Firstly I must make it clear that Recyclix has already announced that the current way of its business of recruiting new members is apparently going to end by October 2017. As the company puts it:
"Recyclix also announced that is well on its way to achieving its start-up financial target of 14 million euros - a goal projected to be reached by October 2017. This paves the way for the company’s move from a start-up into a more established and renowned stable financial system that offers a wide range of very profitable and business-favorable options.
...
To avoid speculation and disinformation, Recyclix provided a brief overview on the planned transition, confirming that the current system will be closed for new registration and new waste packages as soon as it reaches its start-up financial goal of 14 million euros. From the date of the closure, all existing members will still continue to earn and receive payouts with their existing packages for a further period of 10 cycles (roughly another year, by Oct 2018). This guarantees that everyone who is participating in our current concept will be able to see a return of investments with a profit margin."
Source: https://recyclix.com/news/recyclix-rocks-basel-and-reveals-future-strategy
The Facebook page of Recyclix has already a number of concerned members commenting after Recyclix's recent announcement that the current business model of "crowd funding" is going to be closed down in 2018. It seems evident that the members were not expecting this kind of announcement at all.
Update 17th of March 2017: After recent events the information above is not valid anymore. Recyclix decided to change its plans. Currently the ponzi is evidently in serious banking problems.
Update 2nd of April 2017: The ponzi pyramid has collapsed and the scammers announced leaving the company.
What is Recyclix?
The idea behing Recyclix is so absurd that I decided to make a blog post about it, although I haven't heard much about it in Finland.
Recyclix is a company who claims to make sizeable profits from recycling plastic waste. Yes, you read it correctly, waste. Although plastic is a valuable material and recycling it may even produce profits, it's very questionable whether a rather insignificant company in recycling business is profitable enough to feed a worldwide network of greedy recyclers looking for easy money.
It is also suspicious that you can't find Recyclix listed anywhere as a company recycling plastics or providing recycled plastics. - If you do, please, by all means let me know!
Their official Facebook page has about 35.000 likes and followers, and the scheme seems to be quite popular, mainly in some European countries.
Alexa.com gives the following results for recyclix.com:
Meet the staff
Dmitri Paladi, Founder and CEO
Mark Kowal, COO and deputy director
Dmitry Makenyak, CDO
Kirill Babin, sales office specialist
Adam Skrzynecki, operations and CTO
Valentina Dulko, office manager
Renat Osmanov, logistics manager
Klaus Heusslein, manager of the German customer department
Mark Kowal, COO and deputy director
Dmitry Makenyak, CDO
Kirill Babin, sales office specialist
Adam Skrzynecki, operations and CTO
Valentina Dulko, office manager
Renat Osmanov, logistics manager
Klaus Heusslein, manager of the German customer department
The executives of the company don't seem to be keen to list Recyclix on their resumes. At least Klaus Heusslein was up to list Recyclix on his LinkedIn page, which revealed that he has been involved for the last five months in the company. The other people I managed to find in LinkedIn seemed to have a current position in a totally different company than Recyclix. Non of the Recyclix executives cares to even mention the company on their profile. One might even question what their role is in this recycling business.
How does Recyclix work?
The members are led to believe that they actually buy waste and thus participate in recycling process. However I see it more than likely that none of the money is used to actually buy waste. - I'll come back to this a bit later.
As said, the idea is to buy waste and profit from recycling it to granules. New members are lured in with a sign up gift of 20 euros which you are given in an instant. This is of course only a virtual gift with the only option being to invest it in waste, 100 kilograms of it to be exact. Once you have signed up you have a trial account which will expire in 60 days without an external funding through bank wire, credit card or Bitcoins. Only after depositing at least 100 euros user account is activated.
All in all the recycling process takes five weeks. After the period a member has an option to cash out. However according to Recyclix's basic tutorial even after the full process you would only get 81 euros from your initial investment of 100 euros. It's safe to presume that majority of Recyclix members don't cash out with a negative result, so they'll continue investing at least for another five weeks or invest much more to achieve profits faster.
The tutorial encourages to buy at least 5.000 kg of waste to begin with. This minimum investment of 1.000 euros is required to be able to buy additional "equipment shares". Buying those equipment shares should enhance the profit rate greatly.
There's also an option to recruit others to join and thus improve one's profits. According to the tutorial referral commission is 12 % from each new member who activates an account.
Recyclix troubled by banking problems?
I found information from the company's Facebook page revealing that Recyclix has just recently changed its bank account. There was also some posts referring that the previous bank account was in Poland. Maybe the account draw too much attention from regulators and caused money laundering suspicions?
Here are the bank account details provided by Recyclix:
| Beneficiary name | BEPAY LIMITED |
| Beneficiary address | Suite B, 29 Harley Street, London, England, W1G 9QR |
| Bank Name | Bank Polski SA |
| SWIFT | BPKOPLPWXXX |
| EUR Account | PL60102010970000710202964831 |
| USD Account | PL32102010970000730202964849 |
| PLN Account | PL82102010970000710202964823 |
These posts below from Recyclix's Facebook page indicate that the change of the bank was sudden. It seems that the members were not even properly informed about the change.
There are warning signs far too similar to the ones OneCoin had. Eventually OneCoin had at least 17 different bank accounts, all of them supposedly frozen because of money laundering suspicions.
Banned in Italy
In September last year Recyclix was ordeded a suspension by Italian regulator Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa (CONSOB). Apparently there was a great number of Italians participating the scheme and that draw attention of the regulator. A legitimate recycling company would hardly receive this kind of merit.
The Final verdict
Recyclix is waste of money and doesn't bear a closer inspection. The pyramid marketing ensures that there certainly are some people who gain profits from the system. However a vast majority of people participating these kind of scams lose their money.
I couldn't find any credible source that Recyclix actually is in recycling business. They seem to have some connections to some recycling plants, but so could anyone who splashes the right amount of cash.
Furthermore the Italian regulator has done its own investigations to the business model and found it worth suspension.
The company's news section is already preparing their members for a new scam to come. After closing down the recruiting in 2018 there will be an alternative way of investing money. However it remains to be seen what they will come up with.
Update:
Recent comments on Recyclix's Facebook page reveal that they have been charging their victims a hefty 10 % fee for all withdrawals done using Bitcoin. After receiving some feedback from the victims Recyclix seems to have decided to reduce the fee to 5 % according to the last post made.
It's rather strange how they deal with the feedback from the customers. First there's a firm answer with some "take it or leave it" attitude. Then they just quietly change their mind without any comments whatsoever and reduce the fee.
nice artickel you guys
ReplyDeleteThe thing that should ring the alarm bells is that what does Recyclix need the "investor" money for? If it's a legitimate business it can get a bank loan with interest rate of 3-4% range, compared to the 12% "recruitment commission".
ReplyDeleteThe fact that they are eager to use Bitcoin for money transfer is not helping to give an image of - pun intended - clean business.
If recycling business really is as profitable as they claim, they would have been better just keeping it to themselves and reinvesting those profits to build up the company. And if they needed some start-up money, finding an investor for such a great profit rates and solid income wouldn't be a problem.
DeleteHowever it's obvious that they don't use the money from investors to buy waste. Thus it's very deceitful to make all seem like investors really are participating the recycling process, let alone offering the victims the additional "equipment shares". The bogus recycling they are running makes also the imaginary recycling process with its animated chart just laughable.
The members are forced to wait for months to gain at least some profit for their investment. In reality Recyclix is just piling cash and spilling some of it back to feed the poor suckers.