Asantae operate in the health and wellness MLM niche and seems to have been launched around 2001. Details on this seem to be a bit sketchy as the Asantae website does not explicitly clarify the company’s history.

From what I’ve read though (unverified) Asantae was launched around 2001 and either prior to or during their launch had the company name “Inflammation Solutions LLC” attached to it (this company is listed as the owner of Asantae’s website domain today). I wasn’t able to find any further information on Inflammation Systems though.

Whether Asantae relaunched or what I’m not sure but the asantae.com domain was only registered in January 2007. I’ve seen other affiliates claiming that Asantae launched around mid 2008 so this could be the case.

Why the company history clarified on the Asantae website in their “About Us” page, I have no idea.

In anycase, Asantae is based in the US state of Arizona and is headed up by CEO and co-founder, Daniel Lundell (photo right).

According to Lundell’s Asantae corporate bio, he has experience in “IT sales and management, medical practice management and network marketing”.

Despite the network marketing claim however, I was unable to find any online involvement or reference of Lundell being tied to another MLM company (not saying that it didn’t happen, just that there’s seemingly no online record of it).

Finally, it’s also worth noting that Asantae are a publicly traded company in Canada  under “Asantae Holdings International” (JVA). At the time of publication Asantae’s stock price is sitting at 8.5 cents, down from 12 cents this time last year (26.5 cents was the year high).

That said, a third quarter performance report for 2012 was put out in November which offered a more positive outlook:

Asantae Holdings International Inc. announced sales results for the third quarter of 2012.

The company saw an increase in revenues from third quarter of 2011 to third quarter of 2012 to $1,123,067, an improvement of 253% over one year. As a percentage of revenue, the decrease was more dramatic 148% to 46%.

Affiliate commissions dropped as a percentage of revenue as well, from 50% to 43%, while the actual dollars increased from $222,674 to $490,464 due to the increase in top-line sales.

Why this isn’t reflected in their stock price I don’t know (I’m no stock expert).

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

Cool Trader Pro was launched early January 2012 and is based in the US state of Florida.

For some reason the provided Cool Trader Pro corporate address in Florida appears to be rented virtual office space. In the company’s FAQ videos, reference is made to a “company headquarters” being located in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Heading up the company are co-founders Edward Barsano (founder), Cary Flanders (CEO), Sunil Wadhwa (President) and Nick Rausch (COO).

Edward Barsano is the creator of the software suite Cool Trader, which the Cool Trader Pro opportunity revolves around.

Cary Flanders appears to have a stock market and loan industry background:

Prior to CoolTraderPro , Mr.Cary Flanders is the Co-Managing Partner of Robotic Trading Systems LLC., where he is responsible for day to day operations and the development of Automated Capital Systems Hedge Fund.

Prior to Robotic Trading Systems, Inc. he was a partner in Help Arizona Realty where he oversaw the day to day operations of the buy, rehab and resell of short sale negotiated homes for Real Estate Investors.

Prior to Help Arizona Realty he was a branch owner of Great Southwest Mortgage (“GSM”), a residential loan origination office.  In his tenure with GSM his branch closed and funded over $500,000,000 in residential loans over a 7 year period.

Nick Rausch also has a background in finance and robotic trading,

Nick Rausch is co-founder and managing member of Automated Capital Systems a private hedge fund located in Palm Beach, Florida General Partner and the Investment Advisor.

He has also served as a co-managing partner of Robotic Trading Systems, LLC (“RTS”) since April 2011.

Leaving Sunil Wadhwa to bring the MLM component to Cool Trader Pro, with a purported 25 year history in the MLM industry. In researching Wadwha’s MLM history, I’ve seen his name tied to Prepaid Legal, Amega Global, Bidify and the Trump Network.

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

Typically when a Ponzi or pyramid scheme launches in the MLM industry, management or those behind the scheme attempt to justify the scheme via misdirection and flawed logic.

To achieve this all manner of tactics are deployed. Some profess the legitimacy of their schemes behind ad packs they bundle with the admission price into their schemes, some do indeed sell products but only do so to members participating in the scheme, whilst others insist that by removing guarantees of ROI payouts that they are legit.

There are far too many tactics used to list here but despite the arsenal of trickery Ponzi and pyramid scheme admins have at their disposal, they all have one fatal weakness.

Follow the money, and time and time again these schemes are revealed for what they really are. [Continue reading…]

Ambit Energy was founded in late 2006, operates in the energy MLM niche and is based in the US state of Texas.

Heading up Ambit Energy are co-founders Jere Thompson (Chief Executive Officer) and Chris Chambless (Chief Marketing Officer)

History wise both founders appear to have come from the telecommunications industry.

Jere Thompson (photo right) founded CapRock Fiber Networks in 1992 and built

fiber and broadband networks across Texas.

As CEO, he guided CapRock into new markets, took the company public and managed its growth from infancy to 1,300 employees and $300 million in annual revenues.

On his Google Plus profile page, Chris Chambless states he was

a key part of the management team at Excel Communications, a Dallas-based telecommunications firm that became the fourth largest long distance firm in North America before it was acquired by Teleglobe, Inc. in 1996

Excel Communications appears to be the MLM foundation of Ambit Energy, with the company reselling long distance services using an MLM compensation plan.

Chambless (photo right) also claims to have

more than 20 years of practical, hands-on experience managing the sales, marketing and product management organizations for companies of all sizes from start-up to multi-billion public companies.

In 2011 it’s worth noting that an Ambit Energy affiliate sued the company in New York, ‘alleging breach of contract, and that Ambit’s multi-level marketing network is a “pyramid scheme”.‘

The consultant sought over one billion dollars in damages and to

permanently enjoin and restrain Ambit from its business, soliciting, or enrolling customers and consultants in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Texas.

Following multiple revisions to the original complaint (including the withdrawal of ‘specific causes of action relating to multi-level marketing, and allegations of fraud and other violations as a result of such business structure‘), in August 2012 a judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the plaintiff ‘failed to plead sufficient facts establishing the formation of a contract between BH Seven and Ambit‘.

At the time of publication, Ambit Energy claim to have “150,000 Independent Consultants” under them.

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

About two months ago, news broke in India that the long-running TVI Express pyramid scheme had resurfaced amongst Nagpur state-run railway employees.

Known as the “Central Railway Department”, with senior management ringleading the recruitment drive it was estimated that “hundreds” had been duped into believing they would receive ‘double returns in eight days‘.

Following a Times of India investigation blowing the pyramid scheme wide open, much huffing and puffing ensued, with the end result seeing central figure in the scam, Movement Inspector Komal Gajbhye, pay out one of the members he scammed and the Divisional Railway Manager then transferring Gajbhye and another top recruiter to a post that put considerable distance between themselves and their victims.

To date, as far as I’m aware, not one government agency has launched an investigation into the Central Railway recruitment scheme, nor has the department itself fired anyone.

An inquiry was raised by the department, to be handled by an assistant personnel officer (APO) but that appears to have been “buried”.

In a followup piece to his original article (published October 27th, 2012), journalist Vijay Pinjarkar gives his account of the events leading up to and shortly after the publication of his article: [Continue reading…]

In researching MLM companies for review I visit hundreds of company websites and whilst most of them are neat and easy to navigate every now and then I run across a company website that initially does my head in.

OurGV is one of those companies.

The OurGV website is a tangled mess of information that is poorly presented and seems to be split over far too many categories to be of any practical use to anyone.

Information presented is disjointed, clicked links continiously open up new windows and there’s random Youtube videos thrown in which do on occasion clarify things, but also at times seem disconnected from the text presented on the same page (or make the need for an explanation redundant).

On more than one instance of browsing for information on the OurGV website I  suddenly found myself bumped over to the website A2Success.net, which appears to be a WordPress blog, with no explanation given.

From what I have been able to piece together though OurGV seems to have existed “for ten years”, however I’m not sure if that’s under the “Our GV” brand or another name.

The company’s website domain (“ourgv.com”) was registered on the 3rd of February 2002, which seems to support OurGV’s founding claims.

The company provides a suite address in the US state of Texas, however this appears to be just virtual office space (a PO Box in Texas is also provided).

Management wise OurGV is headed up by Chad Schapiro (photo right). On his personal website, Schapiro claims to have

learned the value of hard work and integrity at a young age.

Graduating from a Big Ten University with several business degrees, Chad Schapiro immediately began to put his talents to work running businesses.

Fine tuning his expertise in human relations, and generating profits, Chad Schapiro helped to create the fastest growing privately held company in the United States of America within 5 short years.

Seeing a huge opportunity in technology he began working with companies to develop successful online home-based business models.

Frustrated with an apparent lack of integrity, and ethics, he finally decided to develop his own internet company.

No longer having to worry about someone else letting him and his people down, having complete control resulted in perhaps the most innovative and ambitious internet concept the world has ever seen.

Schapiro then goes on to compare himself to both Bill Gates and Michael Dell, claiming to have an ‘unparalleled track record of success for well over a decade‘.

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

There is no information on the WahVision (Work At Home Vision) website indicating who owns or runs the company.

The WahVision website domain (“wahvision.com”) was registered on the 24th of September 2012, however the domain registration is set to private.

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…]

If you visit the Social Paycheck website there’s not a lot you can do. A basic description of the compensation plan is displayed (along with a tacky robot voice video), some (mostly broken) information links are at the bottom of the page and big login/register buttons appear in the top right corner of the site.

There is no information on the site itself indicating who owns or runs the business or what exactly the opportunity is about.

The FAQ page solely focuses on how members can make money, as does the infographic on the Social Paycheck homepage.

The company’s domain (“socialpaycheck.com”) was registered on the 17th of September 2012 and lists “Randy Major” as the owner, along with an address in the US state of Utah.

Major’s past MLM ventures appear to be restricted to the launch of an MLM social network called “Treehouse Social”.

Treehouse Social appears to have been launched around late 2011. Advertised by Major (photo right) as “the social network that pays you to be social“, Treehouse Social appears to have been hacked sometime after launch, which resulted in the site being pulled offline permanently.

I’m not sure when this classified ad was posted (possibly March 2012), but in it Major explains why Treehouse Social was pulled offline and outlines plans to build what I believe is now Social Paycheck:

Hello, My name is Randy Major. My partner and I have a website called treehousesocial.com … I few days ago it was hacked into and a good amount of damage was done to the database via SQL Injection a few months before someone was able to switch users via session hijacking and that was fixed.

The site was pulling in $300-$500 per month. My partner and I have come up with six improvements to increase traffic, referrals, time on site and the revenue that the site makes. I am looking to bring in 3 new partners in this venture. We want to improve the site, add a new name and graphics and re launch under that new name.

If you are interested please email me back and we can Skype and see if we can fit (fix?) this together. The site treehousesocial.com was up and running and is not anymore depending on the partners we should be pulling income in within 2 months.

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

Following the SEC shutdown of the $600M Zeek Rewards MLM penny auction Ponzi scheme, we’ve seen a flurry of new MLM penny auctions launched – with most toting similarly dubious compensation plans to that which Zeek Rewards used.

For whatever reason, most of these penny auctions have announced or are in the process of going through extended prelaunch phases.

One possible reason is that, once the penny auction switch is flipped, MLM companies relying on them find themselves exposed to the tricky balancing game of relying on revenue from an unestablished penny auction and having to pay out their affiliates.

One way for a MLM company to tilt the odds of success in their favour is to go into prelaunch and charge affiliates money to join the company.

This way when the company launches they’ve got a “kitty” so to speak which they can then rely on to pay out affiliates, regardless of whether their penny auctions actually make money in those first few months.

One such MLM penny auction company that adopted this approach was the short-lived Funky Shark.

Funky Shark went into prelaunch in September 2012, asking “founder members” to cough up $1000, with the company guaranteeing a $500 commission for each founder member signed up.

As obvious a pyramid scheme as they come, not surprisingly after consulting with their legal counsel Funky Shark then announced that they’d abandoned their penny auction plans and would be issuing refunds to all investors.

At the time, it was revealed by Funky Shark that they did this over concerns about the feasibility of running an MLM penny auction that relied on retail profits to stay afloat.

What they didn’t tell anyone was that they were also facing court action filed by the Securities Commissioner of Montana. [Continue reading…]

WebDocsNetwork launched in late 2010 however there is no information on the WebDocsNetwork website indicating who owns or runs the business.

The company’s website domain (“webdocsnetwork.com”) was registered on the 2nd of September 2010 and lists a “T. C. Chyung” as the owner. An apartment address in the US state of Illinois is also provided.

On the Twitter account @WebDocsNetwork, Chyung credits himself as being the founder and CEO of the company:

Why this information is not present on the WebDocsNetwork website is not known.

History wise, other than being credited simply as “a businessman”, I was unable to find any information on any past MLM ventures Chyung might have been involved in.

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