After several months of landing in the United Kingdom, a fraudulent MLM company named OnPassive, which is run by a notorious fraudster Ashraf Mufareh aka Ash Mufareh has landed in Bangladesh with the target of cheating locals.
On its Facebook page eyeing on preys in Bangladesh, fraudster Ash Mufareh introduces himself as “a man with a vision and also an entrepreneur. He is an MIT, Master Affiliate, CEO and…”.
The fraudster has opened an office at Dhaka’s Mirpur area which uses a Teletalk mobile phone number +880 1553-578503. This Facebook page also mentions the website address of this fraudulent venture.
On another Facebook page targeting Bangladeshi nationals, OnPassive gives a catchy description of Ash Mufareh. Moderator of this page is an individual named Rubayet Chowdhury who joined this scam racket in August this year.
Meanwhile, according to media reports, in a notification issued on December 14, 2023, Bangladesh Bank – the central bank said numerous MLM companies engaged in fraudulent activities in Bangladesh earlier and misappropriated substantial sums from the public.
The Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) has found evidence that OnPassive is also engaged in such activities. It has started operations in Bangladesh offering lucrative but fraudulent schemes to lure people into investing, said the notification.
Claiming to be an IT-based product and software company, OnPassive is headquartered in India and has offices in the US. It also operates in Singapore, Dubai, and Egypt.
On its website, OnPassive touts a comprehensive suite of software solutions, from digital payment services to domain/website creation tools to business email solutions.
The company has its own digital platforms such as O-Net, O-Shop, and O-mail as alternatives to Facebook, Amazon, and Gmail, respectively.
Kamruzzaman Kanak, who invested in the company, told Dhaka-based English daily The Business Standard, “To join OnPassive, one has to be the founder of the company with an initial investment of US$102. Another $250 has to be paid after a specified time of joining”.
He said, “One has to join the company through another founder member. A portion of the company’s revenue will be disbursed to investors as it claimed”.
Joining OnPassive requires membership dues, payable in dollars through various international cards like Visa, Mastercard, Amex, and even Bitcoin.
Another investor Sarwar said, “After shelling out US$102 for OnPassive membership, I dutifully downloaded all their recommended apps. However, a month of diligent browsing yielded nothing but frustration and unanswered calls”.
A video documentary on OnPassive shows the company set its targets for a massive US$450 billion market, with online education leading the charge at US$250 billion, followed by domain and web hosting at US$53 billion, digital payments at US$79 billion, and email marketing at US$2 billion.
Beware of OnPassive!
While we have exposed through series of reports the criminal activities of an individual named Ash Mufareh, the kingpin of fraudulent OnPassive Ponzi scheme, sitting in the United Kingdom, an individual named James King is actively promoting this fraud venture, especially on social media platforms with the notorious agenda of scamming hundreds and thousands of Britons. Surprisingly, when some British nationals brought this case of fraud to the attention of anti-fraud investigators in the United Kingdom, those complainants were told that the UK authorities were not either investigating or taking any action on this matter.
According to a credible source, James King has been advocating OnPassive for at least 12, possibly 24 months now and previously he got former work colleagues to invest in Banners Broker, a now officially recognized illegal PONZI scheme where the co-founders were successfully prosecuted in Canada (7 years ago in an FBI run operation).
James King also promoted FLEXKHOM international and MAPS (My Advertsiing Pays), Ponzi schemes also created by the same people responsible for Banners Broker. He also tried to encourage various individuals to invest in a Northern England-based housing investment scheme where people were asked to place £20-40,000 into an investment scheme with less than 24 hours’ notice.
Is OnPassive a scam racket? For the sake of saving people from falling victims of scammers, we already are investigating several scam cartels, including OneCoin, Bank Bene Merenti, YEM Foundation, YEM coin, EcoX etcetera. As part of our willingness of exposing scammers, scam rackets and scam cartels, we also are investigating OnPassive. As part of our investigation, we have found response from various individuals about OnPassive.
Responding to this question, one individual with knowledge about this racket said “OnPassive is a scam. If you doubt this, then go again and really check what their product is. They use big words like Artificial Intelligence to deceive people. I actually attended one of their online seminars, and they were claiming that people should become members as soon as possible because the price to join was about to become much higher since the product was about to be launched. This is interesting because they said the same thing 2 years ago in 2018. Either way, I asked them which specific products were about to be launched. The presenter started blabbing about soft launch, which means that only key people get the products to test. After I pressed him further, he admitted that if the soft launch revealed problems with the product, then they will go back to the drawing board to fix the problems. He still was unable to answer which product or products are being launched. Hence, we can conclude that all the comments on the internet about how great OnPassive is, are fake… because they have not launched any product yet. How can people review a product that does not exist yet? It is a scam”.
Law enforcement agencies in Bangladesh need to act fast – arrest people involved with OnPassive, request Facebook to shut down its pages targeting Bangladeshi national and bring the matter to attention of the US authorities, including FBI as well as other law enforcement agencies.
