Launched in 2001, Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing was shut down by the FTC in 2013. Unfortunately this was before I got around to penning a BehindMLM review of the company.

Described as “one of the most prolific pyramid schemes operating in North America” by Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, FHTM is a familiar “lack of retail” MLM story. FHTM

claimed to have 160,000 independent representatives selling products and services including Dish Network subscriptions, vitamins, cosmetics and security systems.

The reality? [Continue reading…]

One of the common recurring themes in the Ponzi industry, is feigned ignorance as to the going-ons behind the scenes.

Despite being fully aware of what is going on in the schemes they promote, when it all comes tumbling down, those at the top (who made the most money), are usually first to profess their innocence.

“How could we have known it was a Ponzi scheme?”

“I’m not in management, I’m just an affiliate like you guys!”

“How dare they defraud all of us! I hope they go to jail and everyone gets their money back! (just not from my bank account please)” etc.

In what is seen as a landmark shift in how Ponzi schemes are handled once shut down, the SEC has named four of TelexFree’s top promoters as defendants in their civil case.

For their part in collectively convincing thousands of people to invest money in TelexFree, Randy Crosby, Santiago De La Rosa (right with Crosby), Faith Sloan and Sanderley Rodrigues are now finding their heads on the chopping block.

Seemingly working together, De La Rosa and Crosby’s attorneys recently filed respective “Motions to Dismiss”. After two years of scamming thousands, and Crosby and De La Rosa  are now claiming they knew nothing… [Continue reading…]

The Internet Lifestyle Network appears to have launched around mid 2013. The company’s website domain (“internetlifestylenetwork.com”) is registered to Vincent Ortega Jr. (one of the Internet Lifestyle Networks’ co-founders). A corporate address for “Vincent Ortega Jr LLC” in the US state of Missouri is also provided.

Despite being named a co-founder of the company, Ortega’s Internet Lifestyle Network blog bio paints the picture he stumbled across an opportunity that simply “came along”.

I was living in my parent’s home, working on the top of a plastic garage sale table…and the money just kept going down and down every month.

…and then Mark Hoverson

…and the Internet Lifestyle Network came along…

My business went from failing around 2k/month, to Booming… making upwards of 50,000/month!

Mark Hoverson is another Internet Lifestyle Network co-founder, and appears to have been Ortega’s direct upline in several MLM opportunities over the years.

I started my online journey about 3 years ago from when I am typing this blog post. I was a college baseball pitcher for many years and was supposed to get drafted.

The problem was… I honestly didn’t care.

I didn’t care that I was blessed with all that talent and I jacked around as I was going through college. I partied to much,
I drank to much…

I basically threw away any chance I ever had at becoming a professional athlete because I simply didn’t have enough passion for the game.

You could say… I was an idiot.

The first job I got making decent money was DJing. I made about $250 a night and that got me some funds to get going a bit. I mostly jacked around with that money and spent it on stupid things at first… But then I quickly realized that I was 24 years old living in my parents house still with no life.

So where did I turn you ask?

I turned to the internet thank God!

I saw Jonathan Budd and Mark Hoverson popping up all over the place. I saw how they were “making a killing” online and they were the first people that I actually trusted.

Ortega met Hoverson through Jonathan Budd. Specifically, through one of Budd’s internet marketing launches, “Futuristic Marketing”. Futurstic Marketing appears to be some sort of internet marketing training, with an attached single-level affiliate plan.

The business appears to have focused around signing people up for the company’s launch, after which the opportunity went into decline.

According to Ortega, that’s when Hoverson recruited him into Global Resorts Network:

Mark Goes… “Hey Vince… why don’t you just roll your earnings into my GRN product and turn around
and make more money?”

I WAS LIKE… UH… UH….

So internally I said no…

But externally I almost had to say yes because he was just showing me the way I needed to go. So I rolled all of that commission into Global Resorts Network and got the platinum package.

More recently, and through Internet Lifestyle Network (which appears to have origins as a feeder for MLM opportunities Ortega has been involved in, with Hoverson getting on board mid 2013), Ortega was pushing Rippln.

Below is a Rippln marketing video of Ortega’s featuring Mark Hoverson and Jonathan Budd:

Rippln was initially going to launch as a pyramid scheme (Ortega talks about having 20,000 affiliates under him in the video above), but after scrapping the plan, then never really went anywhere.

By January 2014 Rippln was officially “dead in the water“, and that seems to be about the time the Internet LifeStyle Network rebranded itself as a stand-alone business opportunity.

Clifton & Ashley Hatfield together are named as the third co-founders on the Internet Lifestyle Network website. They appear to have originated from Hoverson’s Global Resorts Network opportunity, and have presumably been in his downline over various other opportunities since.

Global Resorts Network itself appears to still be around, but is little more than a shadow of the thriving recruitment-driven travel club it once was.

Read on for a full review of the Ineternet Lifestyle Network MLM busines opportunity. [Continue reading…]

Retail sales are the lifeblood of any MLM company. Without a steady flow of revenue from people outside of the opportunity purchasing your products, you’re only putting off an inevitable collapse.

A complete lack of retail sales saw WakeUpNow rack up $3.3 million dollars in losses for 2012. This trend continued and in 2013 the company recorded another loss of $4.5 million.

No doubt seeing the writing on the wall, WakeUpNow management introduced mandatory retail quotas in late 2013. Forced onto an affiliate-base that had previously been solely focused on affiliate recruitment, these changes were met with mixed reactions.

Affiliates who had focused on signing up, paying the minimum volume-spend themselves and then recruiting others to do the same were rather unhappy.

The loss figures above are quoted from WakeUpNow’s own 2013 Disclosure statement, which was the focus of a recent BehindMLM article. Titled “WakeUpNow blows through almost $8 million in two years“, the article looked at the current situation, what WakeUpNow focused on in the statement and what that likely meant for the business going forward.

In summary, WakeUpNow looked to be pushing more of the same – which I suggested would in turn result in more of the same. That being the ongoing loss of millions of dollars from year to year.

That evidently didn’t go over too well with WakeUpNow corporate, who were quick to deploy their PR agency.

The first response came in less than 24 hours by way of a spammy press-release. Written for no other reason than to be linked back to by over-zealous WakeUpNow affiliates, who for some reason can’t quite seem to grasp WakeUpNow themselves author (or at the very least solicit) such works, declares “WakeUpNow passes 100,000 customer milestone”.

Sounds impressive, until you consider there’s no mention of how many of those customers are retail.

Furthermore, the maths doesn’t add up either. How does a company with 100,000 customers still manage to lose $8 million over two years? Even the smallest of spends ($10), translates into millions of dollars in revenue.

Some things need to be considered here. In addition to no mention of retail ratios, WakeUpNow also don’t clarify whether these 100,000 customers are currently active (having made any recent orders), or whether it’s a cumulative number.

Anyway, it is what it is – a bunch of spam that’s both misleading and ultimately irrelevant.

WakeUpNow followed up this response with an email sent to me via BehindMLM’s contact form. Well, not from them per say but from Mike Scerbo of Rose Moser Allyn Public Relations, who appear to be working for them. [Continue reading…]

Wish Club claim to be part of the “Asblkeu Group”, which was launched in late 2013. Asblkeu Group is apparently based in Spain, however no further credible information is known about the company.

The Wish Club website only provides the following vague marketing spiel:

Asblkeu Enterprise was founded in September 2013 in Madrid (Spain), with the mission to bring the consumer a great revolution in the world of information demand.

Asblkeu is the enterprise who controls a group of companies created with the same goal as Asblkeu’s : take care of every one of the processes, particularly quality control focused on the potential global markets businesses, as well as trading, multi-services, MMN, international publishing or advertising industry segmented in print and digital media, online shopping , e- commerce and its own brands.

A link to what is supposed to be Asblkeu’s website is provided on the Wish Club website (“asblkeu.com”), however clicking it reveals nothing more than a diagnostic message:

Credited as the President of Wish Club is a one Mr. Ezequiel Hipólito (right).

Despite the claim that Hipólito”came into contact” with the MLM industry “from a very young age”, I was unable to find any online record of MLM business activities prior to the launch of Wish Club.

Exactly when Hipólito started in the MLM industry and what companies he has previously belonged to are a mystery. Whether or not he actually owns Wish Club is also unclear (I doubt it).

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

Ever since those forfeiture notices were issued at the Nevada bankruptcy trial, we’ve been waiting for the US Attorneys Office to show their hand. And on Friday morning they did just that.

TelexFree co-owner James Merrill has been arrested on “conspiracy to commit wire fraud charges and his partner in crime, Carlos Wanzeler is now a fugitive in hiding.

Wanted on the same charges, Carlos Wanzeler’s whereabouts are currently unknown, however it’s believed he fled to Brazil shortly before the arrest warrants were issued.

TelexFree and its management have always insisted they’re willing to co-operate fully with any and all regulatory investigations and related matters, but apparently that doesn’t extend out to the arrest of Wanzeler.

[Continue reading…]

Initially declaring World Ventures to be a pyramid scheme back in February, it wasn’t until late April that the the Norwegian Gaming Board issued a directive ordering World Ventures to “stop all activity” in the country.

The Norwegian Gaming Board’s decision came after a nine month investigation, which revealed conclusive evidence that World Ventures was operating as a pyramid scheme:

At the end of May 2013 had WorldVentures 3654 members in Norway. About 95 percent of the members were also sales representatives.

World Venture’s activities in Norway are an illegal pyramid game because revenues almost exclusively come from recruiting members and not the sale of travel residence.

As per World Venture’s business model, the company pays out on the recruitment of new affiliates. With only 5% of their members counting as retail customers, and in all likelihood an even smaller percentage of revenue not being sourced from affiliates, it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together.

Still, quick to file an appeal and even quicker to reassure everyone that they had “permission” to continue to sign up new affiliates into the scheme, World Ventures refuted the Gaming Board claims, telling BusinessForHome:

WorldVentures considers both a number of the factual and legal aspects of the Gaming Board report as unfounded and associated with failure.

WorldVentures considers that there are no reasons for banning business.

Right. [Continue reading…]

Not content to sit idle while a new wave of reload scams target TelexFree investors, Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s office has announced the issuing of subpoenas to Wings Network.

We attended one of their events,’’ Galvin said. “We had heard from some investors who, in light of TelexFree, had become concerned — and we’re concerned.’

TelexFree of course being the $1 billion Ponzi scheme recently shut down by the SEC and Massachusetts Securities Division. [Continue reading…]

Thus far defiant in their non-cooperation with authorities over their part in a $1 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, Faith Sloan and Sannderly Rodrigues were rewarded for their efforts with the granting of a preliminary injunction on Wednesday. [Continue reading…]

LegacyMax launched in late 2013 and appears to have come about following the purported death of the founder of Zazzed.

A Dr. Bob Moore was listed as the owner of the “zazzed.com” website domain, however when I reviewed Zazzed mid last year, I was ultimately unable to conclude who was running or owned the company.

LegacyMax are more transparent about who is running things, crediting a Tim Stevens as the company’s President and CEO on their website.

On his LinkedIn profile, Stevens explains:

The unexpected death of the owner of ZAZZED, LLC in Dec, 2013 created a crisis and challenge for myself and my ZAZZED team mates.

After purchasing the assets of the ZAZZED company I set out to launch a new company, LegacyMax. The intent was to provide the GREEN FUEL TABS marketers, around the world, with a path to move forward with the successes they were having with this great product.

After several months of assembling an incredible team of professionals in all critical areas of corporate and field operations and nearly $100k in developmental costs we have now successfully launched the company, LegacyMax.

In LegacyMax, Stevens served as “Director of International Business Development” and was also an affiliate.

A LegacyMax corporate address in Nevada is provided on their website, however whether this is an actual office or just a rented mailbox is unclear.

In my Zazzed review, I flagged the payment on the recruitment of Diamond level affiliates as being indicative of a recruitment-driven pyramid scheme. Mandatory affiliate autoship and a lack of retail within the business were also concerns.

Has Stevens cleaned up Zazzed with his LegacyMax reboot?

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