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

The GlobalAdShare website domain however was registered on the 21st of July and lists an “Asher Winata” as the domain owner. An address is also provided in the US state of California, however GlobalAdShare appears to be actually based out Texas.

As per the GlobalAdShare Terms and Conditions:

All arbitration must occur in The State of Texas, in The USA.

Winata also lists his location as Houston, Texas in various social media profiles.

In one such profile, Winata describes himself as having

always been an entrepreneur and own(er of) several online/offline businesses. I jumped into online ventures a few years ago because of the challenge to help the 98% who never make any money online.

I started a computer software company in 1982 and was a consultant for several Oil & Gas companies, which includes Shell Oil, Conoco, Exxon Mobil, Fluor Daniel, and Global Marine.

I developed a well-mapping software, an inventory control software, and a mooring stability software which is still in use today.

In addition to his non-MLM ventures, Winata has also launched at least two MLM business opportunities in the last year.

The first was a Facebook clone called “Affiliate Community”. Launched in late 2012, Affiliate Community was your typical MLM social network that led with free membership but offered “premium (gold) membership” to affiliates who ‘want to earn more income‘.

Free members have the same access and privileges as premium members, the only difference is premium members can earn more income from the community.

Up to 75% of our profit will be donated to charities and distributed among members (10% to homeless charities, 10% to animal charities, 20% to free members, and 35% to upgraded members).

Our revenue comes from advertisements, product sales and membership fees.

With Affiliate Community failing to gain any traction Winata then launched Oodle Ads in July of 2013.

Oodle Ads charged $25 for affiliate membership, with affiliates then able to make $25 investments with the company on the promise of a 150% ROI.

We share 100% of the sale profits that is generated from members who purchased our advertising packages back to our members.

As per the above, which is taken from the Oodle Ads FAQ, the company simply takes new money from affiliates and pays it back out to existing investors.

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

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

The AdTelligent website domain (“adtelligent.com”) was registered on the 23rd of August 2013, however the domain registration is set to private.

It’s also worth noting that at the time of publication, McAfee’s site advisor has classified the AdTelligent website as a “malicious site”:

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…]

The Power Lead System went into pre-launch in late July and is set to officially launch in late September 2013. The company’s website domain (“plsfunnel.com”) was registered on the 9th of June 2013 and provides a company address in the US state of Washington.

On a marketing video featured on the Power Lead System Website, it is revealed that the Power Lead System was created by Neil Guess. The video goes on to state that the Power Lead System “runs through” the Priceless Possibilities Marketing Platform, which was founded by Michael Price.

Both Price and Guess appear to be co-founders of the Power Lead System MLM income opportunity.

Simply described in a Power Lead System marketing video as being ‘men with integrity who love god’, both Guess and Price have experience within the MLM industry.

Neil Guess’ MLM experience appears to be limited to the front-end of things, primarily as an affiliate over at Solavei (mobile communications):

Michael Price (right) on the otherhand has been running his Priceless Possibilities business since 1996.

Hello, my name is Michael Price the owner of Priceless Possibilities. My company has invested over 2 Million Dollars since 1996 to create a VERY Powerful Recruiting & Training System that we can Customize to Truly Transform Your Business.

I have also invested approximately $200,000 to learn from people who are the best in their fields such as Tony Robbins, Les Brown, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, and many top Internet Marketing Experts by purchasing their Live Seminars, Books, CDs, and joining Mastermind Groups with the world’s top marketers.

As per the Priceless Possibilities customer testimonial below, at some point Neil Guess was a customer of Price’s business:

Putting two and two together, I’d suggest Guess has come up with the compensation plan behind Power Lead System with Price providing the service backend through Priceless Possibilities.

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

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

The KalosLife website domain (“kaloslife.com”) was registered on the 6th of March 2013, naming a “Tim Wooten” as the domain owner with a supplied PO Box address in the US state of Alabama.

Further research on social media networks reveals KalosLife affiliates naming Wooten as the founder of the company. Upon learning this I did notice Wooten appearing on an image depicting the packaging of KalosLife’s product, however this information was too small to read and not included on the company’s “About Us” page.

I found claims of Wooten having run several previous MLM opportunities in the past by KalosLife affiliates, however I was only able to find information on Market One Inc.

Market One Inc. appears to have launched in the late 1990s and cobbled together a range of household and automotive products using a unilevel based compensation plan.

Today Market One Inc. no longer exists as an MLM opportunity and, due to a lack of information on the company online, I’m not sure which year specifically it closed.

Other than Market One Inc., I was unable to find Wooten’s involvement in any other MLM companies.

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

Another week, another TelexFree appeal rejected by the courts of Brazil.

Shortly after TelexFree’s twelfth appeal was denied in the Acre Superior Court in late August, TelexFree rushed off to the Supreme Court to file for a Preventative Action preliminary injunction against the existing Acre Public Prosecutor’s injunction against the company.

Having initially failed to convince a single Judge in Brazil that they weren’t a Ponzi scheme, of late TelexFree has attempted to have the injunction lifted on legal technicalities. An effort that has proved as in effective as arguing their case on the merits of the TelexFree business model.

Their latest attempt, filed in the Supreme Court somewhere between the 28th and 30th of August, saw the company demand the Acre injunction be lifted on the grounds that the company “would never be succesful” obtaining an appeal from the lower courts.

With no legal precedent or basis to argue their appeal on, not surprisingly the Judge hearing the case was quick to deny it. [Continue reading…]

As Federal Prosecutors in Brazil contemplate whether or not they’re going to arrest and charge TelexFree’s top net winners with ‘counts of embezzlement and money laundering’, the US side of the company is now reeling from ‘rampant global credit card fraud’ and the effect it has had on their US banking channels.

On September 5th, the company sent out the following update to its affiliates:

NEWS – 05/09/2013 16:27

Dear Client,

Due to the recent amount of fraud attempts over the last two weeks, for the next 15 days our bank has limited daily payments allowed by credit card.

On a TelexFree affiliate investor call held sometime within the last 24 hours, affiliates spent nearly forty minutes discussing how to get around TelexFree’s recent credit card problems. [Continue reading…]

New Earth officially launched in September 2013 and operates in the health and wellness niche. Despite the new name, New Earth is actually a relaunch of a relaunch with the company initially starting out as Cell Tech back in 1982.

Founded by Daryl Kollman and Marta Cartman (married at the time, divorced in 2002), Cell Tech and its various incarnations have quite a colorful history.

In 1982, Kollman founded a business that harvested, processed, and sold blue-green algae as a nutritional supplement. Kollman designed harvesting equipment and was the business’s inspirational leader, while Carpenter ran day-to-day operations.

In 1990, Kollman and Carpenter became the sole owners of the business, using the trade name Cell Tech. The business operated through two subchapter S corporations, The New Earth Co. and The New Algae Co., which were each half-owned by Kollman and Carpenter.

In the mid 1990s disaster struck for the company, after the

Oregon Department of Agriculture banned the sale of algae products for human consumption that contain one part per million of microcystin.

It was later revealed in a 2010 tax case against the company that this banning had a devastatingly negative impact on Cell Tech’s sales revenue.

The microcystin regulation was an immediate public relations disaster for Cell Tech. Sales fell as customers worried that Cell Tech’s food supplements were unsafe.

In 1990, Cell Tech had sales of about $10 million. From 1990 to 1996 Cell Tech grew rapidly through its network of individual distributors selling directly to customers.

By 1996, Cell Tech’s gross receipts were more than $193,000,000. Cell Tech’s products were sold across the United States and Canada through 350,000 individual distributors.

Cell Tech then suffered what Kollman’s attorney calls a “perfect storm” of troubles: “In 1997 Cell Tech found itself with millions of dollars of worthless inventory, plummeting sales, harvesting capabilities that far exceeded the new lower demand, and state and federal tax liabilities that greatly exceeded the [company’s] dwindling income or cash reserves.

In 1997, Cell Tech’s gross receipts were about $113 million, down more than $80 million from 1996. In 1998, gross receipts were about $69 million; in 1999, $52 million; and in 2000, $37 million.

In August 1999, as part of an attempt to save the business, Cell Tech became a publicly traded corporation, Cell Tech International, Inc. After the reverse merger in August 1999, Kollman no longer had a role in managing the business. Carpenter became president and CEO of Cell Tech International.

In October 1999, Cell Tech International entered into a financing agreement with a private investor. (Kollman and Carpenter) then each owned more than 40% of the shares of Cell Tech International.

As the company continued its downward spiral, by late 2004 the terms of the financing agreement granted the private investor ownership of more than 90% of the company. (Kollman and Carpenter’s) ownership share correspondingly dwindled to about 3% each.

In 2002, Kollman brought a lawsuit in state court against Carpenter, Cell Tech International, the private investor, and other defendants. After a jury trial, the state court issued a judgment awarding Kollman $40 million in damages against Carpenter and another defendant.

The damages were based on the jury’s verdict that Carpenter breached a fiduciary duty to Kollman by entering into the financing agreement that diluted the value of Kollman’s stock in Cell Tech International.

Kollman also apparently ‘went to prison for tax evasion‘ in connection with the above case.

While all that was happening, Cell Tech was also sued in 2001 by “Teachers for Truth in Advertising”.

In their California filed complaint, the organisation listed 30 claims they objected to on the grounds that they were ‘false, misleading or deceptive’.

Such claims included

• that the general American food supply was nutrient deficient
• Cell Tech’s algae products provided increased physical energy, shiny hair, sound sleep, extra vitality, enhanced brain activity, intestinal cleaning, improved absorption of nutrients, elimination of digestive disturbances, a reversal of the ageing process and the elimination of headaches
• that use of Cell Tech’s algae products resulted in a decrease in cholesterol levels of up to 75%
• that use of Cell Tech’s algae products would result in the improvement of conditions caused by chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, hypertension, attention deficit disorder, ear infection (in children, mostly), depression, viral infections, including HIV and irritable bowel syndrome

In 2003 a Californian judge ruled that all of the sourced marketing statements from Cell Tech and its affiliates were “deceptive”, banned the use of Cell Tech’s products in the state and ‘ordered Cell Tech to refund the full purchase price to California consumers who purchased its algae products between October 1997 and September 2002‘.

For more information on the judge’s order and a complete list of misleading statements cited in the Teachers for Truth in Advertising lawsuit, see MLM Watch.

In April 2005 the family of ex-Cell Teach employee Melissa Blake filed a lawsuit against Cell Tech after Blake died in 2003 from liver and kidney failure.

In the lawsuit, Blake’s family alleged

the company supplied her with algae products that contained toxic levels of microcystins.

Blake worked for the company as a receptionist. The suit papers state that

(a) the autopsy report showed liver and kidney damage suggestive of exposure to toxins that occur with Blue Green Algae called microcystins, and

(b) tests on Cell Tech products found in Blake’s home found high amounts of microcystins.

Ruling that the family’s expert testimony was inadmissible, a judge ruled against Blake’s family. The decision was appealed twice in 2009, however in both appeals the original ruling was upheld.

These lawsuits are largely credited with the renaming of Cell Tech to Simplexity Health in 2006. Ocean Malandra over at eHow even goes as far to claim

Cell Tech Super Blue Green Algae is an algae from Klamath Lake in Oregon that was marketed aggressively by pyramid type network marketers for years.

Cell Tech changed its name to Simplexity in 2006 and stopped marketing the blue green algae under that name following several lawsuits.

On the now defunct Simplexity Health website, the company cited ‘Zubair Kazi, owner of Kazi Management‘ as ‘the company’s majority shareholder‘ and Bob Underwood as CEO.

With the launch of New Earth there’s no mention of Zubair Kazi or Bob Underwood on the company website. No idea what happened to Underwood but he seems to have been replaced by Bilal Ruknuddeen as CEO of New Earth.

Ruknuddeen (full name “Mohammed Bilal Ruknuddeen”) comes over from Simplexity Health, where he served as Managing Director.

I’m not entirely sure when he joined Simplexity (seems to be around 2009), but on their now defunct website the company credited him as a member of Simplexity’s Board of Directors, responsible for

expanding (Simplexity) internationally with accomplishments in opening offices in United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom.

No mention of Ruknuddeen’s past appointment in Simplexity Health is made on the New Earth website, possibly indicating that the company is trying to once again distance itself from a previous brand name.

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

Following the business crippling injunction won against TelexFree, Public Prosecutors in Acre have followed up with a civil lawsuit filed against the company.

Alleging that TelexFree is a Ponzi scheme, the case was filed in the 2nd Civil Court of Rio Branco and is being heard by Judge Thais Borges. As is required when all public civil action cases are filed in Brazil for the benefit of consumer-awareness, Judge Borges published the notice last Monday. [Continue reading…]

As part of my daily blogging routine for BehindMLM I digest, research and analyse a ton of information within the MLM sphere on a daily basis.

Earlier this morning I was conducting my usual MLM news and research rounds when I stumbled across the following curious pop-up over at the BBB website:

Dubbed a “routine literature request”, for reasons not clarified it appears the BBB are requesting consumers to send in examples of TelexFree’s marketing.

BBB routinely randomly checks on businesses literature/advertising to consumers.

Please email or send via postal mail a copy of the literature/advertising you received from this business.

Google cache reveals the information request pop-up was triggered as early as August 24th, however the exact date the BBB began their research is unknown.

Despite the claim that the BBB’s information request is “routinely random”, I’m not entirely convinced. [Continue reading…]

It’s no secret that I’m a staunch supporter of retail activity within the MLM industry. Indeed, if one were to look at the reviews I write here on BehindMLM it’s easy to see that the presence or lack thereof of retail activity is one of the strongest focal points of any MLM company review I publish.

Ideally when talking about retail volume generation within an MLM company, you want the sales to stem out of a genuine perception of value amongst those retail customers purchasing said product. This organic validation not only cements the value of the product in the retail marketplace, but demonstrates sustainability of an MLM opportunity.

Like I said, ideally the above is how you want to be generating retail volume within your MLM company. What happens when this just doesn’t happen though?

Well, if you’re WakeUpNow you abruptly tell your affiliates that in a few short months, unless they maintain at least seven retail customer subscriptions, they’re no longer going to get paid. [Continue reading…]