You’d Be gullible to believe them
OneCoin brothers are back and building yet another pyramid...
WATCH out India, here come the Islam brothers.
The London pair have a depressing record of inflicting disastrous Ponzi schemes on the unwary.
I first came across Moyn and Monir Islam when they were spouting the wonders of OneCoin at recruitment rallies.
This was meant to be a cryptocurrency investment miracle, but turned out to be a £3billion global fraud. The ringleader, 40-year-old Ruja Ignatova, remains on the run.
Next they moved on to a scheme flogging “wearable technology”, such as wristwatches that measured heart rate, and promised their investors that the company would “absolutely” be worth £2billion by this year.
It has since vanished. Then came Melius, and this time brother number three, Ehsaan, joined Monir and Moyn.
Melius supposedly sold software for currency trading, but really it was nothing more than a pyramid scheme where you got commission for recruiting others.
“This company is going to produce more millionaires than any company that I know of,” said Monir earlier this year.
An advertising puff piece in the business magazine Forbes gushed: “They are on their way to building a billion-dollar company in three years.”
Their promotional video vowed that it would be “the next big giant in the industry” alongside Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.
Now you’ll struggle to find any evidence that it even exists.
Which brings us to their most recent lunacy, called Be, and another advertising piece in Forbes.
This time it’s in the Indian edition, suggesting that they’ve moved on from the UK, population 66 million, to a country with a population of 1.3 billion – that’s a lot more potential people to target.
“New-age, young entrepreneurs Monir Islam, Moyn Islam and Ehsaan Islam from the UK bootstrapped a revolutionary idea and turned it into a thriving, successful company called Be,” runs the new Forbes piece.
Moyn is named as the president and chief executive, Monir is the chief visionary officer – yes, really – and Ehsaan is chief technology officer.
I sense that Forbes is embarrassed to be carrying this guff, printing in bold type a disclaimer at the bottom reading: “No Forbes India journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.”
This doesn’t stop the Islam brothers misrepresenting it by claiming on their website befactor. com that they have been “recognised by Forbes as leaders in innovation”, and insisting that some members are earning around £270,000 a month.
I’ve asked the Islam brothers to provide evidence of this success but they have not replied to me, and since Be is based in Dubai, there are no publicly available company accounts.
The website is not much help, spouting vaguely: “Our unique ecosystem provides an opportunity for people from all walks of life to build and own a business from their smartphones while living their best life.”
But it does reveal how affiliates get commission from recruiting others, and more commission from anyone they in turn recruit.
So when you strip away all the flannel about “Be a better you for a better tomorrow” all you have is another Ponzi scheme.
In one of their Forbes plugs the brothers tell how they’ve previously worked in restaurants, shops and as taxi drivers but “believed that they were meant for bigger things in life”. Which is their problem. There’s nothing wrong with earning an honest living, but the Islam brothers are just too deluded or arrogant to give it a go.
Strip away the flannel and all you have is a Ponzi scheme