Just how much of MLM is smoke and mirrors (and illusions of wealth)?

Recently, an article on BehindMLM caught my attention. The title was "Wakaya Perfection Field Leader sentenced to prison for fraud".

It's not the fraud itself though, but the circumstances that caught my attention.

According to the article, Andre Vaughn *had* an illustrious MLM career MLM.

In an article in Networking Times, Vaughn claimed to have found MLM on "February 24, 2005".

In 2012 Youngevity brochure, Vaughn was named as one of the "million dollar earners"

In 2014, he was cited as "Senior Vice Chairman," and "Marketing Director" of Youngevity.

Vaughn jumped ship to Wakaya Perfection in late 2015 when the existing leader left the company with several top "officers". This resulted in Youngevity and Wakaya suing and countersuing each other.

He was cited as "Founding Member" and "Gold Member Billionaire's Inner Circle" in Wakaya. His current rank is believed to be "Blue Diamond Ambassador" (among the highest") which I presume, comes with a hefty paycheck.

Then I learned that Vaughn pled guilty to bankruptcy fraud... Fraudulently declaring bankruptcy together and separately with his wife Monique (with twins) in

• April 2005
• June 2012
• July 2013
• April 2015. 

Now let's put that in perspective by lining up the events, just those we can document. And that doesn't even include any of his Wakaya titles.

• Joined MLM in February 2005
• Declared bankruptcy in April 2005
• Joined Youngevity sometime prior to 2012 (probably 2009?)
• Million dollar earner in Yougevity in 2012
• Declared bankruptcy in June 2012
• Declared bankruptcy in July 2013
• Senior Vice Chairman, Marketing Directory of Youngevity in 2014
• Declared bankruptcy in April 2015

Either this guy declares bankruptcy at a whim to cheat his creditors, or MLM doesn't pay NEARLY enough and his "million earner" status was an illusion. The truth is probably somewhere in between.

In fact, even Vaughn's accomplishments at Youngevity is in doubt. In the lawsuit between Youngevity and Wakaya, Youngevity alleged that then-president Andreoli "force qualified" Vaughn and his wife (i.e. they got the rank WITHOUT meeting the required goals) resulting in them getting paid more without actually bringing in more sales.

Either MLM attracts this sort of people... or encourages this sort of behavior.

JM Ocean Avenue: Why did Ocean Avenue merge with a suspect scheme out of China called JM International?

Ocean Avenue *was* a nutritional supplement based MLM that started in roughly 2012. After a rough tossle with Visalus due to some people jumping ship, which culminated apparently with a theft of laptop from Ocean Avenue office in 2013, Ocean Avenue apparently merged with a Chinese company called JM International in 2014, according to a member:

OK JM International did a take over of Ocean Avenue back in 2014.
JMOA is part of Joy May who is owned by Joe Zhou, Bruce Fang and Jackie Zhang – JMOA is a $2 Billion company based out of china.
The Ocean Avenue managment stayed after the take over but it was not a happy merger and although Hop Rocket was initially going to be part of JMOA, it was decided that the US team would relinquish their interest in JMOA and everyone in the US office wanted to move to Hop Rocket which soft launched just 1 week ago.

Comment posted by Dottie Lotto on 6-AUG-2015

But who/what is JM International? Seems all we know are some Americanized names, and "it's out of China". (The 2 billion can't be trusted as it's unclear it's revenue, profit, products sold, cumulative or single year, etc.)

So who is JM International? If you search for JM International, , you will find ONLY "JMOA" (JM Ocean Avenue). In fact, you can't even find what JM stands for.

What's really interesting is how the "board of directors" change depending on which site you access, as you can't tell which is official and which is not. Some pages include Tim Richerson and Fred Ninow, others included two other Chinese names (Peter Li and Gary Ren).

However, after a bit of searching, I found an alternate domain, jmtop.com, which appears also to be a global corporate site. However, what's REALLY interesting is for a company allegedly started in China, it has NO CHINESE WEBSITE. It has Hong Kong and Taiwan, but none for Mainland China.

JM Ocean Avenue "select country" page as of 7-AUG-2015 ... No China? 

Next stop... Youtube, as I need to find the CHINESE name of this allegedly Chinese company, so I can research it on Chinese media. Searching for "JM International" found an alleged official channel, and following videos:

So we now know that the Chinese name for JM International is 中脉国际

So what does the Chinese Media Say about them?

The Worst Kind of Scammer: False Claim of Government License by Options Rider

Ever heard of "Options Rider"? No? Me Neither, that is, until they started announcing absolutely bull****. But let's start from the beginning.

Back on April 16th, a review of Options Rider appeared on BehindMLM. The company purports to be offering option trading out of New Zealand, but the address is that of a Regus virtual office. And no owners were identified on their website. Shady enough? Searching the interwebs revealed two names: Bob Roberts and Thomas Carter.

Bob Roberts appears to be associated with another virtual entity called BancdeOptions, supposedly HQ'ed in Hong Kong, but it's another virtual office.

Here's the really hilarious part though... At the time of BehindMLM's review (early April 2015) Options Rider showed a license number:  FSP license number 207/13

Sometime after that review, they changed it to FSP license number FSP109805.

But I was able to locate a version of the Options Rider contract, on "WV Trading" that PREDATES the both of them that says: "CIF License number 207/13"

The Company is authorized and regulated by the New Zealand Securities and Exchange Commission to offer certain Investment and Ancillary Services and Activities under the Provision of Investment Services, the Exercise of Investment Activities, the Operation of Regulated Markets and Other Related Matters Law of 2007, Law 144(I)/2007, as subsequently amended or replaced from time to time (“the Law”), with CIF license number 207/13.

The problem is New Zealand does NOT have a Securities and Exchange Commission. New Zealand investments is regulated by Financial Markets Authority. And the cited laws do NOT exist in New Zealand. And obviously, "CIF" number is meaningless in New Zealand. In NZ financial entities are licensed as FSP (Financial Service Providers), but its relevance will become clearer. There is no "Options - anything" licensed as FSP in New Zealand. Search the database yourself.

In fact, you should notice that by typing in a few test cases that NONE of the FSP number goes above 5 digits. Thus, the 6-digit number given by Options Rider is BOGUS.

By now it should be clear that this company is a scam, citing license by a nonexistent government agency for legitimacy. But wait, there's even more hilarity in the lies of Options Rider!