The Norwegian Lottery Authority has revealed it has an active investigation into Crowd1.
The Lottery Authority first became aware of Crowd1 following several inquiries from the Norwegian public.
The Lottery Authority records that Crowd1 is being traded in a pyramid system, but does not currently have sufficient knowledge of the turnover system to be able to assess whether this is an illegal pyramid scheme.
In an attempt to get more information on the company, the Lottery Authority sent out letters to Crowd1’s provided Dubai address, and local promoter Johan Kloster.
Upon being contacted by local media, Kloster deleted his Crowd1 promotional efforts on social media.
He also demanded Norwegian press not mention him “in articles about Crowd1”.
As reported by Dine Penger, Kloster has previously had a run in with the Lottery Authority over his involvement in Wealth Masters International.
After WMI was banned in Norway, a BehindMLM reader outed Kloster as one of That Free Thing’s top promoters.
Kloster is reported to have signed up with Crowd1 in April. By his own admission, Kloster has thus far made over €60,000 EUR promoting the scam.
While there’s no management details provided on Crowd1’s website, the company is supposedly headed up by Jonas Eric Werner.
Dine Penger reports that Werner (right) is based out Sweden. He is reported to have begun his MLM underbelly career via the Spinglo pyramid scheme.
After that Werner joined the OPN Sitetalk pyramid scheme, which was eventually sold off to the OneCoin Ponzi scheme.
Dine Penger attempted to get in touch with Werner but he failed to reply.
At the time of publication the Lottery Authority has yet to receive a reply to the letters it sent out in June. The regulator’s investigation is ongoing.
BehindMLM reviewed Crowd1 back in August. Based on its business model, we concluded at the very least Crowd1 was engaged in securities fraud.
At worst the company combines a pyramid recruitment model with that of a Ponzi scheme.