Operating out of Ontario in Canada, TrueStar Health was founded in 2001 and originally functioned as a pay-to-use health information website.

Headed up by CEO Tim Mulcahy, throughout the years TrueStar claims to have supported

many weight loss clinics, health clubs, doctors, chiropractors, nutritionists, personal trainers and various other health providers in offering health care services to hundreds of thousands of people all over the world.

Mulcahy (photo right) credits himself with ‘25 years experience in direct marketing and motivation‘ and prior to TrueStar,

co-founded Ontario Energy Savings Corporation, play(ing) a significant role in organizing and growing the company from a start-up in 1997 to a TSX publicly listed company.

In 2011 TrueStar abandoned the pay-to-use model and instead shifted to a free information model. During this time the company also introduced a vitamin range and launched a MLM opportunity (TrueStar Wealth) using the established TrueStar Health brand.

Today we take a look at the home business side of TrueStar Health with a complete review of the TrueStar Wealth MLM opportunity.

The TrueStar Health Product Line

In line with TrueStar’s history, the company markets a range of multi-vitamins for its members to sell. TrueStar claim their vitamins are “North America’s #1 Rated Multivitamins” but do not attribute any particular source to the claim.

TrueStar Health’s multivitamins are sold under the “TrueBasics” brand and range in price from $39.95 (TrueBasics for kids) to $82.95 (TrueBasics AO) for a 30 day supply.

The TrueStar Wealth website only mentions the basic TrueBasic multivitamins however the TrueStar Health websites lists a whole lot more products covering a much wider range of vitamin supplements.

I’d assume the entire range is made available to TrueStar Health’s members to market and sell however given the lack of mention of the entire product range on the TrueStar Wealth website I’m not entirely sure if this is the case.

(If a member of TrueStar Health is reading this review they’re welcome to clarify this point in the comments below).

The TrueStar Health Compensation Plan


Personal Sales Volume

Personal sales volume (PV) is used extensively throughout the TrueStar Health compensation plan and refers to the total sales volume of any individual member.

For qualification purposes, PV is measured in a five-week period (4 rolling weeks prior plus the current week counting as the fifth).


Membership Ranks

Certain components of the TrueStar Health compensation plan are tied into a member’s membership rank. Within the compensation plan there are sixteen membership ranks, each with their own qualifications and requirements.

I don’t think we need to go into the specific qualifications required to explain and understand the compensation plan, save to say that membership rank advancement is tied into how much product volume your team generates (matrix and unilevel teams are counted separately) and the higher the rank achieved the longer it must be maintained in order to qualify for that rank’s appropriate bonuses and payouts.

Additionally the maximum required personally recruited member requirement never extends past 2 although using the unilevel compensation structure there is a rank requirement of your downline (starting with Gold Associate that requires at least one ‘Silver Associate’ qualified unilevel leg) at certain levels.


Retail Commissions

TrueStar Health offer retail commissions on the sale of all their products. These retail commissions are calculated on the difference between the retail cost of a product and the wholesale price.

There are percentage overrides that can affect how much of a retail commission can be earnt based on the total retail cost of a product, and this is tied into the PV of the TrueStar Health member earning the commission:

• less than 100 PV = 20% cap
• 100 to 199 PV = 25% cap
• 200+ PV = 40% cap


Matrix Commissions

TrueStar Health use a 3×9 matrix for the residual income backend and this matrix houses a total of 29,523 positions. A 3×9 matrix starts with you at the top and has three legs branching out underneath you.

The first few levels of a 3×9 matrix look something like this:

These three legs form level 1 and in turn branch out into another 3 legs each (level 2) and so on and so forth down 9 levels. Positions in your matrix can be filled via the personal recruitment of new TrueStar Health members, acquisition of customers and recruiting and/or acquisition of customers by your upline.

TrueStar Health pay out a flat rate 4% of the PV generated by each person in your matrix.


Check Match

Using a unilevel compensation structure, TrueStar Health also pay out a check match bonus on the earnings of TrueStar members that have been personally recruited.

A unilevel compensation structure places all members you’ve personally recruited directly under you with these members forming your level 1. Any members they then recruit form your level 2 and so on and so forth.

Within this structure, a “generation” is defined as all members below you up until a ‘Gold Associate’ or higher member is found below you. All members that fall between you and the Gold Associate form your first generation.

The second generation is then defined using this same methodology (travelling down the downline until another Gold Associate or higher member is found), with the members between the second qualifying member and the first forming your second generation.

How many generations a TrueStar member is paid out on depends on their own membership ranks as follows:

• Gold Associate – 4% match on first generation
• Star Associate – 5% match on first generation
• Silver Executive – 6% match on first generation, 5% on second
• Gold Executive – 6% match on first generation, 5% on second and third
• Star Executive – 6% match on first and second generations, 5% on third
• Gold Vice President – 6% match on first and second generations, 5% on third and fourth
• Diamond Vice President – 7% match on first and second generations, 6% match on third and fourth
• Star Vice President – 8% match on first and second generations, 7% match on third to fifth
• Gold President – 9% match on first and second generations, 8% match on third to fifth
• Diamond President – 10% match on first and second generations, 9% match on third to sixth
• TrueStar – 10% match on first to sixth generations


Recruitment Commissions

TrueStar Health pay out what they call a ‘Power of 5 Bonus’. This Power of 5 Bonus rewards members who recruit at least five new members in any given month.

These new members must purchase at least a $399 TrueStar joining package and generate at least 100 PV that month.

If the above qualifications are met, TrueStar Health will pay members $500 per every 5 new qualified new members they sign up in a month.


Fast Start Bonus

The TrueStar Fast Start Bonus is paid out on the first orders of all recruited TrueStar Health members (level 1) as well as any first orders made by new members recruited by your level 1 (they become your level 2).

The Fast Start Bonus amount depends on which “Fast Start Pack” is being ordered with corresponding payouts (tied into how much PV you yourself have generated) as follows:


First Level -

• Beginner Pack – 100 PV = $10, 200 PV = $15
• Basic Pack - 100 PV = $25, 200 PV = $40
• Builder Pack - 100 PV = $45, 200 PV = $70
• Advanced Builder Pack - 100 PV = $90, 200 PV = $140
• Mega Builder Pack - 100 PV = $125, 200 PV = $200


Second Level -

• Beginner Pack – 100 PV = $2.50, 200 PV = $5
• Basic Pack - 100 PV = $5, 200 PV = $15
• Builder Pack - 100 PV = $10, 200 PV = $20
• Advanced Builder Pack - 100 PV = $20, 200 PV = $40
• Mega Builder Pack - 100 PV = $40, 200 PV = $60


Rank Achievement Bonus

As members grow their customer base and team in TrueStar Health and advance in membership rank, the company pays out a one time bonus for certain membership promotions called a Rank Achievement Bonus.

The Rank Achievement Bonus is paid out on promotion to the following TrueStar membership levels:

• Gold Executive – $250
• Star Executive – $500
• Gold Vice President – $750
• Diamond Vice President – $1,100
• Star Vice President – $1,750
• Gold President – $3,000
• Diamond President – $4,250
• TrueStar – $5000


Car Bonus

TrueStar Health members who achieve and maintain the rank of Gold Executive or higher are entitled to an additional ‘Car Bonus’ monthly payment:

• Gold Executive – $200
• Star Executive – $400
• Gold Vice President – $600
• Diamond Vice President – $800
• Star Vice President – $1,000
• Gold President – $1,200
• Diamond President – $1,500
• TrueStar – $1,500


Note that the TrueStar Car Bonus is superceded by the Rank Achievement Bonus should a member qualify for both simultaneously in any given month.


House and Lifestyle Bonus

For TrueStar members who achieve and maintain a membership rank of Star Vice President or higher, an additional House and Lifestyle bonus is also paid out as follows:

• Star Vice President – $500
• Gold President – $1,000
• Diamond President – $1,750
• TrueStar – $2,500


Like the Car Bonus, if a member qualifies for a Rank Achievement Bonus and House and Lifestyle Bonus in the same month, the Rank Achievement Bonus supercedes the House and Lifestyle Bonus.


Bonus Pools

Each quarter TrueStar Health puts aside 2.5% of the global volume sold by members and puts it into three bonus pools. Each pool has different qualification criteria and should a member qualify, they are then awarded an equal share of the pool each quarter.

The three TrueStar Health Bonus Pools along with their qualification criteria are as follows (note all references to levels are referring to the unilevel compensation structure used to calculate matching bonuses):

• Pool 1 – have at least 5 people in your level 1 generating more than 100 PV a month, at least 2,500 PV on level 2  (with 3 legs generating at least 500 PV each) and 100,000 global PV across your entire downline
• Pool 2 – have at least 10 people in your level 1 generating 100 PV or more a month, at least 5,000 PV being generated on your level 2 (with 5 legs generating at least 500 PV each), 10,000 PV being generated on level 3 and 500,000 global PV across your entire downline
• Pool 3 – have at least 20 people in your level 1 generating 100 PV or more a month, at least 10,000 PV being generated on your level 2 (with 10 legs generating at least 500 PV each), 5,000 PV being generated by level 3, 30,000 PV being generated by level 4 and 1,000,000 global PV across your entire downline

Joining TrueStar

As far as I can tell nothing more is needed to become a member of TrueStar other than the purchase of products. The company itself doesn’t seem to differentiate between retail customers and members.

If members and/or customers wish to participate in the compensation plan though, the company requires that these members be “active”:

To be considered Active in the commission period, a Wellness Consultant must complete the following requirements in the Qualification Period:

• Must have purchased a Welcome Kit (one-time purchase)

• Must have at least 50 Qualifying Volume PV-Q

Thus as far as the business opportunity goes, if you want to earn anything the purchase of a Welcome Kit is inescapable. The price of TrueStar Health’s welcome kits therefore pretty much constitute the joining cost for those wishing to participate in the TrueStar Health MLM business opportunity

• Beginner Pack – $99
• Basic Pack – $199
• Builder Pack – $399
• Advanced Builder Pack – $799
• Mega Builder Pack – $1,499

Conclusion

Overall the TrueStar Health compensation plan is firmly grounded in the sales of actual product however there is one slight concern I have on the recruiting side of things.

As far as I can see the ‘Fast Start’ and ‘Power of 5′ bonuses are just flat-out recruitment commissions (when you consider that a welcome pack must be purchased in order to participate in the business opportunity side of thing).

Given that everything else in the TrueStar Health compensation plan involves the selling of products, the inclusion of these two bonuses which are strongly tied into recruitment are a bit of a mystery to me. Members wouldn’t earn as much per new member recruited, however I think overall the compensation plan would be better off if these two bonuses were altered with a stronger focus on product sales (beyond the purchase of mandatory welcome packs).

I was a little concerned about the use of a matrix based compensation structure but at a flat rate 4% commission paid out on sales, if your downline doesn’t sell anything you don’t get paid.

Membership ranks increase commission payouts but overall the recruitment requirements are pretty low so building a large team of autoship members shouldn’t be a concern.

With the price of TrueStar’s products and the commissions generated per product sold it doesn’t really make much sense to encourage members to join, sit on autoship and try to recruit new members themselves.

As far as the products go I think marketing TrueStar’s vitamins is, to put it lightly, going to be your biggest challenge. I’m by no means a vitamin expert but pushing $100 a month for multivitamins is going to be a hard sell when local supermarkets and chemists sell multivitamins for much cheaper.

Issues of quality of the ingredients and what not will be a strong selling point when marketing TrueStar’s products but I think most members will find this is definitely a narrow niche of customers they are marketing to.

That said if you can establish a viable long-term market around TrueStar’s vitamin based products then the compensation plan certainly will reward you for doing so.

Given the personal nature of multivitamins I’d strongly encourage thorough testing of the product before considering TrueStar as a business opportunity. When marketing health products it’s worth keeping in mind that personal testimony and experience often delivers much more of an impact than broad ‘all our products are great!’ type statements.

Good luck!

At the core of any MLM business should be the marketing and sale of products or services. If you can sell those products and services due to your efforts and genuine demand, then all the more power to you.

Keeping that in mind, when a company describes its products or services simply as ‘a non commissionable requirement for compliance‘, things don’t look too good.

Read on for a full review of the Wealth4AllTeam MLM opportunity.

The Company

Wealth4AllTeam is headed up by a one Mr. Danny Cianciulli (photo right) who acts as CEO. Cianciulli seems to have built a downline using the ‘Wealth4AllTeam’ branding for a while now (2010 or so) and has previously been involved in several MLM opportunities.

The two most prominent of these opportunities I found links to are:

1. ROI Unlimited – a recruitment based travel scam:

2. Something called the ‘The Endless $60 Miracle Money Maker’, which appears to be some sort of free trial offer ‘join up and then cancel’ scheme through the website zipnadazilch.com:

As far as I can tell, the launch of Wealth4AllTeam back in November 2011 was the first time Cianciulli has used the brand as a stand-alone MLM opportunity.

The Wealth4AllTeam Product Line

Wealth4AllTeam have no retailable products or services. Instead, upon joining the company members are then able to make investments with the company and bundled with each investment are advertising tools and a training module.

The advertising credits are for use on the Wealth4AllTeam social network (wealth4allteam.co) which appears to be a web application piggybacked onto Facebook (it allows you to sign into it with your Facebook account).

No further information is provided on training packages, other than stating that they are a ‘non commissionable requirement for compliance’.

The Wealth4AllTeam Compensation Plan

The Wealth4AllTeam compensation plan revolves around the investment of money in ‘training & advertising packages’ (TAPs) by members.

There are twelve TAP investment groups (TAP 1 to 12) and each TAP group has 12 levels within it. These are typically numbered with a decimal, for example TAP 1′s levels are written as TAP 1.1, TAP 1.2 through to TAP 1.12 for example.

At the end of TAP 12.12, the process repeats itself as TAP 13.1 onwards.

Each of these TAP investment groups has a different purchase price as follows (total investment amount required (12 investments per group) are in brackets):

• TAP 1 = $16 ($192)
• TAP 2 = $32 ($384)
• TAP 3 = $64 ($768)
• TAP 4 = $128 ($1536)
• TAP 5 = $192 ($2304)


TAP 6 and onwards simply recycle these investment amounts (TAP 6 = $16, TAP 7 = $32 etc).

Members start by investing at TAP 1.1 for $16 these TAPs, starting with TAP 1.1 through to 1.12 with there being no limit on the amount of TAPs members can purchase.

These individual investments then mature over a 10 day period upon which Wealth4AllTeam then pay out a return on the initial investment (ROI).

All of the TAPs in any one group level (twelve in total, split six and six) pay out a ROI every 10 days with half paying out over 60 days and the other half over 120 days.

I don’t know what the exact make up is on which TAPs expire over 60 days and which expire of 120 days but for explanation purposes, on level 1 this would equate to TAPs 1.1-1.6 expiring in 60 days after 6 ROIs were paid out (every 10 days) and TAPs 1.7-1.12 expiring in 120 days after 12 ROIs were paid out (again every 10 days).

The ROI paid out every 10 days varies from group to group as follows:

• TAPs 1.1 – 1.12 = $4.50 ($27 over 60 days and $54 over 120 days)
• TAPs 2.1 – 2.12 = $7.20 ($43.20 over 60 days and $86.40 over 120 days)
• TAPs 3.1 – 3.12 = $14.40 ($86.40 over 60 days and $172.80 over 120 days)
• TAPs 4.1 – 4.12 = $28 ($168 over 60 days and $336 over 120 days)
• TAPs 5.1 – 5.12 = $43.20 ($259.20 over 60 days and $518.40 over 120 days)


TAPs 6 and onwards again recycle these ROI amounts (TAPs 6.1 – 6.12 = $4.50, TAPs 7.1 – 7.12 = $7.20 etc).

Effective ROIs over 120 days total at each TAP level is then calculated as follows:

• TAP 1 – $192 invested with $486 paid out = 253% ROI
• TAP 2 – $384 invested with $776 paid out = 202% ROI
• TAP 3 – $768 invested with $1555.20 paid out = 202% ROI
• TAP 4 – $1536 invested with $3024 paid out = 196% ROI
• TAP 5 – $2304 invested with $4665.60 paid out = 202% ROI


As before, these ROI amounts simply recycle for TAP 6 onwards.

ROIs are paid out 50/50 with 50% of all returns paid having to be re-invested back into TAPs.


Referral Commissions

In addition to the investment returns paid out above, Wealth4AllTeam also pay out a 10% referral commission on all TAP purchases made by people you recruit into the scheme.


Recruitment Commission

For each member recruited into Wealth4AllTeam who pays the $10 upgrade fee, the company pays out a $5 commission to the recruiting member.

Joining Wealth4AllTeam

Membership to Wealth4AllTeam is free, however members wishing to cash out must pay a $10 upgrade fee and invest in TAPs.

Free members can earn referral commissions by recruiting new members, getting them to pay the upgrade fee and investing in TAPs but they too must upgrade if they wish to cash out these earnings.

Conclusion

Wealth4AllTeam’s TAPs are a bit confusing at first (which isn’t helped by the way the company explains the concept on their website), but once you break it down it’s pretty clear you’re looking at investments with a fixed 60 and 120 day ROI period (paid out incrementally over 10 days recurring).

There is no outside money flowing into the system and 100% of the money paid out as ROIs is paid in by members.

As far as the advertising goes, it isn’t offered to non-members simply because there’s no external demand for it. The Wealth4AllTeam social network is clearly not a stand-alone service and only those participating in the Wealth4AllTeam investment scheme are going to sign up as members.

Exposure wise all that’s happening is members are investing money, putting up advertising on a social network and winking at eachother as they earn guaranteed ROIs made up of new investments by existing and new members.

No doubt members will try to convince non-members that it’s all about the legitimate sale of training but with the company itself admitting that training only exists in an attempt to be compliant with US laws, that’s a pretty thin argument.

Moreso when you consider that these advertising packages are most likely not offered past the TAP 12 group whereas investments can continue well beyond TAP 13 (theoretically they can continue on indefinitely as long as new money is continually pumped into the scheme).

The 50% re-investment rule will prolong the life of this obvious Ponzi but sooner or later new money will stop flowing in and as with all Ponzi schemes, there simply won’t be enough money to pay out.

It’s generally accepted that if you want to enjoy soft drinks, you’re going to have to consume a whole bunch of who-knows-what that generally speaking, isn’t going to be good for you.

With most soft drinks on the market containing ingredients that read like the components of a chemistry set, the prospect of healthy soft drinks certainly got my attention.

Hoping to capitalize on that idea comes MLM startup NOCA Now. Read on for a full review.

The Company

Noca Now was founded by owner ‘Raymond F. Martineau (photo right) with George Foerst serving as CEO.

There’s not all that much information out there regarding a background in MLM on these two despite Martineau’s company blog stating he’s ‘been associated with various major networking companies for the past 42 years‘.

On the general business side of things both Martineau and Feorst seem to have enjoyed working in a wide range of niches but specifically when it comes to MLM I couldn’t really find any concrete associations or background.

The NOCA Now Product Line

NOCA stands for Natures Organic Concentrated Alternative with the company NOCA Now aiming to provide healthy beverage alternatives to their not-so-healthy counterparts.

Product wise NOCA Now currently have two no sugar, calories or carbohydrates beverages: NOCA Cola and NOCA Tea. Both beverages are sold in liquid concentrated form and need to be added to water (carbonated or otherwise) before being consumed.


NOCA Cola

NOCA Cola is NOCA Now’s answer to regular cola and contains acai berry, blueberries, garlic, ginger, grape seed oil, hooda gordonii, iodine, kelp, lycii berry, magnesium, mangosteen, panex ginseng, pomegranate, vitamin A, B vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin D3 and zinc.

NOCA Cola is sold in cases of twelve 2oz (59ml) bottles for $36.


NOCA Tea

On the NOCA Now website, NOCA Tea is listed as having the exact same ingredients as NOCA Cola, except that it is a concentrated tea flavoured formula designed to be mixed with regular water.

NOCA Tea also comes in a case of twelve 2oz (59ml) bottles for $36.

The NOCA Now Compensation Plan

Surprisingly, the NOCA Now compensation plan makes several references to Text Cash Network, with the company itself even going so far to claim that only a few modifications differentiate it from the Text Cash Network compensation plan.

These changes include, a Power Retail Bonus, Power Direct Bonus and Power Team Bonus.


Power Retail Bonus 

The Power Retail Bonus offered by NOCA Now is the difference between the wholesale price and recommended retail price of NOCA Now’s products.


Power Direct Bonus

When members recruit new NOCA Now members, they are eligible to earn 10% of the wholesale cost of all product those recruited members purchase themselves or sell.

2% is offered on an additional 9 levels (members you recruit are your first level, members they recruit your second and so on and so forth) in your downline.


Power Match Bonus

The Power Match Bonus offered by NOCA Now is a 10% match on earnings made by your downline down 10 levels.

How many levels of your downline you earn 10% depends on how many members you yourself have recruited and how many members your recruits have recruited (the more you recruit the more levels you earn on).

Joining NOCA Now

I’m not sure if it will be changed in the future but membership to NOCA Now is currently being advertised as free of charge, however any membership links on the NOCA Now website actually point to the Text Cash Network.

Membership to the Text Cash Network is indeed free, however you do need to agree to receive a bunch of advertisements via SMS each day.

Conclusion

Truth be told I didn’t even realise there was a connection between NOCA Now and Text Cash Network until I had a look at the NOCA Now compensation plan. After some further poking around the NOCA Now website, I then found this:

NOCA Now has chosen Text Cash Network (TCN) to market their line of products.

TCN offers many products and services. You can choose to market only NOCA Now products or any/all of the products made available to you.

You will recieve comissions on all sales for all products made by your downline, not just NOCA Now products.

I’m not entirely sure what the specifics of the business relationship are but it seems as if NOCA Now have “outsourced” the marketing side of their business to Text Cash Network members.

In the BehindMLM review of Text Cash Network I identified an overall revenue problem with the company and this latest partnership might be an attempt to alleviate those concerns.

Whereas Text Cash Network doesn’t really have a product besides selling advertising on the network itself, NOCA Now most definitely has a retailable offering in its tea and cola concentrates.

Unfortunately though as with Text Cash Network, even with a retail bonus there’s still a heavy reliance on recruiting if you want to take advantage of the MLM side of things.

True retail commissions exist within the NOCA Now compensation plan which is wonderful but overall it’s still easily possible to stick people on autoship and earn a monthly commission on their purchase. When you consider that Text Cash Network pays out a monthly commission for each member recruited, that only adds another red flag to the NOCA Now opportunity.

In short, it’s great to see that a retail offering has been paired with what was originally a questionable compensation plan lacking it, but unfortunately despite the positive changes they’ve made NOCA Now have also inherited the red flags identified with the original Text Cash Network compensation plan.

Given the above discussion regarding NOCA Now’s products seems a little irrelevant but nonetheless if you are entertaining the idea of marketing them, like all other consumable opportunities you’re going to be spending a considerable amount of money on sample inventory.

Beverage consumers are usually pretty picky about what they do and don’t like so you’re pretty much guaranteed to have to hand out samples in order to attract customers. Being a drink the health benefits alone aren’t going to be enough to convince people if the drinks overall taste is poor.

As an avid consumer of cola myself (Pepsi or Coke, I don’t mind although I can easily tell the difference between the two), NOCA Now’s ingredient list did leave me questioning their claims that NOCA Cola is supposed to be a viable alternative taste-wise to Coke and Pepsi:

“NOCA THE BEE” IS REVOLUTIONIZING THE BEVERAGE INDUSTRY with “Healthy” Delicious Alternatives to your favorite drinks.

Some people say “It Tastes like Coke.”

Some people say “It tastes like Pepsi.”

For the life of me I couldn’t recall even half the stuff found in either Coke or Pepsi but I’m pretty sure most of the ingredients listed in NOCA Cola are absent. When you consider some of the listed ingredients have a pretty strong taste themselves (garlic, ginseng etc.), how NOCA Cola is comparable to its chemical formulated counterparts escapes me.

Also with each bottle making just 295ml – 354ml of NOCA cola or tea, at 12 bottles for $36 that’s a pretty steep price comparison to Coke or Pepsi. I like to think I drink cola in reasonable moderation but I know that monthly I drink quite a bit more than 4 litres a month. In my neck of the woods Coke retails for roughly $1.10 USD for 2 litres so how NOCA Cola’s $18 per 2L cost is supposed to compete I’m not sure.

Tea I can’t really comment on as I don’t really drink it.

All in all I think if you can find a market for their products then NOCA Now might be worth a shot but the integration with Text Cash Network is a bit of a concern. Primarily because there doesn’t seem to be any concrete relationship with NOCA Now and its members, given that you don’t sign up as a NOCA Now member but rather as a Text Cash Network member.

That said they do have a separate management team and are open and honest about their products and who’s running things so full points to NOCA Now for that.

NOCA Now is definitely a mixed bag of concerns, advantages and disadvantages  so I’d strongly advise those looking to sign up not only to familiarize themselves with the company itself, but also thoroughly with Text Cash Network.

This is extremely important seeing as ultimately Text Cash Network is the primary opportunity NOCA Now members will be signing up for.

Good luck!

Way back in 2010 the Australian Competitive and Consumer Commission (ACCC) decided to put a stop to the promotion of TVI Express in Australia.

With no officially registered local presence, offices or staff, the ACCC instead were left to target the national top three local promoters. In May 2010, the ACCC won an injunction that prohibited promotional ringleaders Lualhati Jutsen (also known as Teddi Jutsen), Tina Brownlee and David Scanlon from ‘promoting the scheme (TVI), accepting payments from new “members” or paying other participants’‘.

Wanting to make an example of the top promoters and put a stop to the promotion of TVI for good, the ACCC took the trio to court and alleged that they had been willing promoters of a pyramid scheme, which is illegal in Australia.

After eighteen months in the Australian legal system, last November the case against Jutsen, Brownlee and Scanlon ( right) came to a head with Justice Nicholas ruling against the trio.

I am satisfied that the single most important inducement held out to prospective members of the scheme in this case was the prospect of them making money, large amounts of it, by encouraging other people to join who would have to pay a membership fee to do so.

The vacation representation was misleading or deceptive or likely to” mislead or deceive because “people would not expect the travel certificates to be of no value”.

I am satisfied that the TVI Express System was a pyramid-selling scheme.

The decision against the trio (the company itself initially promised to refute the ACCC’s claims but later abandoned Jutsen, Brownlee and Scanlon leaving them to defend themselves), was a landmark decision in that it was the first time promoters of a scam had been successfully found guilty in an Australian court.

Following the November ruling a period of six months would then pass before a court handed down a sentence.

Earlier this week, for their participation in the promotion of TVI Express in Australia, in addition for having to pay the ACCC’s legal costs an Australian Federal Court fined Lualhati Jutsen $90,000, Tina Brownlee $80,000 and David Scanlon $30,000.

The fines are well below the maximum of $220,000 AUD each but cumulatively total $200,000 and set a strong precedent for future cases against promoters of other MLM scams in Australia.

One common defense used by promoters of known scams (whether they are officially declared a scam by authorities and regulators or not), is that the risk of participation is quite low and that should anything happen, only those at the top of the company need worry about action being taken against them.

Whilst that still rings true to some effect, should regulators close in and due to the often unpredictable nature of “success” in the promotion of scams (MLM or otherwise), it’s worth noting that successful promotion of a business is more than enough to leave members legally liable.

Jutsen, Brownlee and Scanlon don’t work for TVI and despite being ringleaders in the Australian promotion of TVI, still have internationally based uplines themselves. Yet being regular members on paper was still not enough to escape prosecution and legal liability for promoting TVI Express.

In her defense, Jutsen at one point contended that she was nothing more than a ‘victim of the scheme‘ but this argument was disregarded by Judge Nicholas.

Brownlee on the other hand attempted to turn the tables and blame the ACCC ‘for not warning her that participation in the scheme was unlawful‘ but this defense was also rejected.

How Brownlee’s argument was made in the first place I’m not sure as the promotion of pyramid schemes in Australia has been illegal for some time now. The ACCC have plenty of information about it on their website available for anyone to review at any time.

Granted that Australia isn’t the US I still think this particular case should strongly be taken into consideration by those participating in some of the more recent questionable schemes that have sprung up over the past year or so.

As these schemes start to gain traction inevitably the more questionable will at some point attract the attention of the regulators and regardless of whether you’re at the top or not, if you’re seen as a top promoter you still could easily find yourself being held responsible for the promotion of a business.

As ACCC Chairman Rod Sims recently put it,

People who are tempted to take part in pyramid selling should note the serious penalties they could face.

I’ve seen a fair bit of discussion mentioning downlines “in the thousands” for a few questionable opportunities these last few months in the comments here at BehindMLM, so I think these recent fines are definitely worth taking into consideration.

As a result of our continuous coverage and analysis of the Zeek Rewards MLM opportunity here at BehindMLM, over the past few months several questions have arisen that to date have remained unanswered.

Today we take you behind the scenes at Zeek Rewards and reveal some of the more pressing issues that have surfaced:

Did OFAC really have anything to do with the recent banning of members? What is behind some of the relationships between well-known figures in the MLM industry and Zeek Rewards, exactly how much fraud are Zeek Rewards dealing with, how do they address it, is the company still vulnerable and if so, why?

Read on as we explore these very questions and more.

Probably the most pressing question regarding Zeek Rewards these past few months has been “why exactly did Zeek Rewards start banning members from various countries?”

For those who missed the original controversy, back in early April Zeek Rewards abruptly enforced a blanket ban on members from several countries, including Serbia, Slovenia, Belarus, Egypt, Croatia and Macedonia.

Initially the reason given for these bans by Zeek Rewards support suggested that international politics were behind the bans:

We do not have total knowledge of what happened. What I do know is that it is something with your countries government policies (not the Serbian people itself), that has required us to not list your country anymore.

Under mounting pressure over the vagueness of this reason, Paul Burks (CEO of Zeek Rewards and Zeekler) then put out a press release explaining that

The United States Government has established an Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) through the US Treasury Department.

This Federal agency maintains a list of “sanctioned countries” (and) under US law it is illegal for a US based individual or company to do business with individuals of companies in those countries.

After I contacted OFAC, they refuted this claim stating that they do “not currently administer comprehensive sanctions programs against the countries listed in your email“.

Since then, to date there has been no official explanation, clarification or explanation as to what exactly happened from Zeek Rewards.

Until now.

Information recently received by BehindMLM explains in detail what prompted the bans and why they happened:

It had nothing to do with OFAC. For a sustained period of time in Feb the company experienced 85% of all site transactions as fraud out of asia/indonesia.

In January 2012, 1.5 million visa/mastercard numbers were breached by hackers – that means 1.5 million stolen card numbers were being sold for fraud purposes.

Fraud was taking place on Zeekler auctions and through the bid purchases before then (and still is), but not on this kind of scale because there weren’t this many numbers out there in the hands of fraudsters before.

Fraudsters all scrambled to find places where they could cash in on the stolen cards and because of the way Zeekler operates – the business model and technology was easy to exploit for that purpose.

Zeekler probably would have been fine if they had fraud protocols in place so they didn’t identify it immediately and they didn’t have the technical capability.

Visa/Mastercard was taking responsibility for the breech and their zero liability policy protected card holders. Payment gateways that have fraud protocols in place WERE ABLE TO IMMEDIATELY IDENTIFY FRAUD AT THEIR CUSTOMER LEVEL, so the payment gateways cut Zeekler off because of the amount of fraud being processed through the site.

Zeekler had to reduce the fraud to get the payment gateways back. The majority of the fraud was coming out of a select number of countries, so their solution was instead of solving the problem, (to) just block entire countries from transacting on the site.

They compounded the problem by instead of telling the truth, taking responsibility with some of the language Visa/Mastercard provided to corporate customers, or deferring the answer they blamed OFAC, when that failed, they said it was a DDOS attack.

This again compounded the problem because once you publicly say a large site can be downed with DDOS, every amateur hacker in the world wants those bragging rights.

It was also indicated that whilst there are definitely ongoing DDOS issues affecting Zeek’s sites, that my source hadn’t seen anything indicating that these issues existed prior to Zeek announcing the DDOS attacks on their news blog.

How bad were the DDOS attacks? Alberto Mujica (friend of CEO Paul Burks) sent out an email on April 10th detailing the full extent at the time:

Hello Dan, Dawn and Paul,

Attached is a sample list of IP addresses seen attacking Zeek Rewards today.

The offending IP addresses are found to be consuming roughly 2.5Gbs of bandwidth. There are roughly 4000 IPs so far attacking the site.

The list detailed as described about 4000 IPs which were then presumably blocked from accessing Zeek’s online properties. This IP blocking protection, whilst largely ineffectual due to the obvious deployment of botnet swarms, was the primary defense method deployed to deal with the attacks.

So, what started with 1 fire is now 3 and the first fire was never actually put out because blocking ips doesn’t solve the hole in the system that allowed the fraud to begin with.

In the midst of all this – because there was so much fraud on the site and they failed to follow visa’s guidelines handling it, the payment gateways ceased doing business with Zeekler so affiliates couldn’t get paid unless someone manually processed them.

Not being able to use credit cards has been a huge thorn in the side of Zeek Rewards as to date they’ve failed to adequately or sufficiently explain why members cannot use credit cards to perform certain actions within the company.

Furthermore Zeek Rewards has only ever suggested that they themselves made the decision to stop accepting payments from credit cards, rather than acknowledge that they were cut off by payment processors.

In February 2012 Zeek Rewards did admit that hundreds and thousands of dollars of fraud was occuring through the company, but this was after the fact and failed to mention that around this time constituted 85% of all transactions being processed by the company.

Around this time payment delays were starting to be noticed by Zeek Rewards affiliates and shortly thereafter

all hell broke loose… Dawn called in O H Brown to get other payment gateways and in their mind it solved the problem but, again, the root cause was NEVER addressed – the technical infrastructure that allowed for the fraud and the DDOS (still) existed.

Since then Zeek Rewards and Zeekler have been up and down like a yo-yo with the company citing repeatedly that they are either under DDOS attack or are upgrading or maintaining their systems.

This in itself is questionable when you consider that

everything comes down to politics and cronyism. Dawn’s son and Paul used old code from Free Store Club written in ASP (a very old language with distinct limitations and security issues) to start Zeekler. They just modified FSC code to be an affiliate penny auction site and used that db to market it.

Paul (and possibly) Dan (don’t) know modern languages or platforms like .Net, PHP or Ruby on Rails or work with big data solutions like hadoop – and they can’t really get new developers to jump in and fix what’s there right away because the code isn’t documented and they didn’t use SVN so they can’t work in development teams.

Basically, only 1 developer can edit in the entire code base at one time. If they used the proper systems and protocols they could work with a team of 3-5 developers and a big data guy to redevelop the system in a few months.

The code is very old, very insecure, undocumented, never reviewed before pushed live, etc and the database is a complete disaster that has to be optimized before it will ever perform properly – so the site is slow, unstable and almost impossible to secure and control.

They also host out of a single datacenter in Miami on 6 servers that is owned by Paul’s friend Albert. You cannot run a site of their size or traffic at a single datacenter. Their choice of hosting in miami is the reason they were taken down by the DDOS.

They should, like everyone else, host in the cloud on something like Amazon S3 so they can balance server load across multiple data centers in multiple geographic locations and have a dedicated server admin that would manage the bandwidth so they wouldn’t have outages if they have DDOS attacks.

The technical infrastructure is completely inadequate for the traffic and transactions on the site and they KNOW it. But they refuse to do what any other company that expects to be around in 5 years would – redevelop their infrastructure to handle their explosive growth with solid technologies.

They are using ASP code (a very old scripting language) from paul’s previous venture, Free Store Club (i don’t even think he transferred the IP rights on it) and modifying it to be an affiliate penny auction site.

With all the financial success Zeekler and Zeek Rewards claim to be enjoying, why none of the above has been actioned or addressed remains a mystery.

Are Zeek Rewards really exposing their affiliates and entire business operations to ongoing risk and uncertainty due to internal company politics and cronyism?

Moving on, much was made recently of some positive commentary in the Network Marketing Business Journal back in April. Published by Keith Laggos, turns out this wasn’t the glowing independent third-party endorsement many touted it as:

Dawn said she bought $100K worth of prints of NMBJ and Keith’s personal consulting time to review Zeekler for compliancy and in return Zeek gets good play in the mag.

I would not call the coverage in NMBJ anything other than an advertorial it is not journalism – Keith’s name might be on the piece but Dawn wrote most of it.

Peter Mingils is the Executive Vice President of the Association of Network Marketing Professionals (ANMP) and also seems to have a strong relationship with Zeek Rewards:

he is a paid consultant to build out a training system for affiliates – he attends every marketing and training meeting and while I do not know the exact arrangements if there is new work on the table he almost always gets it.

Many questions have been made recently regarding the nature of the relationship between Troy Dooly from MLM Helpdesk and Zeek Rewards. Beginning a few months ago, there was a noticeable shift in attitude in Dooly’s reporting which seemed to stem from nothing more than attendance at a Zeek Rewards VIP Red Carpet Event and talking to Zeek Rewards management.

Troy Dooly is listed as a Committee member over at ANMP and on his involvement in Zeek Rewards my source had this to say:

I believe he was initially critical of Zeekler, but I think it was Keith Laggos that reached out to him and sat down with Dawn and him in Vegas.

Troy and Peter were brought to the table by OH – after they learned that Troy was negative on Zeek, they held a meeting with him in Vegas. He comes to all events and is favorable on the company now.

I do not know if any money is exchanged for consulting or other services but he does attend all the Zeekler events, speaks at events to affiliates on Zeek’s behalf and now gives positive reviews on the company.

Based on the fact that they pay everyone…

The thought was left unfinished at the time but at a later date the source further elaborated:

(Dooly) is now paid. – he comes to all events and is favorable on the company now.

In the past Dooly has denied being paid directly by Zeek Rewards (and I still personally give him the benefit of the doubt) but at the same time has hinted at a possible financial relationship existing between the ANMP and Zeek Rewards:

when a company is willing to have me speak on issues surrounding network marketing to their distributors as a Board Member of the Association of Network Marketing Professionals, then I will gladly do it.

Observing the strong implication of a financial arrangement between the ANMP and Zeek Rewards, I contacted Dooly for further information and received this reply:

None of the companies Rex Venture Capital, Zeekler or Zeek Rewards, or any other company or entity controlled by Paul Burks or anyone else for that matter who might have some form of vested interest in any of the above companies are members or sponsors of the ANMP outside of Dawn & Alex.

Dawn and Alex are paying member. She paid the $50 annual individual membership fee.

That said, I’m still finding it hard to not read between the lines when it comes to the relationship between ANMP executive and committee members and Zeek Rewards but for now I’ll leave it at that.

In summation,

• O H Brown does videos
• Troy Dooly – general advocate and speaks at events
• Peter Mingils produces affiliate training materials
• Keith Laggos is paid huge sums for the prints and reprints of his mags.

Looking forward, with compliance clearly taking centre stage as Zeek Rewards struggles to avoid being referred to as an investment scheme without actually changing the core of their 90 day ROI business model, I’ll leave you with some parting insight:

Their biggest concern right now is not the tech or fraud but the compliancy course.

The affiliates are continuing to sell the opportunity in a way that seems like a security because honestly – put the penny auction and the mlm thing together and how can it not be construed as such? It’s the easiest way to explain it.

They are investing all this money into compliancy because they already have a number of State’s attorneys sniffing around.

Stay tuned…


Footnote: In order to protect my source(s) discussion regarding their identity(ies) will not be permitted in the comments below. Members of Zeek Rewards who are able to are wholly encouraged to verify the information published above for its accuracy with the company itself.

I myself have verified the credibility of the source(s) used and am satisfied at the time of publication with the accuracy of the information provided.

There is no information on the Resort Cruise Club International website indicating  who runs or owns the business.

The domain ‘resortcruiseclub.com’ however was registered on the 5th of April 2012 and lists a Randal Williams from Prosperity Formula LLC as the domain owner.

Randal Williams (also known as Randy Williams, photo right) first popped up BehindMLM’s radar as one of the co-founders of the recruitment scam Fast Profits Daily. Teaming up with Brett Robinson and Scott Chandler (who had just quit as founders of AutoXTen, another recruitment scam), Williams launched Fast Profits Daily back in September 2011.

Less than six months later, in February 2012 Fast Profits Daily was relaunched as Profit Racer Pro. Profit Racer Pro used the same recruitment commissions model as AutoXTen and Fast Profits Daily before it.

The problem with the business model behind all three companies was that once new members stopped signing up, commissions dried up and the companies fell apart.

Now just three months after the launch of Fast Profits Daily it seems the company has stalled and Williams has decided to launch yet another company, Resort Cruise Club.

Is Resort Cruise Club International just another recruitment scam bound to fail in just a few short months like William’s other MLM ventures, or has he learnt from his mistakes and launched a viable product-based company this time around?

Read on for a full review of the Resorts Cruise Club International MLM opportunity.

The Resort Cruise Club Product Line

Resort Cruise Club International has no retailable products or services. Instead, members of Resorts Cruise Club are required to market and sell membership to the company itself to prospective members.

Membership to Resorts Cruise Club International provides members with access to third-party travel booking services, with the company itself having no part in the purchase of any travel related products or services:

Resort Cruise Club is NOT the “Booker of Travel”. All travel booking are done through our travel partners and their vendors.

In the event you have travel related billing issues, you deal directly with our travel partner to resolve any issues.

The Resort Cruise Club Compensation Plan

The Resorts Cruise Club compensation plan revolves around the sale of $25 and $75 memberships, with 100% of the membership fee being paid out as a commission.

In order to qualify for commissions, members must recruit at least two new members a month.

The basic idea is that you sign members up and earn a $25 or $75 commission monthly, depending on which membership option they choose.

Every 2nd, 4th, 6th and 8th and then 5th membership sale thereafter is passed to your upline. In turn, the same numbered sales of your downline are passed up to you.

Note that if you only purchase the $25 membership option, you are only qualified to earn $25 commissions, the remaining $50 is paid out to your upline.


Premier Membership Commissions

In addition to the basic membership commissions above, Resort Cruise Club also pay out commissions on the sale of Premier Memberships. These Premier Memberships range in price from $247 to $9,997 and are basically extended travel memberships to third-party travel vendors.

On the sale of these memberships Resort Cruise Club offer commissions ranging from $150 to $5,000 and they function in much the same way as the regular membership commissions.

Once again the 2nd, 4th, 6th, 8th and thereafter every 5th sales commissions are rolled up to uplines. One catch with the Premier membership commissions however is that Royal Cruise Club members are only qualified to earn commissions on the sale of Premier memberships they themselves have bought (or lower).

For reference, here are the Premier membership commission payouts (membership cost in brackets):

• Emerald – $150 ($97)
• Diamond – $500 ($697)
• Platinum – $1,000 ($1,617)
• Ambassador – $2,000 ($2,997)
• Executive Ambassador – $3,500 ($4,997)
• Royal Ambassador – $5,000 ($9,997)


For example, if you bought an ‘Ambassador’ Premier membership for $2,997 you’d be entitled to full commissions up to the Ambassador level. If you sold a higher level Premier membership, let’s say an ‘Executive Ambassador’ membership for $4,997 (commission: $3,500) you’d still be entitled to the $2,000 Ambassador level commission, but the remaining $1,500 would be distributed amongst your upline.

Commissions are distributed also according to Premier membership rank. For example in the above scenario, if the immediate upline had only purchased an ‘Emerald’ membership, they’d only get $150 out of the $1,500, with $1,350 continuing to roll up until it was entirely paid out.

Members who have not purchased a Premier membership are naturally not qualified to earn on these commissions.


Coded Bonuses

On top of the regular Premier membership sales commissions outlined above, Royal Cruise Club also pays out a coded bonus up six levels. The first level is your immediate upline, the second their immediate upline and so on and so forth.

Coded bonus commissions are paid out only on Premier membership sales and the payout is split between Level 1 commissions and levels 2 to 6 as follows:

• Emerald – Level 1: $20, Levels 2 to 6: $7
• Diamond – Level 1: $35, Levels 2 to 6: $12
• Platinum – Level 1: $75, Levels 2 to 6: $25
• Ambassador – Level 1: $100, Levels 2 to 6: $35
• Executive Ambassador – Level 1: $250, Levels 2 to 6: $50
• Royal Ambassador – Level 1: $700, Levels 2 to 6: $100


Infinity Power Bonus

The Infinity Power Bonus kicks in once a Resort Cruise Club member has sold five memberships in any given month. Once qualification is achieved, this member then earns a bonus of $10 to $100 (depending on membership level being sold) on every membership sold by their downline for the rest of the month.

The downline members this bonus is earned on can be capped if another member in the downline qualifies for the Infinity Power Bonus.

For example, if you qualify for the Infinity Power Bonus you are then qualified to earn on membership sales by your entire downline. If 2 days later a member on your level 6 also qualifies, the members you can earn on are then restricted to levels 1 to 5.

Joining Resort Cruise Club International

Membership to Resort Cruise Club International comes in two options:

$25 Traveller membership and $75 Cruiser membership with both options attracting a $19.95 a month admin fee.

There are Premier membership above this however they are handled via third-party partners. One of the above two membership options are still required in any case, meaning that both the Traveller and Cruiser membership options are an unavoidable cost of joining Resort Cruise Club International.

Conclusion

Whereas Randy Williams’ past companies focused on a once off membership fee, this time around Williams had added a monthly fee and substantially increased the membership costs into the thousands.

The end result is sadly still an opportunity dependent on recruitment but now with the addition of membership options that cost thousands of dollars, one which could suck a lot more money out of members.

Commissions are only paid out on the level members themselves buy-in at and with 100% of the basic membership commissions being paid out to members, it’s clear that the Royal Cruise Club membership options is a simple cash gifting scheme being played out between members.

The cost of the Premier membership options are grossly inflated to cover the commission payouts to members with commission overheads hitting 80% of the membership price at the Executive Ambassador level.

With these memberships being handled by third-parties though, all that really needs to be analysed are the two membership options offered by Royal Cruise Club themselves, that being the Emerald and Cruiser options.

Members make their money by signing up new members who pay 100% of their membership fees as commissions, whilst the company makes its money from everybody’s $19.95 admin fee.

If people stop joining or paying their monthly membership fees, the entire company fails and all the while no actual products or services are being sold through the company itself.

No doubt members of the company will put up the argument that travel services are available as part of membership to Resort Cruise Club, however the company clearly states otherwise:

Resort Cruise Club is NOT the “Booker of Travel”. All travel booking are done through our travel partners and their vendors.

As with Randal Williams’ other MLM ventures over the past six months or so, it’s easy to see that without a constant influx of new members Resort Cruise Club isn’t going to be able to sustain itself in the long-term.

Sooner or later those new members will dry up and then so too will the Resort Cruise Club opportunity.

Back in 2005 Doug Sleeth founded Printer Shoppe, a wholesale graphic design and printing company (non MLM) that marketed their services and products to US-based businesses.

As I understand it, Printer Shoppe retail centers (electronic kiosks) were set up in participating retail stores who would then, through the kiosks, sell Printer Shoppe’s printing and graphic services at a retail level.

In June 2011 Sleeth then decided to expand his business and launched ViralPrint to expand Printer Shoppe’s retail offering to a wider market.

Read on for a full review of the ViralPrint business opportunity.

The ViralPrint Product Line

ViralPrint, presumably through Printer Shoppe’s established printing network market a variety of printing services. These include business cards, postcards and tri-fold brochures.

I’m not sure whether ViralPrint themselves count Printer Shoppe as a partner but the company does mention that they themselves don’t handle the printing side of the business.

Rather ViralPrint defer the actual printing work to “printing partners” and instead focus on the retail side of things.

The ViralPrint Compensation Plan

ViralPrint use a unilevel compensation plan that pays out 5 levels deep. With a unilevel compensation structure, you are placed at the top and for each customer you acquire, they are placed directly underneath you.

In ViralPrint customers and members are one and the same with every customer you acquire being able to go on and find customers themselves.

In this manner each customer you yourself refer becomes your level 1, and any customers/members your level 1 refer to the company become your level 2 and so on and so forth.

Using this unilevel structure, ViralPrint pay out commissions on all product sales made by anyone who falls within 5 levels of your unilevel team:

• Level 1 – 10%
• Level 2 – 5%
• Level 3 – 3%
• Level 4 – 2%
• Level 5 – 1%

Joining ViralPrint

ViralPrint membership is free.

Conclusion

The biggest advantage of ViralPrint’s compensation plan is that it strongly compliments their product offering. Printing and graphic services are a truly consumable product and with commissions only being paid out on sales, there’s no incentive to just recruit new members and move on.

Instead, ViralPrint members will have to focus on sales and retaining customers if they wish to grow their business and enjoy success.

The ViralPrint compensation plan does lean more towards an affiliate style setup but most definitely does pay out on multiple levels, allowing members to build teams if they so wish. Note that doing so alone won’t generate commissions as products and services still need to be ordered.

Internal consumption also doesn’t seem to be an issue due to the fact that you are only paid out on other people’s orders.

In a greater marketing sense it is worth noting that the paper publishing industry is quite well established and competition is going to be steep. As a new ViralPrint member, given that you’re entirely going to be relying on attracting new members and customers (the lack of differentiation in the compensation plan is a non-issue given there are no membership fees), how effectively you can market ViralPrint’s products is critical.

I’d strongly suggest that any new members themselves do a test purchase to evaluate the quality of ViralPrint’s products and see if they’d feel comfortable marketing them to a wider audience. Also it’d be worthwhile evaluating your competition and seeing how they compare pricewise.

ViralPrint do offer a general favourable comparison on their website but a local comparison (online/offline) wouldn’t hurt.

In the age of the internet traditional paper marketing might have taken a back seat but the simple business card is still a staple of traditional face-to-face offline marketing.

If you’re happy with ViralPrint’s products and pricepoints and feel you can establish a customerbase, business model wise ViralPrint seems like a solid opportunity to have a crack at.

Over the past year or so I’ve had a few requests from readers to review the Lyoness MLM business opportunity. The first time this happened I added Lyoness to my review list and when the time came went over their site to start my research.

A few hours and a massive headache later, I closed my browser window and gave up. I concluded that Lyoness had put so little thought and effort into the coherency of explaining their business, that it simply wasn’t worth my time to try to understand the business model.

Taking recent strides to beef up their US presence however, Lyoness has finally realised that their business presentations and information desperately needed a massive overhaul.

Armed with some decent and clear information on the company and the business model, I’m now able to present a complete review of the Lyoness US business opportunity.


Foreword: Please note that for the purposes of this Lyoness review I’m solely analysing the US division of the company. As far as the international Lyoness opportunity goes it’s still painfully impossible to understand and not worth wasting my time trying to dissect it.

The Company

Lyoness is headed up by CEO Hubert Freidl (photo right), who founded and launched the company back in 2003.

I’ve seen Freidl referred to as a mathematician but I’m not exactly sure what he was doing prior to 2003 or whether or not he has a history in MLM. There doesn’t appear to be too much information out there.

The Lyoness Product Line

Lyoness itself doesn’t have any products that members can sell. Rather, the company’s members market membership to the company to new members.

Once a member of Lyoness, members are issued a “cashback card” which can then grants the user a cashback on specific purchases from partnered retailers (loyalty partners).

The Lyoness Compensation Plan

Whereas the Lyoness international compensation plan is confusing and presented poorly, Lyoness in the US have stripped out some of the more confusing aspects of the plan and streamlined it down.


Retail Cashback

Not really a commission but still effectively money in a Lyoness member’s pocket, the Lyoness cashback is effective on all purchases (online and offline) and giftcard purchases from selected retail partners.

The cashback amount varies between 1 and 2% and is paid out weekly (minimum cashout balance is $15).

Additionally, a 0.5% cashback is also offered on the purchases made by members you have directly recruited (down 2 levels) into the company.


Accounting Units

Accounting Units are where the Lyoness compensation plan starts to get a little complicated.

Starting with you, every member you recruit is placed below you and forms your downline, along with any members your recruited members recruit and so on and so forth.

For the purposes of accounting units, Lyoness use a binary compensation plan system. which means that directly underneath you are two member positions, underneath those positions are another two member positions and so on and so forth. Starting off with the initial two member positions under you, each of these sides is a seperate team.

For each $75 earnt in commissions generated, paid out in cashback bonuses (both direct cashback and referral cashbacks) or $75 put down by members as a downpayment towards a gift card or payment, the company counts you as having generated one ‘accounting unit’.

For each accounting unit you generate, when 35 of the same units have been generated by your left binary team and 35 by your right team (for a total of 70), your accounting unit is redeemable for a $675 commission.

When four of your personally recruited downline members have each generated at least one accounting unit, you can also claim a loyalty cash bonus which further increases the accounting bonus commission payout by $198 (for a total payout of $873).

The $675 must be spent with a Lyoness retail partner, whereas the $198 loyalty commission is paid out as cash.

In addition to the $75 accounting units above, Lyoness also offer four other tiers that function in the same manner as the $75 AC I accounting unit commissions:

• AC II – $225 (30 units required to be purchased by both binary teams, payout is $1869 ($594 cash, $1275 credit))
• AC III – $600 (25 units required to be purchased by both binary teams, payout is $4380 ($1980 cash, $2400 credit))
• AC IV – $1800 (25 units required to be purchased by both binary teams, payout is $13,140 ($5940 cash, $7200 credit))
• AC V – $6000 (25 units required to be purchased by both binary teams, payout is $43,800 ($19,800 cash, $24,000 credit))


Membership Ranks

Within the Lyoness compensation plan there are a total of 8 levels of membership. At each level members are awarded a bonus as well as an increase on the amount they earn per accounting unit they receive a bonus on.

Members gain membership ranks based on the number of accounting units they have converted into cash returns.

Joining Lyoness

Membership to Lyoness is free. There are no fees whatsoever to become a member of the company.

Conclusion

On the surface, Lyoness looks like a regular enough cashback member rewards scheme and that part of the business I have absolutely no problem with.

You sign up for free, you shop and you earn a 1-2% cashback and a 0.5% cashback on the purchases of people you refer (and members they refer).

If this was the extent of the Lyoness compensation plan then, apart from it not really being MLM my conclusion would stop short here. The inclusion of “accounting units” however throws the entire Lyoness business model into question and raises some serious questions.

From a rewards viewpoint, the idea that members can earn an additional commissions as members in their downlines accumulate accounting units is solid.

What Lyoness then do however is allow their members to purchase these accounting units themselves.

Jump start your Lyoness benefits with “Down Payments” against a specific gift card order for future purchases.

The down payment is converted into units, which are placed in your Lyoness accounting program.

Being a “down payment”, as I understand it the money stays with Lyoness itself as nothing has been purchased from any retailer. At a later stage you could cash out a gift card but there doesn’t appear to be any onus or requirement to do so (you can’t redeem the money as cash so it makes sense to request a gift card).

Effectively you pay your $75, $225, $600, $1800 or $6,000 to Lyoness and they give you an accounting unit. Then after between 20-35 people in your downline make a similar payment, you are paid a lump sum cash payment as a loyalty commission, as well as a lump sum to be used in their retail network.

With how much you are paid and the amount of people needed to create accounting units above and below you directly tied into the value of your own accounting unit, it’s very hard not to see this as a return on the money paid to Lyoness for an accounting unit.

Lyoness themselves even encourage this:

Become a Business Member

The fastest way to become a Business member is by making a down payment of $3000 on future purchases.

Down payment: $ 3,000
Loyalty Credit: $ 15,750
Loyalty Commission: $ 9,108

Total Benefits: $ 24,858

In the above example, ignoring the loyalty credit, the investing member has generated an effective 303% return on their original $3000 investment. This return is generated and paid out solely on the condition of getting other members to invest in their downline.

Now as far as I can tell, the only difference between a business member and anyone else in Lyoness is the $3000 they’ve pumped into the company.

Given that you can entirely bypass the purchasing of products from retailers and cashback side of Lyoness and just focus on purchasing accounting units with your own money and encouraging others to do the same, it’s hard to not look at it as an investment scheme.

Effectively, the Lyoness compensation plan can be broken down into five investment plans:

1. AC I – invest $75 with Lyoness and once 70 similar investments are made by your downline, Lyoness will pay out $873 (264% cash ROI + 900% credit ROI = 1164% total ROI)
2. AC II – invest $225 with Lyoness and once 60 similar investments have been made by your downline, Lyoness will pay out $1869 (264% cash ROI + 566% credit ROI = 830% total ROI)
3. AC III – invest $600 with Lyoness and once 50 similar investments have been made by your downline, Lyoness will pay out $4380 (330% cash ROI + 400% credit ROI = 730% total ROI)
4. AC IV – invest $1800 with Lyoness and once 50 similar investments have been made by your downline, Lyoness will pay out $13,140 (330% cash ROI + 400% credit ROI = 730% total ROI)
5. AC V – invest $6000 with Lyoness and once 50 similar investments have been made by your downline, Lyoness will pay out $43,800 (330% cash ROI + 400% credit ROI = 730% total ROI)


Note that if downline members make multiple investments individually, less people overall are required to invest to reach the targets of 70, 60 and 50 investments respectively. Also if the initial investor does not meet the cash return requirements (loyalty commissions), these ROIs are still paid out but go to the first available qualifying upline member.

Obviously not all of these counted units are going to be straight cash injections into the company and no doubt a lot of legit cashback accounting units are created, but the fact remains that the above scenarios are readily occurable.

Moreso when you consider that each member is relying on money being pumped into Lyoness by their downline (people they’ve recruited and people their recruits have recruited).

Lyoness do state that

down payments are neither investments nor loyalty credits, they are down payments on a specific gift card order for future purchases.

But given that there’s no requirement to put the money towards an actual purchase pending a ROI payout, I don’t see how members injecting money into Lyoness for a guaranteed return upon certain conditions (people above and below you creating accounting units) isn’t just a straight out investment with a paid return.

Finally there’s the question of revenue. Lyoness charge no membership fees and as far as retailers go, they are charged a once off registration fee of between $392 – $790 USD and then just $26 USD a month thereafter.

Even with thousands of stores participating, when you consider how many members Lyoness claim to have (in the millions)… it’s clear that at $26 USD a month the company would struggle to pay out the accounting unit returns (remember that the 0.5-2% cashbacks are paid out by retailers and not Lyoness itself).

Consider though that at the $75 accounting unit level, $5250 is the revenue generated by the creation of 70 member paid accounting units (enough revenue to pay out six $75 accounting unit ROIs), and it’s easy to see where the money comes from.

Like I said earlier, obviously not all the units are going to be member payments and there will be legit cashback accounting units in there so the numbers aren’t exact, but when you factor in that these cashback accounting units are actually a loss to Lyoness itself when it comes to payouts, it’s clear that the business model relies on a significant portion of the accounting units being directly paid for by members themselves.

As a cashback rewards program, given that Lyoness don’t themselves pay out the cashbacks, as long as they have retail partners that side of the business is sustainable. When it comes to the whole accounting units and MLM side of things though, all I’m seeing is what alarmingly resembles a Ponzi scheme.

Lyoness themselves acknowledge that

money spent on everyday necessities may generate several hundred dollars in Cashback per year

but as a business opportunity, “several hundred dollars a year” isn’t really worth writing home about (it’s only a few thousand in accounting unit payouts). Not withstanding the fact that in order to legitimately generate just one $75 accounting unit, members themselves must spend at least $3750 at Lyoness’ retail partner stores (less if you consider the 0.5% referral payment).

With the legit use of the cashback card no doubt joe average can generate a few cashback accounting units a year but if you want to earn anything considerable, we’re talking either massive retail spend on your behalf or a gargantuan downline, they themselves spending huge amounts on retail.

Much easier to just pay Lyoness $75-$6000 directly yourself and get others to do the same no?

Not a straight out Ponzi granted what with the sprinkling of legit cashback earned accounting units added to the mix and no fixed ROI timeframe, but a largely member funded scheme nonetheless.

Ever since the Solomon James writ 383 petition was filed late last year, Speak Asia, AISPA and senior panelists have harped on and on about how this one case was supposed to decide everything.

“Don’t worry about anything else, just follow the Supreme Court and they’ll sort everything out” was pretty much the line towed by those running things. Instilled with the confidence that the highest court in India was indeed handling all matters Speak Asia, the company’s panelists all too eagerly swallowed the company line and rallied against critics, the media and the various authorities investigating Speak Asia.

Seemingly out of the blue however, around a fortnight ago Speak Asia’s defacto management team in India, AISPA, started to publicly put forth a new direction. After nearly a year of proclaiming that the Supreme Court would fix everything and ensure Speak Asia a business restart, all of a sudden AISPA were now telling panelists to pretty much ignore all court cases.

Something didn’t add up, and yesterday why the sudden shift in company management policy regarding the subduing of panelists was finally made clear.

On the 21st of March 2012, AISPA told the Mumbai High Court that

the Apex Court has appointed a mediator and the mediator (has) seized the entire case.

This was infact something AISPA had been claiming for a while now and formed one of the cornerstone arguments of both AISPA and Speak Asia’s coordinated launching of court cases to have criminal investigations into Speak Asia quashed.

Giving AISPA the benefit of the doubt and not wanting to possibly rule over the Supreme Court (or interfere with the Supreme Court case if it was indeed dealing with criminal investigations into Speak Asia), the Mumbai High Court ordered a stay on the EOW’s investigation and asked that they “obtain clarification” from the Supreme Court regarding the writ 383 petition and criminal investigations.

In yesterday’s hearing of the writ 383 petition that clarification was made crystal clear with the Supreme Court clarifying once and for all

that (the) pendency of this matter (writ 383) either before the Mediator or before this Court will not hamper with the investigation.

In one statement, any notion that the Supreme Court writ 383 case had anything at all to do with any of the criminal investigations currently open against Speak Asia was shattered.

Naturally in light of this, the pertinent question then is “so what matter is the Supreme Court handling in the writ 383 case”?

To date the only matter discussed publicly in any order of the Supreme Court issued in regards to the writ 383 case has been the payment of owed money to the signed 115 petitioners on the writ itself.

To this end, Speak Asia has deposited 50 crore rupees and (misguidedly) hoped that this small token payment would settle all matters and dispose of the case (along with all other cases and investigations currently open that Speak Asia are involved in).

As per what information has been made public in the Supreme Court orders, while there has been some talk of tax liabilities but it’s unclear as to the status of such matter(s).

In any case, in yesterday’s Supreme Court order also ordered the listing of

all applications along with the main matter on 8th August, 2012 for final disposal.

The order is unclear in regards to the specifics of the applications it is referring to, but the fact that they have slated the case for final disposal come August means it is unlikely that any new matters are going to be taken up.

Thus as far as is publicly known, the scope of the writ 383 case is limited solely to addressing the owed payments to the 115 petitioners and possibly some tax liabilities.

There has been no talk of exit options, business restarts or anything else. Unofficial AISPA spokesperson Anjali has repeatedly made mention of an intervention application AISPA was planning to file (‘aispa has made an intervention application and is standing by for the right time to enter the process‘), but the likelihood any such application would be heard let alone accepted with the case slated for final disposal in the next hearing seems nonexistent now.

Although not clarified by AISPA or Anjali directly, it is believed their intervention order would call on the Supreme Court to make the action of paying off the 115 signed petitioners binding to all panelists who are owed money. Nevermind the fact that Speak Asia simply don’t have a recorded revenue anywhere near the 30,000 cr they currently owe all 1.2 million panelists.

One could make the argument that the request of the list of panelists details by the mediator R.C. Lahoti could indicate he was going to consider what was owed to all panelists, but I believe it’s far more probable that this information is required to be verified by the mediator before any money is ordered paid to the signed 115 petitioners.

The notion that one man would oversee the payments owed to 1.2 million panelists is not at all likely, especially when there has to date been no public mention or acknowledgement by the Supreme Court of any such notion in the nine months since writ 383 begun.

From the looks of it, the EOW have agreed to hand over the required information requested by the mediator (in regards to the 115 petitioners) on the assurance that this action ‘will not hamper’ their investigation.

After validation and confirmation by the mediator, the case then will go back to court in August and the issue of payment to the 115 signed petitioners will then be resolved. As I mentioned earlier, some tax liability issues might be included for resolve on this date but this remains unclear per the court’s orders.

That’s pretty much where we’re at regarding the writ 383 case and longtime readers will note two things – the writ 383 case has not (now or ever) had anything to do with criminal proceedings and investigation into Speak Asia, business restarts or exit options.

I myself had called out the Lahoti mediation committee’s uselessness back in November of last year and it appears that, as far as payments to all panelists and addressing criminal liabilities goes – that was entirely accurate.

Yesterday’s order was of course great news to the 115 signed petitioners, who for once appear to now have an end date in their sights, but for everyone else the lies they’ve been fed by Speak Asia and AISPA have only now been officially exposed for what they are.

With Speak Asia and AISPA both employing high-priced legal teams (paid for with panelist’s money), I suspect they saw the writing on the wall before yesterday’s Supreme Court order and as such have launched a petition signing campaign tomorrow on Saturday the 11th May.

The fact that Speak Asia, through AISPA are now openly calling on panelists to ignore any and all court cases only drives home the point that neither party can pretend or mislead people as to the scope of writ 383, nor the fact that their major arguments in all investigation and FIR quashing cases that the Supreme Court is handling everything, has been finally blown out of the water by no less than the Supreme Court itself.

As such, from what I gather come tomorrow those still willing to blindly follow Speak Asia’s management through AISPA will meet up, sign a petition with a list of demands to be made to Indian authorities (an admission in itself that they cannot stop police investigations into Speak Asia by wasting everybody’s time in court), and the placing of stickers on cars as some sort of coordinated protest effort.

With the Supreme Court clearing the way for criminal investigations into Speak Asia to continue, no doubt any such demands from Speak Asia’s management regarding the dropping of investigations will have trouble finding an audience.

Looking forward, all eyes will now no doubt turn to the next hearing of AISPA’s writ 3611 in the Mumbai High Court that is next due for hearing on the 28th June. With the EOW having received concrete clarification that the Supreme Court writ 383 case has no impact on any criminal investigation, one would imagine the High Court will remove the stay in place on the EOW’s investigation, along with the stay on arrests in connection to the case.

Before the High Court placed a stay on the investigation, the EOW were poised to arrest Bahirwani, presumably on suspicion of working in co-ordination with Speak Asia’s fugitive management in hiding and effectively serving as local defacto management for the company.

Once the High Court removes the stay on the EOW’s investigation, it’ll be interesting to see if the true relationship between AISPA, Bahirwani and Speak Asia will finally be revealed.

Last time Bahirwani caught wind of his pending arrest he fled and went on the run from authorities for nearly two months before his lawyers made the argument in court that the Supreme Court was “handling” the EOW’s case. With that argument now thrown out of the window by the Supreme Court it’ll be interesting to see what happens now.

I had considered that the EOW might resume their investigation taking a cue from the Supreme Court, but going over the High Court’s order it appears they do have to report back to the High Court first before getting back to their investigation. If I was the EOW I’d be gunning for a pre-poning of the writ 3611 case but I suppose short of Bahirwani fleeing again before June 28th there’s not all that much for them to worry about.

One final aspect to consider is also how the Supreme Court’s clarification might affect other cases involving the quashing of FIRs and criminal investigations. Most notably Speak Asia have launched a case against the CID in the Supreme Court and no doubt they were using much of the same argument(s) that AISPA were. Arguments that now hold little weight.

The Speak Asia vs. CID case is due back in court on the 2nd of July so we’ll have to wait and see what happens there.

In the meantime those that have been cheated, Speak Asia’s panelists, could accept the hard reality that this entire legal charade has been nothing more than an exercise with no other goal than to secure the legal absolution of company management for running the largest Ponzi scheme in Indian history, or give some blood tomorrow (a worthy action in itself) and sign petitions demanding India legalize Ponzi schemes immediately and permit Speak Asia to restart business operations.

Best of luck guys.

There is no information on the 10 Daily Cash website indicating who owns or runs the company.

The domain ’10dailycash.com’ was registered on the 26th April 2012 and lists the domain registrant as:

owner-name: Michael Chardi
owner-street: NYStreen No.3
owner-city: Sydney
owner-state: Sydney
owner-zip: 2993992
owner-country: AT
owner-phone: +43.83326556255
owner-fax:
owner-email: script4money@gmail.com

Interestingly enough the ‘admin’ contact details are different from the domain owner details:

admin-name: Wersen Janyers
admin-street: NY street no.342
admin-city: Florida
admin-state: Florida
admin-zip: 898773884
admin-country: UA
admin-phone: +380.3226545488
admin-fax:
admin-email: forexplanet@ymail.com

A quick search on both emails (‘forexplanet@ymail.com’ and ‘script4money@gmail.com’) reveals both emails have previously been tied into multiple dodgy looking investment schemes, the bulk of which are no longer operational.

You’ll note that the addresses provided in the domain registration also don’t really make sense either so I’m pretty sure that both listed contacts are fake IDs.

As always, if a 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.

The 10 Daily Cash Product Line

10 Daily Cash has no retailable product or service. Instead, members are required to make investments in the company and in turn then receive a return on their investment (ROI) over a specified amount of time.

These investments are made in $10 allotments and bundled with each investment are advertising credits. These credits are useable on an inhouse advertising network that features on the 10 Daily Cash website.

The 10 Daily Cash Compensation Plan

10 Daily Cash offer members four investment plans each with slightly different ROIs and maturity periods:

• 4% daily ROI over 50 days (200% total ROI)
• 3% daily ROI over 75 days (225% total ROI)
• 2% daily ROI over 100 days (200% total ROI)
• 10% daily ROI over 25 days (250% total ROI)
• 5% daily ROI over 40 days (200% total ROI)


Why 10 Daily Cash bother offering five investment options is beyond me, seeing as option 4 is most likely what every member investing is going to opt in for (why wait longer to earn less?).

10 Daily Cash pay out their ROIs at a rate of 70/30, meaning that at any given time 70% of the total ROI is able to be cashed out with 30% of it being required to be re-invested back into the company.

In addition to investment returns, 10 Daily Cash also pay out a 10% commission on any investments made by members you recruit.

Joining 10 Daily Cash

Membership to 10 Daily Cash is free however members must invest if they wish to participate in the compensation plan and earn money.

Free members are able to generate income via the recruitment of others and getting them to invest, however they themselves must first invest if they wish to cash out these earnings.

Conclusion

10 Daily Cash claim that they are

an advertising program that generates traffic for your products and/or services and also rewards you for advertising using our platform!

10dailycash.com IS NOT AN INVESTMENT PROGRAM.

Quite obviously though, if you consider that advertising cannot be bought without participating in the investment program and that the company offer fixed rate ROIs on any money invested in the company, 10 Daily Cash is an investment scheme.

This is further evidenced in the 10 Daily Cash refund policy, which states:

Once you have made your purchase, you are allocated with advertising credits which you can use straight away.

No refund will be offered.

If advertising credits were infact being purchased, the non-use of any such credits would surely entitle the purchasing member to refund. However with 10 Daily Cash using newly invested money to pay out owed existing returns, this is clearly not possible.

Amusingly, they even refer to the money invested by members as such:

The second bit of text I’ve underlined states that ‘10dailycash.com never gives and makes any guarantee of earnings or profits‘, yet quite obviously by guaranteeing a set ROI this is obviously a bogus claim.

With anonymous owners and a compensation plan that merely shuffles money invested by members around to pay out ROIs on existing investments, 10 Daily Cash is pretty much your everyday run-of-the-mill Ponzi scheme.