and operated his own successful company for 18 years with tens of thousands of distributors and hundreds of thousands of customers.

Finger (right) first popped up on BehindMLM’s radar as the CEO of GBG, otherwise known as “Guided By God”.

The company has origins dating back to 1996, with Alexa statistics for the GBG website domain suggesting the business has been in decline for some time.

Curiously, it looks like GBG might have been sold off. As per the company’s Facebook page, in late 2015 they were advising affiliates of a “transition” to something called “Novus Era”.

You all now have a position and back office in Novus Era.

You will also receive a new ID number with Novus Era, but don’t worry, your downline and your current auto ship will remain untouched.

Starting 10/22/15 you will start to see Novus Era on your bank transactions instead of Novus DBA GBG.

The Novus Era website domain is owned by “Globus Holdings, LLC”, a Nevada corporation.

At the time of publication, Stuart Finger does not appear on the “corporate team” page of the GBG website.

Read on for a full review of the Chew The Fat Off MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]

In addition to enriching himself with stolen Ponzi funds, WCM777 owner Phil Ming Xu also splashed out on his family.

Through Xu’s efforts at investment fraud, his sister Sue Wang and mother Xiao Mei Deng received $2.5 million dollars.

Some of that money went to buying Xu’s mother a house and some of it to fund his sister’s business ideas. The rest of it was put towards existing mortgages and general expenses.

Having learned of Xu enriching his family, the Receiver approached Wang and Deng about returning the stolen money.

$1.1 million dollars has since been recovered, with $1.4 million in cash and assets unaccounted for.

Wang and Deng initially failed to respond to the Receiver’s attempts to recover the funds, prompting the filing of a lawsuit in March, 2015.

Continuing their “ignore it and it will go away” strategy, Wang and Deng mostly ignored the proceedings against them. They did however attempt to circumvent the proceedings by transferring the title of the properties they bought to individuals located in China.

Nonetheless, due to an overall lack of participation in the proceedings, default judgement was entered against Wang and Deng on January 4th, 2016.

Forced to reckon with the legal proceedings against them, Wang and Deng then finally entered into settlement negotiations with the Receiver.

Those negotiations have borne fruit, with Wang and Deng agreeing to return $1.17 million dollars. [Continue reading…]

In their own words, Financial IT are

a cutting edge financial technology magazine.

The publication provides a unique and valuable forum for people involved in the change process to learn and exchange ideas and knowledge – as technology cements its pivotal role in supporting the financial markets.

The magazine was first published in 2012, is printed four times a year and has a circulation of ‘over 2,000 print and digital copies‘.

Advertising features heavily in the publication, with Financial IT pitching the magazine as the ‘perfect media vehicle to extend global reach of your print advertisement and brand awareness campaigns‘.

We help FinTech companies to generate genuine leads and to improve their SEO rankings.

We provide an online platform, video production, content marketing, listings, reviews and rankings.

According to their media-kit, “full editorial coverage” in Financial IT will set you back £1999 or £2999 a year. Basic coverage via a “long-form editorial article” is £999 a year.

So, what does any of this have to do with OneCoin you ask? Well, yesterday OneCoin Founder and CEO Ruja Ignatova announced that she would be gracing ‘the cover of the winter issue of Financial IT‘:

The announcement was originally made on Ignatova’s personal “CryptoQueen” Facebook account. It was then republished on the OneCoin corporate Facebook account.

The photo of Ignatova super-imposed on the Financial IT cover is from her corporate sponsorship gig at the EU-Southeast Europe Summit late last year:

Accompanying the Facebook announcement was a PR video, directing viewers to “get your magazines today”.

Here’s the thing though… a few hours ago Financial IT unveiled the actual cover of their 2016 edition.

See if you can spot the difference:

Unless Ignatova recently underwent radical surgery and changed her name to Gareth Richardson, we don’t know where she is either. [Continue reading…]

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

The Elegant Matrix website domain (“elegantmatrix.com”) was registered on the 8th of February 2016, however the domain registration is set to private.

A few days ago one BehindMLM reader claimed that Dale Payne-Sizer is behind Elegant Matrix. Further research reveals Elegant Matrix affiliates claiming the same:

Dale Payne-Sizer recently featured on BehindMLM as the admin of Infinity Profit System, a $25 to $100 a month cash gifting scheme.

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

A few days ago Sann Rodrigues filed a motion requesting he be released from jail. Late last year Rodrigues was found to be in contempt and is currently being held at Florida’s Pinellas County Jail.

Rodrigues motion claims that it is impossible for him to pay the $474,503 he’s accused of dissipating.

The SEC argue otherwise, with hints they suspect Rodrigues might have millions squirreled away overseas. [Continue reading…]

As late as February 1st, 2016, Trudy Gilmond was still adopting a “if I ignore it, it’ll go away” approach to her upcoming Zeek Rewards trial.

Gilmond was sued by the SEC late last year for her role as a top investor in the Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme.

An attorney conference had been scheduled for February 1st, with SEC attorneys unable to reach Gilmond on the day.

A follow-up attempt to contact Gilmond (right) was made on February 3rd, with SEC attorney John Bowers claiming ‘Gilmond was unable or unwilling to respond regarding the issues presented‘.

As such, the SEC alone filed a proposed trial schedule on February 10th.

Judge Mullen signed off on the schedule on February 17th, ordering a five-day trial to kick off on September 11th, 2017. [Continue reading…]

Yesterday BehindMLM reported on a court order directing Payza, Payment World and VictoriaBank to return $13.1 million dollars in funds stolen through Zeek Rewards.

Today the Zeek Receiver’s filed accompanying Memorandum has also been unsealed, shedding light on the games the three entities have been playing over the past three years. [Continue reading…]

One of the enduring mysteries of the MLM industry these past few years was David Sharpe’s departure from Empower Network.

The official corporate line was that Sharpe left EN to focus on his health. Around the time he left, Sharpe revealed that he was suffering from Hepatitis C.

After a year or so of silence, Sharpe revealed that he had been given the all-clear.

It was a logical assumption that Sharpe would return to Empower Network, however as the months dragged on – it became apparent that wasn’t going to happen.

A big part of the allure of this mystery is the fact that up until recently, neither Sharpe or Wood had publicly addressed it. Sharpe appeared to have left Empower Network on good terms, with his going off on his own post-recovery not making a whole lot of sense.

Empower Network has always carried with it a sort of cultish vibe, with the “us vs. them” mentality strongly fostered among affiliates. Thus the answers behind Sharpe’s departure was always going to have to originate from the inside.

Turns out that’s exactly what happened a few weeks ago at Empower Network’s “Generation Hero” event. [Continue reading…]

The F15teen launched on February 15th and identify Mike Peever as the owner of the company on their website.

Mike has been an online marketer since the late 1990s. He has been a program owner/admin for 8 plus years.

Peever first popped up on BehindMLM’s radar in 2012 as the admin of Cash Club International, a six-tier matrix Ponzi cycler.

In 2013 Peever launched The Last Cycler, a $10 Ponzi pyramid hybrid.

2014 was a quiet year for Peever, with 2015 seeing him launch Decide Your Path ($15 matrix-based recruitment scheme) and Success Cycler ($25 subscription-based Ponzi).

Peever was also an investor in the Zeek Rewards Ponzi scheme.

Alexa statistics for the Decide Your Path and Success Cycler websites suggest both schemes are in decline. This decline has likely prompted Peever’s recent launch of The F15teen.

Read on for a full review of The F15teen MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]