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Is Winthrills Network a Scam and Ponzi Scheme?
Is Winthrills Network a scam? This post is the most honest and most thorough review of Winthrills Network (aka Mandee Thrills Ltd) you will read on the internet today.

When a friend recently told me about the investment opportunities of the Winthrills Network, I was surprised that such a wonderful opportunity existed and I hadn’t heard about it. “You can make as much as 46%, 48% in 120 days!” she explained. One could make almost 50% ROI in 120 days just by crowdfunding real estate businesses in the UK? No Nigerian bank would give me that if I invested the same capital in a fixed deposit account. It sounded too good to be true. I felt almost embarrassed that a few minutes earlier, I had proudly tried to just show her the business opportunities of investing in certain herbal products.

I took down the name of this juicy investment opportunity for the purpose of conducting due diligence before I made any investment. Winthrills Network. Noted.

This post is the result of my research.

Tl;Dr

Winthrills Network has way too many red flags.

Discrepancies in Company Objectives
First, I visited the official website of the Network. I found it strange that the site proclaimed much more of online advertising than the crowdfunding part.



Mentally shrugging, I researched further.

Lack of Regulation by Government Body
The legal Agreements and Policies of the Winthrills Network website (updated July 2017) dwelt extensively on advertising. The parts that referred to investments are captured in the screenshot below. Let’s just say my reservations began to form when the website advised users “not to invest what they cannot afford to lose”. I discovered further that the company’s offerings are not regulated by any ‘body’ or regulations. The UK Securities and Exchange Commission does not approve of the entire thing. The company is trading in illegality and admits so on its own website.



I asked myself, so what recourse do I have if something happens and I lose my money?

Curious about the founders or manager of the company, I searched for them in the UK Companies House (the UK version of the Nigeria Corporate Affairs Commission). I made an interesting discovery. The founder of Mandee Thrills Ltd is Michael Imonikhe Edorhe. Up until March 2017, he was the only director and the only person with significant control.

Registrations in the UK and Nigeria
The website for Winthrills states that the Network was launched in 2010. And that it got its online presence in 2012.



Not true. An online search revealed that Winthrills got its online presence on October 15, 2014. If it was launched in 2010 as the website states, then it was probably operating without being registered in Nigeria and in the UK.



Mandee Thrills was registered in Nigeria in 2012.



There is no WinThrills Network registered in the UK.



Mandee Thrills Limited, however, was registered on 24 December 2015 and not in 2010 as the website says. A possible explanation is that Winthrills probably commenced its online advertising business way ahead of Mandee Thrills’s property investment business arm. That will explain why the Facebook page for Winthrills has been around as early as 2014 even though it was not for crowdfunding purpose.



The weirdest part for me in this registration tangled yarn is the fact that Winthrills Online Solutions (a business name and not a company) was just registered in Nigeria in April 2017.



Vague Company Officers
A lot of users are under the impression that the company is owned by Stan Grossman and Michael Rotimi Richards. A painstaking search of these names yielded nothing significant. In fact, the first few pages returned in a Google search showed Stan Grossman as a fictitious character in the 1996 movie, Fargo and Little Miss Sunchine (2006). Further search showed another Stan Grossman though who is a medical practitioner. Will the real Stan Grossman please stand up?

Michael Rotimi Richards came up in my search as a computer engineer. I am still not sure if they are one and the same as the name mentioned on the Winthrills website. (Update: these people are not the same)

The name of the second director – Rubiani Stefano Richards – appointed in March 2017 also yielded no significant results upon a basic Google search. The thing is, reputable sites have their directors/partners/managers well described in their portfolio and some random name isn’t just pasted on the websites to confuse doubters like me.

What about the people on social media with positive reports of the company? These are people who affirm that the company is legitimate and their money returned to them as and when due. I cannot say. A Ponzi scheme also works the same way. People get paid; always from the subsequent payments made by new sign-ups.

Recruitment of downliners
Winthrills promises 10% (update: a reader has commented that it’s actually 5%) of your investments to your sponsor (the member who registers you). My question is this. Do I still get the full ROI on my entire capital contribution? If I ‘invested’ N1m with the expectation of a 50% ROI, and 50k out of my initial N1m is given to my sponsor, will I still get the expected 50% (500k) on the 950k left with the Network? Or will it reduce to 475k because a portion has been given out to my sponsor? There are too many grey areas in the whole set up.
Conclusion
In my opinion, the investment part of Winthrills Network is a Ponzi Scheme. It will eventually unravel unless the promoters have the good fortune of an endless supply of fresh sign-ups with huge capital and consistent roll over by existing members.





Reasons numbers 2, 3, and 4 on the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s website (screenshots above) put up bold red flags for me. I went further to determine if Mandee Thrills invests at all in any property in the UK. The research outcome is a post for another day.

This post contains my reasons for choosing not to invest my money in Winthrills Network/Mandee Thrills Ltd. They are not reasons for the reader not to go ahead and invest especially when it is money you “can afford to lose” (see underlined part in next screenshot). If you already have your money invested, it may be wise to take out your principal sum as soon as you can and, provided you have the unyielding nerve for risk, leave the interest already accrued to yield more. When Winthrills will inevitably collapse, I cannot predict.



Read the update to this post here.



It seems that the proponents of Winthrills have been notified of this article. Some of the facts I discovered during the course of my research are being modified by the company such as the ROI and the commissions payable to a subscriber. Instead of writing me an email about how my facts are incorrect, let the reader please note that these findings are valid as at Oct 2017.

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Skip to content
AdeolaE.
ADEOLAE.

Life et al.

Menu

POSTED ON BY FANNYMOSA
Is Winthrills Network a Scam and Ponzi Scheme?
Is Winthrills Network a scam? This post is the most honest and most thorough review of Winthrills Network (aka Mandee Thrills Ltd) you will read on the internet today.

When a friend recently told me about the investment opportunities of the Winthrills Network, I was surprised that such a wonderful opportunity existed and I hadn’t heard about it. “You can make as much as 46%, 48% in 120 days!” she explained. One could make almost 50% ROI in 120 days just by crowdfunding real estate businesses in the UK? No Nigerian bank would give me that if I invested the same capital in a fixed deposit account. It sounded too good to be true. I felt almost embarrassed that a few minutes earlier, I had proudly tried to just show her the business opportunities of investing in certain herbal products.

I took down the name of this juicy investment opportunity for the purpose of conducting due diligence before I made any investment. Winthrills Network. Noted.

This post is the result of my research.

Read more

Skip to content
AdeolaE.
ADEOLAE.

Life et al.

Menu
POSTED ON BY FANNYMOSA
Winthrills Network – Ponzi? Scam? – Update
After my last post on Winthrills Network, I received numerous emails from readers who wanted to know if Winthrills actually invests in any property in the UK.
Inasmuch as I found it mildly astonishing that with all the red flags I pointed out in that post, people are still interested in putting their hard-earned (or perhaps not) money into it. Sigh.

Anyway, this post is to share what I discovered further in my research into Winthrills Network.

The Nigerian Registration
The company was registered on May 10, 2012 as MAND EE-THRILLS LTD (the spacing is not a typo). Its registered address together with the address of its three shareholders is in Minna, Niger State.

Dubious Investment Offerings
Upon signing up on their website, I was presented with an array of available investments in the UK. Quite a number of them were sold out but the available ones on their website were: Sir Thomas House (Liverpool), Dolphin Trust, Atlantic Bay Hotel, and Times Aparthotel.

I selected the Sir Thomas House project to invest in. Using the online calculator on the website, I calculated that with an investment of N1m at 0.44 interest rate, I would make a profit of N528,000 in 120days of payment grossing a total of N1,528,000 at the end of the term. (That’s right, the calculator did that.) Wow! I checked out the other projects. Similar suspiciously-high yield investments.

One at a time, I contacted the UK agencies directly involved in investments in these properties. After several emails back and forth and telephone conversations, I discovered further that, Sir Thomas House was not even available for investment as the project was concluded weeks before, and more importantly, not one of the other projects listed on Winthrills website nor any other property projects in the UK for that matter, gave ROI higher than 10% spread over 2-5years. Most of them gave 8%.

How on earth is Winthrills Network able to invest in a property that yields 8-10% returns in 2-5years and yet give its investors as much as 51% returns in 90 to 120 days?!

Here is a screenshot of the calculation done for my supposed investment: (By the way, the website owners might want to look into their calculator; I’m not sure how 0.44 yield on N1m equals N528,000. Just saying.)



But below is a screenshot of what to expect if you are to really invest in Sir Thomas House for example (different website):



In Conclusion
In final response to everyone who emailed me if I could confirm if Winthrills Network actually invests in UK properties, my response is this. As a result of my research, I am of a strong opinion that Winthrills Network does not make any investments on behalf of their subscribers.
Just like all smart Ponzi schemers know to do, some investors will get paid until the shit hits the fan. Bernard Madoff gave actual high returns in millions of dollars to his investors over several decades, and yet it was a Ponzi scheme where thousands of people lost about $18m (after government authorities recovered over $1b).
The red flags are too many. If it walks like a Ponzi, talks like a Ponzi; your guess is as good as mine. Follow your gut.


Did you miss the first post on Winthrills? Read it here.

TL; DR?
You really should click here


Did I miss something? Shoot me an email at comments@adeolae.com OR fill the form below.