Pyramid schemes are illegal business models where money transfers from pocket to pocket with no exchange of value, characterized by heavy emphasis on recruiting new members rather than genuine retail sales. The iMarkets Academy case demonstrates this: the company took over $1.2 billion from consumers since 2018, yet 95% of participants made $5,000 or less, with only 0.1% making six figures. Despite a $796 million judgment against founders Chris Terry and Alex Morton, the actual settlement was only $2.5 million, with additional asset freezes targeting properties worth over $20 million. This case illustrates how MLM promoters often join multiple schemes (Vemma, Jeunesse, iMarkets Academy) while making deceptive income claims, ultimately facing legal consequences but continuing to recruit new victims.
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Exposing the $796 MILLION Judgment Against MLM ScammersAdded:
If you don't do this, what are you going to go do? Literally, you have no cap on your income. You guys >> Most companies are like pump and dumps and startups and garbage or lying to people about returns on their money.
>> Alex Morton finally got caught.
Actually, finally is not the correct word because he always runs into legal trouble with every MLM he joins. The most recent scam was iMarkets Live where everyone was making life-changing money with big fat checks. This was an MLM that offered Forex trading education and it promoted the idea that you too could become wealthy through their trading and recruiting other people to be just as wealthy as you. Alex Morton was the frontman luring people into the scheme and Chris Terry was the mastermind who built the system. I am Academy no longer exists. Chris Terry has attempted to evade punishment numerous times, but it looks like the law has finally caught up to him. In May 2025, the FTC claimed iMarkets Academy deceived customers taking more than 1.2 billion dollars from consumers since 2018.
>> Number one, I wanted to make a lot of money. And number two, I wanted to impact a lot of people. How many of you love the idea of actually helping somebody? Say yes.
>> He always talks about helping people, which is a little ironic considering 95% of the people he helps join his scheme end up worse off than before. Jason Brown and Matt Rosa were top sales people. Brandon Boyd was also listed as a top salesman for the company. The complaint was explosive and full of facts pointing to this company being a massive pyramid scheme. This seemed inevitable to all of us who are making content about this company. Always Marco released a video in February 2021 titled Infiltrating a Pyramid Scheme iMarkets Academy, which was an awesome video.
>> I joined an opportunity call hosted by this guy, Fidel Castro.
Get it? Cash-stro, like the communist leader of Cuba, but cash.
>> Marco did a great job exposing just how ruthless these distributors are at recruiting, which is how the pyramid scheme can continue. I made a video covering the lawsuit last year titled Exposing the Biggest MLM Fraud on Social Media as it was a pretty monumental day in the world of MLMs. A complaint alleging a 1.2 billion dollars in damages is nice for articles and headlines, but what happened next? A couple weeks ago, the FTC and state of Nevada filed a stipulated order for permanent injunction and money judgment against i am Academy and the Terris.
This number is funny to read because it doesn't seem real. A judgment in the amount of nearly $796 million was entered. Considering how big this story was, I think it's a good time to provide an update now that the feds are coming after these scammers and they're coming for everything. On August 7th, 2025, a settlement was entered with Jason Brown and Matt Rosa. They received a judgment for $36 million. How they arrived at that number, I'm not entirely sure. My guess is I am Academy was forced to hand over their back end and show the attribution codes that showed how much each distributor was recruiting into the system and that's the number they came up with and they found for Jason and Matt. They agreed to settle for only $2.5 million to be paid within 45 days of the order. Why so little? They had to disclose all of their financial statements, all of their personal financial assets to the FTC. So, I imagine this is a pro-rated amount based on how much the FTC expects they can pay, reasonably pay, and the most that they can get out of them. A judgment is just a court document. So, a $36 million judgment is nice and all, but if they can actually only pay two and a half million dollars, if that's all the money they have, well, then that's what you should settle for because that's all you're going to get anyway. There is a clause for the suspension of the judgment to be lifted. Basically, if they pay the $2.5 million within a few weeks and agree to the other terms, which we'll get to in a second, then it'll suspend the judgment of $36 million, meaning the FTC will never collect on that difference of thirty-something million. The terms are if the court finds that settling defendant failed to disclose any material asset, materially misstated the value of any asset, or made any other material misstatement or omission in the financial representations identified above, which are basically, "Hey guys, can't make any more income claims. You can't make any misleading statements about a product or service and you can't mislead about the performance of any product."
>> Helping people is the best. You know, I'm here today at 29 years old. I'm not getting paid to be here. I'm here cuz I want to help people. Like, if I do this for 30 minutes and one of you leaves this weekend and makes a decision and changes your life and becomes a multi-millionaire, and starts the charity, and starts the fundraiser that you want to start, my my mission is complete, right?
>> As you can probably guess, no new recruit ends up becoming a multi-millionaire. It's only the people who start in the business. Alex was absolutely paid to be there, so don't listen to him. It might not have been a direct speaking fee, but this guy is not traveling for free, and not doing this for free. He recruits people into a scheme, and that's ultimately how he makes money. The cost was between $100 and $500 to sign up. IM automatically renewed their membership, charging between $100 and $400 every 4 weeks, continuing until the customer canceled the auto-renewal. 60% of the customers dropped off within a month, and 90% dropped the service within 6 months. You may think that people may have stopped paying for the service because they learned how to trade. So, why stay and pay if you already know how to trade?
That would make sense if they were actually making money trading. The numbers show that 95% of people made $5,000 or less, and we can assume that a majority of the people in the top income brackets were the first recruiters. All the data shows no one was making money.
Yet, they signed up because they believed this was an easier path to becoming a multi-millionaire, and starting charities like that guy Alex Morton said.
>> There's a young man in here in the back named Julian. He's younger than me, and he's made millions and millions of dollars with me, and he will tell you when he was broke, and he had no money, he wrote down his goals.
>> 0.1% or less than two people out of every thousand made six figures with the company. 99.23% of people made under $25,000. To be fair, the directions were a little unclear. Maybe their goals were to make less than minimum wage. Maybe their goals were to cause financial catastrophe to everyone in their downline.
>> I'm going to teach you not what I've read out of some book. I'm going to teach you what's allowed me to be completely financially independent, and and help a lot of people do the exact same thing.
>> in these MLMs ultimately get in trouble because all their sales pitches and claims are misleading, and they aren't accurate about the outcomes. The income disclosure chart is so important because no one would sign up if they knew that this was the outcome. Alex Morton and the other promoters rely on a vulnerable audience who don't know the outcomes of joining MLMs. MLM influencers are like pests. Today's sponsor, Pesty, is a DIY pest control company with a mission to provide professional-grade products at an affordable price. When I was running my real estate business, I routinely had to account for expensive pest control in order to handle the occasional cockroach breakout here in Vegas. Because Pesty sends pro-grade products that professionals use, you can save multiple hundreds of dollars per year by using Pesty. I work on a creative schedule, so I don't like allocating my time waiting on a professional to arrive at my house to let them inside or overseeing them while they work on my property. We also have a couple cute dogs at my house, and Pesty's products are pet and kid-friendly, which is very important to me. People from all over the United States watch my videos, so you may be thinking, "Well, I don't live in Las Vegas like you do. Can Pesty's products help me with the insects in my specific location?" The answer is yes, they can.
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>> You see, 28 months ago, when I got involved by current company, and I and I asked the opinions on that current company to a lot of mentors, a lot of people I respected, nine out of 10 of them said, "You're absolutely crazy.
You're nuts. It's not going to work. IF YOU GO THERE, YOUR CAREER'S PROBABLY OVER."
>> I focus on Alex more than the other promoters because he's the most popular and brings more people into these schemes, but it's because after each MLM he runs into legal trouble and then runs off to another MLM just to get into more legal trouble.
>> If you all stood up and said, "I don't want to do it," and one guy stood up and said, "You know what? Help me get to 100 grand a year in the next 8 months," dude, my job's done here. So, if you want to know how to make an extra thousand, two thousand, three thousand, six thousand, and even ten thousand bucks in the next 13, 14 days, guys, message Justin.
>> Anyone that wants to I I'm going to make sure they become millionaires that I market [music] fine.
>> Alex began in Vemma back in the early 2010s and was pitching to small groups of people in their living rooms.
>> So, we're moving faster, we're moving quicker, guys. We're really helping a lot of people change their life financially, guys. And tonight, for the next I'm going to talk for 16 minutes, dude.
>> He's been recruiting into MLMs ever since. His pitch is always the same.
It's always about helping people. It's always about how much money he's made, this huge opportunity that you just can't miss out. And all those people over there, they're going to be stuck getting jobs, but that's not for you.
Every single MLM income disclosure chart looks like this, where effectively no newly recruited member makes money, but he never seemed to talk about this.
>> You know, I just hit Royal Ambassador in Vemma, which is now like 60,000 a month.
It's a million dollars a year. By October, I'm on pace to be at 100 grand a month.
>> One of the main reasons why these promoters constantly get in trouble is they spend so much of their energy on recruiting people into this opportunity and how much money could be made. Very little of their energy is spent on retail sales. When you only focus on recruiting and not sales of the product, that, my friends, is a pyramid scheme.
They did have a lot of sales of their product, so it wasn't a phony business.
And the Phoenix Suns received a big check to validate them as a legitimate drink on their stadium and billboards.
But the business model was reliant on recruiting more people because those new people were forced to buy the product.
It wasn't retail sales. That's why the business no longer exists. But this next clip gives you an idea of just how deep Alex was within the matrix.
>> Verge, V- V- Vemma.
>> Yeah, right here in Phoenix, dude. Oh, yeah.
>> For a minute, it was massive, spectacular implosion.
I think, right? Like, I don't know.
>> Yeah, at the at the end, well, I >> Yeah, what happened to that?
>> It was it was falsely called a pyramid scheme. And at the end of the entire process, it was actually deemed not a pyramid scheme.
>> Alex is very clueless about anything that would alter his opinion that MLMs are God's gift to the business community. We'll react to some more clips in a minute because that interview is absolutely hilarious. But it's important to point out that a company doesn't settle with the FTC for $238 million in a story with a sub-headline of company agrees to a ban on pyramid scheme practices to settle charges. It was so bad that the company and both founders agreed to essentially never participate in another MLM again since the clause here is what every MLM business model looks like.
>> There should be consequences to that.
>> be.
>> Like if we're going to you know, come in and and hijack somebody's business like that.
>> Does a $238 million settlement sound like an admission of innocence? There was no hijacking here. When you build a pyramid scheme and it gets large enough, the FTC will come knocking.
>> Yeah, right? It's just insane. I really think the world doesn't want people to be financially independent and free.
>> Absolute comical statement by the con man. My favorite part of the Vemma settlement was that the FTC actually was not the reason for the business shutting down. Vemma was hitting larger and larger sales numbers every month which looked great. However, these sales numbers were artificial because they were forcing new recruits in order to join the opportunity they had to buy product. So the sales weren't coming from retail. That court-endorsed plan effectively ended the recruitment frenzy and inventory loading by distributors who had to purchase costly affiliate packs and supplements each month to fully qualify for bonuses and commissions. The court essentially proved that Vemma sales were only from recruiting and not from retail sales.
The company did go bankrupt pretty quickly because once the pyramid structure and the recruiting were taken away, there were no more sales.
>> How can you be a pyramid scheme on a drink?
Like how would that even like >> the thing is like pyramid schemes are illegal business models where money transfers from pocket to pocket to pocket with no exchange of any any value.
>> Like every other person with MLM, they have very little understanding of what a pyramid scheme is. When a majority of the money is made from recruiting and those new recruits buying the product and not retail sales, then it's a pyramid scheme. Boreyko admitted that the company was struggling to make sales and that he was thankful to members of the MLM industry who had been helping out by purchasing products. Rapid decline in recruits, canceled product lines, and terminated the lease at its headquarters.
>> First, so I tell everybody it's like I went from rock bottom to rock star back to rock bottom. Because when this company went out of business, number one, I was getting a lot of the blame.
Um cuz I was like the {quote} {unquote} face of the deal.
>> Generally, when you're the top recruiter into a pyramid scheme and you get paid millions of dollars at the expense of all the people you recruited into the business, you're going to get a little blame. He's just a little victim, isn't he? After the Vemma fallout, Alex's dad, Mark, wrote this article giving his reasons for leaving. Of note is this sentence at the bottom. In late July, we were introduced to a couple of outstanding mentors, married, clean life, and in their mid-30s that Alex would really be able to follow and learn how to build a large and sustainable MLM business. After several meetings with them, we traveled to the East Coast to meet up with the ownership of Jeunesse and were very impressed with their story, products, and vision. Instead of learning their lesson going clean, they just had to jump back into the MLM business because that's the only way they know how to make money. So, he joined an MLM selling lotions. I'm sure he really believed in this product. Less than a year after they joined Jeunesse, a class action complaint was filed alleging a pyramid scheme. Alex was listed as a defendant. They include a complaint filed by Truth in Advertising to the FTC alleging that Jeunesse had an emphasis on recruitment over product sales and that the distributors were making deceptive income claims regarding the financial gains consumers will achieve. Some were advertising that you can make $26,000 per week. I know this may be getting a little repetitive because all these MLMs sound the same, but that's kind of the point when criticizing guys like Alex who claim that the next MLM they're joining, they believe in the product and the vision and this whole business model. They believe in it more than any other MLM they've been a part of. During a Google Hangout, the leader shared the eight-step plan to success with Jeunesse, which was entirely focused on recruiting. Now that you know about Jeunesse, the next clip should be even funnier.
>> So, today I am officially resigning from Vemma.
And I'm joining a company that's going to allow me to dream bigger, achieve much more, and help every single one of you get to that next level.
>> Every single time Alex leaves an MLM, he joins a new one where the opportunity is bigger than ever before. He always fails to mention that the one he's leaving is facing bankruptcy or some massive class action complaint.
>> Get ready to go full throttle, get ready to go all in, and get ready to make history.
>> Eventually, the opportunity at Jeunesse dried up for Alex, so he pivoted to Forex trading, which is how we got here today with the $796 million judgment against them.
>> There's a quote I like that goes, "A con man doesn't worry about fines and sanctions. He simply packs up his wagon of snake oils and moves to the next town." That's Alex.
>> That describes Alex perfectly because he joined another MLM immediately after the IM Academy judgment. More on that in a second. First, we need to see what his penalty was. He settled in September 2025. The judgment filed against Alex was a little over $76 million.
Despite the lower settled amount, you'll see in just a second, that first number is massive. This is not a typical settlement agreement where someone just wants to exit litigation and they're quasi admitting wrongdoing, but not so much. No, that was a massive admission of wrongdoing.
>> Okay, now we're going to talk about automation. It's 100% hands-free, 100% hands-free, you know, product. You set it and you forget it and you have the opportunity to make money.
>> This is how much of a con man he is. He constantly promotes opportunities where he knows 95% of the people make significantly less money than minimum wage. Alex himself wasn't even using these auto traders. It was making up to 10% per month returns and he wasn't using the product himself. Build your name, reputation, brand, and your level of spiritual awareness to heights where no one can disturb your peace, attempt to ruin your reputation, or create false narratives because the world already knows the truth. Alex, there's nothing we can say that will ruin your reputation. Everyone outside of the MLM world knows exactly your game plan. You join another MLM immediately after the previous one blows up and you're recruiting people who eventually lose all their money. Alex quickly settled for $10 million with similar stipulations as the other defendants.
What does a con man do after paying a settlement? Did he learn his lesson and join a new industry? Of course not. He's got new people to recruit into this new scheme.
>> You know, listen, you know, first off, congratulations on being in the best company in the industry of network marketing, uh Gfu.
>> Alex is like an MLM mercenary. Whenever the previous opportunity that at one point was like the biggest opportunity for him in his life, whenever that company's going bankrupt, building burning down, he just joins the next opportunity. Gfu has got to be the worst name, the corniest name I've ever heard in a company. It sounds like vegan peanut butter.
>> Is you're doing Gfu I do Gfu 24/7.
When I'm in the airports, when I'm in the Ubers, I'm always looking for conversations that I can be having that could that could translate into new customers joining my business, new leaders joining my business. So, >> despite claiming that he never joins any pyramid schemes, he spends all of his day, those are his words, recruiting new people, never focusing any of his attention on selling product to retail.
>> Bottom line is guys, when I first got approached this industry, I was very very skeptical, too good to be true, scam, called it a pyramid scheme. Guys, I was that guy, dumb, ignorant, broke.
>> 15 years and many lawsuits later, he still ignores the fact that deep down he keeps pushing the same scammy business model over and over again because that's all he knows.
>> The last 6 7 years has been, hey Cody, on all the money that's flowed through your bank account in the last 5 years, how much money have you made on that money?
And the answer is normally uh what do you say?
>> Yeah, none.
>> Nothing. Awesome. If I could show you a way to just multiply your existing income, would you take a look at something?
>> The income disclosure statements released by these companies indicate that basically no one makes money and nearly everyone would be better off just getting a minimum wage job. And yet Alex is on podcast using the words multiplying their money with his opportunity.
>> Right. I I've been in this game for 14 years.
14 years, and I've never been this excited and confident in my entire career about the direction of a company.
>> He said that on April 12th, 2025. Anyone want to guess what happened within the next year? On March 16th, 2026, Alex posted on his Instagram a disclaimer about Elite. Behind MLM is the best source for everything MLM. They posted an article about the reboot of this company, a monthly membership for travel.
>> When I look at Gifu, to me, the stars have completely aligned for massive, massive success. Period. Point-blank.
Massive, massive success.
>> My favorite segments in Alex's interviews on podcasts is when he discusses how he evaluates the next opportunity he's going to join, treats it like he's this business mogul. He's got this big decision to make, when in reality, he's just waiting for the next scam to offer him a bag so he can both show up to these bogus livestreams. The final settlement we'll talk about today is the Terrys, filed on May 13th, 2026.
This is the settlement agreement where the judgment is for $796 million.
The Terrys only had to hand over $1.36 million in cash. I know, please don't get mad at me for reading that. I'm just the messenger. I too was very disappointed seeing that number when I first read it, but that is not all.
There's also mention of an asset freeze.
They're coming after everything. This is 13 pieces of land in total. These plots are highly valuable and collectively could sell for over $20 million. There's eight separate properties, including New York, Las Vegas, Sunny Isles, Dubai, and Miami. Those addresses are redacted, so it's impossible to know the value.
However, each one seems to be listed in an A-tier city, so I imagine most of them are really expensive. My guess is he was trying to store his money in safe assets hoping to be judgment proof. They have nearly 20 vehicles listed, some of them worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. They include three watercraft vehicles and my favorite, four owners tickets {slash} personal seat licenses for the Raiders. Next is jewelry, watches, and furs, mostly owned by his wife. Finally, some cash and personal property. This still isn't enough in my opinion, because if you're caught running a Ponzi scheme, you're going to go to prison. But if you're caught running a pyramid scheme, you don't go to prison, even though they're reasonably similar. However, I do imagine that the Terrys, even though they have a lot of money, having the feds come in and take essentially everything down to the clothing in your closet, I imagine is pretty mentally destroying. I'm sure they had a fun run while they were scamming people for millions, no morals or ethics required.
But, the federal government won this battle, and we can only hope that they're all miserable following this judgment and having to pay up. Thanks so much for watching.
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