I’ve had a few requests to review Vitae, be it Vitae Coin or Vitae Token.
The scheme is spearheaded by serial scammer Michael Weber a few years ago and primarily targets the third-world.
What was missing however was an MLM component, and hence there hasn’t been a Vitae review here on BehindMLM.
That changes with Vitae Rain Chat, which sees Weber return to his Ponzi roots.
Michael Weber operates out of Colorado in the US. His last appearance on BehindMLM was in connection to the BitConnect Ponzi scheme.
Weber (right) first appeared on BehindMLM in 2015 as admin of the X100K pyramid scheme.
After collapsing a number of times X100K was abandoned in early 2016. Weber (right) returned later in the year with PIF2Cash, a Ponzi cycler.
On or around May 2017 Weber launched Coin Nuggets, a matrix-based Ponzi cycler.
After Coin Nuggets came BitConnect. BitConnect collapsed in January 2018. Vitae Token launched on or around June 2018.
Vitae Rain Chat is part of Vitae Token (which I’ll refer to as “Vitae” from here on out). Previously Vitae affiliates had been using Discord as a messaging platform.
On or around June 2020 Vitae’s operations on Discord were shut down. This prompted the launch of Vitae Rain Chat, an in-house messaging platform.
Vitae Rain Chat’s launched was accompanied by a somewhat… disturbing marketing video.
In June 2020 Vietnam issued a fraud warning against Vitae.
As estimated by Alexa, the majority of traffic to Vitae’s primary website (“vitae.co”) originates out of India (34%) and Vietnam (14%).
Read on for a full review of Vitae Rain Chat’s MLM opportunity.
Vitae Rain Chat’s Products
Vitae Rain Chat has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market Vitae Rain Chat affiliate membership itself.
Vitae Rain Chat affiliates can purchase $25 adcredits, which can be used to display advertising to other other Vitae Rain Chat affiliates.
Vitae Rain Chat’s Compensation Plan
Vitae Rain Chat affiliates sign up and participate in a Ponzi scheme.
Vitae Rain Chat’s chatroom periodically “rains” (distributes) generated Vitae tokens with the last two hundred affiliates participated in the chat room. That is affiliates who’ve sent a message.
Rain events are triggered every six minutes.
Vitae tokens distributed with each rain event include:
- $5 worth of Vitae from every new paid affiliate membership
- a percentage of “thousands of Vitae tokens stored for distribution”
Vitae Rain Chat affiliates can also receive Vitae tokens for watching ads and if another affiliate directly deposits into the “rain address” (for rain event distribution).
Recruitment Commissions
Vitae Rain Chat affiliates receive commissions on recruitment of new paid affiliates.
Vitae Rain Chat pays a $5 recruitment commission for each affiliate recruited, split down three levels of recruitment (unilevel):
- 50% on level 1 (personally recruited affiliates)
- 25% on levels 2 and 3
Revenue Sharing
Paid Vitae Rain Chat affiliate membership is $14.99. Affiliates can also purchase adcredits in $25 bundles.
Vitae Rain Chat takes these funds and distributes them equally to paid Vitae Rain Chat affiliates.
Joining Vitae Rain Chat
Vitae Rain Chat affiliate membership is $14.99 a month.
Conclusion
Vitae initially launched as a social network platform. You know the deal, “use our platform and we’ll reward you with Vitae tokens”.
Vitae tokens of course being worthless, as Michael Weber simply generates them on demand for distribution.
Unfortunately that wasn’t much of a money-spinner, and so now Weber has cranked things up with a full-blown Ponzi pyramid.
Vitae tokens started off as Ponzi points but have since been listed on a few exchanges. After hovering around the $1.x mark for some time, Vitae Rain Chat has pumped Vitae to its current $2.65 value.
Considering Vitae tokens have no use outside of the pointless social network and Vitae Rain Chat Ponzi however, take any value figure attached to the token with a grain of salt.
Vitae tokens are only worth something if there’s gullible Vitae affiliates to offload them onto. Either directly or through Vitae’s internal exchange.
With respect to Vitae Rain Chat’s business model, you have a simple Ponzi pyramid hybrid.
If you clicked through to that Vitae Rain Chat marketing video linked in the intro of this review, the lyrics “free to join uhuh, free to join that’s right” will probably give you earworm for a few hours.
The irony being that free Vitae Rain Chat affiliate membership is severely limited.
Free Vitae Rain Chat affiliates are spammed with ads and can only “post the phrase: “I love Vitae” once per hour.”
That’s it.
Why would anyone subject themselves to this? They wouldn’t. Vitae Rain Chat free membership is merely a marketing gimmick to sell the business model.
In that model participants pay $14.99 a month. This qualifies them to receive commissions on new recruits, as well as a percentage of adcredit purchases by other affiliates.
Michael Weber keeps $4.99 of every monthly membership fee payment.
The recruitment commissions make up the pyramid element of the scheme. Recycling funds spent by affiliates on advertising is the Ponzi component.
Both are tied to constant recruitment of new affiliates, without which things collapse.
Finding himself directly under one of the top US promoters of BitConnect, there’s little doubt Weber made a packet in the multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme.
That money is finite however, and I suspect Weber will keep adding to Vitae in an attempt to stay afloat.
Unfortunately that means stealing money from victims through one ruse or another.
So far we’ve had a social network and paid chatroom. A trading bot probably isn’t far off, bringing the BitConnect clone circle to completion.
Update 25th June 2021 – As part of a criminal investigation, Belgian authorities have seized Vitae’s and Vitae Token’s website domains.