SEC foils another Ponzi scheme

MANILA, Philippines — The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has revoked the certificate of incorporation and registration of the company behind 1UP Time, which the corporate regulator likened to a Ponzi scheme.

The SEC revoked the license of Superbreakthrough Enterprises for soliciting investments without the proper license and registration.

While the company is registered with the SEC, it does not have the authority to solicit investments from the public, the SEC said.

According to the SEC, the investment scheme of 1UP Time involves selling investment packages to the public who were promised returns of P28,000 in a day to P840,000 per month.

“On Oct. 19, 2022, a surveillance operation was conducted by the agency at 1UP Time’s principal office and confirmed that the company was indeed operating onsite with the activities pertaining to its selling of product packages,” the SEC said

The regulator found out that 1UP Time was not registered to sell investments to the public.

The SEC said it was also keeping a close watch on AlphanetWorld Corp. or NWorld, which shares the same business address, among other common denominators such as similar products, with 1UP Time.

According to the SEC, the scheme of 1UP Time is recruitment driven. This means the income is derived primarily from building a large downline and not from the retailing of products to consumers.

“Here, we can observe the endless chain of recruitment of participants as primary customers. The primary commissions on sales to downlines makes it clearly a money transfer scheme, transferring from those at the bottom to those at the top, making it a hybrid pyramid or Ponzi scheme,” the SEC said.

The SEC has been cracking the whip on fraudulent investment schemes, particularly those that have no licenses to solicit investments from the public.