Thread: Is Rippln a pyramid scheme? MLM? fun game? You decide.

Originally Posted by Jonathan Brand

Rippln is the very essence of an illegal pyramid scheme.

Technically it's a ponzi / pyramid hybrid. You pay into the scheme, and pretend that your "commission" came from sharing the crap being sold to people under you. But that's splitting hair.

I came across this post on Twitter.
Jaime Gueits | Press Release: Rippln-New App Release News!

In the second sentence, note the past tense, as in, already happened.

"And in the first day thousands of dollars were paid out to people just like you who decided to share apps
with their friends."

I noted this to the originator on Twitter, to which he responded that it was from official promotional material. Sure enough, it is, as anyone with rippln back office access could tell you.

What does this say about their intent? They intend people to believe that rippln players in app share have been paid already.

Yet, we know from the PDF that payouts happen... appshareinfo.jpg

Oh dear. Another big, fat lie from Rippln HQ.

I'm afraid that "press release" was more likely authored by Mr. Gueits than anyone at Rippln hive mind central. When Rippln wants to use a free press release service they use a free press release service and not some hackneyed "IBO Toolbox" page. That and the only two Google hits for the text in question both bare Jamie's name (as will this one soon).

• Robert LI
  
  
  Hola, soy de los que hice campaña para conseguir afiliados en rippln, màs de 100 personas dadas de alta...En fin que me lo curre...y para que? Pues eso, màs de lo mismo. Tengo que decir que estoy completamente decepcionado con esta "aplicacion" o lo que quiera que sea. Tanto misterio, tantas palabras bonitas, tanto prometer para luego na de na. Otra mentira màs de tantas que circualan por la red. Pido disculpas a todos los que han confiado en mi cuando les hable de rippln, en mi defensa tengo que decir que yo tambien creì en ellos. Se que no os servirà de consuelo, pero yo he sido el primer engañado, manipulado y defraudado.
  RIPPLN=DECEPCION/ENGAÑO/MANIPULACION
  
  Hello, I am among those who campaigned for rippln affiliates, more than 100 people discharged ... Anyway what I curre ... and for what? For that, more of the same. I have to say I am completely disappointed with this "application" or whatever it is. Both mystery, so many nice words, both promise and then na na. Another lie that circualan many more of the net. I apologize to all those who have trusted me when I talk about rippln, in my defense I have to say that I also believed in them. It will not be a comfort, but I was the first deceived, manipulated and cheated.
  RIPPLN = DECEPTION / CHEATING / HANDLING

Not untypical of the international user base. And I don't blame them in the least. How many people outside the US were bilked into paying their $95 and $30/month BEFORE App Share went live (to avoid the extra $199 fee) to share apps only to find out that there were no apps at all in their country to share? At this point there is no form of any product what so ever for these people to sell and the only way they can make money is to conn their friends into paying to join "the ripple" so they can keep a portion of the monthly fees their friends are paying in.

I was sorta hoping that Rippln was bluffing about the additional $199 "App Share Catalog" fee. It would have been a sufficient stick to wield to drive player "power ups" and you have to admit that the entire Rippln sales pitch without app share is pretty much nothing. They might as well admit that the new "power up" fee is $300 because, it is. About the only upside I can see is that since they are paying out commissions on that $199 it's just another blatantly illegal portion of their comp plan. If you did away with it and the "player engagement" bonuses Brian and Jonathan would be forced to spend their days lying about their next fraudulent biz opp.

I haven't worked all the angles yet but I think I know the real reason "app share" is not and will not be a global opportunity. If (and that's a big IF) Rippln is getting paid $4 for each Game of War download doesn't their partner need to average more than $4 in in app purchases per download to break even? They wont get them from Rippln in the US because they aren't rewarding in app purchases they're only rewarding bulk downloads. Now you see why they're delaying payouts, love to see the fine print on Rippln's contracts with them. But at least in US and Europe there's enough disposable income that some of those downloads will be profitable. I'm not saying no one in Brazil can afford to spend money on mobile gaming but if Game of War was available for download there at $4 a head, every iOS phone in earshot of a Rippln member would have it installed without much thought for the profitability or sustainability of the offering.

I know who their partner is.,....

Just using a random affiliate link off the web (and yes, referral links are just about the only technology required for "App Share"):

Results of Trace



http://goo.gl/d0l6g5
301 Redirect
http://www.startmyripple.com/ln/55A7812FTTLQ
302 Redirect
http://tracking.applift.com/aff_c?of...ec6f7fb8cf809c
302 Redirect
http://hastrk1.com/serve?action=clic...hone&sub3=4010
302 Redirect
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/drag...561941526?mt=8

OK, so the Rippln affiliate download link goes to one of Rippln's websites, from there it goes to the people who actually do what Rippln sorta pretends to do, AppLift then they get passed through an analytics company (hastrk1 = Has Offers). So after the traffic broker and the affiliate tracking site we finally get to the iTunes Store.

So Rippln didn't reinvent the wheel, they're just far more willing than most PPI (pay per install) affiliate firms to lie about how much they can pay. Can I prove that? Not just yet but their numbers are way out of line. I will caution to remind you that the core of their business model is to pay their affiliates with their own money. App Share is just a little twist on that.

HITFOX GROUP

---

HitFox Group is a fast-growing incubator focused on founding and developing companies within the mobile and online games distribution and user acquisition market. Our portfolio companies ad2games, AppLift and GameFinder are partnering with 180+ game publishers and 1000+ media companies such as EA, King and RTL. We are a team of 100 professionals (hiring at all levels) with headquarters in Berlin and San Francisco and local presences in Seoul and Paris. www.hitfoxgroup.com


AppLift (a HitFox Group company) is the world’s first mobile affiliate network, exclusively focused on mobile games. AppLift acquires high quality users for 150+ mobile game publishers and helps them monetize their traffic. The company delivers more than 1M quality users per month for its largest game publisher and rapidly executes on global and niche market campaigns. www.applift.com


ad2games (a HitFox Group company) is Europe’s leading ad and affiliate network for online games. ad2games matches renowned games of publishers such as Bigpoint, Gameforge, EA and Nexon Europe with quality users through its vast network of gaming portals in over 50 countries. www.ad2games.com
web: www.hitfoxgroup.com

Glim, the copy Gueits used was from official promotional material in the rippln back office.

Tonight's Rippln call.

I must admit some confuzelment. Rippln as a company has grown past the point where they hold conference calls for their affiliates where they make announcements or give news and updates. Oh, they still hold as many calls as they ever have but all of them are wall to wall non stop recruiting. Grab your friends, show them a video then get them on the calls, they'll sign up and you'll be recieve some of the money they pay to join the company. Which is kinda a shame because this means they sorta buried the lead so to speak, tonight Mike Rutherford announced that App Share is now World Wide. From about the 12:40 mark of the link above:

So think about this, just try this on for size. You become a Player in the Rippln community and you purchase our App Share catalog, It's less than $300 just so you know, to start your own app sharing business, world wide app sharing business. We have apps on Apple, we have apps on android, we have apps in the United States, all over the world. OK?

So you log in, click a button that says "Share Game of War." It pops up a tab that says "type in the cell phone number and the country code of the person you want to send this to," type in their email or tweet it out, what ever you want to do and hit "Share."

I'm sorry, but if you were so blessed as to have never sat through a previous Rippln recruiting call (which is the target audience) might that lead you to believe that you could get paid by sharing apps "all over the world"? But unless this is Rippln's way of announcing that all of the existing limitations on their app catalog (see below) are no longer in force, Mr. Rutherford was being grossly deceptive. See for yourselves:

10-31AppShareCat.jpg

Does that look "world wide" to you? One Android app in a whopping total of 19 other countries and an iOS app in 7. That is what Mike Rutherford means when he says:

We have apps on Apple, we have apps on android, we have apps in the United States, all over the world. OK

When Rippln finally does drown in a puddle of their own vomit, stupid lies like this one will have been the figures it stuffed down it's throat.

You know, it wouldn't take too much artistic talent to change Rippln's logo to a tumbleweed.

Recruit, recruit, recruit is all they ever talk about and this isn't any surprise because new player fees and monthly subs are about 99% of the companies revenue stream. Yes, I am exaggerating, no way in hell AppLift is contributing 1% of their income.

There's another call tonight, wont bother to link because nothing Mike Rutherford is saying tonight in any different than what he's said on the last dosen or so calls. The Chat App, soon. Could have sworn Mike said it was approved by the App Store last month. I really expected Brian Underwood to come out of hiding tonight, Rutherford is doing the call from his living room kinda thought he'd like to say hi. Guess not.

Fun fact, Rutherford showed a little of his back office on last Saturday's Hang-Out and half way through a commission cycle Rippln's top money maker had earned almost $37 from sharing apps. This is the same guy who was bragging about his five figure paycheck and he's on pace to make less than $80 off of apps, better than 10 grand from the pyramid portion of the plan but less than $80 from apps. Yep, another Brian Underwood MLM company in full flower.

I'm not a social media expert. I had to look up what facebook's PTAT (people talking about this) number meant. It's the daily average (across a one week period) of the number of people who commented on, liked, shared or otherwise interacted with a facebook page. 415. That's about how many people interact with the official Rippln page of late. In fact it seems the total number of comments is actually dropping as complaints and spam are being deleted faster than legit comments are being made.

It's a ghost town at Rippln's official Facebook page. uhoh.jpg

uhoh2.jpg

The PTAT scores continue to drop lower than I have ever seen them.

robbed0.jpgrobbed1.jpgrobbed2.jpgrobbed3.jpg

This gentlemen has uncovered more evidence of systematic douchebaggery by Rippln.

Looks like Rippln has been abandoned.

Several people have claimed on FB and elsewhere that they filed FBI/FTC/SEC complaints about unauthorized credit card charges.

It seems like Rippln's fearless leaders saw which way the wind was blowing and decided to call it done.

The punch line of Rippln: Even with all the hype, they never broke 1/3rd of Wazzub's internet footprint, indicating that Wazzub had a lot more people involved.


On a personal note: I don't intend to let any of the people responsible for Rippln escape their past. I will keep them on my radar and make sure they stay honest.

Originally Posted by felgercarb

On a personal note: I don't intend to let any of the people responsible for Rippln escape their past. I will keep them on my radar and make sure they stay honest.

Don't forget Al Sills. He loves when you drop by and comment on his videos. Everything is all aces when he is pitching the deal, and when it blows up he calls it a venture and plays the victim.

Al Sills Rippln.JPG

Originally Posted by ribshaw

Don't forget Al Shills. He loves when you drop by and comment on his videos. Everything is all aces when he is pitching the deal, and when it blows up he calls it a venture and plays the victim.

Al Sills Rippln.JPG

There! Fixed it for ya!

Originally Posted by laidback

There! Fixed it for ya!

Thanks, let's see if Al likes his new nickname. Have to screen shoot it, as the other comments have already disappeared. Think he is slowing down though, this is like the third time "James Evans" has made comments without being banned. In the past it Al would get all huffy and then ban you.

And as much as I enjoy acting like I am 12 and spamming his silly videos, would be investors should be asking WHY does Al Shills continue to promote things after they have stopped paying people?? That don't be seeming very honestable way to do bidness..

AL SHILLS.JPG

Looks one of the biggest pimps for this scam, Brian Spatola, has abandoned his MMG thread. No surprise, he has done this crap for years.

Case Closed: Rippln IS a Pyramid Scheme

IZigg Agent-Barbara Pahmeyer · 330 like this
March 27, 2012 at 11:03am ·

Izigg 2.0 is here and WOW! It is going to blow you away!

Imagine all those apps you share with your friends on your mobile devices - Our new AppCraze program is coming soon --- It will allow you to share in this million dollar business; There are a million apps to share; 26 million apps are downloaded and shared every day. What if you could capitalize on that! Call or Text me or go to www.iziggmedia.com to learn more about our other powerful products.

Sometime about a year ago, perhaps a little less, perhaps a little more iZigg Co-Ceo Brian Underwood decided that the "AppCraze" concept that he'd been teasing the flagging iZigg affiliate base with would better be monetized without a lot of 90210 baggage. Rippln as it came to be known was launched more than a year after AppCraze was first promised to the iZigg faithful, why the bait and switch? I don't know for sure but suspect that a brand new round of affiliate enrollment fees and a completely clean MLM genealogy to build out from were significant factors in that decision.

Rippln kicked off last Spring with an amazing blizzard of bull crap, promising among other things that they would soon be "bigger than email." Proving that they were well versed not only in Pavlovian marketing but recent history of get rich quick schemes they hammered two points repeatedly and right on the button. The first is what is already a shop worn meme about massive internet companies making billions but not sharing that money with all the people who use their services for free and the second is the eternal classic, a pyramid scheme.

They quickly removed their original compensation plan video from their official YouTube page but it still exists and it served it's purpose. A lot of the people who play these less than legal money games took notice and were spamming Rippln to their email lists and very soon Rippln was bragging about how many people were signing up. I believe the original plan was to build a significant user base for the "Rippln App" by paying the affiliates with their own money and eventually they'd have enough "eye balls" that they could leverage for some more or less legitimate marketing. But a funny thing happened before they could start taking in money, someone somewhere pointed out how blatantly illegal their comp plan was and for reasons yet to be explained, Brian Underwood and the rest of his co-founders decided they needed to pretend to care about that.


"Not all multilevel marketing plans are legitimate. If the money you make is based on your sales to the public, it may be a legitimate multilevel marketing plan. If the money you make is based on the number of people you recruit and your sales to them, it’s not. It's a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are illegal, and the vast majority of participants lose money". -FTC.gov on Multilevel Marketing


Rippln's original plan was to quite simply pay people to get other people to pay money to join Rippln. That was pretty much it, oh and they also had to get five free "fans" to sign up as well (who could later pay for the opportunity to get paid for finding still more paying players). MLM Attorney Kevin Thompson was hired to tell Brian Underwood what Brian already knew through his BurnLounge involvement and Rippln scrapped their original comp plan. It's important to note that sometimes when an attorney is hired to advise a business that business does not always follow the advice they paid for to the fullest and when that happens it isn't the attorney's fault. It's also interesting to note just how close to impossible it would be for Rippln to earn any money at all in it's start up phase without operating like a pyramid scheme.

Rippln's core sales pitch is to "reward you for the value of your social graph." Facebook and Twitter are worth billions because tens of millions of people use their services yet they don't actually pay those users for the value they've added to those companies. Rippln seeks to change all of that by becoming a huge social platform with millions and millions of users but unlike those selfish giants they will share the value that gets created with the people who helped them create that value.

Here's where that idea falls apart, how much was Twitter worth back when it had fewer than 10k users? Worse still, how much would Twitter have been worth if it had far less than 10k users and the only reason anyone used it in the first place was that they were being paid to do so? Pretty sure we're talking about a negative number here (the money to pay those members has to come from somewhere). Millions of people use facebook and Twitter each day because they enjoy and find value in them, nobody has any use what so ever for Rippln other than the promise of getting paid. But if what Rippln could keep on paying more and more people to join the company and use their service till they had hundreds of thousands or millions of users, well then they would have enough users that they could make money in a number of ways off of that audience and finally they would have some income to start sharing with their users.

See the problem? Rippln has no way of making any money to pay their affiliates until they have many many many affiliates and there isn't a single reason to join Rippln other than getting paid. With one huge caveat, Rippln isn't promising to pay ALL of it's users it's only promising to pay the affiliates who pay Rippln first. So they do have a pre-monetization revenue source to share with their early affiliates, Rippln is paying their affiliates with their own money. What so ever could be wrong with that? The vast majority of participants end up losing money.



"In pyramid schemes, each participant pays money to the promoter in exchange for the right to recruit new participants. Participants then receive benefits for each individual they recruit or who appears below them. Earnings in a pyramid scheme are derived primarily from recruiting other participants into the program, not from the retail sale of products or service".


Is the above statement true about Rippln? When you consider the role the word "primarily" plays in the final sentence, yes it is. There is ~some~ retail activity involved in the program but they primary economic activity is the sale of memberships and recurring membership fees and none of that should be commissionable to the affiliate force yet it is. The following is taken from this document:

RipPEB.jpg

And let's let Rippln Co-Founder Michael Rutherford explain this in his own words (at about 7:40 mark in this video):

So what we've created is a residual model very simply off of just Pro Player fees we call the "player engagement bonuses," every single Pro Player that you have in your ripple, A Player is spending $30/month a Pro Player is a Player spending $30/month who has five free fans. We take $13/month and pay it into the plan.

So basically what we're talking about and no guarantees here, people are going to have to work to get paid, this is a little bit of an income disclaimer here you can read it below. It says this does not include any of the other incomes you can earn as products flow through the Rippln eco-system.

What we're talking about here is just that bonus that, almost like a loyalty fan bonus, $13 split between ten levels.

One very simple yet important key when it comes to MLM comp plans, if a customer wouldn't buy it, you can't pay commissions on it. What customer value does a monthly membership in Rippln hold? You can't use it for anything other than making (or vainly trying to make) money in Rippln. Let's face it, Rippln is dying, it's almost impossible to suppose that it will last long enough to get shut down, it's failing becuse of the greed and incompetence of it's founders so all talk of legality is somewhat secondary. The remaining issue has more to do with why pyramid schemes are illegal in the first place, the fact that the overwhelming majority of the people who pay to play will lose the money they invested to a small number of people at the top of the pyramid. Yes, I'm looking at you Mike Rutherford.

I do need to point out that the "official" Rippln comp plan (Link) does not include the phrase "player engagement bonus" and clearly states that there are no rewards associated with the $95 and $30/month "player" fees. I will point out that "player engagement bonuses" are mentioned in several videos and on some calls and their existence can also be proved empirically. Rippln's very first pay run took place in the month of September in the week the Photo Guessaroo app was released, no retail product existed in the pay period leading up to the first check yet "loyalty rewards" were paid. Paid on what and with what money? The only money Rippln had taken in at that point was membership fees and all anecdotal reports of payouts conform to members expected returns from "player engagement bonuses."

Further the Rippln comp plan is being overly specific when it claims that there are no rewards paid on fees paid by "players." Yes, when a Rippln affiliate persuades someone to pay $95 and $30/month thereafter (making them a player) no potion of those fees are shared among that new "player's" upline but neither is that player eligible to earn any income. In order to earn any income that "player" needs to recruit five free "fans" but that will not pose a problem because based on some information I have seen I suspect that there is no email confirmation or login requirement to validate "fans" so it may be just as easy as typing in five made up email addresses into a form. But even if I'm wrong about that it would not change the fact that once a paying "player" gets their five "fans" they advance in rank to "Pro Player," are eligible to earn income and a portion of their $30/month membership fee is, as Michael Rutherford explained above, "payed into the plan." So Rippln does not pay any commission on the fees paid by "Players" but they do on fees payed by "Pro Players" and ranks above.

One could rightly question why the "official" comp plan document does not include the information about "player engagement bonuses" and I could speculate that they didn't do so for the very same reason they waited until after they launched their first app to make their initial pay run, they understand the value of pretending that they are not a pyramid scheme. By the time the first payment was made there was no income generated by the app (Photo Guessaroo) and it's very likely that no significant income has ever been generated by that app.

Also not included in the official comp plan document is fees relating to the CRApp Share Catalog. With the massive expense of updating PDF documents perhaps we can't blame them for not keeping their information current. But in mid October Rippln hit on a great way to milk even more money out of their deal. If you failed to become a dues paying member prior to the launch of the App share program you would need to spend an additional $199 to be able to get paid for sharing free apps. Two points on this:

First this was a way for them to slow the already growing exodus of paying members and even to rope in new people. All of Rippln's calls and videos extorted the members to go out and recruit, recruit, recruit, App Share was coming. Most offensively much effort was directed to recruiting people outside the US and a matter of a very few hours before App Share officially launched, a link to this video was made public. In the opening moments of the video Jonathan Budd tells us that it was recorded on October 17th but only released on the 31st. Near the end Rippln announced for the very first time that they have "since day one" warned people that until they had 5,000 paying members in their country, Rippln would make no effort what so ever to provide them with products or support. Again, for the very first time Rippln announced that from day one they had been warning people. All the foreign affiliates who had been bilked into paying their money during the October recruiting orgy learned that they had been screwed.

Second. In this video Micheal Rutherford announced an new aspect of the Rippln comp plan regarding the App Share catalog. The $199 fee which has no value other than to a paying Rippln member is commissionable. From the 4:40 mark:

As people start growing their ripples around the world not only are they going to be paid off of the individual downloads of the people they get to download an app for free. Free apps, real money. They're going to get an override of all the different app downloads of everyone in their ripple. But the biggest way they're going to be able to generate revenue is off the App Share catalog it self. So as people are coming in and buying the App Share Catalog, we're sending $100 out of the $199 immediately through the coaching rewards plan.

Again, if you had no interest in making money off of it, why would you buy the App Share catalog? It has zero value to a customer, none. It's only use is to open up a product category to Rippln affiliates. In short, it's illegal to pay a commission off of it. In commentary on a company called BigSmart 2000 the noted MLM law firm of Grimes and Reese explain this point:

"Legitimate MLMs never pay a commission on the sale of catalogs, marketing literature, starter kits, and other sales aids. Only retailable products and services are properly commissionable. Bigsmart however, generated most of its commissions from the sale of malls, which are nothing more than electronic catalogs published on the web. They are certainly not retailable products since the only persons who would have any interest in purchasing a mall are those who wished to participate in the Bigsmart compensation plan. Other than the value the online mall presented by virtue of the attached income opportunity, the malls were otherwise devoid of intrinsic consumer value".

Needless to say the FTC closed BigSmart down.

Rippln is a dying company and while turkeys everywhere will wonder why Rippln isn't trussed up on a table with them this Thanksgiving it's important to do some math. Very few people are making money in this scam but almost all of them know Brian Underwood personaly. It costs very little to keep this company going and the inner circle is still getting paid. They could try to milk this for a while yet. But understand that 95+% of the money flowing to the top of this company is affiliate fees and not derived from any retail related activity. Funny note on this point, this is the November 16th Rippln Google Hangout, at about the 20 minute mark Mike Rutherford shares a screenshot of his back office. Half way through a commission cycle he had earned less than $36 from sharing apps. This is the same guy who was bragging about his "five figure" Rippln pay check.

The only thing here that really pisses me off here is how few of the people who praise the virtues of Legitimate Multilevel Marketing care when affiliates are getting screwed by a company like Rippln. Brian Underwood is a hell of a nice guy, it would be rude to point out that he's a lying scumbag.

Originally Posted by GlimDropper

Case Closed: Rippln IS a Pyramid Scheme

Rippln is a dying company and while turkeys everywhere will wonder why Rippln isn't trussed up on a table with them this Thanksgiving it's important to do some math. Very few people are making money in this scam but almost all of them know Brian Underwood personaly. It costs very little to keep this company going and the inner circle is still getting paid. They could try to milk this for a while yet. But understand that 95+% of the money flowing to the top of this company is affiliate fees and not derived from any retail related activity. Funny note on this point, this is the November 16th Rippln Google Hangout, at about the 20 minute mark Mike Rutherford shares a screenshot of his back office. Half way through a commission cycle he had earned less than $36 from sharing apps. This is the same guy who was bragging about his "five figure" Rippln pay check.

The only thing here that really pisses me off here is how few of the people who praise the virtues of Legitimate Multilevel Marketing care when affiliates are getting screwed by a company like Rippln. Brian Underwood is a hell of a nice guy, it would be rude to point out that he's a lying scumbag.

The officers of the company have been completely silent for several days, even missing scheduled calls and hangouts. They have a good reason to stay far away: there are people filing complaints with law enforcement about the recent unauthorized credit card charges several people on FB have mentioned.

Even people as scummy as Rippln's founders are smart enough to make a risk/reward evaluation. While it may be profitable to keep the charade going, they are not even bothering with that, which leads me to believe that the complaints have them afraid of law enforcement, or at least the credit card companies.

It's been about a month since Brian Underwood or Jonathan Budd have made a public appearance, Michael Rutherford joined them about a week ago. No one stepped in to run the last three scheduled calls and we'll see tomorrow if that streak reaches four. The official facebook page hasn't has an update in over a week and more surprising, the negative comments aren't currently being deleted.

This is a danger point for a pyramid scheme, the game is almost over but the payment processors are still in place. Rippln is still taking in money but the new members have about a zero chance of breaking even. The only significant way to make any money is to recruit 20+ paying players in your first "ripple" and the only way for those 20 people to make money for them to go out and get 20 more each (and so on). The numbers here are staggeringly bad for the people at the bottom and that's finally being felt by the fat cats at the top. They were far too greedy with the legal aspects of the comp plan stacking the deck so that too much of the money went to too few players. Of course they knew they would be in the only position to take advantage of all of this, at the peak of the pyramid.

I don't honestly believe that this is how Brian Underwood wanted it all to work out but this is almost a text book example of how to run a modern pyramid scam. He had a bright line of chatter to make it look like this had the potential to be a legitimate MLM company and because they had an inspirational story in an aspirational industry, Brian's friends will view this as something like a noble if failed effort instead of a naked money grab. But in the end, which is coming soon, it will work out the same. Rippln took in well over a million dollars (conservatively), almost all of that going to either the company or a very small circle of Co-Founders and cohorts. Upwards of half of that money (if not more) coming from people outside of the United States posing a barrier for legal recourse and now all Brian needs to do is close this scam down before any regulators shut it for him and he and his friends will get to keep the money.

The most nauseating thing here isn't just that he could easily get away with it, it's that the MLM community will let him do it again. Six months, a year from now Brian could launch another hair brained scheme with lots of glitz and lots of buzz and no one will be there to stop him. I keep seeing the people who pass for the honest faces of this industry speaking of integrity, of ethics. They make fine speeches about needing to regulate this industry before it gets regulated for them and perhaps most galling, they pretend to hold the best interests of the individual affiliates close at heart. But when one of their friends, someone like Brian Underwood, bilk millions from thousands of those "reps in the field" they stand there in silence.

Nauseating is the word, Glim.

How's this for nauseating? Someone deleted a good number of the incriminating posts from the official FB page. (Archived in this thread, fortunately)

So, the bastards can disappear, leaving their affiliates high and dry, but if there's something on the FB page that might make things easier for law enforcement, they show up ready for censorship.

Troy Dooly once again gives his clients/pals a nice friendly handjob with a happy ending. We're supposed to believe it has nothing to do with the check he's being cut.

You see, we were overreacting! The disappearance of Rippln HQ was just... the holiday! Nevermind that Thanksgiving isn't an international holiday, and no warning of the disappearance was communicated officially to assuage the concerns of the already-agitated international affiliates.

In spite of what Troy says, there were missed Hangouts and calls, 4 of them.

No mention is made of the Facebook censorship of credit card fraud allegations and negative complaints, the tanking social media numbers, or the former affiliates now in contact with law enforcement. And, if you believe Troy, Candy Crush is in App Share now.

No mention is made of App Share payouts not happening.

Again, he repeats the statement that "none of the investors are making any money", but we're just supposed to take his word for it.

And, he implies that Rippln cannot be a pyramid scheme because the monthly player payments are only $36.

Troy may find himself collateral damage when law enforcement concludes their investigation. I hope whatever he was paid is worth it.

Oops, missed another lie: Troy says 1.4 million people were grandfathered in, and nobody paid $199 for App Share.

Rippln's 6 month late chat app released for Android and iOS. Is it everything it was claimed to be?https://plus.google.com/109752959453...ts/h7AcDfTP3q9

Originally Posted by felgercarb

Troy Dooly once again gives his clients/pals a nice friendly handjob with a happy ending. We're supposed to believe it has nothing to do with the check he's being cut.

You see, we were overreacting! The disappearance of Rippln HQ was just... the holiday! Nevermind that Thanksgiving isn't an international holiday, and no warning of the disappearance was communicated officially to assuage the concerns of the already-agitated international affiliates.

In spite of what Troy says, there were missed Hangouts and calls, 4 of them.

No mention is made of the Facebook censorship of credit card fraud allegations and negative complaints, the tanking social media numbers, or the former affiliates now in contact with law enforcement. And, if you believe Troy, Candy Crush is in App Share now.

No mention is made of App Share payouts not happening.

Again, he repeats the statement that "none of the investors are making any money", but we're just supposed to take his word for it.

And, he implies that Rippln cannot be a pyramid scheme because the monthly player payments are only $36.

Troy may find himself collateral damage when law enforcement concludes their investigation. I hope whatever he was paid is worth it.

I don't believe he learned anything from Zeek! He was paid from zeek and was boosting zeek and now he is paid from rippln and boosting it.