eXfuze launched in early 2008 and are based out of Florida in the US. The company is headed up by Co-founder and Chairman, Rick Cotton.

On his eXfuze corporate bio, Cotton (bottom right) is credited with having

involvement of nearly 10 years abroad with a non-profit ministry developing businesses and programs to benefit the mission, and overseeing all Latin American operations.

Rick Cotton has served in more than 10 countries and has a strong command of culture, language and international business.

On the MLM side of things, I’m not sure if it’s the same guy but a Rick Cotton was President of something called “Viva Toxic Free”. I wasn’t really able to find out much on that opportunity, other than it seems to have been active between 2007 and 2011.

Like eXfuze, Viva Toxic Free was also based out of Florida however there’s not a whole lot of information out there on it. Possibly just a co-incidence, a charity division of eXfuze appears on the company website by the name of VivaKids. Rick Cotton is credited on the page as being the co-founder of VivaKids.

I wasn’t able to get any further information on the VivaKids Foundation as the website was not responsive at the of publication.

In any case, other than possibly being involved in Viva Toxic Free, Rick Cotton doesn’t appear to have any other history within the MLM industry.

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

When I sat down to initially review Lyoness (the European version), I spent a few days trying to get my head around material that was obviously never written to be fully comprehended by your average MLM affiliate.

When Lyoness launched in the US, they sought to remedy this by releasing slightly less confusing business model material. Not as clear-cut as it could have been, but enough for me to suss it out and put out a Lyoness review.

In my review I identified the primary revenue source that had contributed to the initial success of Lyoness in Europe and their subsequent worldwide expansion.

That source?

An affiliate-funded investment scheme, where affiliates invest in “accounting units” and after a fixed number of new units have been invested in, Lyoness pay out affiliates a cash ROI.

All monies are deposited with and paid out by Lyoness, isolating the scheme from the merchant shopping network.

That of course doesn’t stop the company burying the scheme in mountains of “earn cashback by shopping” literature, which the companies affiliates are all too happy to run around the internet promoting.

With now over 1000+ comments on the BehindMLM review fleshing out the AU investment scheme (including the reluctant admission that it functions as a Ponzi scheme by some Lyoness affiliates), some affiliates still don’t see it, or probably more accurately, refuse to see it.

Despite the review citing  the official Lyoness US compensation plan material itself, evidently there’s still a great deal of confusion amongst Lyoness affiliates as to what the business is actually about.

Evidently I’m not the only one to observe this, with Lyoness feeling the need to put together an official corporate webinar to lay out the compensation plan and business model in detail.

So here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth: The Lyoness Accounting Unit Investment Scheme. [Continue reading…]

Total Life Changes operate in the nutrition and skincare MLM niche and is headed up by CEO and founder Jack Fallon.

I’ve seen multiple references to Total Life Changes being launched in 1999, however the current branding of the company seems to only have taken place early last year. Prior to that Total Life Changes was primarily marketed through SeAcai, which was promoted as a “division” of the company.

The rebranding of the company back to Total Life Changes appears to coincide with an effort to broaden the company’s product offering.

I wasn’t able to find an MLM history for Fallon prior to 1999 so I’m not sure if he was involved in any other MLM companies prior to founding Total Life Changes.

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

Back in April Rippln went public with a compensation plan that paid affiliates to recruit new free and paid affiliates. In order to qualify for these commissions, affiliates had to upgrade to either a “Domestic” or “Global” affiliate.

At the time it was explained that Domestic affiliates would be able to earn on those recruited within their country of residence, and Global affiliates were able to earn globally.

These commissions were earnt via a pass-up system, with affiliate fees being passed up to a new affiliate’s upline.

Mobile app commissions were also briefly mentioned, however no specific information was provided.

Shortly after details were released on the initial compensation plan were released and the BehindMLM Rippln review went up, lawyers were called in and the entire compensation plan was retracted.

That was a month and a half ago and since then over 700,000 affiliates have signed on with no clue on just how exactly anybody is going to earn commissions.

Last night Rippln finally addressed these concerns and held a webinar to lay out their new revised compensation plan.

Read on to learn exactly what Rippln affiliates are going to have to do to make money. [Continue reading…]

When we last checked in on the MLM business side of Bidify, the company had undergone several compensation plan revisions and finally settled on what was still a primarily affiliate-funded ROI scheme.

Slightly different from Zeek Rewards model, it was seen more as a grey area that worked loopholes in that the possibility for affiliates to get paid on retail customers was present.

Due to the way the overall compensation plan had been structured and the type of affiliates the company had already attracted (mostly Zeek Rewards refugees), that scenario was highly unlikely.

Sure enough Bidify’s v2.0 compensation plan changes flopped with the company failing to gain any ground on attracting genuine retail customers to it’s Bidsson penny auction business.

Bidsson’s former CEO Albert Liske publicly declaring the company to be a Ponzi scheme didn’t help either. Nor did the February 11th “amicable resolution” reached between Liske and Bidify, the details of which were never made public.

Since then Bidify has struggled to gain any attraction and as I understand it business operations have ground to a complete halt. Seemingly looking to reinvigorate things came the unexpected press release yesterday announcing that Bidify were

getting ready for the full launch of everything we have been working really hard on for the last months.

Both sites will be taken down for MAJOR UPDATES the 3rd of June, and will stay offline until we go live.

Details of what Bidify management have been up to haven’t been released yet but one additional tidbit of information was made public today:

Bidify are abandoning operations in the US. [Continue reading…]

Launched during the heyday of the recruitment driven travel membership company boom a few years back, World Ventures is one of the few such remaining MLM companies still operating today.

On the MLM side of things World Ventures affiliates can only earn commissions by signing up new affiliates and collecting commissions on the monthly fees they pay. As such, as is typical with travel niche MLM companies what you wind up with is a company full of affiliates mass-recruiting, with little to no attention paid to travel side of the business.

Not at all surprising when you consider that the travel side of the business has pretty much nothing to do with revenue flow inside the company.

Facing what can only be assumed must be a resurfacing of World Ventures in Norway, local authorities have announced the launch of an investigation into the company. [Continue reading…]

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

The Uptown Offers website domain (“uptownoffers.com”) was registered on the 5th of May 2013, however the domain registration is set to private.

Also hosted on the UpTown Offers hosting server is the website for BizCustomers (domain registration also set to private).

BizCustomers sold customers to affiliates of the failed GoFunRewards MLM opportunity. Earlier this month GoFunRewards shut down their US operations citing legal concerns with their revenue-sharing compensation plan.

Three videos for BizCustomers appear on YouTube under the account “Devon Crawford”.

A woman (presumably Crawford) voices the videos, making numerous references to “our business” and “our website”.

A woman’s voice featured on a recent May 27th Uptown Offers affiliate call, however  it doesn’t appear to be the same voice (I’m not 100% sure) as featured on Devon Crawford’s BizCustomer videos.

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…]

Despite the arrest of TVI Express CEO and owner Tarun Trikha in India last month, the company’s website remains operational with affiliates elsewhere in the world continuing to promote the scheme.

Fortunately, so too is the continuation efforts by law-enforcement agencies in prohibiting the proliferation of one of the longest standing pyramid schemes in MLM history. [Continue reading…]

Earlier this month news broke that Lyoness had begun to actively go after uploaded multimedia footage that made the company look bad.

Falsely claiming copyright infringement, Lyoness filed multiple copyright infringement notices with YouTube who then took the videos down (they have a “no questions asked” policy on copyright infringement complaints, however the complaints can be challenged) .

The two videos in question?

The first is the classic Dragon’s Den appearance by Andy Nyakas, who tries to pitch Lyoness to three “dragons” (venture capital investors).

Painfully awkward to watch at times, Nyakas’ attempt to pitch Lyoness is nonetheless an interesting example of what happens when the often buried Accounting Unit investment scheme within Lyoness is brought out into the open (fast forward to [25:00] for the Lyoness pitch):

The footage above is from Dragon’s Den Canada, with copyright of the show owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Curiously, after being previously available the footage also now appears to have been removed from the CBC website itself.

The second is an investigative report from ORF, the Austrian national public service broadcaster.

Following the airing of the report earlier this year, it appeared on YouTube. Shortly after the report was exposed to a wider global audience, once again Lyoness filed copyright infringement notices with YouTube.

Needless to say the ORF report belongs to the ORF broadcasting network, with any claims of copyright infringement from Lyoness being false.

Whereas the Dragon’s Den episode is more like a critical review of your typical Lyoness investor presentation, the ORF report took on an investigative approach and is far more damning.

It should be noted that I had been aware of the report for some time now, but it was only recently that I was able to track down an English subtitled version of the report and thus understand it. [Continue reading…]

After taking in who knows how many hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dollars from affiliates who were urged to “purchase as many JubiBucks as (their) resources allow(ed)“, recruit as many “low-hanging fruit” affiliates from rival revenue-sharing companies and months and months of reassurance that their revenue-sharing compensation plan was “100% compliant”, JubiRev announced today two major changes to the plan.

In a webinar that went live just a few hours ago, JubiRev announced that they would be abolishing the automatic (and mandatory) re-investment component of the daily ROI paid out to affiliates, as well as the introduction of a “Customer Quality” score. [Continue reading…]