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At one time or another in our online journey, we’ve been led to believe we can get-rich-quick or live a luxurious lifestyle on passive income for very little to no work involved. Even more now than ever, there are millions of people looking to make an income online and are spellbound by the so-called limitless potential of the internet especially when someone tells you you don’t have to do a thing, it’s all done for you, so just pay the money and let the money roll in passively.
Although some of us learn that this is just fantasy, others, particularly the tens of thousands of newcomers to the online world are sitting ducks for any so-called company promising great riches with no real evidence of the amazing proprietary technology they endlessly spruik about and the passive income promises they make.
Online technology has greatly evolved since the dot.com era with automated marketing and AI and although it has its place, there’s a lot more to building a business than relying on automation or other people to work it or bring in new recruits for you. What makes a business work is by creating value on a personal level. If you're going into the business with the intention of having it magically provide money for you while you sip margaritas on the beach, then you often get roped into dubious companies making unfounded claims.
The majority of people I see who are only interested in passive income haven't learned how to create value in the first place. They're just going along with the gimmicks, tricks, and formulas, basically wanting and believing they will get the lifestyle promised to them without doing anything to the point where it becomes a cult.
There have been so many companies that have failed due to pyramid structure or matrix compensation plans which is the primary structure that pays the thousands of people their promised millions of dollars. Either intentionally or unintentionally they failed.
Then there are the ones that intentionally create a business with no products on the back end, in fact, the websites never existed. Just one example is PRSI. William Caudell offered people a wholesome internet business that turned out to be a bogus marketing scheme, which cheated them out of $13 million was sentenced to 11 years in jail, originally 14 years, however, it was reduced after Caudell cooperated with the authorities by giving up his co-conspirators.
PRSI made its money by charging a $295 "application fee" that qualified users for the "Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) System" that would provide them access to their own site in an Internet shopping mall.
But there were no Web sites, nor any intention to provide them. PRSI was "selling air". Instead of providing Internet shopping sites, PRSI recruited "CyberManagers" who would recruit others to buy into the plan, and the new recruits would find more participants to pay the fee - a classic, illegal pyramid scheme that hooked 48,000 people globally. The company's Web site advertised that the company was dedicated to protecting children and creating a pornography-free e-commerce site that would spark the interest of any humane individual. Great hook!
The latest current program, as it stands at the moment, and similar in nature to PRSI is GoFounders/Onpassive which hone in on the heart of people. Everyone wants to belong to something. They play on peoples’ sense of community and tug at their heartstrings, literally brainwashing their victims. GoFounders.net seems to be the matrix program and the funnel to access Onpassive.com, (awaiting launch), which is purported to be the marketing suite with proprietary products. (Although it states on their website that GoFounders is the product. See image below)
One of the catchphrases is “Artificial Intelligence with heart”. AI is defined by its very name, it has no heart, it’s artificial. The heart comes with the human aspect of a business that provides value and personal experience the customer receives from a living person. So if the main feature that sells this concept is to automate everything so the business owner doesn’t have to do anything but rake in the money, they are doomed from the very start. Any professional, experienced marketer will tell you there is no such thing as “completely done-for-you systems”.
While I was researching this topic I found that GoFounders.com, the domain, is up for sale for $31,700. You can buy this domain from Epik Inc. Copyright © 2020 by Epik Inc. All rights reserved. Whois Privacy services provided by Anonymize.com. Obviously too expensive to acquire for the company that boasts two luxurious offices - one in Bangalore, India, and the USA headquarters in Orlando, Florida, USA. These two locations actually rent temporary (by the hour) office space to any business, and thanks to another scam researcher, Robert Preston, who went to the Orlando Office only to find Onpassive is not there.
Ash Mufareh is going to great lengths to make ONPASSIVE seem like it’s growing into an IT tech giant, yet it suffers from a lack of quality control. For example, the video says “In the heart of Disney Land.” First, Disneyland is one word, and in California, not Florida where Walt Disney World is.
NOTE: Ash Mufareh has also registered another Orlando, FL address for ONPASSIVE that is not the same as this office building. This other address is, 9924 Universal Blvd., 224-320, Orlando, FL 32819. When you Google that address, it comes up as The UPS Store.
On one hand, they proclaim you will earn $2 million a month passively for a one time fee, so unsuspecting people sign up, pay the fee, only to find they are now saying you must “work hard and smart” to achieve that, along with financial disclaimers according to Ashraf (Ash) Mufareh, the founder and CEO of GoFounders/OnPassive, in a zoom meeting held last week by a group of leaders that invited him to speak. In that same webinar, he stunned the attendees with his new and latest announcement of implementing an Onpassive Academy for school kids, due to the COVID19 situation. I wonder if this will delay the launch yet again!
This program has been taking money from people while in prelaunch now for over 2 years with nothing, no sign of any marketing software, except for the promise of “never been done before” automation and AI technology, but to keep these members placated, it had provided a URL shortening tool which you can access for free anywhere. Personally, I refuse to call it a company until I see proof of their claims and products.
The normal procedure for a real startup company has 3 stages. Telling members they are holding off the launch till everything is perfect while stipulating a joining fee is a RED FLAG.
Marketing should start at pre-launch and carry through to all stages. All genuine companies that integrate and use the latest technology have an official whitepaper and road map. In all my research I have yet to find an Onpassive White Paper or Road Map.
Notably, I found only four videos. Three of them were hyped up videos of roughly around 90-seconds in length each, that belonged to Ash Mufareh himself, but not of himself on his YouTube channel that had a total of only 420 subscribers. The one other video was a presentation by one of his recruits. You’ll only ever actually see him on a few webinars of his top leaders in Onpassive at which he has been an invited guest.
All meetings seem to be very Kumbaya with very little substance and all very vague of what is actually promised to the members in terms of its “seismic revolutionary technology” and marketing tools. The rest is excited hype. Transparency doesn’t seem to be one of Ashraf Mufareh’s fortes. All of the webinars are still there on YouTube with the repetition of the exact same things said a year ago, always being equally “excited” and “blown away” by all the wonders Mufareh keeps talking about, during these webinars – but of course, that’s all “proprietary”, so he can only hint at it. (the guy seems to think “proprietary” means “confidential”).
Video Compliments of Julian Leahy
Onpassive’s compensation plan was until recently, a 3 x 10 matrix, and since been changed to a 3 x infinity corporate matrix. Every individual has their own matrix they need to fill within the corporate matrix. Below I do the math on a 3 x 12 level matrix then go on to 20 levels for those that haven’t taken that into consideration up to this point.
The initial joining fee of $97 upfront, locks you into the infinity corporate matrix. Then at launch, you need to become a customer initially, pay one of four levels $25, $125, $250, $500. This is a monthly fee, which the leaders claim will become self-funding, therefore not out of pocket once you fill your matrix. Each level has a finite amount of tools available for use. If you want them all to complete your marketing suite, you need to pay for all 4 levels upfront totaling $950 monthly. Once you have your back office, with a click of a button you become an independent reseller even though it’s touted that you just pay a one-time joining fee of $97 now before it goes up to $997, then sit back and earn $2 million a month.
What is noteworthy is that for any MLM company to be a legal entity, it needs to have retail customers yielding retail sales separate from the distributors or resellers.
There are no qualifications needed, just join up and get paid by every new member that comes into your team. According to one of the leaders, Mike Ellis, This comp plan is “revolutionary” and “really really cool, really really ingenious” as you as a member get your level 4 monthly membership (once you’ve reached level 4) paid by the “profits of the company.” (in other words, the money from the people that have come in after you that are in your personal matrix within the corporate matrix.)
Revolutionary? No, it’s been done and failed too many times before. This matrix program is just hiding under the guise of the latest technology of the products (that no one has actually seen yet) that most people know very little about. Any real AI company will tell you it is very expensive to implement and maintain to keep it running at top-notch.
In a 3 x 12 matrix pyramid scheme in which the top 3 people recruit 3 new people. Those 9 recruits 3, the 27 beneath them bring in 3, 81 beneath them, 243 beneath them, 729 and beneath them, 2,187 beneath them 6,561 and so forth down to just the 12th level is 4,782,969 recruits.
On the 20th level, it equates to 10,460,353,203 people which is more than the current population on earth. Unfortunately, everyone that comes in, even the last person to be signed up thinks they are at the top of the matrix. (Psst… you are! - The top of YOUR matrix with nobody under you until you make the effort to recruit, and until then you pay the monthly fee for the tools.) but wait, there are no more people left in the world to recruit.
What about spillover? Unless you come under a hotshot recruiter and particularly if you come in at a lower level there is no spillover, it dries up as the people who have been told they don’t need to recruit come in before you have their infinity matrices to fill before they even get close to you. Let’s face it, most people that are drawn into a program that promises to make them a millionaire don’t know how or even want to work for their dreamy lifestyle.
One of many members that joined over a year ago, had this to say,
“I, unfortunately, joined this company over a year ago "yea I know stupid me" but I didn't believe the bullsh*t about making all that money with the matrix plan doing little work but instead was trying to find a marketing system that would help me with advertising my affiliate programs and other business ideas. For the last year, I have been hearing the company's mouthpieces talk about we are "just about to launch so get in now".
Since that time the "Founders'' have gone from around 25,000 to now well over 110,000 and still, we are "just about to launch". I just wanted the services which were promoted in the beginning but now it's all about creating an online meeting platform like Startmeeting which is going to be "bigger than Zoom or Google". Well, I DON'T CARE about that. I just want to have a marketing system that works and doesn't cost an arm and a leg which I am beginning to see now is next to impossible.
I have given up on the $97 sign-up fee but it just pisses me off the way people can so blatantly promise a service(s) and then just put off providing it because they are some sort of MLM marketing company in prelaunch. I wish I had done more research and looked for other videos like yours back then, but I was just so eager to find something that might work for me that I just went in blindly. Maybe eventually this company might prove me wrong and actually launch but then again maybe golden raindrops will fall from the sky the same day I win the lottery too.”
Or there’s this one…
This guy seems to know what he’s talking about...
Ash Mufareh has been involved with different work at home endeavors that have been shut down almost as soon as they start. In 2010 Mufareh founded a recruitment-based matrix scheme called AshMax.
Mufareh stipulated AshMax was NOT MLM but on the contrary, has a 5x5 sales matrix, with each new member required to recruit 5 additional members within 20 days. If someone does not meet this requirement, the person is forced out of the matrix. The full 5 x 5 matrix comes into effect after 100 days (5 x 20 day periods), at which point the first level member can reportedly expect to earn in excess of $22,000 per month, recurring, for life.
According to one ex-member of AshMax,
“things were well organized over there (AshMax), for a while - weekly webinar meetings, training sites, upline/sponsor communications on point. The crux for me, the goal post kept moving, things got shaky and no one was giving disclosure. Long story short, things went pear-shaped, never got sorted, refunds never happened, etc.”
In 2012 he became involved with a Ponzi scheme called TelexFree using his TelexMax. TelexFree had legal troubles in Brazil. In 2014 the SEC shut it down revealing TelexFree U.S. investors lost in excess of $3 Billion.
A couple of years later Ash Mufareh became involved with another Ponzi scheme based out of Brazil called PayDiamonds. That endeavor didn’t last long either and in mid-2018 it was closed down. It was at that time when Ashraf Mufareh started GOFOUNDERS/ONPASSIVE.
Here is one of the three videos on Mufareh’s official YouTube channel. The title of the video is, “Ash Mufareh – The Visionary Behind the World’s Best Online Business Solution”. With a title like that, wouldn’t you expect to see or hear Ash saying something about his AI-Tech baby? How about footage of him working with his team? I certainly did and was left disillusioned when I viewed them. There was nothing but self-aggrandizing and hype. Ash is not the person in the video.
Absolutely none of the ONPASSIVE videos show footage of Ash Mufareh. You would think that if someone was creating the next best thing, that person would want to get out there and promote his new creation. Wouldn’t you expect that after 2 years of promoting and collecting an accumulative total of $11,640,000 from 120,000 GoFounder members at $97 a pop, he would be able to and want to reveal the progress to date? You will always find a genuine owner of a startup out there in full view with updates and progress reports every step of the way.
Trustpilot, as its name suggests, should be trustworthy about its reviews (you would think) however, a multitude of reviews look very suspicious to me… here are just two,
How can this be if they haven’t launched the marketing suite yet?
Adapted from the FTC website
The victim, like the first investor, thinks of himself at the top of the pyramid but suddenly realizes that he is actually at the bottom, unable to find people interested in the program to build out his downline. He is not alone because mathematics shows that MOST investors will find themselves at the bottom of the pyramid when it collapses. The very structure of a matrix dictates that whenever the collapse occurs, at least 70 percent will be at the bottom level with no means to make a profit.
The GoFounder members will be quick to say that ONPASSIVE is an AI & IT company and not an MLM. If that is true, why is a matrix-based multi-level compensation plan used to build a team? Those are MLM hallmarks!
In my opinion, it shouldn’t be frozen in a prelaunch for over 2 years while taking people’s money. It should have reached the BETA stage by now so those 120,000 members that have paid their money can start tinkering with it at least, with ongoing updates and reports from the engineering department and corporate body, not just avid over-excited members who have only been in it for 15 months, taking the lead and have obviously drunk the kool-aid.
Right now the only thing that may attract a naive marketer is its claim of being “100% Hands-Free Completely Done-For-You Automated Online Success” and for the people who want to believe that there’s money-for-nothing ogle over the proposed passive earnings in the compensation plan.
If you apply some simple logic to their claim against the actions of a member aggressively promoting and recruiting, it contradicts itself. It’s clear to me that anyone who joins has been swept up by the thought and promise of making millions passively.
A successful business that brings real value does not put making money a personal priority and just wait for the money to roll in while you sleep. An excellent article explaining why “passive income” is a dangerous fantasy and points out 4 reasons why,
1. You Can't Stay Ahead of Competition Passively
2. You Can't Maintain a Loyal Tribe of Customers Passively
3. You Can't Lead Great Teams Passively
4. You Can't Create Meaning, Passion, or Purpose in Your Life Passively
The evidence and timelines in this article are correct at the time of researching and writing. It certainly makes sense to me to BEWARE & to look out for RED FLAGS and apart from doing your own due diligence, logically think about what is really happening here.
What Onpassive is promoting is nothing new or special in the technical aspect, in fact, at the moment it’s fresh air until it launches (if it ever does). Automated marketing and AI technology are already being used along with blockchain and cryptocurrency in the marketing arena for far less money and there’s been no need for a pyramidical recruitment matrix.
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, a very successful entrepreneur revealed that Tesla has had a spectacular run this year despite the COVID 19 impacts. In a recent interview, he offered some advice to other entrepreneurs, suggesting that any company of any caliber put their investments first into engineering and developing a product that is superior before investing in Marketing,
“My advice, you know, to corporate America or companies worldwide is spend less time on marketing presentations and more time on your product. Honestly that should be the number one thing taught in business schools. Put down that spreadsheet and that PowerPoint presentation and go and make your product better.”
What Musk says speaks volumes to me. To be a legitimate company, there needs to be “a product” long before it starts taking money from interested parties. Even in the initial stages, you won’t see any investor just hand over the money on promises or without seeing at least the blueprint (or white paper) of the startup company’s products which should be available to the public. They need to see that it’s a viable company and marketing hype incessantly and publicly just doesn't cut it for savvy investors.
Before the claims of how “mind-blowingly, nothing out there like it” system is broadcast to the world, the company needs to be transparent with its products and after 2+ years, it should be well into a BETA phase and not continuously delaying the launch, repeatedly saying you still have time to get in at the cheaper price. Food for thought.
Deb Williams
A Crypto/Blockchain enthusiast and a strong advocate for technology, progress, and freedom of speech. I embrace "change" with a passion and my purpose in life is to help people understand, accept, and move forward with enthusiasm to achieve their goals.
