{"id":1739,"date":"2008-08-07T15:19:52","date_gmt":"2008-08-07T20:19:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequence-inc.com\/fraudfiles\/?p=1739"},"modified":"2017-11-27T11:33:46","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T17:33:46","slug":"ytb-called-gigantic-pyramid-scheme-by-california-attorney-general-and-sued-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/ytb-called-gigantic-pyramid-scheme-by-california-attorney-general-and-sued-too\/","title":{"rendered":"YTB Called “Gigantic Pyramid Scheme” By California Attorney General (and Sued, Too)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday on WalletPop<\/a>, I wrote about how California’s Attorney General announced a lawsuit<\/a> against YourTravelBiz.com<\/a> (YTB) and called it a “gigantic pyramid scheme.” The evidence that it is a pyramid scheme is based upon the fact that the company theoretically offers members a chance to sell travel services to customers, yet that’s only a small fraction of how the money really flows.<\/p>\n

The real money in YTB is in recruiting new members, who pay $450 to join and pay $50 a month to stay active and eligible for commissions. Hmmmm… Kind of sounds like the $448 it costs to join Shop to Earn<\/a> and the minimum monthly purchase of $100 from its “Shop to Earth” products in order to be “qualified” to be paid commissions.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t even seem like YTB tried to hide the fact that it was a gigantic pyramid scheme. In 2007, there were over 200,000 members, and only 38% of them made anything from actually selling travel services. And for those who did make money selling travel services, it averaged $39 a year.<\/p>\n

And late last year, another WalletPop writer, Zac Bissonnette, clued in on the proof that YTB is a pyramid scheme. He wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The latest 10QSB for the company provides damning evidence that this company’s online travel agency business opportunity is nothing more than a classic pyramid scheme. How can we tell so quickly? 2 lines under “Net Revenues” tell the story.<\/p>\n

Three Months Ended
\nJune 30, 2007
\nOnline travel store sales and monthly license fees $23,309,601
\nTravel commissions and services $5,856,731<\/p>\n

Three Months Ended
\nJune 30, 2006
\nOnline travel store sales and monthly license fees $7,405,332
\nTravel commissions and services $1,904,131<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite simply, the YTB agents pay way more in fees to YTB than they make in commissions from selling travel products. Sounds like pyramid scam to me….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday on WalletPop, I wrote about how California’s Attorney General announced a lawsuit against YourTravelBiz.com (YTB) and called it a “gigantic pyramid scheme.” The evidence that it is a pyramid scheme is based upon the fact that the company theoretically […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[184],"tags":[936,935,1442,1441],"class_list":["post-1739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pyramid-schemes-mlm","tag-your-travel-biz","tag-ytb","tag-ytb-agent","tag-ytb-pyramid-scheme"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-s3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}