7 Minute Workout launched in mid 2011 with a binary based compensation plan, requiring affiliates to bring at least one new retail customer (student) each month to qualify for commissions.’

I’m not exactly sure when but sometime over the last few months 7 Minute Workout ditched their binary and have adopted the currently popular pass-up model.

In doing so, unless I’m missing something, it appears 7 Minute Workout have abolished the retail side of the business. As per the company’s own explanation of their new compensation plan,

Every time a person registers, they pay their small fee and we do two things;

1. We send you exactly 50% of their fee

2. We place them into your organization.

Now, as your client who is now your “downline member” promotes the product and earns their own cheques, they earn a cheque for you too.

There is mention of an “optional” affiliate signup, however this appears to be a token effort to distinguish affiliates from retail customers.

Affiliates shall be charged NO FEE by 7minuteworkout for setting up an account to join affiliate programs or to join any program.

7minuteworkout Affiliate Program is, however, only open to users of the service and deemed a “closed” affiliate program open to members only.

As per the 7 Minute Workout Terms Of Service Above, there’s no difference between a retail customer and affiliate, with signing up to 7 Minute Workout being the only pre-requisite for affiliate membership. [Continue reading…]

In the next 30 days, a new social network is going to be released to the world.

You will hear about it on your favorite blogs and on TV.. The news will cover it… And not only will your friends and family members be talking about it, but complete strangers will also approach you about it…

Because the technology involved will not only change how we communicate, it will also change how commerce, both online and offline, happens.

-Official Rippln marketing copy, supplied to affiliates circa June 2013 and reproduced on over 200,000 webpages (Google)

To borrow a tired joke; If I was to look up the hype in an MLM dictionary, I’d probably see a copy of Rippln’s logo. No further explanation required.

After going live with the marketing copy above and copious similar efforts, here’s a rundown of the Rippln MLM business opportunity today. [Continue reading…]

Limu was founded in 2004 and are based out of the US state of Florida.

Limu (interchangeable with “the Limu Company”) operates in the health and wellness MLM niche and is headed up by Founder, CEO and President, Gary Raser.

Having proven himself in the world of business, building his own success as a distributor in network marketing, Gary turned his strategic vision to create the LIMU dream: making better futures for families everywhere.

In a promotional video on the Limu website, Raser (right) claims to have been introduced by “a guy” who “called him up every day inviting him to one of those meetings”. Raser says that after he finally attending one of the meetings, he was “hooked”.

That was 25 years ago (and) we were successful right from the beginning, but not without disappointment.

Raser claims that after experiencing disappointment and frustration with MLM companies changing compensation plans to benefit the executive staff over “the field”, his wife suggested he start his own company.

This company was Dynamic Essentials, which Raser co-founded in November of 2008 with Kevin Jones. By the end of 2009 Dynamic Essentials was bought out by Nature’s Bounty Inc. (NBTY), who are

an American manufacturer of vitamins and nutritional supplements which are distributed under many third party brands in the United States and internationally.

Dyanamic Essentials continued on as an independent MLM company, operating as a subsidiary of NBTY. Dynamic Essentials’ flagship product was a seaweed extract named “Royal Tongan Limu”.

In 2002 Dynamic Essentials was issued a warning by the FTC in regards to their marketing material, which claimed Royal Tongan Limu

was clinically proven to cure, prevent, or treat a range of diseases and disorders such as allergies, diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Dynamic Essentials failed to adequately respond to the FTC’s warning and the following year in 2003 they were abruptly shutdown by the regulator.

Facing seizure of their product inventory, Dynamic Essentials instead opted to

voluntarily destroy its inventory of bottles of Royal Tongan Limu, along with the product’s related literature and materials.

NBTY was no stranger to FTC violations, having previously been pinged in 1995 for

falsely or without substantiation (advertising) that its products promoted weight loss, increased muscle mass, decreased body fat, promoted hair growth, prevented premature hair loss, lowered cholesterol, and prevented arthritis.

The result of the FTC’s 1995 action against NBTY resulted in a $250,000 consumer redress payment and a settlement order.

Under the terms of the order settling the matter, NBTY agreed not to make unsubstantiated claims about any dietary supplement and not to misrepresent the results or conclusions of any test, study, research article, or any other scientific opinion or data.

The FTC used Dynamic Essentials shutdown as evidence showing NBTY had breached the terms of the 1995 order made against them. The FTC took the matter to court and NBTY were ordered to pay $2 million dollars civil penalty.

In 2004, the year after Dynamic Essentials was shutdown, Gary Raser returned to the MLM industry with the launch of Limu.

Prior to Dynamic Essentials, Raser was an affiliate of National Safety Associates (NSA), achieving the top-level affiliate rank of “National Marketing Director”.

NSA marketed a series of water and air filters, coming under regulator scrutiny in 1992 due to the recruitment practices of some of its affiliates.

In response to the media attention surrounding the issue, Raser stated at the time that

(NSA) distributors are supposed to focus on sales, not recruiting.

Herndon and other ex-distributors, he said, did not follow all the sales training and became frustrated when they failed to sell the product.

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

Brazilian regulators are currently on fire in their handling of both the TelexFree and BBOM Ponzi scheme fraud cases.

Setting an example that India and other countries drowning in Ponzi and pyramid scheme fraud would do well to follow, Monday firstly saw TelexFree denied their bankruptcy protection application and then on Tuesday, the uncovering of a fresh $8.6 million USD fraudulent transfer attempt by BBOM that prosecutors managed to thwart. [Continue reading…]

Prior to launching DS Domination, Roger Langille’s primary MLM focus was his affiliate membership with Sozo.

So the story goes, Langille met with Mark Adams (co-founder and CEO of Sozo) in April. During a wine and dine, Langille claims Sozo promised him lead generation, the opening of the business in Brazil, that Sozo would be “best in class”, a check match bonus that “equated to the binary”, a “3 for free” recruitment incentive, the “full opening” of Sozo in Canada, a 401k retention program, a weight-loss coffee range and a new compensation plan.

Langille claims none of the “promises that were made were delivered on” by the company.

Despite this, Langille still managed to become the highest ranked affiliate in Sozo (Sapphire) shortly after signing up, claiming to be a “top recruiter” and responsible for ‘70-80% of the growth across the entire company‘.

Langille states he was able to maintain via his online marketing, but once the ‘online started to be cancelled and we started moving in a different direction… the numbers completely, drastically went down‘. [Continue reading…]

If the injunction continues TelexFree may enter into bankruptcy.

Should the company spend a few more days being prohibited from signing up new investors, they would have no money to pay the old ones.

-Djacir Falcão, one of TelexFree’s lawyers explaining on July 10th why the Acre injunction should be lifted

News broke yesterday on BehindMLM that TelexFree was entertaining the idea of applying or Bankrupty Protection in Brazil.

The comment was accompanied by a TelexFree Facebook notice, informing the company’s affiliate investors that owner Carlos Costa would shortly be putting up a video explaining the move.

Less than twenty-four hours later Costa came through, announcing, amongst other things, that on Thursday the 19th TelexFree had indeed filed for Bankruptcy Protection in the Brazilian state of Espírito Santo.

In both the TelexFree Facebook announcement and Carlos Costa’s video, it is claimed that the company filing for bankruptcy is to “protect its affiliates”. But is that really the case?

Having failed to convince judges in Brazil to lift the business crippling Acre injunction, handed down in June which prohibits TelexFree from recruiting new investors and paying out existing ones, the main thrust behind the bankruptcy protection filing appears to be the belief that TelexFree will be able to present an alternative business model to the courts, and more importantly this time have it accepted. [Continue reading…]

Hidden Hunger International launched in mid 2013, operating out of the US state of Texas.

Hidden Hunder International (HHI) is headed up by founders Ruel and Angel Morton. According to the Morten’s HHI corporate bio:

Ruel and Angel have been together for almost 20 years and have 3 children; 2 daughters and a son. Together they have worked in several companies over the past 20 years.

Ruel Morton’s biggest success in the MLM industry appears to have been as an affiliate with Fortune High-Tech Marketing (FHTM), in which he credited himself as ‘the #1 Top Money Earner‘.

Morton regularly appeared in official corporate FHTM marketing material (right), in which he was credited as a “Presidential Ambassador” of the company.

Fortune High Tech Marketing was shutdown earlier this year by the FTC and three US State Attorney-Generals for being a pyramid scheme.

The FTC and attorneys general for the states of Illinois, Kentucky, and North Carolina have moved against Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing (FHTM), alleging it is a pyramid scheme.

A federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois has appointed a receiver and ordered an asset freeze.

“This is the beginning of the end for one of the most prolific pyramid schemes operating in North America,” said Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway.

“This is a classic pyramid scheme in every sense of the word. The vast majority of people, more than 90 percent, who bought in to FHTM lost their money.”

A top FTC official called FHTM a “rigged game.”

At a FHTM conference held just before the company was shut down, Morton declared Fortune High Tech to be

the most lucrative financial opportunity in the history of the country.

Following the closure of FHTM I did read some chatter that Morton moved onto Shaklee (health, nutrition, personal care and weight loss), however I was unable to confirm this information.

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

SimpleFastCash launched in March of 2013 and was founded by Graham Frame, who operates out of Lincolnshire in the UK.

Frame appears to have joined Empower Network about a year ago, under the affiliate acccount “frammie”:

In a marketing video Frame uploaded to his YouTube channel, titled “Why Empower Network Does Not Work!”, Frame credits himself as a ‘marketing expert with over forty years experience‘ and claims to have had ‘online success since 1998‘.

In the past, I’ve built profitable networks in MLM companies… heck I’d even started my own MLM companies online which had done very well.

In a blog post titled “Folks who never made a dime online made money this week in Pure Leverage” by founder Joel Therien, Frame was listed on Therien’s “reseller leaderboard” for Pure Leverage for the week 12th to 18th of March 2013.

In 2006 Frame launched “Your Cash Cow”. Your Cash Cow was a matrix-based recruitment scheme that charged affiliates $10 to participate. The scheme seems to have collapsed sometime in 2008.

Frame also launched something called Cash4Sure, which seems to revolve around website hosting:

Graham Frame has been in business for over 40 years. He has started and successfully built many businesses, both conventional and MLM and has a very comfortable lifestyle that most people envy. He founded Cash4Sure.biz in 1998, a thriving business that is still going strong today.

Taking business seriously, he is a member of many organizations. He is an accountant, a salesman and an internationally renowned master hypnotist. His specialty is in clinical hypnosis and his services are usually given free.

Seeing an opportunity, he has just launched a new online program. It suits the needs of any person wanting to establish an internet presence with their business.

Web hosting demand is going to skyrocket in the coming years and Graham is providing a service which far exceeds what is available for the price.

Here’s how one Cash4Sure affiliate described their experience with the business in October of 2009:

I, too was victimized by Graham Frame. My family invested almost $18,000 in his Cash4Sure program after being promised a certain level of return. Of course nothing ever happened, return-wise.

Mr. Frame gravitated from California to Utah, and then left the country and is presently in Italy. He promises to make good on our and other folks’ investment but I feel it will be a long wait.

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

SociPays launched in June 2013 and is headed up by Thomas Greeen (also goes by “Tom Green”), who is credited as CEO of the company on the SociPays website.

Tom Green is a seasoned business professional with over 40 years of sales, marketing, and business management experience. Tom was introduced to network marketing in the 1970’s and had many successes.

He began marketing on the internet in 1994 and has owned several successful companies including Dynamics4Success, Web Factor 2, and Tours4Success.

Tom has built big downlines in many companies and he has the needed experience to lead SociPAYs.com to success.

Green appears to run his online ventures through the parent company “Techs4success Inc”, who are based out of the US state of Florida.

Despite Tech4Success’ US based address however, Green himself appears to be based out of the Philippines:

On the Techs4Success Inc BBB listing, an incorporation date of February 2005 is provided along with a “Thomas D Green” listed as the “Director/President”.

A supplied Techs4Success website domain on the BBB listing (“4s2s.com”) is no longer active. A few additional domains linked to Techs4Success Inc I checked are also not active.

Shortly after uploading some SociPays informational videos on his YouTube account (“4VNetwork”), Green began spamming several YouTube videos seeking to attract “special leaders”:

Forming a special leaders group to launch new program

Join and Get FREE $850 Plan 3 Upgrade

perfect for leaders and multiple positions and big payouts

Get paid when you cycle and get paid match for referral cycles.

7 separate 2 X 2 recycler matrixes fill only 6 slots

no graduating steps or connecting matrixes

Growing payout from $100 to $5,000.

Each Referral Pays avg $1,000 a Cycle Big Money Fast

(referral link and contact details removed)

Green left the above comment on affiliate marketer videos advertising Rocket Cash Cycler ($315 matrix-based pyramid scheme) and HourlyRevShare (recently collapsed $5 Ponzi investment scheme).

The selective targeting by Green of these two businesses indicates he felt affiliates of those two opportunities would find SociPays a good fit.

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

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

The OwnProfits website domain (“ownprofits.com”) was registered on the 8th of August 2013, however the domain registration is set to private.

Affiliates are naming an “Eric Teng” as the owner of OwnProfits on social media, which appears to be supported by Teng’s presence on the OwnProfits Facebook page:

On his personal Facebook profile Teng lists his location as Singapore, which correlates with a supplied address on the OwnProfits website that is also based in Singapore.

On the MLM history side of things, Eric Teng was most recently the Chief Technology Officer of AdSpacePro.

AdSpacePro launched in July 2013, accepting $5 investments from affiliates on the initial promise of a 150% ROI. All revenue was sourced from new affiliate money and paid out to existing investors using the familiar “Ponzi points” style compensation plan.

On August 19th, AdSpacePro CEO Thomas Winegard sent out the following “compliance update” to affiliates, explaining that he’d only recently been informed Ponzi schemes were illegal in the US:

AdSpacePRO – Compliancy Update

Dear AdSpacePro Member, Firstly, I would like to thank you for your patience while we are in Beta Launch and understanding the technical errors that we have incurred and the downtime that it has taken to get them resolved.

I unfortunately write to you today with another major hurdle that AdSpacePro has come across. Due to new laws in the USA that have come into effect, their are certain aspects of AdSpacePro that will no longer make us fully compliant.

It is not only AdSpacePro that has to change our business model to fall within their guidelines (To Continue Operating LEGALLY), but many of the other rebate programs throughout the internet. Even big boys on the block will too have to make changes.

We have had a look at our options to either keep the website functioning, slowly changing things one step at a time, or to put the website back into pre-launch stage, rectify everything that we need to do to stay legally compliant, and then re-launch on the 1st September as a fully functioning, fully complaint business opportunity.

I am sure that some of you may feel concerned about our capabilities or in the thought that we are in trouble. All of you that have spoken to me know that this is most defiantly not the case at all! I am not going anywhere! It is just unfortunate that these changes in government rules has come at the stage just after we launched in Beta.

So where does this leave you?

1) All membership fees made to ASP will be refreshed on the 1st September so be advised that you have not lost anything

2) All purchased shares will be credited to your account balance for you to use again on launch date; therefore you have lost nothing here.

The only thing lost is time, which is frustrating for not only you but us as well.

We are sorry for this further delay, but I am sure that you will agree with me that it is in the benefit of the whole family to get these changes made before we really kick off.

We don’t want to be on the other side of the law at any stage and therefore it has been our decision to put AdSpacePro website “Under Maintenance” until the 1st September to allow us to complete and change these necessary steps.

I would like to thank you for your support and understanding through this time. When we come back, we will be bigger, better, fully compliant and have everything ready for our members to log into and start building your business and making money online.

At this time I would like you all to retract any public promotions on any website on the internet in which you have publicly promoted.

The use of revenue sharing will not be allowed to be used ever, passive income will not be aloud to be referenced in any presentation of the adspacepro,and distributors, you may not say we share our profits with you.

Upon starting up the site again there will be a new Advertising Rebate Model that will be introduced. You will receive Advertising Rebate Value each time you purchase and apply your advertising to a campaign.

There is a lot of other things coming as well, the point system will be phased out, We have a brand new Advertising platform called the Web Traffic Driver.

We will open the back office back up as soon as we can go in and remove the (ASpace Packages) infrastructure without causing any more technical hick ups, once this is done we can reopen and allow you guys to begin earning commissions again off the sale of advertising.

P.S Please to not forget to retract all marketing campaigns to AdSpacePRO for the time being and, you should only ever show the latest revised compensation plan and Income Disclosure statement to a prospect in a private manner.

Please make Sure To Check The News Section Daily To Receive Our Important Updates Again, No public advertising of the biz opportunity, only within private areas, in which only they or the people interested/invited may learn more about the compensation plan.

The revised compensation plan, and Income Disclosure Statement will be released after it has been approved by an MLM lawyer.

Our public focus is on developing new relationships with advertisers <–(Customers) that will purchase our revolutionary new products to help drive traffic to their site, and get more leads Products: (Web Traffic Driver + AdSpacePRO Tool Set)

I had to cut my ties with my last lawyer who failed to make me aware of recent changes that will be taking place in the U.S Regulations, we now have one of the top MLM Lawyers that will be helping us construct a complaint and beneficial platform for the people.

Kevin Thompson, has multiple clients in the MLM industry and comes highly recommended to me as someone “Who knows his stuff” We will also be purchasing a compliance training course presented by Kevin himself that all distributors must complete, in order to properly represent AdSpacePRO, and what you can or can not say or do!

Kind regards, Thomas Winegard CEO AdspacePro!

As above Kevin Thompson was named by Winegard as AdSpacePro’s new lawyer, however no clarification is made of the supposed “new laws that have come into effect” in the US since the launch of AdSpacePro in July 2013.

After the compliance update Winegard thing seem to have deteriorated. On the 15th of September Eric Teng advised via Facebook that he was “officially out of AdSpacePro”.

Less than 24 hours later Teng went on to post the following:

Alright, now that I am calm, I’m just going to lay down some facts just so you guys can see what kind of person Thomas Winegard is deep down inside. This include the ones you already knew and the ones you maybe didn’t know about.

1) He said bad things about people behind their backs… and I’m not talking just about any people… I’m referring to people like Chris Donnelly, Nikki De Chalain, Edward Elliott who have helped him so much.

How ungrateful can a person be? If Thomas can do such things to me and all those close to him, then I cannot imagine what kind of things he can’t do to others who helped him less.

2) Greed got to Thomas and why do I say this? He keeps wanting to reduce the equity of his partners (both Chris and mine) from the day the business starts.

It started from 33.33% each, and then he reduced Chris to 15% and now maybe less. He reduced mine from 33.33% to 10% to now 0%.

3) AdSpacePro is broke. Only a week ago, I gave Thomas my credit card details (yes, that’s how much I still trusted him 1 week back) so that he can purchase something he needs (and it cost less than $100).

He still has my credit card details but I’m going to cancel it tomorrow.

The lawyer fees are $8k and I estimate we need about another $15k-$25k to pay off the members when the shares expire plus the account balance so I’m not sure how he’s going to dig out ($8k + $15k = $23k) or ($8k + $25k = $33k) based on my estimation.

4) I did not break any agreement because I specifically told Thomas that I am starting a new rev sharing site and he agreed.

I even ask him on 2 different occasions if he wants shares in it, and he did not. Despite this mutual agreement, I guess he is using the chance to kick me out so he can have my ASP shares to his own.

Common sense tells you that if I wanted to launch my own rev sharing site secretly, I wouldn’t have posted on my Facebook timeline publicly since Thomas is on my list and he could see it.

The reason I do it is because we had a mutual agreement and I think it’s ok to do so. I have proof of him agreed to my rev sharing site, yes.

5) For those who knew, I programmed the whole ASP system from scratch, been defending ASP each time some of you come asking and I kept saying ASP is not a scam (because until a couple days ago, I still trusted Thomas like some of you). And he claims I’m not loyal?

Someone who isn’t loyal to the business won’t offer his credit card to him and definitely won’t offer to inject $20k to keep AdSpacePro afloat because like I said, it’s broke.

6) Thomas kept giving promises and deadlines that wasn’t delivered. This did not happen just 1 or 2 times so it’s definitely not an accident, it’s his habit.

I’m sure you all know about all these broken promises by now, but for those who are new, yeah he kept giving false promises and bad deadlines.

7) Thomas changed the compensation plan to benefit himself at anytime he likes it!

For example when it was first started, he lure people in with unlimited shares and then limit the amount and today, nobody has any shares because AdSpacePro is broke and he’s not going to pay the shares.

Luring people in with a promise and then deliver something less and then at the end, deliver nothing, this is very unethical way of doing business. If he is serious about ethics, he should pay off the shares as promised first, you can’t simply steal/erase people’s assets/money like that without any compensation!

He’s basically taking everyone who trusted him as a fool.

I feel upset because I remember right from the start, we (some members and I) defended Thomas when he argued with some members, argue with David Dave Clayton (and David has the rights to be angry because members are indeed given false promises to come into ASP), and even argue with Charles Scoville and others who posted his mugshot photo.

Now given all the lies Thomas made and all the broken promises, I am beginning to start doubting his mugshot story.

It might well been him who stole the things just like how he stole my company equity from me. If he can do all these things to people, then why can’t he spin a story about his arrest?

For those who defended him today, I see a mirror image of myself on you, people who were being used by him because we trusted him too easily.

I am happy to provide proofs on all the above points I said. He is no longer worth me helping. Before today, I didn’t say all these because I was prepared to let the matter drop and let AdSpacePro continue, but when he started making threats today and hurling vulgarities at me, this broke the limit.

I am not weaken by threats, I always come back stronger when facing challenges like this.

At the time of publication the AdSpacePro website advises visitors that “something big is coming”, displaying a timer that has four days left on the count.

Despite the claim on the OwnProfits website that it’s been ‘a registered company in Singapore since 2009’, quite clearly as an MLM income opportunity the company only came about following Thomas Winegard’s AdSpacePro compliance backflip back in August.

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