Q International launched in 2011 and are based in the US state of North Carolina.

Heading up the company are founders Evan Runde (CEO), Ken Walker (President and CFO) and John Walker (COO).

In his Q International executive bio, Runde (right) is credited with an accounting, finance and economics background along with 20 years of network marketing experience.

As a multi-million dollar earner, he’s built large organizations in the U.S. and overseas. Evan has also provided consulting services to existing and start-up Network Marketing companies.

His success in the industry has been well documented in publications including Upline, Cutting Edge Opportunities, and Network Marketing Lifestyles.

Richard Poe in his landmark book on the industry, Wave 4 – Network Marketing in the 21st Century, devoted two chapters to Evan.

Runde’s MLM career appears to have begun around the mid 1990s, after a (non-MLM) franchise operation went sour. According to an online bio I found, Runde’s first attempt at MLM wasn’t all that successful. He then went on to join Life Plus, who are still in business today.

After Life Plus there’s a bit of a gap, with a blog created in 2009 linking Runde to “Rain Nutrition”, who were bought out by Rain International in 2011 (seed-based nutritional supplements).

Ken Walker is credited with being ‘a leader and top performer in the Network Marketing industry for 10 years’, however I was unable to find anything specific there either.

Ditto John ‘has years of experience in the network marketing industry’ Walker.

For the record I’m not doubting or attempting to undermine the experience quoted in the Walkers’ Q International bios, just that anything they’ve accomplished outside of MLM generalities appears to have been very low-key.

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

Bitcoin Zones launched in February 2013 and claims to be

supported by Bitcoin core developers and managed by bitcoin community members around the world, with the input of bitcoin communities.

Other than mentioning Bitcoin Zones was ‘founded to help people make and save Bitcoin in a sustainable way‘ on their “about us” website page, the company fails to disclose who owns or runs the opportunity.

The Bitcoin Zones website domain was registered on the 7th of February 2014, however the domain registration is set to private.

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…]

Following a month-long investigation into TelexFree, Rwanda recently decided to ban the scheme. Upon announcing the decision, the Rwandan Ministry of Trade claimed TelexFree’s activities were “similar to that of a pyramid scheme” and raised concerns it was facilitating money laundering.

Now, in a followup report released by the Ministry, the Rwandan government is accusing TelexFree of tax evasion, exploitation and money laundering.

The TelexFree Ponzi plague arrived on Rwandan shores in mid 2013, with the company registering itself nationally as “PLI TelexFree (Rwanda) Ltd”. Then, over the next nine months, the company set about fleecing Rwandan affiliates and transferring their money offshore. [Continue reading…]

Currently in “Buzz Launch”, Kannaway are slated to go into pre-launch at the end of this month. Given that that’s now under two weeks away, the company has released it’s launch compensation plan into the wild.

Typically I’d include a brief history to preface an MLM company review but as Kannaway launched a separate compensation plan for their Buzz Launch, I included the company history with that review. See the BehindMLM Kannaway Prelaunch Review for a company history and brief introduction to Kannaway’s product line.

Otherwise, read on for a full review of the Kannaway launch compensation plan. [Continue reading…]

What happens when you pull the compensation plan rug out from thousands of affiliate investors and then refuse to communicate anything officially to them?

A mob of angry TelexFree affiliates stormed the company’s Massachusetts office, prompting neighboring companies in the building to lodge complaints.

TelexFree’s reception staff, complaining themselves about being “unable to walk” amongst the affiliate crowd, went and pulled Steve Labriola, TelexFree’s International Marketing Director, from his daily business to address the gathering. [Continue reading…]

Some time earlier, the Swedish Gaming Board opened an investigation up into Lyoness. While the Gaming Board carried out their investigation, a separate investigation was opened up in Norway and Poland’s OCCP declared Lyoness to be a pyramid scheme.

Now the Swedish Gaming Board have concluded their investigation into Lyoness… and in doing so have handed over their findings to the Stockholm County Police Department. [Continue reading…]

Back in January Alessandra Marques, of the Acre Public Prosecutor’s Office, revealed in a radio interview that TelexFree was under US investigation.

In a subsequent telephone conversation with Brazilian media, Marques went on to name the IRS as being involved. [Continue reading…]

Earlier this month it was revealed that Rwanda had launched an official investigation into the business operations of TelexFree. The investigation formally began on February the 19th and was a joint effort between the National Bank of Rwanda and The Ministry of Trade.

Now, a month later the result of the Rwandan investigation has been made public:

TelexFree Rwanda Ltd activities are similar to that of a pyramid scheme, which can easily be a channel to jeopardize the financial sector and facilitate money laundering.

The result of the investigation has been made public by the Ugandan Ambassador to Rwanda, Richard Kabonero. Kabonero tweeted the conclusion of the Rwandan investigation and attached an official notice from the Rwandan Ministry of Trade and Industry.

Kabonero also called on his own government in Uganda to follow suit to “protect the public”: [Continue reading…]

Neurs went into beta launch this February and are scheduled to officially launch next month. On the Neurs website a corporate address in the US state of California for “Neurs LLC” is provided.

Heading up Neurs (taken from the last syllabic quarter of en-tre-pre-neurs) is CEO and co-founder Frank Codina.

Prior to co-founding Neurs (the other co-founder(s) are not mentioned on the Neurs website), Codina was in Primerica (financial services) 21 years.

Codina joined Primerica back in November 1991 and achieved the affiliate rank of Senior National Sales Director. According to his LinkedIn profile, Codina left Primerica in August of last year.

Shortly after that work on Neurs appears to have begun, with Codina listing involvement with “Neurs Capital” from September 2013.

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

Empower Network launched on the simple idea that people would pay the affiliate who recruited them $25 a month for WordPress. Once they had their foot in the door and realised WordPress was free and not owned by Empower Network, they’d then be told to “go all in” and purchase further “training”.

Once they’d paid their thousands of dollars, they were then qualified to receive commissions by going out and telling others the same. For each person they convinced to sign up and go through the process as they themselves had done, commissions were paid.

The central problem and give-away that affiliates were simply just paying eachother based on recruitment was that Empower Network didn’t own the rights to WordPress.

WordPress is

a free and open source blogging tool and a content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL, which runs on a web hosting service.

WordPress is used by more than 18.9% of the top 10 million websites as of August 2013.

WordPress is the most popular blogging system in use on the Web, at more than 60 million websites.

After it became too much to continue the facade of pretending they were selling access to WordPress for $25 a month, with the goal of eventually convincing people to pass up thousands of dollars to their affiliate uplines, Empower Network paid someone to develop their own blogging platform.

ENV2 was released in October 2013 and, despite the “WordPress-killer” marketing hype, all it did was further reduce the blogging functionality of what was already a paper-thin facade to begin with.

I suspect the handful of people who were actually paying their upline on the belief that the Empower Network domain held some SEO value, up and left.

This didn’t go unnoticed at the top and has resulted in a shift away from a focus on “just blog and earn infinity money” to tin-can style internet marketing courses.

By and large these latest attempts to convince people to continue to hand over money to their uplines each month (passed all the way up to the top, where Empower Network owners David Wood and David Sharpe sit), target traffic and lead generation.

The problem with Empower Network traffic generation is that you’re directing traffic to something that’s not as attractive to the type of people who might be convinced to part with $25 for access to WordPress and then thousands of dollars in upsells later on.

ENV2 is a flop, and no amount of hype is going to convince the world that it’s even a remote competitor to WordPress.

Case in point?

David Wood’s own personal blog site?

WordPress.

David Sharpe?

WordPress too.

Wood and Sharpe are the most obvious examples of ENV2’s lack of viability, but look up any other Empower Network top-affiliate and you’ll find the same thing. Yeah they might have an Empower Network blog counter-part but their primary blog, the one they actually give a crap about and brand themselves on?

WordPress. [Continue reading…]