Simply Naturals appears to have launched in 2012 and are based out of Surrey in the United Kingdom.

The company operates in the health and nutrition MLM niche and lists a Peter Willoughby as CEO on their website.

Willoughby (right) is credited with ‘almost two decades’ of “referral marketing experience” in his Simply Naturals executive bio:

Prior to this he was employed by Kleinwort Benson Corporate Finance specializing in the technology and IT sectors and entered the referral marketing sector in 1997.

Simply Naturals appears to be the only MLM venture Willoughby has headed up, although I’m a little unsure of the specifics.

This Simply Naturals newsletter is dated May 2012 and mentions a “pre-launch special”. It’s written in an introductory format by Willoughby and implies the company was only recently launched:

I am pleased to introduce you to Simply Naturals Ltd and look forward to a long and rewarding relationship; Simply Naturals has been established to improve the quality of people’s lives through true health and true wealth.

As we enter a new era of health awareness, coupled with ever increasing life expectancy, the quest for good health and wellness has never been so important.

Then there’s this “U.S. Naturals” newsletter dated November 2006, in which Elmer G. Heinrich wrote:

As you have been informed, I have sold my interest in U.S. Naturals, Inc. to Mr. Peter Willoughby of London.

Simply Naturals obviously existed before 2012, so I’m not sure what’s going on in that first cited newsletter. It appears Heinrich was running U.S. Naturals as a sister company of Simply Naturals (run by Willoughby). He got out in 2006 by selling his share in the company to Willoughby, and both companies have been under Willoughby’s control since.

Again I’m not sure what happened between 2006 to 2012, but there does appear to have been some restructuring that led to a new Simply Naturals “pre-launch”. U.S. Naturals meanwhile is still up and running and appears to function as an independent opportunity selling the same products as Simply Natural.

Why Willoughby continues to use two different company names is a mystery to me, I certainly found it confusing. None of this is explained or clarified on either the Simply Naturals or U.S. Naturals websites.

For the purpose of clarification on this review, it should be known that I’m using Simply Naturals’ marketing material.

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

Things have been awful quiet over at the Phillip Ming Xu Ponzi empire these last few weeks. Following a spate of regulatory crackdowns on his darling WCM777 scheme spanning Peru, Colombia, Canada and the US states of Massachusetts, California and Alaska, Xu appears to have now all but given up.

Well, at least that’s what he’d have you believe.

When the regulators came knocking, Xu first tried to dodge the regulatory gavel by assigning James Tenorio as puppet CEO and changing WCM777’s name to Kingdom777.

When Tenorio went AWOL and regulators didn’t back down, Xu suspended US investor payouts, ordered his investors to stop using investment terminology and opted for a second name-change to Global-Unity.

Not surprisingly that didn’t work either. Further compounding Xu’s problems were rumors indicating that his partner in crime, Zhi “Tiger” Liu (right with Xu), had run off with around $50,000,000 in WCM777 affiliate funds.

Offices were closed, staff and lawyers were fired and sources have suggested that these last few weeks Xu has been negotiating with the SEC in an attempt to escape jail time.

Confirming much of this information comes a new series of tweets from Xu, published just this morning: [Continue reading…]

Despite a video on the Kannaway website informing me that ‘on February 28th this site will begin actually morphing into our actual prelaunch website’, it appears the company is still in this pre-prelaunch stage.

Official Kannaway prelaunch compensation plan documents I’ve cited in my research for this review confirm this is the case, stating

‘The Buzz Campaign’ will run from March 1st – March 31st at which time everyone who enrolls will be placed into one company wide Powerline structure based on the time and date of enrollment.

Due to international laws regarding the sale of cannabis products, Kannaway are currently slated for operation within the US.

And yes, Kannaway’s pre-prelaunch actually has its own compensation plan – more on that later.

At the time of publication the Kannaway website is little more than a sales capture page, demanding visitors enter in identification credentials before revealing anything beyond Kannaway being ‘a hemp lifestyle company with cutting edge CBD Rich Hemp Oil Products‘.

A marketing video features on the site, heavily emphasizing the distinction between hemp and marijuana (which is admittedly likely to be an instantaneous association most people are going to make with Kannaway when they hear the word “hemp”):

Other than a video on hemp’s history though, the Kannaway website fails to provide any additional information on the opportunity unless a visitor ‘enters (their) sponsor’s ID number’.

No ID? no information.

Personally I felt that the whole “we are not a druggie culture marijuana company” video was rather undermined by the whole “buzz” prelaunch. Certainly a better use of the Kannaway website would be providing even the most basic of company information?

Anyway I suppose that’s where I come in. Read on as BehindMLM pulls apart and dissects Kannaway’s “The Buzz” prelaunch campaign. [Continue reading…]

Less than a week is all it took for TelexFree’s top affiliate investors to collectively revolt against the company’s new “everybody needs five retail customers” compensation plan.

What’s even more amusing is that, if true, the change comes just days after TelexFree charged affiliates $169 each to attend “new compensation plan” training in Boston.

Not surprisingly, after paying for their ticket, accommodation, transport to get there and whatever else, some TelexFree affiliates aren’t taking the fact that what they paid to learn only a few days ago might already be obsolete. [Continue reading…]

Despite the industry-wide ramification of a full-blown investigation into Herbalife, there’s surprisingly not all that much to write about.

Earlier today,

Herbalife shares sank as much as 15% in Wednesday trading after the nutritional supplements marketer said it is under Federal Trade Commission investigation.

Kinda curious that Herbalife themselves made the announcement, although after further consideration, I suppose it was probably a “making the best of a worst-case scenario” situation for them.

The FTC themselves, as per regulatory policy in the US, won’t publicly comment on the investigation. That left it up to Herbalife to either maintain radio silence or break the announcement.

No doubt in a lofty boardroom somewhere, it was decided that going public was the best move. News of the investigation would have gotten out sooner or later anyway, better it come from them. Herbalife’s transparency track-record is pretty atrocious, so it’s good to see the company be open and honest about something for a change.

Along with the investigation announcement, Herbalife also reiterated their stance on regulatory cooperation:

“Herbalife welcomes the inquiry given the tremendous amount of misinformation in the marketplace, and will cooperate fully with the FTC,” the company said in a statement.

“We are confident that Herbalife is in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations.”

That they’re “cooperating fully” is good to know. Y’know, given that they don’t really have a choice.

Meanwhile as I woke up to the news this morning, this pretty much summed up my reaction.

Why am I totally not surprised at an FTC investigation into Herbalife? Read on. [Continue reading…]

Not so much an MLM company as a website + script, Bungee Bones is owned by a one Mr. Robert Febure. No contact details are provided on the BungeeBones website, however the domain’s registration lists an address in the US state of Florida. Presumably this is where BungeeBones operates out of.

I wasn’t able to find any concrete MLM related history on Febure, indicating that BungeeBones is his first stab at running an MLM company.

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

With TelexFree affiliates publishing all sorts of rubbish pertaining to the SEC investigation of the company, it was only a matter of time before the company itself would have to address the regulatory elephant in the room.

Unfortunately those hoping for information on the Wednesday subpoena summons are going to be left disappointed. TelexFree’s lawyers have made it clear the company is not interested in sharing what went down. [Continue reading…]

There is no information on the DualAdCycles website indicating who owns or runs the business. The DualAdCycles website domain (“dualadcycles.com”) was registered on the 9th of January 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…]

Quick Pay Group (also known as Qpay) is set to enter pre-launch in April 2014. In its official compensation plan material an expected launch date is set for July 1st, 2014.

Quick Pay Group claim to be based out Belize (a known tax-haven) and list a “Larry Jones” as the company’s CEO and Founder. No specifics about Jones are provided, other than the following vague marketing copy:

Mr. Jones has a decade long experience in Corporate Management. Serving a multi-national corporation, for which he was responsible for management of Global Expansion and Outreach programs.

His experience has gained him profound practical knowledge and understanding of factors that drive business growth and development. He has helped numerous individuals, from various financial, educational and racial backgrounds, become successful by realizing their true potential.

With QPG, Larry Jones aims to take these endeavors to a whole new level to broaden the outreach of opportunities that lead to success.

A lot of Quick Pay Group’s official marketing material is in British pounds, and their “Chief Operation Officer & IT Senior Adviser” is listed as a “Jasbir Singh Awapal”

I don’t know what it is with Indians, England and fake-sounding Anglo-Saxon names, but I’m going to have to flag “Larry Jones” as likely to not be a real person.

Jasbir Awapal on the other hand appears to be an actual person, and is responsible for building the Quick Pay Solutions website. Hidden in the source-code of the Quick Pay Solutions website is a link to Awapal’s web-design company:

Based out of New Delhi, India, Awapal Solutions provide “MLM softwares”, one of which is an “investment plan MLM software”.

On his Facebook profile, Awapal lists himself as the Director of Awapal Solutions:

Call me cynical but I’m going to suggest that the reality behind Quick Pay Group is that Awapal is running it out of India, possibly with an additional partner or partners unknown.

The Quick Pay Group website domain (“qpay.biz”) was registered on the 14th of October 2014, listing a “Moise Thomas” of “Quick Group Ltd” as the domain owner. An address in Belize City is also provided.

Who Moise Thomas is and what his relationship with to Quick Pay Group is remains unclear.

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

At the time of publication NextLevelX is currently in prelaunch, with the company website indicating the opportunity is a marriage between crowd-funding and MLM.

Named on the NextLevelX website as the founder of the company is a “Leslie Robert Wolfe”. In his NextLevelX corporate bio, Wolfe is credited with a whole stack of marketing achievements, however outside of NextLevelX, none of them appear to be directly MLM related (although some do appear to tie in with MLM training).

On the NextLevelX website, the company’s crowd-funding platform, “Crowd Fund Giving”, is credited as a trademark of the “Chamber of Commerce Network”. In his corporate bio, Wolfe provides some history of the Chamber of Commerce:

In the year 2000, I started the Blue Diamond, Nevada, Business Chamber Of Commerce. It was me and a few other people. After a year, the other people decided it wasn’t worth their time, so I took over all operations.

As I added more benefits to the Chamber, I realized it could be done on a National basis. So I also created the Chamber Of Commerce Network.

The idea is to make the membership so powerful, that people had to join. Our Platinum Membership (the only one we have) retails for $395. The membership is primarily used as a premium or incentive for licensing purposes.

What other Chambers won’t do is give their members an endorsement. You can be a member, but they will not endorse your business. WE DO endorse businesses. In addition, we also give them a AAA+ Rating and a guarantee that we will not tarnish their name in the the (sic) media or publish complaints.

We also guarantee that the business will profit from using the Endorsement and AAA+ Rating. If they don’t, they get their money back.

Wolfe (right) goes on to provide an example of how he “guarantees” membership with his Chamber of Commerce generates profit for businesses who sign up, using restaurants as an example:

Created The “Chamber Of Commerce Network” Restaurant, 5-Star Rating.

This 5-Star Rating business model guarantees fine-dining restaurants at least $60,000 in additional profits per year.

They choose which entree and dessert is suited for the 5-Star Rating. Now that they have it, those items will increase in sales and profits.

Restaurants cannot lose.

Exactly how Wolfe “guarantees” to “increase the sales and profits” of products given a 5 star rating by his Chamber of Commerce is not explained.

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