IM Mastery Academy has received a pyramid fraud warning from Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK).
Identifying IM Mastery Academy as “International Markets Live from New York”, Tomasz Chrostny, President of UOKiK, stated on August 17th;
I’m warning consumers about the (IM) academy platform.
I accuse the company that runs it of establishing, running and promoting a pyramid-type promotional system. It is prohibited by law as an unfair market practice.
Following an investigation, UOKiK concluded
the organizer of the system and people promoting the (IM) Academy platform are focused primarily on marketing and acquiring new members.
On the other hand, (the0 educational activities are “secondary” and are aimed at creating the appearance of the legality of the project and a kind of masking the actual goal, which is to raise money from platform users.
This is your classic product-based pyramid scheme. BehindMLM raised the same possibility in our December 2019 IM Mastery Academy review.
Explaining why UOKiK is warning consumers about IM Mastery Academy, Chrostny stated;
These types of systems need a continuous, avalanche inflow of new members and their money.
In the long run, this is not possible – then such a system collapses and consumers lose money.
There is a serious risk that this may also be the case, hence the consumer warning.
Pyramid schemes are illegal in Poland. If further action is taken, IM Mastery Academy runs the risk of disgorgement plus a 10% fine, calculated on total harm caused to consumers.
SimilarWeb currently ranks top sources of traffic to IM Mastery Academy’s website as Italy (15%), Chile (12%), Germany (11%) and the US (11%).
US authorities took action against iMarketsLive in 2018. This led to a recruitment focus outside of the US, as well as the IM Mastery Academy reboot in 2019.
Thus far IM Mastery Academy fraud warnings have been issued in Peru and Colombia, Spanish authorities also arrested eight local leaders a few months ago.
IM Mastery Academy is run by Chris and Isis Terry from New York. To date US authorities have not revisited the company.