UPDATED 12:29 P.M. EDT (U.S.A.) TelexFree, which operates through Ympactus Comercial Ltd. and is under investigation amid allegations in Brazil it is running a massive pyramid scheme, has no license with Brazil’s telecommunications regulator to offer VOIP services, according to this report in Brazilian media. The regulatory agency is known as Anatel.
Here is a translation from Portuguese to English by Google Translate.
Although the degree to which Anatel regulates VOIP providers in Brazil was not immediately clear, the assertion was reminiscent of one the U.S. government made against AdSurfDaily Ponzi schemer Andy Bowdoin last year: that Bowdoin, now in federal prison for ASD’s $119 million fraud, earlier had sold contracts for a telecommunications company that wasn’t licensed by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.
TelexFree denies it falls under Anatel’s regulatory framework.
Bowdoin, 78, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in the ASD case in May 2012, less than a month after the U.S. government made the assertions that he’d ignored FCC regulations in a pre-ASD securities scam in Alabama in the 1990s. Prosecutors also linked Bowdoin to the AdViewGlobal HYIP scam and a purported venture known as OneX that allegedly recycled money in ASD-like fashion.
ASD, an MLM company, promised to pay members 1 percent a day. A grand jury charged Bowdoin with selling unregistered securities as investment contracts, securities fraud and wire fraud. He was arrested in December 2010.
Like ASD, TelexFree is an MLM company. Some TelexFree promoters claim a payment of $15,125 to the firm for the purchase of a “contract” fetches a profit of more than $42,000 in a year.
There have been reports of death threats against a judge and prosecutor involved in the TelexFree case in Brazil.
AdViewGlobal and OneX also were MLM companies. In 2011, Bowdoin claimed he was pushing OneX to pay for his criminal defense in the ASD Ponzi case. Prosecutors described OneX as a pyramid scheme.
A judge banned Bowdoin from MLM in 2012. The same judge earlier had been targeted with false liens by Kenneth Wayne Leaming, a purported “sovereign citizen” who allegedly was performing legal work for certain ASD members while harboring two federal fugitives from Arkansas wanted in a separate home-business caper.
Leaming, 57, was arrested by an FBI terrorism Task Force in 2011. He was convicted of the charges in March 2013 and was sentenced to eight years in federal prison.