After over a year of rallying against the US government, throwing any number of conspiracy theories out there, promising the return of Zeek Rewards and everything inbetween, it appeared the SEC and Zeek Rewards Receivership finally caught up with Robert Craddock.

Craddock, a Zeek Rewards Ponzi net-winner who was quite obviously furious at the prospect of being forced to return stolen funds to victims, published the following abrupt backflip on the ZTeamBiz website back on November 13th, 2013:

November 13, 2013

Fellow Zeeker’s,  this is our final posting. As you know the goal was to assist the people of Zeek Rewards, and provide relevant information relating to the Zeek Receivership.

Here are a few links you need to have to finish the process.

zeekrewardsreceivership.com

This site is operated by Kenneth Bell the appointed receiver for Rex Venture Group.

Again it has been a pleasure this past year providing updates to help you stay informed and hope you visit the zeekrewardsreceivership for further updates.

Only weeks prior Craddock (right) was promising his followers he was going to “bring back the Zeek Rewards excitement” and reveal a brand new “really good rev-sharing opp” for them to invest in.

At the time, I speculated that it was likely Craddock had been likely told to cease and desist by the Zeek Rewards Receivership.

To date Craddock hasn’t clarified what made him suddenly go all gushy for the Receivership and abandon his Ponzi resurrection plans. Fast forward four months later though and it appears Craddock has decided that enough time has passed to pick up where he left off. [Continue reading…]

RevStar Global combine a bunch of opportunities under the one brand, offering a multi-niche MLM business opportunity.

Listed as co-founders on the RevStar Global “Our Team” website page are Paul Redmayne (President) and David H. Hooker (Executive Vice-President).

Paul Redmayne was the President of Blue Bird Bids, a Zeek Rewards Ponzi clone that launched in late 2012.

Blue Bird Bids collapsed shortly after launch following concerns, raised by Vice-President Eric Swaim, that auto-bidding bots were being used to drive up auction prices.

Following the collapse of Blue Bird Bids, the company transformed into PureNRG Fx with Swaim at the helm. PureNRG FX abandoned the Ponzi points business model in favour of a recruitment-focused compensation plan to market Playboy branded energy drinks.

Swaim is joining Redmayne in his new MLM venture, credited as the company’s Vice-President of Sales on the RevStar Global website.

Meanwhile PureNRG FX appears to have stalled some time ago, however the status of the company in light of RevStar Global launching is not clear. At the time of publication, Eric Swaim’s name does not appear anywhere on the PureNRG FX website.

In his RevStar Global executive bio, David Hooker (right) credits himself with having been “headhunted” by Mark Hughes and Larry Thompson to join Herbalife in Europe – ‘a position that he held for many years helping to develop many of the leaders that are still prospering with that company today‘.

Over the years David has held senior executive positions with many of the major international corporations such as Herbalife International, Lifestyles International, Modicare India and Nature’s Sunshine Products.

With David’s unparalleled skills, concepts and drive, he took their International Business Development Programs to new heights, becoming the most widely recognized programs in the industry.

More recently however, Hooker aligned himself with the Banners Broker Ponzi scheme as their “Director of Compliance”.

Hooker held Banners Broker investor recruitment events, hosted corporate calls and appeared as an official spokesperson for the company.

Despite having never formally reviewed Banners Broker due to a lack of an MLM component within the business, as I understand it the scheme involved investors investing in a fictional advertising network.

Banners Broker appears to have begun collapsing around early to mid 2013, leaving many investors out of pocket. Currently those left in the scheme appear to be stringing the remaining investors along with promises of Banners Broker resurrecting itself.

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

There is no information on the MMO Cashout website indicating who owns or runs the business. The company does have an “About” page, however only the following vague marketing copy is provided:

MMOCashout is the brainchild of Las Vegas, NV-based Peak Venture Group Inc, featuring an extraordinary executive and management team with extensive experience in network marketing, the gaming industry, information technology, sales, and operations.

Note that there is a Peak Venture Group using the website “peakventure.org”, however this does not appear to be the same Peak Venture Group behind MMO Cashout.

On the Peak Venture Group website, they state that

Peak Venture Group was founded in 2000. We are registered with US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as a 501(c)(3), focusing on education to the benefit of the entrepreneurial community in the Colorado Springs region.  We are also registered with the Colorado Secretary of State as a non-profit.

The MMO Cashout Peak Venture Group Inc. however doesn’t appear to have a web presence. Corporation Wiki lists an entry for them in Nevada, registered as a corporation in September 2012. A David B. Tiffany and Steven M. Tiffany are listed as the group’s Director and President respectfully.

David Tiffany’s name pops up as the owner of the MMO Cashout website domain (“mmocashout.com”). Peak Venture Group also features in the listing, with a provided corporate address of “somewhere street” in Nevada.

Whilst David Tiffany and presumably the rest of Peak Venture Group’s executive management are behind MMO Cashout, the exact nature of the company’s corporate structure is currently unknown.

I did try to research any MLM history for either Peak Venture Group Inc. or David Tiffany, but didn’t turn up anything. Presumably MMO Cashout is the group’s first MLM venture on the executive side of things.

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

On the Rocket Cash Cycler v2 website, the company claims to be

owned and operated under RCC Worldwide Inc. San Pedro Belize. The RCC corporate office is located in Davao City, Philippines. The RCCv2 programmers and support team work from Mumbai India, Sønderborg Denmark, and from different parts the USA.

Named as CEO of Rocket Cash Cycler v2 (RCC2) is Tood Hirsch, who is based out of the Philippines.

In his RCC2 executive bio, Hirsch claims the company took a year to develop, costing “over $100,000”.

Prior to Rocket Cash Cycler v2, Hirsch (right) ran Rocket Cash Cycler v1 (RCC1).

A RCC1 marketing video that featured on YouTube credited a “Daniel Butts” as a co-founder of the company. Butts name never appeared on the RCC1 website and also does not appear on the RCC2 website.

Whether or not Butts is involved in RCC2 is unclear.

RCC1 was a recruitment driven scheme, charging affiliates $315 for matrix positions and paying out commissions as recruited affiliates bought additional positions in a series of matrices.

Activity in RCC1 appears to have died off in the fourth quarter of 2013, with Hirsch (initially the silent owner of RCC1) rebooting the scheme with a version 2.

Read on for a full review of the Rocket Cash Cycler v2 MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]

In the Zeek Rewards Receiver’s third quarter report for 2013, a “settlement conference” was proposed for January 27th, 2014. This date was later granted, however as of yet there’s been no word on how it went down.

Filed on the 30th of January 2014, the Receiver’s fourth quarter report for 2013 makes no mention of the conference, however there is an update on  pending clawback litigation and ongoing settlement negotiations with Zeek’s top affiliates. [Continue reading…]

When US regulators came knocking on Phil Ming Xu’s door to ask about the WCM777 Ponzi scheme he was running, he kept it a secret until the state of Massachusetts went public. Xu claimed he was “suspending all US operations”, but continued to accept investment funds from and pay a daily ROI to US affiliate investors.

When California investigated WCM777, Xu again kept quiet about it but announced he was stepping into the background and changing WCM777’s name to “Kingdom777”. James Tenorio was named as Xu’s replacement.

Xu also promised Kingdom777 would eventually go public and “register its stock with the SEC”. In an “announcement” published on the Kingdom777 website in early January, Xu blamed WCM777 affiliates for his regulatory troubles.

Xu’s “blame the affiliates” announcement was made the day before California formally issued their cease and desist against Xu and WCM777. Following California’s cease and desist (January 8th), Colorado has issued their own notice and both Louisiana and New Hampshire have issued WCM777 investor alert notices.

Despite it being pretty obvious that Xu continuing to run WCM777 as Kingdom777 in the US will most certainly result in further regulatory action taken against him (if it already isn’t pending), on January 26th his successor, James Tenorio, published his first member announcement on the Kingdom777 website: [Continue reading…]

Ken Russo, a Spinding affiliate who markets the opportunity as a “passive revenue share with immense potential”, recently sent off some questions to owner Paul Nash about the business.

Whilst refreshingly honest in the sea of psuedo-compliance that plagues the MLM revenue-sharing niche, Nash’s reply was still somewhat (unintentionally?) revealing. [Continue reading…]

Just under a fortnight ago Jonathan Budd conceded that Rippln was all but finished.

The gist of it?

If Rippln failed to secure another round of investor funding, the company wouldn’t be able to continue operating.

Now, sometime in the last twenty-four hours, fellow Rippln co-founder Jim Bunch has confirmed that this latest round of capital raising failed.

Hi Friends,

I wanted to personally connect with you all and let you know that Rippln will be closing it’s doors very soon.

As you may have heard, I brought investors to the table to acquire Rippln and bring it back to the original vision and mission.

Unfortunately, the due diligence made it apparent that we would not be able to raise the next round of VC capital that would be necessary to take Rippln where it needed to go and therefore the investors had to decline the opportunity to purchase Rippln.

Please know that I respect and appreciate each and everyone of you and the contributions you made. Reaching out to your trusted friends and family and sharing the vision shows a great commitment on your part.

Also know that the partners in Rippln invested an enormous amount of time, energy and resources to give it a chance at success.

The goal was to do something that had never been done before…and while there were a number of those things accomplished, in the end, there were a few things that could not be overcome.

Please feel free to reach out to me personally if you feel the need to do so and I’ll be happy to connect with you each.

There are a few really great lessons I personally am grateful for and I hope you invest a few moments in capturing your lessons and insights so we can all look back and appreciate the gifts we were given by being a part of this company.

It’s now time to focus my full attention to the Vision and Mission of The Ultimate Game, which is to Inspire Happiness, Health and Wealth Worldwide.

Thank you again for your trust and energy, I really do love and appreciate you all.

Am I surprised Rippln failed to raise funds to return it to the pyramid scheme model they spent eighteen months developing? Hardly.

What I did find interesting was the acknowledgement, finally, that due diligence played in burying Rippln for good.

That Rippln has been a stagnant mess for months is well established, but what can we learn from their mountain of mistakes? And what were the two core issues that majorly contributed to how the business was ineffectively launched and managed?

Today I thought it’d be worth reflecting on just how Rippln got to this point. [Continue reading…]

Following closely on the heels of Massachusetts banning WCM777 for selling unregistered securities, on January the 15th California issued a cease and desist against Xu and WCM777.

Issued on January 8th by Jann Lynn Owen, the Commissioner of Business Oversight for the state of California, the “desist and refrain order” lists World Capital Market Inc., WCM777 Inc., WCM777 Limited, (Phil) Ming Xu, (Tiger) Zhi Liu and Harold Zapata as respondents.

Xu and Liu are/were WCM777’s CEO and President respectively, with Zapata credited in the order as a WCM777 “Director” and affiliate (investor). [Continue reading…]

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

The Profit Yard website domain (“profityard.com”) was registered on the 5th of January 2013, however the domain registration is set to private.

The domain registration record was recently updated on the 7th of January 2014, possibly indicating that this is when the current owner(s) acquired the domain.

As always, if an 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…]