Recently, a pyramid scheme came to light called AI Marketing (ai.marketing) that pulled an exit and left thousands of ‘investors’ with losses. The scheme ran for more than a year from June 2020 to August 2021. This article will go into detail about the AI Marketing scam, its connection to a new scam called Cashbackpro (cashbackpro.biz) and the company behind these schemes called INB Network (inb.network).
The AI Marketing (ai.marketing) Pyramid Scheme
Though the domain name ‘ai.marketing’ was originally registered in 2015, the website of this ‘investment scheme’ did not go live till June 2020 as seen from Wayback Machine archives.
AI Marketing falsely claimed on their website that the company was founded in 2017 and that the website was launched in 2019. There is no proof that any of these claims are true. Right from the start, AI Marketing was built on lies and deception.
Much like Jocial which I have written about previously, AI Marketing claimed to have a magical bot that would generate revenue by running advertisements for their (non-existent) clients.
Though the main website ai.marketing has shut down as its creators have pulled an exit, there are related sites like aimarketing.cloud that still have information about AI Marketing.
Apparently, the company needed users to ‘invest’ in this platform to fund the ‘advertising campaigns’ being run by the company. In return, they would get a share of the ‘sales commission’ and get ‘cashback’. Anyone with even basic knowledge of digital advertising can tell that this is absolute nonsense.
Like any illegal pyramid scheme pretending to be a legal MLM, these buzzwords were deliberately meant to be obscure and confusing to obfuscate what the company is actually doing. As we know now, AI Marketing was nothing but a fraudulent money circulation Ponzi scheme that used money from new investors to pay old investors.
This is obvious from the earning chart presented to investors. The returns promised were absolutely absurd, as AI Marketing claimed that investors could turn $500 into $18,000+ in a year. That’s a ridiculously high ROI of 3,500%. For context, even the richest investors in the world don’t make more than 20% profit a year.
Further, AI Marketing incentivized their members to recruit more members so that they can earn ‘commissions’ on the deposits made by their referrals. This is the hallmark of any pyramid scheme as the scheme can only be kept alive as long as there is a steady stream of new joinees.
Investors were initially quite happy and praised the company for giving them their profits. Even as early as April 2021, you can see reviews on TrustPilot where users are saying good things about AI Marketing
What they did not realize was that the profits were nothing but deposits by new investors that were being recirculated to old investors, with the scammers running the scheme pocketing the rest. In simple terms, AI Marketing was ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’.
AI Marketing claimed that its parent company Wexford Alliance Ltd. was based in Hong Kong. However, residents of Hong Kong who visited the location found that no such company existed at the address, as it actually belonged to an unrelated shell company.
AI Marketing was hiding behind three different companies:
- Wexford Alliance Ltd., supposedly based in Hong Kong
- UDMCreators Ltd., supposedly based in London
- Zarya LLC, based in Russia
In August 2021, The Russian government officially declared AI Marketing and the three companies as fraudulent. Soon after, AI Marketing made various excuses to stop giving payouts and disappeared with investors’ money.
It became obvious that AI Marketing was a scam when they claimed that they could not give investors payouts as they were undergoing ‘maintenance’ (a common excuse given before pulling an exit scam).
According to Payeer themselves, all the money had been withdrawn from AI Marketing’s account by the account holders.
Soon after it became obvious that AI Marketing has left investors hanging, negative comments started piling up on review sites like Trustpilot. 1-star reviews are increasing day by day and all the recent reviews are negative.
Back Under a New Name – Cashbackpro (cashbackpro.biz)
The scary part? The story is not over. AI Marketing seems to be back under a new name running the same fraudulent scheme. This time around, the scheme is called Cashbackpro (cashbackpro.biz) and the website is identical to that of AI Marketing. Let’s play a game of spot the difference. Take a look below at these screenshots from the websites of AI Marketing and Cashbackpro respectively…
It looks obvious that Cashbackpro is nothing but a reboot of AI Marketing, as even the same lies are being repeated. The website of Cashbackpro claims that it is active since 2017. However, the domain name was registered only on 31st July 2021. It was also registered anonymously.
INB Network (inb.network) – The Pyramid Scheme Masterminds
AI Marketing and Cashbackpro are simply facades for the company that is really behind these schemes – which is a Russian operation called INB Network (inb.network).
To ‘invest’ in AI Marketing and Cashbackpro, you need to go through the INB Network platform. Even after AI Marketing has shut down, INB Network’s dashboard still has an active link directing to its website.
INB Network claims to be a legal multi-level-marketing (MLM). This appears to be a dubious claim as there don’t seem to be any real products or services being provided by them. Further, the company has a three-tier referral commission system. These two facts combined paint the picture that INB Network is likely to be a fraudulent pyramid scheme.
While INB Network claims that they make money through ‘Affiliate Marketing’, it doesn’t appear to be anything more than than a buzzword they are using to fool people without knowledge of the subject.
ANYONE with a website can use Affiliate ‘codes’ offered to ANYONE who owns a website, however, the majority of legitimate companies do NOT permit ‘buying ‘ads’ to promote or boost your clicks on the affiliate codes! Such activities constitute a form of fraud called ‘click fraud’.
Conclusion
Keeping all the above facts in mind, there are several reasons to believe that Cashbackpro is likely to be another scam run by INB Network, much like the fraudulent AI Marketing. It is advisable to avoid investing with these companies, as the signs suggest that these are fraudulent pyramid schemes that will leave investors with heavy losses.
Update
The website of Ai.marketing seems to be live again after being dead for weeks. However, it would be foolish to believe that it is a legitimate company considering all the facts highlighted in this article, especially the warning by the Bank of Russia.
How to Get Your Money Back from a Scam
Remember: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
To read about other Investment Scams, click here.
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If you have been a victim of an investment scam, you can take the following steps:
- File a complaint with the payment portal. However, investment scammers mostly use methods such as Bitcoin, Western Union, MoneyGram and other untraceable methods which make refunds impossible.
- File a formal police complaint with the Cybercrime department.
- Leave a negative review on review portals such as Scamadviser and TrustPilot
- Report the website to Google using the Suspicious Site Reporter extension for Chrome
- Give a low rating to the website on Web of Trust. You can also install their extension for the same.
- If the company has a listing on Google My Business or Google Maps, file a complaint using the Business Redressal Complaint Form. Also, leave a negative review explaining what kind of experience you had.
- Report the scam site to web filtering companies.
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