The Legends Network launched in early 2014 and on their website provide a suite address in the US state of Virginia.

Heading up the company is CEO and Founder Bob Bremner (below right).

Attended an A L WILLIAMS opportunity meeting in 1984 and started working part-time building a business in the life insurance and securities market.

Joined a start-up MLM company in 1990 called Consumer Buyline and developed a 200,000+ down line in 18 months.

Founded a MLM company in 1999 specializing in marketing nutritional supplements and continue to serve as the CEO.

Helped found THE LEGENDS NETWORK in January, 2014 and help oversee all phases of the operation of the company.

The MLM company mentioned in Bremner’s Legends Network corporate bio above is Nutronix.

Bremner’s name does not appear on Nutronix’s “About Us” company website page, however his name does appear on various marketing material where he is credited as the company CEO.

Nutronix flagship product is a “Silver Solution”, which the company claims ‘is a 14 ppm concentration nano-particulate solution that is very potent, effective, and non-toxic.‘

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

Reminded only yesterday that TelexFree’s answer to the SEC’s amended complaint was now overdue, Trustee Stephen Darr was quick to file a reply – within which are revelations that shed light on the future of TelexFree.

Darr’s response, filed on behalf of TelexFree which Darr has been put in charge of, is based on the Trustee’s “preliminary investigation”.

The opening paragraphs of Darr’s response speak for themselves:

On information and belief, the Trustee admits that the various individual debtors cited in paragraph 1 appear to have been engaged in a multi-level marketing enterprise, which, while purporting to be in the business of selling telephone service plans using Voice-over Internet Protocol (“VoIP”) technology, they were in fact engaged in a Ponzi or pyramid scheme which, in part, involved promising to pay investors for placing ads on the Internet and recruiting other investors to do same.

The Trustee admits that the individual Defendants’ conduct involved fraud, deceit and resulted in significant risk of substantial losses to persons, including the Debtors.

The rest of the response essentially agrees with practically everything the SEC allege, however the Trustee doesn’t go so far as to call out individuals named in the case.

Subpoenas for information on these individuals have been issued to TelexFree related parties, the results of which will no doubt reveal the extent of their individual involvement in the “fraud and deceit” he mentions. [Continue reading…]

Qivana launched in 2009 and operate out of the US state of Utah.

Heading up Qivana is co-founder Derek Hall (below right), who serves as CEO.

Refreshingly, Qivana don’t shirk from naming past companies its execs have been involved in:

Derek’s career has been focused on growing sales revenues and profitability for a variety of industry leaders. He has served as President and CEO for Nature’s Way, Botanicals International, Integrative Therapeutics, Unigen USA and Univera.

In addition, he served as Vice-Chairman and CEO of ECONET, Inc. His success of achieving and maintaining profitability at the companies over which he has presided is a matter of record.

Usually MLM companies will acknowledge involvement of their execs in other MLM companies, but rarely cite a name. Sometimes this is easy to research and sometimes it takes a little more digging. Either way it’s annoying, so full points to Qivana for complete disclosure.

As for the companies Hall has been involved in, they’ve been around for a while and from the brief research I did appear to be well-established in the industry. A common theme of dietary supplements, health and nutrition runs through all of them.

As at the time of publication I haven’t reviewed any of the companies on BehindMLM, so I can’t really go into any specific details on each of the opportunities. That said I did look each up, and specific to Hall’s involvement didn’t spot any pressing points of concern.

In early 2009 there was some kefuffle when Hall left Univera (of which EcoNet is the parent company).  Shortly after Qivera launched, Univera filed a lawsuit (MLM Watchdog)

against Qivana LLC and its CEO, Derek Hall, for intentional interference with economic relations, unfair competition, and misappropriation of trade secrets.

The suit relates to actions taken by Qivana that are detrimental to the structure and integrity of Univera’s business operations and that threaten the businesses of Univera’s independent distributors (Associates).

The complaint alleges that Qivana has attempted to target a certain group of Univera Associates in order to persuade such Associates to breach their Associate Agreements with Univera and to violate Univera’s Policies and Procedures.

Given Hall was CEO of both Univera and EcoNet, they appear to have been upset he left and worried he’d raid the company’s affiliate-base.

By the end of 2010 (approx a year and a half later), the lawsuit was settled:

Univera, Inc., announced today that it has reached a settlement in two lawsuits filed in Federal Court in the Western District of Washington and the Middle District of Florida, and one lawsuit filed in Utah state court (collectively, the “Litigation”).

The Litigation involved Univera, Inc., Qivana, Inc., Univera’s former CEO Derek Hall, and three former Univera Distributors: John Terhune, Marshall Douglas, and Joe Land.

“From the beginning, Univera’s actions in the Litigation were designed primarily to protect the businesses of countless independent distributors (Associates) who were adversely affected by the actions that led to the Litigation,” said Thomas J. Hoolihan, Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Univera and its parent Company, ECONET, Inc.

Unfortunately ‘the terms of the settlement were not disclosed‘, so how the lawsuit was settled is a mystery. In any event, both Univera and Qivana are still in business today and appear to have successfully moved on since.

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

Two brief updates today in the ongoing battle between MLM Ponzi pimps and regulators.

Neither really had enough weight for a separate writeup though, so I’ve combined them together below. [Continue reading…]

Extracted from the Nopal cactus, Trivita’s Nopalea is essentially cactus juice available at $39.99 per 32oz bottle.

Or as Trivita describe it on their website:

Nopalea is a delicious, nutrient rich drink from the Sonoran Desert. Featuring the superfruit of the Nopal cactus, it contains a powerful class of nutrients called Bioflavanoids.

Nopalea customers enjoy so many aspects of this unique drink: the taste, color and certainly its health benefits.

Following an investigation by the FTC, the marketing of those “health benefits” has landed Trivita in hot water. [Continue reading…]

That the SEC were going to object when James Merrill requested $4 million in seized funds be released was always a given.

Not only because Merrill claimed he needed the money to fund his legal defense but more importantly, because the money had been stolen from TelexFree affiliate investors.

Merrill didn’t deny otherwise, but argued that it was up to the government to prove the funds were derived from his involvement in TelexFree.

Unfortunately for Merrill, that’s not how it works. Filing their objection to Merrill’s request on the 14th of July, the SEC explain why.

The Defendant cannot use forfeitable, victim funds to pay for his defense, much less an unusually expensive one. Nor does he provide any evidence that he even needs the funds to retain counsel of his choice (indeed with $325,000 in the bank, nor can he).

At the forefront of the argument against Merrill’s motion is the fact that he already has $325,000 in known assets, and who knows how much more in as of yet undeclared assets. [Continue reading…]

If one Googles the term “WorldVentures” today, above is typical of the results returned.

In first position is WorldVenture’s own website, second is another corporate website run by WorldVentures’ Marketing dept and third is a review by “Twenty-something Travel”.

Owned by Stephanie Yoder (right), she claims she wrote the review after she attended ‘a coworking event with a group called DC Night Owls‘.

Last Monday Michael and I went to a coworking event with a group called DC Night Owls.

It was our first time, and we felt kind of like the new kids in school, so when a friendly looking guy started chatting with us about our businesses, we were psyched.

As we talked about living and working around the world he got more and more excited. We’re on exactly the same page, he told us. He just had to tell us about his business!

He settled down beside us and flipped open his Samsung tablet. Thinking we were going to hear about his start-up or website or whatever, we leaned in. He started in on a slideshow featuring generic travel photos under headings like BEACHES, NIGHTLIFE, ADVENTURE.

Well whatever he’s doing, it sounds pretty cliché, I thought to myself. He kept going telling us about this online travel club called WorldVentures, where users can buy discounted travel packages for super cheap if they just pay a $199 fee + $54.95 a month (what a deal!). Then he told us the real money was in becoming an associate and recruiting others to join the program.

It wasn’t until he showed us the pay structure, which looked exactly like a pyramid, that I realized what was going on. It looked like this guy was actually trying to recruit us into a pyramid scheme!

“I’m going to stop you right now,” Mike said. The guy looked up from his endless slideshow where he was explaining all the free trips and cars you can earn, just by working for yourself! “We’re never going to be interested in this.”

“I thought you guys said you were entrepreneurs,” the guy mumbled before shuffling off dejectedly. Mike and I looked at each other in disbelief. Did that really just happen?

I didn’t know people even still DID these things. I associate these sort of companies (like Amway) with some bygone era.

Clearly they do (though) since this young (probably late twenty-something) dude was trolling coworking meetups for sign ups. So of course I started digging.

According to inhouse statistics, Twenty-something Travel currently lists the review, titled “WorldVentures: This is NOT the Way to Travel the World”, as the most visited article on the blog.

Ditto the comments, so much so that Yoder stopped responding to comments late last year, and roughly two weeks later disabled them altogether: [Continue reading…]

What happens when you have Brazilians pretending to run a dubious looking MLM company out of Japan?

Something along the lines of the comically named Mr. Link IT Solutions.

Quite obviously run out Brazil, Mr. Link IT Solutions professes on their about page (which defaults to Portuguese)

The Mr.Link IT Solutions was born in 2000 in Japan yet named Skynet, came to meet the Japanese and Brazilian markets in Japan Brazilians living in the country they could not enjoy the Japanese equipment due to language and writing the same, so OVERSEAS also began to market products, export models to foreign multi-language, such as general electronics and computers due to the great success the business was soon expanded.

In 2005 with the import and export of products such as car chief, seek new products to serve the markets, Japanese and Brazilian working in China, Japan and Brazil axis.

However Mr.Link consolidate IT Solutions Co. LTD, with the partnership and partnership between Japanese and Brazilian nikkey, aiming to bring corporate and entrepreneurial solutions to Brazilians living abroad, Japan and the world!

Riiiiiiiight.

The About Us page goes on to list three “bases”, one in Brazil and one in Japan and one in China.

Our base in Japan started its activities on the date of May 16 of two thousand and five, with five employees and initial capital deҰ 3 million yen.

As above, Mr. Link claim their Japanese base has five people working there. However save for the effort to hide assets from Brazilian authorities, there doesn’t appear to be any actual links (no pun intended) between Mr. Link and Japan.

China is listed as just being a warehouse facility.

The company’s website domain “mrlink.co.jp” was registered on the 26th of March 2014, and lists a “keirosu hiroyuki” as the domain owner (right).

A real person or not, who knows. But this name does not appear anywhere on the internet (either as is or in reverse), in connection with Mr. Link.

A search on the email address used on the domain registration reveals another (now defunct) domain associated with it, “enjoy.vc”:

Mr. Emerson Queiroz certainly matches the email address “mr_ehq@hotmail.com” far better than “keirosu hiroyuki” does.

Interestingly enough a Japanese address is provided on the above domain registration, indicating that Queiroz might be Mr. Link’s Brazilian Japanese link (a Brazilian expat living in Japan?).

The domain registration for the related domain “mrlink.com.br” (which redirects to mrlink.co.jp), certainly suggests so.

Queiroz’s middle name is revealed in the registration, and it’s decidedly Japanese sounding:

domínio: mrlink.com.br
titular: Emerson Horoyuki de Queiroz

Horoyuki hey? As in “keirosu hiroyuki”? Perhaps keirosu is an adopted name (alias) of Queiroz’s?

In any event, the mrlink.com.br registration provides us with a different email address than the one Queiroz used for the .co.jp registration:

A different name appears here as you can see, but that would appear to be baloney. Queiroz himself used the “marciagabriela.Bio@hotmail.com” email address in a lecture application filed with the “Federation of Industries of the State of Mato Grosso”:

Filed in March of 2013, Emerson Queiroz uses the “marcia” email address and credits himself as the “administrator” of Mr. Link.

Mato Grosso is of course a state in Brazil, indicating Queiroz’s feigned move to Japan was either recent or not at all (realistically he’s probably still based out of Brazil).

A website purportedly showing some sort of local Brazilian election results claims Queiroz received 0.07% of a voting pool that might have had something to do with Japan:

Other than the bio on Queiroz though (which confirms his Brazilian nationality), I’m not really sure what I’m looking at there. Perhaps one of our Brazilian readers familiar with local politics can clue us in?

Meanwhile why none of this information is openly presented on the Mr. Link website is a mystery.

On the MLM side of things, the only past venture I was able to pin Queiroz to was TelexFree. He subscribed to the channel “Sou TelexFREE” on his YouTube account:

Sou TelexFree (English: “I’m TelexFree”) is a pro TelexFree Ponzi scheme channel, featuring an assortment of pro-TelexFree marketing videos.

TelexFree of course being the largest Ponzi scheme Brazil has ever seen. It was shut down by Brazilian regulators in June 2013, and the SEC in the US back in April of this year.

Queiroz’s subscription to the channel strongly suggests he was an affiliate investor with the company. Whether he lost money or made money in the scheme however is unclear.

Read on for a full review of the Mr. Link IT Solutions MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]

Just over a week ago we saw the TelexFree Trustee issue subpoena requests on some of the bigger names linked to the TelexFree Ponzi scheme.

Eight requests were made in total, with the standout names to me being Gerry Nehra (and his lawfirm) and i-Payout.

i-Payout were running around telling everyone TelexFree wasn’t a Ponzi scheme, as this was a threat to the millions of dollars they were making in processor fees.

Nehra was the legal face of TelexFree (up until the company experienced actual regulatory problems), and was responsible for sending out cease and desist emails to anyone who bothered to look over TelexFree’s business model.

Initial objections were filed by Opt3 Solutions (IT service provider) and ProPay Inc. (payment processor).

Opt3 Solutions’ objection is limited to concerns about confidentiality and information being circulated by the Trustee among the general public. ProPay also raise these concerns, but also requests they be given 20 days to respond to any requests by the Trustee.

In his original motion, the Trustee had requested a 10 day response time for any subpoena requests and 5 days response time for any requested depositions. [Continue reading…]

BehindMLM first reviewed Xseed Health during its pre-launch infancy late last year.

Despite signing up affiliates, at the time the company had practically no information up on what affiliates could expect come their January 2014 launch. I was highly critical of this, as I believe if you’re going to sign people up, you at least need to be providing them the basic cost structure and compensation plan (how they will get paid).

If neither of those details haven’t been fleshed out yet, then to put it bluntly you shouldn’t enter prelaunch until they are.

Now, six months after Xseed’s launch we revisit the opportunity to see where they’re at. Read on for a full review of the Xseed MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]