When BehindMLM reviewed Ju Ding back in late 2013, we were unable to establish who was running the scheme.

Links between Ju Ding and Phil Ming Xu’s WCM777 were observed, but nothing concrete on who explicitly was behind Ju Ding.

Turns out Wenxing Huang (also known as “Di Peng” and “Fatty”), a resident of San Gabriel, California, was behind the scheme.

Yesterday FBI agents arrested Huang, who is now facing charges of wire fraud and money laundering. [Continue reading…]

In late 2014 OneCoin seemingly came out of nowhere.

Ruja Ignatova was an unknown outside of China and a select group of Europeans. Sebastian Greenwood was tied to the SiteTalk share-based Ponzi scheme.

As far as the cryptocurrency space went, the OneCoin concept was presented as being entirely new.

Turns out it isn’t.

OneCoin is little more than a third attempt at the Ponzi points model, tweaked for maximum financial destruction of its affiliate-base. [Continue reading…]

BehindMLM reviewed FX United back in February.

With a passive 150% ROI offered on $300 to $10,000 investments, FX United raised some serious compliance issues.

The sum total of (FX United) is an opportunity that comes off as pretty suss. You don’t really know who’s running it, from where, or what they’re doing with your invested funds.

That’s not smart business, making FX United an opportunity you should probably stay clear of.

As is common with schemes run by anonymous admins, FX United claimed to be registered in an out of the way jurisdiction.

That jurisdiction is New Zealand, who have little to no track record of MLM regulation.

Despite that, New Zealand’s Financial Markets Authority (think SEC) still took it upon themselves to issue a warning against FX United. [Continue reading…]

Disclosure is something often overlooked in the promotion of MLM opportunities.

In an industry where you’re actively promoting a business opportunity on the premise that anyone can be successful, disclosure of anything that might skew that representation is important.

Failure to do so is not only dishonest but also a prime target for regulatory investigation. [Continue reading…]

PlanB4You was a Ponzi scheme launched in mid-2014 by Johny Schabregs.

As per PlanB4You’s business model, affiliates invested €40 EUR on the promise of a €50 EUR ROI.

In a rare show of force by European regulators, the ill-fated scheme was shut down by Dutch authorities a few months after launch.

Schabregs managed to evade authorities for a few months, but was eventually apprehended in early 2015.

Charged with fraud, operating a pyramid scheme and money laundering, criminal proceedings against Schabregs have been playing out this past year. [Continue reading…]

There is no information on the Allin25 website indicating who owns or runs the business.

The Allin25 website domain (“allin25.com”) was registered on the 21st of January 2016, however the domain registration is set to private.

Alexa currently estimate that some 67% of all traffic to the Allin25 website originates out of Poland. This is a strong indication that Allin25 is being operated by an admin based out of Poland itself.

A look at the source code of the Allin25 affiliate login page reveals a “Denis Mazanov” cited as the author of the content:

Possible due to language-barriers, I was unable to source any further information on Mazanov’s role within Allin25.

Update 5th May 2016 – Additional research from BehindMLM reader NikSam has revealed Denis Mazanov to be a Russian web developer living in Poland. The owner(s) of Allin25 is still a mystery but remains likely based out of Poland. /end update

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…]

Well, that didn’t take long.

Just shy of a month after MMM Global collapsed, the local South African chapter has gone under.

As at the time of publication invested funds, along with withdrawal requests, have been “frozen”.

Not surprisingly, the reason for the freeze is a lack of new investment into the scheme. [Continue reading…]

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

The Crowdfunding International website domain (“crowdfundinginternational.eu”) was registered on September 25th, 2015. “Crowdfunding International Exploitatie BV” is listed as the owner, with an address in Obbicht, Netherlands also provided.

The same residential address is provided on the Crowdfunding International website, suggesting the company is run from within the Netherlands itself.

Several Crowdfunding International website lists several Facebook groups belonging to the company, spanning the languages English, French, Croatian, Turkish, Portuguese, Hungarian and Dutch.

Each group has various admins, with Eliza Leclerc an admin in all seven Crowdfunding International Facebook groups.

On her Facebook profile, Eliza Leclerc (right) lists her location as Rotterdam, Netherlands. This ties into Crowdfunding International’s corporate address, with Leclerc likely involved in the running of the scheme.

Prior to promotion of Crowdfunding International beginning in February, 2016, Leclerc was promoting the Crypto 888 Club (2015) and GetEasy (2014) Ponzi schemes.

Update 3rd May 2016 – A “Team CFI” page on the Crowdfunding International website (not linked off the website homepage), lists several additional Netherlands-based admins (credited as “General Managers”):

• Ivo Coenen
• Twan van der Kort
• Pascal Nieling
• Mick Baggen and
• Koen Lienaerts (IT Department)

Generic bios are provided for each, however nothing specific to MLM. /end update

Read on for a full review of the Crowdfunding International MLM opportunity. [Continue reading…]

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

The OKBTC Biz website domain (“okbtc.biz”) was registered on the 21st of March 2016, however the domain registration is set to private.

A residential address in London, UK is provided on the OKBTC Biz website, along with the company claiming to be “a UK registered investment company”.

No registration details are provided.

Alexa currently estimates that 26.4% of all traffic to the OKBTC Biz website originates out of Russia. India is the second largest source of traffic, providing 14.7%.

The admin of OKBTC Biz is likely based out of one of these two countries. A UK company registration is typically the work of Indian scammers, so my money would be on India.

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…]

Following a Joint Report filed by the SEC, USFIA and Steve Chen, a trial date has been scheduled for January 10th, 2017

Note that this is the SEC civil action against USFIA and Chen, with details of criminal proceedings yet to surface. [Continue reading…]