BECM Inc. pays out Lyoness victims!

So far, BE Conflict Management Inc. has made payments to Lyoness/Lyconet/myWorld victims 311.837,91 AUD (Australia), 47,234.08 GBP (England/Northern Ireland), 37,837.19 EUR (Ireland) and 242.786,07 ZAR (South Africa). German injured parties have not yet been published due to the current investigations of the public prosecutor’s office in Cologne.

BE Conflict Management Inc., which is listed in the commercial register under the registration number P19000039786, is operating internationally in order to deal with the damages the snowball system Lyoness has caused worldwide. Surprisingly, a lot of victims from the USA have contacted us. Promises and sales forecasted by the myWorld group are not becoming reality. Also, the marked was too weak and the main concern was recruiting new paying members.

Currently we, we have open claims against the snowball system Lyoness of about 6.5 million Euro.

Thank you for the many thank-you letters and videos of thanks, for which we will create a separate section. 

Austrian Grand Prix sponsor “myworld”: What lies behind this?

Even if myWorld/Eyetime/Lyoness/Lyconet etc. is being renamed on a regular basis, the product remains the same with changed or amended sets of agreements.

“Speedweek” used to be a weekly issued motorsport magazine and was converted to a pure online medium, which inter alia contains a database of more than 70 racing series.

Already in August 2019, they published an article headlined “Lyoness – an obscure new partner of Dorna”.

Since then, myWorld/Eyetime etc. has not become less obscure. Far from it!

The following article by Oliver Feldtweg of SPEEDWEEK puts it succinctly!

By Oliver Feldtweg – 16 August 2019 11:12 a.m.

At the Austrian Grand Prix, we met again another “naming rights” sponsor of Dorna, since the company “myworld” or “myWorldsolutions” has bought the naming rights for the motorcycle GP in Styria. Whatever this company concretely produces, renders, offers or sells can only be guessed with plenty of imagination.

Behind the company name, there are the same contemporaries as once were behind the company Lyoness which had bought banner advertisements at the Grand Prix in Spielberg in 2016. In 2017, “MotoGP cashback” bought the naming rights for the Austrian Grand Prix, in 2018 it was “eyetime” and this year it is the turn of “myworld”.

Whoever wants to look behind the scenes of this illustrious business model, will find an obscure type of shopping community. Members receive 3 or 5 percent “cashback” per transaction, as long as enough new members are recruited. Critics speak of a snowball system.

In some European countries like Switzerland, there had been legal proceedings, it was said that there was a diffuse company construct. The business cards of the top employees showed quite different company addresses in different countries. Surprisingly, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of all companies from Lyoness to eyetime to myworld is always the same – it is Hubert Freidl. In 2003, he founded Lyoness International AG in Buchs, Switzerland. Operational business activities are primarily conducted from Austria. In 2018, the company was renamed to myworld.

In 2016, Lyoness announced that it was operating in 47 countries and had more than 130,000 partner companies, 13 million customers and 250,000 points of acceptance worldwide. These statements are not verifiable.

The obscure business model lead to numerous actions and investigations against the company. In Norway, Lyoness respectively Cashback was banned because it was classified as “illegal pyramid scheme”. Also in Italy, the antitrust authority stated that Lyoness was a pyramid scheme and the company was sentenced to a fine of 3.2 million Euros.

In 2011, was a trial in Austria. In this context too, there was the allegation of “financial malversations” in the form of an “illegal profit forecast system” respectively of a “pyramidal built snowball system”, but the case was closed. Lyoness calls his business model a service company.At the request of the Austrian Press Agency, the company founded by Hubert Freidl stated, that myWorld Solutions provided its “know-how for various international companies and organisations”. One was offering solutions in the fields of product development, product management, IT, marketing, PR and communication as well as fan and customer loyalty.

As a Grand Prix name sponsor of the Motorcycle-GP 2019 in Styria, myworld also bought the tickets of a complete tribune with approx. 3,000 seats in the finish curve, but most of the time it was quite unfrequented.

Already a year ago, the marketing specialists of Dorna were wondering about the surprisingly small number of VIP guests of the GP sponsor.

But invoices are paid promptly by this cashback companies with changing names. In Formula 1, this ominous shopping community also was a GP name sponsor at Spielberg. On this occasion, the cashback company also did not appear very pompously, it only put up an inflatable tent and two rollups. Such an appearance was unworthy of a Formula 1 title sponsor, so it was to be heard. Because such a deal costs about 2.5 million.

But “myworld” is also annual partner of the Red-Bull-Ring racing track in Styria. Although no bustling marketing crew can be spotted and the backgrounds of the business model remain obscure, “myworld” spends ludicrous piles of money for the promotion of the company name.

Public Prosecution Cologne (file nr. 115 Js 424/19) starts again with preliminary proceedings against Managing Director of Lyoness Deutschland GmbH Guido van Rüth!

With a letter of 12 July 2019, the initially closed proceedings (file nr. 115 Js 915/16) were have been resumed and preliminary proceedings due to infringement of § 16 UWG (Unfair Competition Act) were initiated (file nr. 115 Js 424/19).

Writing the prosecutor’s office translated:

“Preliminary proceedings against Mr. Guido Josef van Rüth a. o.

Alleged crime: Fraud

Dear Mr. Ecker,

I hereby inform you, that in accordance with your letter from 13 May 2019, new proceedings against the accused von Rüth because of an infringement of § 16 UWG (so-called snowball system) in connection with Lyconet’s Terms and Conditions of 2014 were initiated and are being worked on under the file number 115 Js 424/19. In regard to your further complaint, I submitted the file to Prosecutor-General of Cologne.

With best regards

Prosecutor”

With his letter of 13 May 2019, Bernhard Ecker lodged a 17-page complaint against the closing of the proceedings. Within this complaint, indications and facts concerning Lyoness, that obviously have not been further investigated before, were highlighted and reasoned in detail.

In particular, attention was drawn to the fact, that Lyoness has not – as alleged to the Public Prosecution – stopped to apply certain business practises. Nothing could be further from halting this business practises. They only were redrafted even more opaque and confusing.

Under item 8 of the claim of 13 May 2019 it is, inter alia, explained:

The business practices under examination have not been stopped but are being pursued with a construct that is even more opaque.

Compared to the previous “advance payment system” de facto nothing has changed but, in principle, only the wording was changed. Until November 2014, Lyoness named their investments “Advance payments on vouchers”, with which members basically only could obtain considerable profits if they recruited new investors. Later, when the WKStA (Public Prosecutor’s Office against Corruption) investigated against Lyoness because of the forbidden snowball system according to § 168a StGB (Criminal Code) as well as because of serious commercial fraud, and the first judgement of Civil Courts obligated them to make repayments, Lyoness drafted new Terms and Conditions and renamed its distribution from Lyoness to Lyconet, since the name Lyoness – especially in the media – already had become very negatively attributed. The conversion to the new Terms and Conditions was forced since members could only log in to their online member account if they had accepted the Terms and Conditions. Meanwhile, also Lyconet has fallen into disrepute so that the term “Cashbackworld” was chosen.

We welcome the well implemented and renewed measures of investigation as well as the transmission of further critical issues to the General Public Prosecution of Cologne.

We advise all German Lyoness victims to directly contact the Public Prosecution’s Office Cologne under the file number 115 Js 424/19 and to lodge possible claims against Lyoness in a well-documented way.