BBOM, the trading name of “Embrasystem Technology Systems” was a Ponzi scheme shut down by Brazilian authorities in July 2013.

Owned by João Francisco de Paulo, who also served as company President, BBOM accepted $300 to $1500 investments from affiliates on the promise of $80 to $400 monthly ROIs (dependent on how much was invested).

Additionally, the company also offered recruitment commissions, adding a pyramid scheme layer to BBOM’s Ponzi scheme business model.

The facade BBOM operated under was the sale of GPS trackers to retail customers, yet all that was required was affiliates to invest money with the company. The GPS customers BBOM claimed to have didn’t exist, with de Paulo simply shuffling money from new investors to pay off existing ones.

Not surprisingly, around the time TelexFree was shutdown (many of BBOM’s affiliate had also invested in TelexFree), Brazilian authorities moved in and shutdown the company. Assets were frozen and, despite the BBOM’s repeated attempts to circumvent the law and access frozen funds, the Ministry of Finance ultimately concluded the business to be an “unsustainable” Ponzi scheme.

In response to the Ministry’s finding, de Paulo issued the following response:

(They are) absurd and groundless.

The charges were planted by different people and the prosecution are wrong in their decision, since the sources can not be trusted.

To date, BBOM remains closed.

Now however, it seems de Paulo (right) is looking to restart the scheme offshore. Citing itself as ‘a company with employees and partners’ in Hong Kong, Singapore and the US (Florida), comes InterBBOM.

De Paulo’s name does not appear anywhere on the InterBBOM website, however a check of the company’s domain name registration reveals de Paulo owns the domain through Embrasystem Technology Systems (right).

Despite trying to imply that InterBBOM is a “global” company, the languages offered on the site are English, Spanish and Portuguese, indicating that de Paulo is still really only targeting South America as he did with BBOM.

Has João Francisco de Paulo learnt his lesson and launched a legitimate company or is this just the latest chapter in his failed BBOM Ponzi scheme venture?

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

Despite the retail offering of third-party products and services, WakeUpNow had to force affiliates to focus on retail sales by introducing mandatory retail subscription quotas late last year.

This was done due to the evident complete lack of retail focus within the company.

As per WakeUpNow’s July 2013 Income Disclosure Statement, 80% of the company’s affiliates failed to generate a $10 or more commission payout that month. With $10 being the minimum commission payable on a single retail subscription, that means 80% of the company’s affiliates failed to make one retail subscription sale (or earn a commission of an existing one) for the month of July.

Things haven’t gotten much better since, with WakeUpNow’s December 2013 statement revealing that 82% of the company’s commission qualified affiliates failed to earn any commissions at all.

Even more revealing, is that according to the statement, it appears there’s only one affiliate in each of the top 5 affiliate membership categories (monthly averages and high and lows are the same).

These five affiliates walked away with a combined $1.9 million dollars in commissions. How much of those payouts was derived from retail activity within the company is not disclosed.

Filed on December 31st 2013 but only published last month, WakeUpNow’s Annual Disclosure Statement reveals that the above has translated into a net-loss of $4.5 million dollars for 2013.

Coming off the back of a $3.3 million dollar loss in 2012, WakeUpNow’s combined operational loss over the past two years is $7.8 million dollars.

Their response?

Though the Company’s current financial condition may cast doubt on its ability to continue as a going concern, management believes that its plan of operation, if successfully implemented, will generate sufficient earnings to both restore a stable financial condition and provide adequate returns to its shareholders.

Uh, seriously? [Continue reading…]

Now that TelexFree’s bankruptcy proceedings are all but dead, attention has shifted onto pending and ongoing regulatory action in the state of Massachusetts.

Charged with being a Ponzi and pyramid scheme by the SEC and Massachusetts Securities Division, TelexFree are now staring down the barrel of a permanent injunction. But whilst the company and key management blindly put their faith in the now-squashed Nevada bankruptcy, other insiders have been wheeling and dealing with the SEC. [Continue reading…]

In a nail-bitingly suspenseful hearing yesterday, Judge Landis ordered TelexFree’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy application be moved from Nevada to Massachusetts. And in the meantime, the Nevada bankruptcy court will abstain from making any further orders regarding the case.

In short, pending the move to Massachusetts (where it is likely to be heard and subsequently rejected by the same Judge hearing the SEC complaint), TelexFree bankruptcy application is currently dead in the water.

The next big court date for TelexFree is now a hearing for the granting of a preliminary injunction against the company, key insiders and top promoters, to be heard in Massachusetts today.

Filed on May the 2nd, here’s the opening statement of TelexFree’s argument against the injunction:

After intentionally disregarding the preexisting bankruptcy proceedings involving TelexFree and racing into this Court instead on an ex parte basis to obtain a temporary restraining order, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) now asks this Court to convert the ex parte temporary restraining order issued on April 16, 2014 (the “TRO”) into a preliminary injunction.

Oh my! [Continue reading…]

The notion that a global Ponzi scheme be able to file bankruptcy in a state it registered a shell company in, solely to evade financial, criminal and civil liabilities for the running of said Ponzi scheme, was always going to be a stretch.

Still, hats off to TelexFree’s lawyers for putting on a good show in fighting for the absurd.

At the conclusion to the mammoth 8 hour hearing conducted last Friday in Nevada’s bankruptcy court, Judge Landis used a series of prongs to determine whether or not TelexFree’s bankruptcy case should be transferred to Massachusetts (where the company is currently being sued by the SEC and Massachusetts Securities Division).

The prongs Judge Landis used to reach his decision were as follows: [Continue reading…]

Last we checked in with the ongoing battle between Zeek Rewards’ top Ponzi pimps and the court-appointed Receiver, they were arguing about the particulars of discovery.

Looking to bog down the Receivership in both time and costs (so they can no doubt bitch about it later), Zeek Ponzi royalty were collectively asking for ‘what amounts to thousands of interrogatories and requests for admission and over 500 depositions‘.

With there obviously being no need for that much discovery on the net-winners’ side, the conclusion the Receivership arrived at in his court-filed response accurately summed things up:

The key difference in the parties’ proposed case management is that the Defendants in this action are seeking to delay and complicate the case at every stage.

That was the situation as of April the 13th, with a hearing scheduled to take place the next day on the 14th ‘to discuss the competing proposal plans and… establish how discovery should take place‘. [Continue reading…]

Despite reports of Better Living Global Marketing failing to pay affiliates for months now, it’s an opportunity that continues to push on.

A relic of the Zeek Rewards penny auction Ponzi scheme craze, Better Living employs the familiar affiliate-funded 99 day ROI model. Under the guise of purchasing penny auction bids, new affiliate money is used to pay out existing investors.

Based out of Hong Kong, despite launching in August 2012 (the month Zeek Rewards was shut down), local authorities have refused to acknowledge the scam. For reasons not entirely clear, Hong Kong regulators appear to be unable or unwilling to tackle the growing tide of online global Ponzi fraud originating out of Hong Kong.

Appearing to make some inroads into the situation, is a report from eKantipur about Hong Kong based Nepalis and the companies KaChing Holdings, RSE Bid and Better Living Global Marketing.
[Continue reading…]

On the eve of Judge Landis’ decision that will decide whether Ponzi schemes are able to claim bankruptcy protection, lawyers acting on behalf of TelexFree affiliates have filed a class-action lawsuit in Nevada.

Filed on the 3rd of May in the Nevada Bankruptcy court, the class-action names TelexFree, its management, top promoters, legal and advisers, payment processors, banks and financial institutions as defendants.

Listed as plaintiffs are Waldemara Martins and Leandro Valentim “and those similarly situated”. Martin and Valentim are identified in the complaint as being TelexFree investor affiliates (participants in the pre-March 9 AdCentral ROI compensation plan).

Valentim and Martins’ complaint is based on the fact that the named defendants knew TelexFree was a Ponzi scheme, and did nothing to stop it. The filing of fraudulent 1099 tax forms is also raised:

In furtherance of their unlawful enterprise, TelexFree mailed fraudulent and inaccurate 1099 (Miscellaneous Income) forms to investors, possibly to create the illusion that they had made payments to investors.

The 1099 forms were provided long after the mandated January 31, 2014 deadline, and some after the April 15, 2014 filing deadline.

TelexFree falsely represented that investors had received income that they had in fact never received.

Here are the allegations laid out against the individual defendants and/or parties: [Continue reading…]

As Jordan Maglich’s cell phone battery began to die, we wound up BehindMLM’s eight-hour coverage of the May 2nd bankruptcy proceedings.

Absolute kudos to PonziTracker and Maglich, who wound up being the primary source of information coming out of the courtroom after repeated warnings against streaming the session shut down any alternatives.

I know I was mentally exhausted by the end of it, and I was only syndicating Maglich’s updates with commentary and additional information I was tracking. I can only imagine how he felt having to maintain concentration over a phone call with only a few short breaks in between!

Anyway, logistics aside, here’s where we’re at currently. [Continue reading…]

Our thanks to PonziTracker for live updates on what’s going on inside the court room as the TelexFree bankruptcy hearing takes place. Note that additional sources/reporting may appear below. [Continue reading…]