A bail hearing for James Merrill, co-owner of the $1 billion dollar TelexFree Ponzi scheme, was held last Friday in Massachusetts. Taking the matter under advisement, Magistrate Judge David Hennessy made a decision yesterday to keep Merrill in custody.

Citing that ‘the Government has met their burden‘ in establishing why Merrill should not be granted bail, Judge Hennessy ordered he be ‘remanded to the custody of the US Marshals‘ until further notice.

Supporting evidence provided by the government against Merrill (right) included

• a binder containing letters from TelexFree affiliates
• phonecall logs
• a corporate profile of TelexFree Canada Inc. and
• evidence collected from the Facebook page of “TelexFree Canada”

The nature of the phonecall logs or what relevance TelexFree Canada has to the case against Merrill were not disclosed.

In related news, further information has been revealed detailing the arrest of Katia Wanzeler (TelexFree co-owner Carlos Wanzeler’s wife). [Continue reading…]

IM Suite launched a month or so ago and is owned and operated by Aron Prins.

A message at the bottom of the IM Suite webpage informs visitors that IM Suite is ‘an iHeartIM product’, with iHeartIM appearing to be a parent company of Prins’:

I wasn’t able to tie Prins to any MLM opportunities on the affiliate side of things, but he does appear to have some experience launching opportunities of his own. Most of these opportunities revolve around internet marketing.

Prins refers to his Badass Network as a “cult”, and it appears to be some sort of WordPress blog platform. Prins’ video was shot late last year, however today the BadAss Network URL redirects to iHeartIM, indicating it appears to have been since abandoned (or re-branded).

I’m not sure what happened there or how, if at all, IM Suite fits into any of that, but Prins appears to have dropped the references to Empower Network in his marketing efforts. Well, perhaps not all of them. He uploaded something about an “Empower Responder” to his YouTube channel only a few weeks ago.

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

Helping Hands International went into prelaunch in late 2013 and appear to have gone on to officially launch in early 2014.

The company claims to be based out of Angels City in the Philippines, and was co-founded by Luzviminda Mac-Elvis (who also serves as CEO) and Ramiel Policarpio.

Note that Helping Hands International the MLM company uses the “helpinghandsinternational.biz” website domain. A charity with the same name exists over at “helpinghandsinternational.com”, however it appears to be an unrelated business.

The Helping Hands International .BIZ website domain was registered anonymously on October 31st, 2013.

In her Helping Hands corporate bio, Mac-Elvis (right) describes herself as being

a simple lady of little beginning who has enjoyed the mercy and grace of God.

My growth experience has shown me that irrespective of background, location or education, you can still achieve your dreams.

Whether or not Mac-Elvis has any prior MLM experience is unclear, as her name only appears on the internet in conjunction with Helping Hands International (often abbreviated as H2i).

Ditto Policarpio, whose name also only appears online in conjunction with Helping Hands.

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

There is no information on the MyAdRich website indicating who owns or runs the business. The information provided is the following vague marketing spiel:

MyadRich has been founded by a leading international Business group experienced in IT, Network Marketing,Capital markets,CORPORATE SOFT SKILLS and Personality Development.

The MyAdRich website domain (“myadrich.com”) was registered in September 2013 and lists a “Dave Tony” as the owner.

An address in the British Virgin Islands is also provided, however this belongs to “Fidelity Corporate Services”. They advise on their website that they operate ‘in the BVI, providing offshore company formation and management services‘.

Given the generic nature of the name “Dave Tony” and the fact the supplied corporate address for MyAdRich is little more than a mail forwarding address, I’m flagging the provided admin details as likely to be false.

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…]

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

The GoldAdMatrix website domain (“goldadmatrix.com”) was registered on the 22nd of January 2014, and lists a “Michel Lavoie” as the domain owner. An address in Ontario, Canada is also provided, and is presumably where Lavoie runs GoldAdMatrix out of.

The marketing videos on the GoldAdMatrix website are hosted by GVO, which Lavoie appears to be an affiliate of under the account “frenchy36”. As an affiliate, Lavoie has used the same username for Pure Leverage (under the name “Mike Lavoie”).

More recently, Lavoie has been promoting “Sky Coin Lab”:

Sky Coin Lab accepts investments from affiliates on the promise of ROIs paid out via BitCoin.

Lavoie also appears to offer “video intro” services on Fiverr, with several uploads made to his YouTube account (“mlmcashbiz”) advertising his services.

Lavoie (right) also has promotional videos for Trideci (UltraXProject Ponzi scheme relaunch) and GlobalAdShare (a $10 Ponzi scheme) on his account.

On the executive side of things, early last year Lavoie launched ProMatrixPlus. A similar-looking opportunity to GoldAdMatrix, ProMatrixPlus charged participants $27.50 to participate, and paid them on the recruitment of new affiliates via a series of matrices.

A visit to the ProMatrixPlus website indicates the scheme has stalled some time ago, and is likely the reason Lavoie has launched GoldAdMatrix a year or so later.

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

Less than a month after Michael Sander (right) was busted using his Obtainer Online magazine to defend the ViziNova Ponzi scheme, the disgraced publisher is at it again.

Now Michael Sander is defending Bonofa.

Obtainer Online, who Sander bills as “The world’s most trusted source for direct selling news”, wrote a fluff piece on ViziNova on the 16th of April.

ViziNova, a WCM777 reload Ponzi scheme, was launched by two of WCM777’s top investors in March.

ViziNova’s business model sees the company accept $1000 to $3000 investments from affiliates on the promise of a 150-166% ROI. The company it was modeled on, WCM777, was shut down by the SEC in the same month ViziNova launched.

In his paid advertisement for ViziNova, Sander had the gall to claim

The fact that Renato Rodriguez and Gutemberg dos Santos were among the top leaders at WCM777 isn’t in dispute.

Nor is the fact that both of them earned millions. But the allegation that ViziNova is a new edition of WCM777 is quite simply false.

Not surprisingly, Sander was also a consultant for WCM777. It is believed he assisted founder Phil Ming Xu set up money laundering routes through the UAE, to disperse Ponzi funds through shell corporations.

On Obtainer Online, Sander recently described himself as someone who

lives and works in a tax haven, has set up more than 2,000 offshore companies for clients and still administers some of them and, on top of that, deals with investment strategies and investment opportunities.

In addition to the obvious links between ViziNova’s owners and WCM777, which Sander appears to be at the center of (administratively), it has also been revealed that the company is essentially resurrecting WCM777’s failed payment processor model.

So intertwined are the two businesses that ViziNova at first didn’t even bother to change the name of WCM777’s Kingdom Trade platform.

Unconfirmed reports also suggest ViziNova and its affiliates are willing to honor KingdomCoin Ponzi points accumulated in WCM777.

After his role as an advisor to ViziNova was exposed, an adamant Sander declared the following on Facebook:

To answer the question whether I was a consultant for WCM and Kingdom777 or some leaders who worked there: Yes, but that was never a secret.

Am I looking (after) Vizinova -. Well yes Just as I was there for many companies and am and will be in the future. It’s my job.

And that brings us to Bonofa. [Continue reading…]

Well that was fast.

Not even twenty four hours after we predicted regulatory charges would be filed against Wings Network, despite the company “suspending all US operations“, the Massachusetts Securities Division has filed a complaint against the company.

Filed on May 15th, the complaint was filed ‘in order to commence an adjudicatory proceeding against Wings Network”. Also named as defendants in the complaint are:

• Vinicius Aguiar – Wings Network affiliate
• Grupo International – front company, owned by Vinicius Aguiar
• Sergio Tanaka – owner of TropikGadget with Josefar de Soussa Silver
• Geovani and Priscila Bento – Wings Network affiliates who ran hotel presentations for the company and engaged in door-to-door promotion
• TropikGadget – company behind Wings Network with a PO Box in the UAE (TropikGadget FZE, owned by Narendrakumar Mansukhlal Modha) and physical address in Portugal (TropikGadget Unipessoal LDA)
• SuccessWealth 101 Inc. – owned by Geovani and Priscila Bento, with Geovani serving as President, Secretary, Treasurer and Director

Of note is that Wings Network CEO, Carlos Luis Silveira Barbosa , is not named as a defendant in the complaint. He only appears as a “related party”.  [Continue reading…]

The $1 billion dollar Ponzi noose around Carlos Wanzeler’s neck tightened today when reports detailing the arrest of his wife surfaced.

Caught trying to flee the US for Brazil, Katia Wanzeler was apprehended at John F. Kennedy International airport. Wanzeler (right with husband Carlos) had hoped to fly out of the US on a one-way ticket to Rio de Janeiro, but instead was taken into custody by federal agents.

Wanzeler is a material witness in the case against her husband Carlos, who is on the run from US authorities for running the $1 billion Ponzi scheme, TelexFree.

Presented before U.S. Magistrate Joan Azrack, Wanzeler’s lawyer tried to argue that ‘his client had no reason to flee because she’s only a witness in the case and was planning to return by the end of the month.‘

The only problem with that though was that Katia Wanzeler was found with ‘$3,000 in cash and four suitcases weighing 70 pounds‘.

“Seventy pounds of luggage? Four suit cases? … There is no way I’m releasing her,” Azrack said in federal court in Brooklyn.

Whether or not the suitcases weighed 70 pounds each or collectively is unclear.

Wanzeler’s lawyer tried to brush off the luggage as ‘clothes she had bought for her relatives’ but Azrack wasn’t having any of it. Forty-nine year old Katia Wanzeler was denied bail.

Wearing blue jeans and a hoodie, (Katia) wiped away tears with her sleeves as she was led out of court.

She was to be taken to Massachusetts, where she’s been subpoenaed by a grand jury in Worcester.

With her plane ticket paid for in cash “by someone in Brazil” and Katia’s husband Carlos currently hiding out there, it doesn’t take much to put two and two together.

Especially considering this isn’t the first time Katia has been caught telling regulators porky-pies.
[Continue reading…]

There is no information on the Argent Global website indicating who owns or runs the business. The company claims only that

Our team of skillful international marketers has 50 years of experience, comprehensive industry knowledge and is abreast with the latest online advertising trends. We have a team of the best international marketers from all four corners of the world who create result-oriented and smart online advertising to help you achieve business success.

The Argent Global website domain (“argentglobalnetwork.com”) was registered on the 30th of May 2013, and lists a “Victorien Rival” as the domain owner. An address in the US state of Florida is also provided.

A Google Maps search on the address provided, reveals the supplied to address to be a residential location:

A YouTube account is linked off some Argent Global Network webpages, which appears to belong to Rival himself:

Videos uploaded on the account reveal Rival marketing Argent Global Network itself. Also note that the screenshot above closely resembles the Google Maps location provided on the Argent Global Network domain registration.

I wasn’t able to find any further MLM history on Rival (right), however he does appear to be a real individual. Florida Division of Corporations records reveal that a “Victorien Antoine Rivel” registered “Team Wealth Unlimited” as a fictitious name in 2008 (note that Rival appears to switch surnames between “Rivel” and “Rival”). The registration expired at the end of 2013, which coincides with the launching of Argent Global Network.

Rivel registered Team Wealth Unlimited with partner Gilbert Sandy Dupoux, however whether or not Dupoux is involved in Argent Global Network is not clear. Also not clear is why Rivel’s name does not appear anywhere on the Argent Global Network website.

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

Company launches Ponzi scheme, regulators get involved, company suspends US operations, company makes big roo-rah about it being a “voluntary” shutdown, regulators file lawsuit and shut them down anyway.

The above is fast becoming a reality for Ponzi scheme operators that operate in and out of the US. It was only a few months ago that the California-based WCM777  Ponzi scheme went through this exact scenario:

• October 2013 – WCM777 shuts down US operations, doesn’t reveal it’s under US regulatory investigation
• November 2013 – Massachusetts shuts down WCM777, reveals they started investigating in September 2013
• November 2013 – WCM777 admit they are illegal in the US
• January 2014 – California issue WCM777 a cease and desist
• March 2014 – SEC file Ponzi scheme lawsuit against WCM777

Now, in the wake of the $1 billion dollar TelexFree Ponzi scheme bust, comes Wings Network. [Continue reading…]