Is Crowd1 a Scam?

Have you seen the ad for Crowd1 and you’re wondering what is this company all about?

Crowd1 is about investing and collecting a passive return.

That means that a person can invest a few hundred bucks into the system and each month he or she should be able to withdraw a larger sum from the system. 
This is how the passive income works, doesn’t it?

Well not exactly, but we are about to find out how this company works. 

From their ads and promotional videos, one has an impression that this must a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

But doesn’t it seem too good to be true? 

The legit question would be:
Is Crowd1 a Scam?

This review will answer that question and in about a few minutes, you will know who runs the company, what is their agenda, and what is the reality. 

Disclaimer
Please note, that I am not a member or an affiliate of Crowd1. This review is based on research and information available online in the public domain.
Any recommendations and conclusions are only opinions and may not apply to all persons or situations.

Overviews

Name: Crowd1
Website: www.crowd1.com
Price to Join: 99€ to 3,999€
Recommended: No!
I recommend Affiliate Marketing. Check the Pros and Cons of both business models (Affiliate Marketing vs. MLM).

What is Crowd1?

Crowd1 is an online Multi-Level marketing company, that allows members to take a part in gaming, gambling, education, and international networking using 3rd parties websites/platforms, for example, Miggster, AffilGo, and Epic1Lotto.

It also offers platforms where digital companies can advertise their service. 

Let’s take a look at their promotional video, and let me know what you think in the comment section below:

Does it seem like a real thing? 

Well, let’s check some facts.

The company is based in Dubai, UAE. 
In January 2019 they started with the pre-launch, and by August 2019 the business was already running. 

According to its website, it has already about 6 million members, worldwide. 

The number of members is really impressive considering the fact that this is still a new company.
No wonder, they claim to be the fastest-growing crowd-marketing company in the world.

What is Crowd marketing? 
Basically, it is a sort of digital marketing focusing on a large audience. 

But what does Crowd1 offer? 

1. Educational program 
2. Customer acquisition
3. Profit-sharing 

That sounds great. 

In fact, the company offers products as packages to its members and they can earn money by selling these products. 

The other way how the members can make money is “profit-sharing” or in other words, recruiting and making commissions from the new “investors”. 

Regarding the Educational program, we are going to check how good they are, since the Titanium package costs almost 2,500€ (that equals about $3,064 as of today’s writing).
So it better be good.

Crowds1 is also very active when it comes to webinars.
Thousands of people attended these webinars from all over the world. 

One would expect some value, but unfortunately, the main message can be summed up in the following sentence: 
“What if this works, and you become the first millionaire in your family”

Is this kind of “hope marketing”?
Or is the entire company just one big hype? 

Let’s dig deeper. 

Who Runs the Crowd1?

There are more people behind Crowd1. 
The founder is Jonas E. Werner.

He is a real person as well as the rest of the leadership.

So far it is a good sign.

The reason – is there are many companies outhere promising high returns but in fact, they are just outright scams, where no one knows who really runs the company, for example, Tronex World. 

So at least these people running Crowd1 are real. 

Here you can check also Jonas Werner’s Facebook profile which has a lot of photos from Crowd1 events. 

According to Jonas, this is supposed to be the next generation of Online Networking. 

The CEO of Crowd1 was Johan Stael von Holstein:

Simple research shows that these individuals have years and years of experience with MLM and what is most important, pyramid schemes. You can check Wikipedia, to learn more about his sketchy past. 

And as for December 2020, Johan leaves Crowd1, apparently due to health reasons. 
Whether it is due to health reasons remains unknown. 

What is also interesting, Holstein denied being the CEO of Crowd1, but the evidence shows otherwise. 
Back in January 2020, he claimed that Crowd1 was gonna become a publicly-traded company within 3 to 5 years. 

Well, less than one year after the statement he abandoned the company and its investors. 

Legal Issues

The number of countries where Crowd1 is under investigation for securities fraud grows.

The company has been already banned from Namibia: 

• “The Bank of Namibia has banned the Crowd1 get-rich-quick scheme after an investigation that found it to be a pyramid that must inevitably collapse.“

You can read the article, here.

Also in Burundi Crowd1 is identified as a Ponzi Scheme:

There are serious reasons why Crowd1 is identified as a Ponzi Scheme and later you will see a list of countries where crowd1 is or has been under investigation or a warning has been issued. 

Is Crowd1 a Pyramid Scheme?

Let’s see. 

The main difference between a legit MLM company and a Pyramid scheme is that the pyramid scheme has no retail products.

Meaning that money that flows into the company is from the new members only. 
And these members get paid for recruiting. 

In a legitimate MLM company, members have to make a profit solely from the retail products and recruitment is optional. 

Crowd1 offers an educational program so it is not an outright pyramid scheme.

But hold on a minute.

Let’s check what does FTC say about Pyramid Scheme:

“Some schemes may purport to sell a product, but they often simply use the product to hide their pyramid structure. There are two tell-tale signs that a product is simply being used to disguise a pyramid scheme: inventory loading and a lack of retail sales.”

So the simple rule can’t be applied and we must look a bit further. 

Going through the webinars, it becomes obvious that they do put emphasis on recruiting; 
They use more fancy words – Offering profit-sharing”.

Here is another claim from their webinar:

“The more crowd1 rewards you have the more cash payout you get and you are promised to be paid every single month“

Why there is such hype when it comes to recruiting? 

Above is a screenshot from their webinar where it says that Crowd1 is “offering profit-sharing”;
In other words, recruiting other people into the scheme is the only way how to make money within Crowd1.

But what about the Educational material?
That must be worth something, right? 

Well, we will see the material in a bit – and you will be surprised. 

Here is another sign of the fact that recruiting is essential within Crowd1.
Let’s assume that you are already a member and you are not sure where to find new members.

Well, ask no more – here is a recommendation from one of the Crowd1 coaches showing the following list: 

(Not sure how visible it is, let me mention a few points from the screenshot above:

• Your primary and secondary schoolmates (I am wondering what the reaction of your classmate will be once you contact him after 20 years…)
• Your higher institution course 
• Your church members
• Your village people in your area
• Family members, even extended ones
• Your phone contacts
• Your Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter friends
• and so on

Waw – it reminds me of one specific lesson back in time when I started in one MLM company (It was many years ago. )

Where all this money is coming from? 

According to their videos and sales material, the money is supposedly coming from 3rd party companies. 

We have already mentioned them ( Miggster, AffilGo, Epic1Lotto) at the beginning so let’s do a little investigation. 

It is said that one can play and bet using these 2 sites, but none of the websites have any games where one can bet or play. 
How about the domain information: 

• AffilGo.com
• miggster.com

It is inevitable that both sites are registered under the same name, Piskopianos Stelios. 

And guess under what name the registered domain www.crowd1.com? 

You guessed it right:

Under the name Piskopianos Stelios.

So these so-called 3rd party companies are made up to fool the “investors”. 
(I mean the websites are real but they belong to the same company). There are no 3rd party companies, that Crowd1 cooperates with. That is a huge red flag.

How about the Epic 1 Lotto?

This is supposed to be an app where you can buy tickets for the biggest lotteries, including MegaMillions.
Crowd1 members in Africa were promised access to this lottery claiming that it is available worldwide. 

The truth? 
Megamillions  – this game is only sold in the USA. And anyone selling the game around the world is in violation of their rules.

Another red flag.

So where is this money coming from?

The only money coming into the scheme is money from existing and new members – a classic Ponzi Scheme. 

How Much to Join the Crowd1

Let’s check out of curiosity what is the price to join this scheme. 

In order to start, you need a link from a member. Just like any other MLM company. 

You buy an educational package, and by now we know that none of the packages is cheap.

The price starts at 99€ and goes up to 3,999€. 

Why such a wide range?

As they say: 
“Bigger the pack the more educational you get”

Do you know what kind of education you get if you purchase the Titanium package for 2,499€? (that equals about $3,056 as of this writing).

Some slides and videos – The total content is something over 2 hours!
Sounds like a rip-off, doesn’t it?

But that’s not all.

Based on further research the Titanium Educational Package is just copied material from the book, How to be a Real Estate Investor.

This book is available as a PDF and it can be downloaded for free.
If you are interested in such a book, you can read it here.

Is this one of the best educational materials they have there? 

Why does it cost more than $3,000? 

Because it is a scam. 

Compensation Plan

The majority of MLM companies have very complicated compensation plans and it is done that way for a purpose.

I don’t want to bother you with all the details, but if you are interested to read the whole document, it is available here.

Crowd 1 has a binary structure. 
That means that the first two people you recruit are placed on your left and right side. 

When these people (your downline) recruit other people, they are also placed on the left and on the right side. 

Here is an example of how it works.

Let’s say you are a member and you bought the black package for 299€.

Now you recruit 2 people – they both buy the white package, each for 99€.
That is 198€ that flows into the company. 

According to the compensation plan, you get points that depend on the kind of package your downline purchase. 
In the case of the 99€ packages – the number of points is 90. 

That makes 180 points for you. 

10 points are worth 1€. 

With that being said you earn 18€, and Crowd1 gets (198-18) 180€. 

If your both right and left side recruits 2 new people, you earn from the 2nd level as well. 
And how deep this can go? 

It depends on the package you have both in the first place. 

• White (for 99€)  up to level 4
• Black (for 299€)  up to level 8
• Gold (for 799€)  up to level 12
• Titanium (for 2,499€)  up to level 20
• Titanium Pro (for 3,999€)  up to level 20

Remember that money that goes in is money from people who sign up. 
Again, it is estimated that Crowd1 has about 6 million members – that is how huge this pyramid is…

Red Flags

Let’s summarize the major red flags.

1) Educational material is a joke. 

2) 3rd part companies are either to be launched or they have no relationship with Crowd1 whatsoever. 

3) List of countries that issued warnings against Crowd1: 

• Paraguay
• Czech Republic
• Hungary
• Slovakia
• Ivory Coast 
• Gabon
• Namibia
• Burundi
• South Africa
• Mauritius
• Vietnam
• Philipines
• New Zealand

4) Founders already involved in Pyramid schemes in the past

Scammers are aware of the fact that their company is under investigation.
As with any such organization, they don’t move as fast as the scammers.

And let’s check another interesting fact. 
We know that the company was targeting African countries in 2020. 
How about now?

Not only that the traffic significantly dropped over the last 3 months, but according to web similiar.com, the visits that www.crowd1.com are mostly coming from Russia.

The majority of traffic is from Russia (a little over 20%) and then of course still South Africa, Ukraine (a little over 6%), and Thailand. 

It is obvious that the scammers running Crowd1 started to target the Russian market for these 2 simple reasons:

• The market there is huge
• The quality of life has been getting better (so more people have funds to buy these “products”), meaning tons of people they can scam.

What do other people think?

According to the review site, Trustpilot the ranking is not that horrible. 

But it is important to know that these rankings need to be taken with a grain of salt. 

The reason is that lot of companies ask their clients to write an excellent review, so I always look at the middle one:

Here is one example of the real bad one:

And here from the other side – the very positive one: 

As I said, reviewers leaving extremely positive rankings are most likely those who are part of the system. 

And here is just a screenshot of some comments underneath the Crowd1 2 hours video:

You get the picture. 

Would still sign up for Crowd1? 
Please let me know in the comment section below. 

What Now? 

There is no need to say more about Crowd1. 

But what to do now? 

How to make money – or have an extra income? 

Well, this is a tough one and it depends on your preferences. 

For example, I left the 9-5 and decided to create my own website that would generate a consistent income. 

But I did not know how, so I was trying to find a course or tutorial on how to build a website that drives a lot of traffic and monetizes the traffic. 

It was not easy to find a platform that is legit and has step-by-step training and still for a reasonable price (well, yeah – education cost money). 
Finally, I found one and in September 2019 I became a full-time internet marketer. 

I don’t have to invest, I don’t recruit people and I work anytime I want. 
Of course, it was not easy at the beginning. 

You know what? 

There is no such thing as easy money. 

People often think that there must be some push-button system or automated algorithm that starts to generate money.

It is all false. 

To have a website that ranks well on Google one must craft that website and the educational platform, called Wealthy Affiliate, I have mentioned teaches exactly that. 

Then, there is another good business opportunity – Youtube
But again it is important to create a lot of videos before the channel gets monetized. 

To give you an idea, to monetize the channel there must be

• 4,000 watch hours in the past 12 months
• 1,000 subscribers.

And that also requires effort and time. 

Again, as Napoleon Hill says: 

“There is no such thing as Something for nothing.”

If a person is persistent and patient, there are many paths, but in my opinion, affiliate marketing is the easiest one, compared to other business models (such as dropshipping, online surveys, and Getting paid to sites…) 

What I like about Crowd1

• Despite the fact that this is a pyramid scheme, I must admit their marketing material and sales videos are pretty good.

What I don’t like about Crowd1

• A Pyramid Scheme
• Legal Issues in many countries (more to come)
• Founders already involved in Ponzi Schemes
• A lot of people already lost their money

Is Crowd1 a Scam?

Crowd1 is a scam and a big one. 
I don’t recommend joining this company. 

The purpose of Crowd1 company is to generate hype, as we have seen in their videos.
It is really unfortunate that they abuse terms like “family” – there is not such a thing as a family within this company. 
The founders of Crowd One have only 1 agenda – to make billions and disappear. 

People lose money and in many cases their life savings. Is this family?
Is this bringing people together? 
Again quite opposite. 

Please STAY AWAY from the Crowd1. It is a matter of months until this whole structure collapses. 

If you want to know more, or in case you have experience with a similar company please use the comment section below. It will help other readers to make the right decision. 

Thank you for reading,
Mike