CROWD1 Review: Legit or Scam?

What is Crowd1?

Crowd1 is an organisation with a listed UAE address, which claims to ”connect crowd marketing and online networking with online gaming”.

In 2020 the company was supposedly bought out by another organisation called Impact Crowd Technology (ICT) S.L. (even though there is no mention of Crowd1 on their website since the buyout).

Are they legit (or is this a scam)?

To find out if a company is legit, the most important things we need to look at are:

1. What they’re selling and who they are selling it to
2. The history of the people who created the company
3. Any official warnings against them
4. Whether they are properly registered
5. What other people are saying about them
6. The registration date and place of their website

Easy Crypto’s Scam Checklist – CROWD1:

1. What exactly do they sell? And to who?

The question of whether Crowd1 sells products to customers other than its members is very important.It’s not illegal for a company to pay rewards for sales and recruitment, but a legit company will be more focused on selling products.

If the company’s main business and income comes from the recruitment of new members, that’s a pyramid scheme – something that is illegal in most countries including New Zealand.

Check out the Crowd1 website and you can see that in no place do they mention the sale of their products, with all information relating to the recruitment programme (!)

On their website you can see they have a few mobile game or gambling apps and some pointless training as the “products” they use to hide behind, despite there being no way to access these without signing up for their recruitment programme “The Crowd Movement”  – indicating that it is likely an illegal pyramid scheme*.

Learn more about MLM: Read our guide for a closer look.

2. Who is behind it?

Several of the top members including the founder have been linked to several previous MLM Schemes (almost all of these have failed, leading to many people losing their hard earned money)

Jonas Eric Werner (Founder and CSD)

1. Onecoin (one of the biggest known MLM scams in the world – see more here)
2. Synkronice-Springlo
3. OPN-Sitetalk

Bjorn Arnstedt (also known as Bjorn Thomas)

1. TOWAH (more info here)
2. Sitetalk
3. Unaico

Johan Kloster (top recruiter)

1. Wealth Masters International
2. OPN Sitetalk
3. Onecoin

3. Are there official warnings about the business?

Warnings from the following agencies:

1. New Zealand’s FMA
2. Philippines’ SEC (also see their cease and desist letter here)
3. Mauritius’ FSC
4. Vietnam’s CCP Department
5. Africa’s COSUMAF
6. Burundi Security
7. Bank of Namibia
8. South Africa’s SARB & FSCA
9. Norweigan Lottery Authority
10. Paraguay’s CNV

Other third party investigations:

1. Major network marketing company Crowd1 accused of being a pyramid scheme
2. Crowd1 Review: “Owner rights” virtual shares investment fraud
3. Crowd1 Review – Investment Scam? Compensation Plan Exposed
4. Crowd1 Review – Is Crowd1 a Scam? Read This First Before Investing
5. Crowd1 – Listing Terminated (Business For Home – BFH)

4. Are they a registered business and a registered financial services provider?

• Listed office in the United Arabic Emirates (UAE)
• Not a registered company in UAE – https://www.dfsa.ae/Public-Register/Firm
• Not registered as a financial services provider in any of these countries (including New Zealand).

5. What are other people saying?

What are the online reviews?

• Not many reviews for Crowd1 found online (but a lot of negative ones): https://nz.trustpilot.com/review/crowd1.com
• No reviews for its parent company ”Impact Crowd Technology S.L.”

Do they have any social media accounts? (and how active are these?)

Crowd1 has several social media accounts with varying levels of activity/engagement. These accounts have hundreds of positive and negative reviews which can be typical of pyramid schemes.

What’s in the news about them?

See current news stories about Crowd1 here

6. When was the URL registered and where?

Looking at the URL ownership is a way to check who owns the website and is it based in the country that they claim to operate from?

URL is registered to someone called Pskopianos Stelios (who is also listed as the owner for ‘affilgo.com’, ‘miggster.com’ and ‘mygrithub.com) in Limassol, Cyprus (not the same place as they claim to operate from).

Takeaways

Based on this information, we would recommend you not send any money to Crowd1 or sign up for their recruitment programme.

Supporting this group could cause losses not only to yourself but to many others involved (including your friends and family).