After the FTC shut down MOBE, promoters Michael Giannulis (aka Mike Antoni) and Michael Williams launched their very own clone rip-off.
It’s taken a 12 months and a half, however the FTC has lastly moved to close My Ecom Membership down.
The FTC sums up Giannulis’ and Williams’ web advertising profession as almost a decade of selling
fraudulent enterprise teaching schemes with the intention to peddle sham funding alternatives and bilk over $30 million from customers.
The advertising duo made a reputation for themselves with MOBE, praising founder Matt Lloyd McPhee as a “visionary founder”.
Of their non-public correspondence nevertheless, Giannulis and Williams acknowledged
Matt is blinded by greed and doesn’t actually care, it’s a cash seize whereas the cash continues to be there.
Evidently after MOBE was shut down, Giannulis and Williams wished their very own piece of the “cash seize” motion. Which brings us to My Ecom Membership.
My Ecom Membership was launched in 2018 and provided “teaching applications” in the identical vein as MOBE. Ecommerce (dropshipping) was additionally a part of the enterprise.
By way of My Ecom Membership, Defendants purported to produce customers with e-commerce shops and a collection of associated teaching applications, costing between $2,000 and $40,000.
$40,000 for a course from scammers whose solely declare to fame was ripping folks off for hundreds of thousands by MOBE?
Ouch.
Worse nonetheless, My Ecom Membership’s shops had been simply rebranded Shopify shops.
Shopify sells shops beginning at $29 a month. My Ecom Membership was reselling these similar shops for hundreds of {dollars}.
Like MOBE, Giannulis and Williams pitched My Econ Membership on the idea customers would have the ability to “generate substantial revenue”.
And after I say “like MOBE”, that’s not an exaggeration.
Giannulis and Williams used the identical crew of coaches and gross sales scheme as they used for MOBE, replete with equally false or unsubstantiated earnings claims, to bilk hundreds of thousands of {dollars} extra from customers in just below two years.
Once more, simply as they’d with MOBE, My Ecom Membership’s coaches pressured customers into utilizing credit score to finance membership charge funds.
On account of Giannulis’ and Williams’ deception, many customers have misplaced their retirement funds or life financial savings, misplaced their houses, and ended up with insurmountable bank card debt.
Defendants’ coaches referred My Ecom Membership members to exterior “credit score advisors,” like Seed Consulting LLC, which proceeded to “information” customers by filling out purposes to acquire bank cards and submitting requests to lift borrowing limits on present bank cards.
My Ecom Membership was actually MOBE 2.0 with ecommerce.
Key to Giannulis’ and Williams’ advertising efforts was a $500 a refund assure.
In a single specific instance, a sufferer recruited into Giannulis’ and Williams’ MOBE downline spent $90,000 but was unable to make a single sale.
The sufferer tried to assert a $500 a refund assure she had signed up beneath, solely to obtain pushback.
Williams purportedly advised Giannulis;
I don’t wish to create a difficulty by preventing her, however I additionally don’t wish to create a difficulty by accepting duty.
Giannulis and Williams noticed referred to victims who took them up on their $500 a refund assure as “occasional buyer(s) who take this [guarantee] to annoying extremes”.
Behind the scenes Giannulis and Williams
used straw signers and shell firms and offered banks and cost processors with “dummy” web sites to evade scrutiny by financial institution underwriters and procure a number of service provider accounts to course of bank card funds from customers.
Williams additionally assisted Digital Altitude with organising shell firms to deceive cost processors with.
Gianullis and Williams used faux buyer testimonials to advertise MOBE and My Ecom Membership too.
Regardless of their efforts nevertheless, as time went on adverse evaluations started to build up with the Higher Enterprise Bureau.
In an try and handle sufferer claims, Giannulis and Williams sought BBB accreditation.
They did so by mendacity to the BBB about possession of assorted advertising campaigns.
Giannulis and Williams had been conscious that “Countdown to Earnings” was producing adverse on-line evaluations and hid their affiliation with this advert marketing campaign when responding to the BBB.
All in all, Giannulis and Williams used My Ecom Membership to rip-off customers out of $8 million.
Citing “an extended observe file of deploying and taking advantage of misleading teaching schemes and sham funding alternatives”, the FTC’s criticism accuses Giannulis and Williams of
- misrepresenting earnings;
- unfairly injuring customers by bank card laundering; and
- inflicting substantial harm to customers.
The FTC sought an injunction in opposition to Giannulis and Williams, which appears to have been bundled with their MOBE fraud settlement.
The stipulated injunction settlement offered within the FTC’s My Ecom Membership case was signed by Giannulis and Williams on January seventh, 2020.