The two remaining high-profile disputes between merchants and the Zeek Receiver are NxPay and Preferred Merchants.

NxPay served as Zeek’s merchant payment processor and, after returning some of the stolen Ponzi funds in their possession, hold out that they are entitled to keep some $9 million.

After the staffer NxPay put in charge of negotiating with the Receiver agreed NxPay would likely have to return the money, they got rid of her and started to play hardball.

Similarly Preferred Merchants are holding onto $4.8 million in stolen funds, sourced from a Rex Venture Group trust fund.

After they were notified that the SEC had shut Zeek Rewards down, Preferred Merchants quietly transferred $4.8 million out of a Rex Venture Group trust account and hoped nobody would notice.

Forensic accounting of Rex Venture Group’s account undid them, and now Preferred Merchants are doing everything they can to delay the inevitable return of funds.

In the meantime, the Receiver had filed a Motion seeking to find Preferred Merchants and its owner, Jaymes Meyer, in contempt of court for not handing over requested documents related to the funds.

In two separate orders filed yesterday, Judge Mullen moved to squash both NxPay and Preferred Merchant’s dillydallying. [Continue reading…]

I first took a peek at Lyconet earlier this year back in February.

Launched in response to ongoing criticism of Lyoness’ accounting unit investment scheme, the purpose behind Lyconet was to completely separate the affiliate side of the business from that of the MLM opportunity.

Unfortunately nothing much has materialized on Lyconet since my first look at it. Even today a visit to the Lyconet website is a complete waste of time.

There’s a login page and that’s it:

No compensation plan details, no information about Lyconet itself, what it’s all about. As it stands almost a year after Lyconet was announced, the Lyconet website is a complete and utter failure.

I’ve meanwhile been waiting patiently for a copy of the Lyconet compensation plan to materialize in order to formally review Lyoness’ new angle. A Polish copy surfaced a month or so back but, while it was translatable, we learnt that the compensation plan might differ from region to region.

Going to the effort to pull apart Lyconet’s compensation plan in the event of the US version being different didn’t seem like a good use of time.

Finally a copy of Lyconet’s US compensation plan was recently sent to me by a BehindMLM reader. It’s twenty-one pages in length and just as headache-inducing as Lyoness’ original compensation plan was.

Nonetheless, I’ve done my best to break it downa and see where Lyconet’s new direction differs from Lyoness’ previous compensation plan. [Continue reading…]

Last we checked in, the WCM777 Receiver’s Third Interim Report detailed that in February of 2014, $1 million in stolen Ponzi funds was transferred to Phil Ming Xu’s sister.

This was done under the guise of Xu’s company ToPacfic, who on paper were purchasing garments.

Trouble is, Xu transferred the million odd dollars back in February 2014. As of October his sister’s company, Mana Fashion, still had the garments in storage.

Despite paying for the goods, WCM777 had done nothing to acquire them.

Sound fishy? You bet.

The garments in question were purchased by Xu’s sister over 2011 to 2013. Despite initially not co-operating with the WCM777 Receiver, Xu’s sister eventually handed over the goods.

After acquiring them, the Receiver then promptly sold the garment collection to a wholesaler for $295,000. Money that will at a later date be eventually returned to WCM777 investors.

In the meantime, what of the $1 million Xu transferred to his sister? Where did that money go? [Continue reading…]

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

The AdsWorker website domain (“adsworker.com”) was registered on the 6th of September 2014, however the domain registration is set to private.

A marketing video uploaded to the YouTube account “Alice Breton” appears on the AdsWorker website.

This account was created on the 25th of November, and is likely not an actual person.

An address in Glasgow, Scotland is provided on the AdsWorker website. A Google search of the address reveals a ton of companies operating from it, suggesting that it is a rented mailing address.

It’s worth noting that Alexa currently estimates that 90.6% of all traffic to the AdsWorker domain originates out of the Dominican Republic, indicating that this is where the company is being operated from.

As always, if a 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…]

In its heyday, Liberty Reserve was the darling of countless scams that populated the MLM underbelly. And that was only a fraction of the fraud they got up.

The argument that the payment processor was simply trying to be the next Paypal was never going to hold up in court. Yet that’s the excuse that was trotted out at a sentencing hearing for Mark Marmilev.

Marmilev, Liberty Reserve’s Technology Chief, was sentenced yesterday in a New York District Court. [Continue reading…]

After a few years of developing its product line, Asea launched in 2009.

The company is based out of the US state of Utah, and is headed up by co-founders Verdis Norton, Tyler Norton (son) and James Pack.

So the story goes,

After three decades with Kraft Foods, Verdis Norton retired as the Vice President of Strategy and later was asked to run a biotech company. Some time after that, a particular technology caught Verdis’ interest, and when the technology came up for sale, Verdis mentioned it to his Park City, Utah friend and neighbor, James Pack.

James had moved to Park City years prior after building a highly successful telecommunications consulting company. So successful, in fact, that James retired at an age when most businessmen are just beginning to earn real income.

When James heard about the opportunity to join Verdis in business and acquire this intriguing technology, he pulled out a check, wrote in a large figure, and said, “There’s more where this came from. Let’s do this.”

And that’s how ASEA was born.

Following further research and development into their product line, Tyler Norton was then brought on at a later date. Asea marked the first involvement in the MLM industry for all three co-founders.

Heading up Asea as CEO today is Charles F. Funke (also known as Chuck Funke, right).

In his Asea corporate bio, Funke is credited with an extensive background in the financial sector. Like Asea’s co-founders though, his appointment as CEO appears to mark his first involvement as an executive within the MLM industry.

On the regulatory front, earlier this year Asea was accused of selling their products ‘through mechanisms that actually had the sole aim of recruiting other sellers (affiliates)‘.

Italy’s Anti-trust Authority claimed that upon signing up, these new recruits were then asked to make ‘an initial contribution (affiliate signup fee) or subscribe to a program of personal purchases (autoship).’

It was also noted that Asea ‘attributed healing abilities to their products that are not adequately demonstrated and certified‘.

The Italian regulator fined Asea €150,000 EUR in October.

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

Joining an MLM opportunity started by someone who was an affiliate in a travel-based pyramid scheme, then launched an MLM company who without notice took their affiliate’s customers and shutdown their MLM division, and then plead guilty to tax evasion should have been a no-brainer.

For many in the industry though, September was a month of spamming advertisements for RE247365 in the hope that people would sign up.

Operating itself as a pyramid scheme, RE247365 paid affiliates $50 for every new affiliate they recruited into the scheme. On top of this, additional bonuses were offered at certain recruitment milestones.

What usually happens in schemes like RE247365 is that those who get in early recruit as many suckers as they can, cash out their withdrawals and then move onto the next scam.

To that end, Alexa’s traffic estimate graph for RE247365 is pretty spot on:

Initial recruitment boom, cash out and do a runner before those you’ve scammed realize there’s nobody gullible enough left to recruit.

One problem though… this time around those who got in early are still waiting for their commissions to be paid out in full. [Continue reading…]

In an effort to get out of paying back the millions they collectively stole from Zeek Rewards victims, the scheme’s top profiteers filed a series of motions to dismiss mid 2014.

They then attempted to use the filing of these motions to stop the Receivership performing discovery (such as learning where they’d stashed their winnings).

A decision on that motion has been forthcoming, however with a recent ruling made on the filed motions to dismiss – it would now seem redundant. [Continue reading…]

Back in February, BTG180 filed a lawsuit against Robert Craddock and Fun Club USA.

The case was brought about after Craddock failed to deliver on contractual promises made between the two parties, and issues arising from Craddock using the BTG180 affiliate database to further his personal gains.

In July an amended complaint was filed by BTG180, adding Theodore Zentner to the defendant list. Zentner, an attorney and President of Fun Club USA, went on to file a motion to dismiss around October/November. [Continue reading…]

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

The PayAdShares website domain (“payadshares.com”) was registered on the 27th of September 2014, however the domain registration is set to private.

Affiliates on social media identify the owner of PayAdShares as Brian Solomonson.

A visit to Solomonson’s Facebook profile confirms as much, with Solomonson referring to PayAdShares as his “great program”:

In his profile, Solomonson claims to be living out of Stockholm in Sweden. It is likely that this is where PayAdShares is being run out of.

As for a history, I was unable to find any information pertaining to other companies Solomonson might have run in the past. Ditto involvement in the industry as an affiliate.

Solomonson does reference DigAdz on his Facebook profile though, indicating at least some level of familiarity with the industry:

DigAdz sees affiliates invest amounts of $1 or more on the promise 150% ROIs. Whether or not Solomonson is an affiliate with DigAdz is unclear.

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