Although not as large as its US counter-part, Norway’s Direct Selling Association (DSA) has 22 member companies.

The organization claims that around 75% of Norway’s 88,000 MLM affiliates belong to one or more of their members.

One of the stated objectives of the Norwegian DSA is to ‘protect consumers’ legitimate interests with respect to direct sales companies‘.

And that brings us to OneCoin…

In a March 3rd article titled “(We) don’t want to be the police”, the Norwegian DSA called OneCoin out for being an “ugly” pyramid scheme. [Continue reading…]

Youlab Global launched in mid 2015 and are based out of California in the US.

Heading up the company is Founder John de Vries, who also serves as Youlab Global’s CEO.

De Vries first popped up on BehindMLM’s radar as the CEO of Xseed Health back in mid 2014.

Xseed Health operated in the health and nutrition niche, with a heavy emphasis on affiliate recruitment. Upon recruitment of enough affiliates, Xseed Health offered a “commission guarantee”.

In addition to running Xseed Health, de Vries (right) has also been a master distributor for Nutrie and top-distributor with Monavie.

Today the Xseed Health website is offline, with the domain it was hosted on not in use. Whether Xseed Health collapsed or was shut down, its demise paved the way for de Vries to launch Youlab Global.

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

Over the past year or so I’ve seen an increase in financial service related MLM opportunities.

Typically these schemes are registered somewhere shady in Europe, however their primary source of investors is the US.

Back in 2013 the SEC took action against Banc de Binary Ltd., a non-MLM binary options company.

Although not MLM, Banc de Binary Ltd. is otherwise pretty similar to today’s MLM binary options offerings.

Through YouTube videos, spam e-mails, and other Internet advertising, (Banc de Binary Ltd.) solicit(ed) U.S. customers.

The problem for Banc de Binary Ltd. is that they weren’t registered with the SEC.

The case against the company has been playing out over the past three years, with news of a settlement breaking earlier today. [Continue reading…]

Following the regulatory shutdown of Zeek Rewards, Darryle Douglas was classified an insider and pursued by the court-appointed Receiver.

After years of ignoring proceedings against him and then attempting to launch a new scam, Douglas was finally slapped with contempt proceedings.

On December 10, 2015, Judge Mullen found Douglas in contempt of court. A warrant for Douglas’ arrest was issued, however up until now we’ve had no updates as to Douglas’ status. [Continue reading…]

Despite a lack of retail a key focal point in several MLM-related enforcement actions over the past few years, there are still those who argue the legitimacy of chain-recruitment autoship schemes.

Typically in this business model, retail is either insignificant or absent altogether.

Instead, products are sold exclusively to affiliates, with participants in such schemes arguing that because affiliates are consumers, their purchase of product constitutes a retail sale.

The latest attempts to justify autoship recruitment can be seen over the past week in our LifePlus Review (comment #2 onwards).

What participants in non-retail MLM opportunities rarely touch on is that the recruitment of other affiliates who also purchase products is how they make money – with recruited affiliates then also required to do the same.

In other words its chain-recruitment. And no matter how much the value of the products is professed, at the end of the day it’s still a closed-loop income opportunity.

This is significant because without retail, there’s no way to determine actual product value. Logically speaking if a product did have market value, affiliates would be able to sell it to retail customers.

From an enforcement and compliance perspective, this results in the effective value of the product reduced to zero. In other words, it exists solely to perpetuate a recruitment-driven pyramid scheme.

Earlier this month the University of Illinois at Chicago and the SEC held a joint symposium to raise awareness.

The issue?

Combating Pyramid Schemes and Affinity Frauds.

Speaking at the event was Andrew Ceresney, Director of the Enforcement Division (typically the guys behind SEC litigation against MLM companies).

Not surprisingly, in his address Ceresney re-enforced the importance of retail in legitimate MLM. [Continue reading…]

JM Ocean Avenue came about following a merge between Ocean Avenue and JM International in 2014.

Ocean Avenue was launched back in 2012 by Fred Ninow and Ken Dunn. JM International was founded in 2009 by Joe Zhou, but outside of China is relatively unknown.

JM Ocean Avenue claimed the merger between the two companies ‘create(d) opportunities for distributors and customers by expanding to 25 new markets in six continents‘.

A month prior to the merge in June, 2014, Ken Dunn left Ocean Avenue. A year later in June 2015, JM Ocean Avenue affiliates began advertising HopRocket.

As above, HopRocket was initially billed as a “brand new JM Ocean Avenue opportunity”. At the time, it was claimed the JM Ocean Avenue affiliate-base had been pre-loaded into the company.

That fell apart a month later in July, with four JM Ocean Avenue executives (former Ocean Avenue staff) resigning.

HopRocket continued on as an independent MLM opportunity launch, now very much separated from its JM Ocean Avenue roots.

JM Ocean Avenue meanwhile moved its US headquarters to Los Angeles (the Ocean Avenue staff who resigned were based in Utah).

To date I haven’t seen specific clarification of what went down between JM Ocean Avenue and the four executives who resigned.

Today JM Ocean Avenue is headed up by Joe Zhou (right), who serves as Chairman.

Joe Zhou started as an independent business owner at a direct selling company with a worldwide reputation.

There he gained practical experience and knowledge about direct sales and soon became one of the most successful and recognized direct sales team leaders in China.

In 2006, Joe became the Vice Chairman of a newly established direct sales enterprise. In just 3 years, he was able to establish a name for that enterprise in China and lead it to become one of the most recognized direct sales companies in China.

Since 2009, Joe Zhou founded JM International and has since worked tirelessly to take the company to dozens of global markets, which are now encompassed in seven major regions.

I wasn’t able to establish whether the current JM Ocean Avenue management run the company from within the US or elsewhere.

Read on for a full review of the JM Ocean Avenue MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]

BehindMLM first reviewed CeraCoat Direct back in early 2013. Decent enough compensation plan and product, but a major problem with the opportunity was a lack of retail.

At the time, only affiliates were able to purchase products from CeraCoat Direct.

In late 2014 we reviewed Globally Positioned Partners, who at the time were the exclusive distributor of CeraCoat Direct products in the US.

CEO Ken Howard claimed that in its first year, Globally Positioned Partners ‘could easily grow to $100 Million Dollars‘.

GPP could easily achieve and sustain triple digit annualized growth of over 100% per year for the next ten years, which could potentially see GPP grow up to $50 Billion Dollars in annualized sales in just 10 years!

That didn’t happen.

Globally Positioned Partners followed CeraCoat Direct’s problematic compensation plan, with affiliates required to purchase products in order to qualify for MLM commissions.

A few months after our review, Globally Positioned Partners changed their compensation plan.

Retail commissions were finally clarified, with residuals paid out via a unilevel compensation structure. Unfortunately it was still entirely possible for an affiliate to self-fund commission qualification, and then focus solely on recruiting others who did the same.

A few months later in mid 2015, CeraCoat Direct severed all ties with Globally Positioned Partners.

Commenting on the split, CeraCoat Direct Founder Elio Keller lamented:

Ken was not successful and did create a lot of negative image, so we had to stop with him.

I did choose the wrong person, but it’s my fault, because I listened to his “crazy plans” and when he told me he was an MLM expert, I trusted him.

Big mistake, but we have our worldwide business and exist for over 20 years, so Ken was just a “lost of time and money” and now we are looking to the future.

A lot of persons warned me about Ken, but it was too late. Now I saw they were all right. . .

Around the same time CeraCoat Direct announced a new partnership with CeraCoat Unlimited, who were to take over distribution of CeraCoat Direct products in the US.

Unfortunately there is no information on the CeraCoat Unlimited website revealing who owns or runs the company.

The CeraCoat Unlimited website domain (“ceracoatunlimited.com”) was registered on February 9th 2016, with “Owen Greeson” listed as the owner.

The address used to register the domain is a residential address in the US state of Georgia, which matches the CeraCoat Unlimited corporate address provided on their website.

A Google search on the address reveals several results tying the address to Greeson.

Nothing much comes up with respect to Greeson’s prior involvement in the MLM industry, with his history and credentials unknown.

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

Hot off their acquisition of SiteTalk back in January, UniverTeam appears to be OneCoin’s newest source of gullible investors.

As of yet no official announcement has been made by OneCoin, however in the last few hours UniverTeam investors have begun announcing a merge between the two companies on social media.

The caption above reads “OneCoin company buys UniverTeam”. [Continue reading…]

BehindMLM reviewed Basic Reset late last year in December. The compensation plan looked good and the products fit their purpose, but what caught our eye were medical claims and testimonials published on the Basic Reset website.

Further research revealed Basic Reset affiliates making all sorts of claims in their own marketing material.

We highlighted this as a potential red-flag, as historically the FDA frown upon such claims in MLM advertising. Regardless of whether an MLM company or its affiliates make the claims, it is usually the MLM company who attracts the attention of the FDA.

Following publication of our review last December, the FDA purportedly paid Basic Reset a visit.

The FDA visit was discussed in a Basic Reset corporate call recently hosted on March 3rd. As reported by affiliate Randy Steen, you’re not going to believe the outcome. [Continue reading…]

LegalShield has leveled a series of scathing criticisms at the Direct Selling Association and its member companies.

A press-release published on LegalShield’s website on March 2nd cites “concerns about the lack of enforcement of the DSA’s Code of Ethics for its members” as the primary reason LegalShield has revoked its DSA membership. [Continue reading…]