Crowd1
A Dubai free-zone operator whose plan pays the sponsor about 9% of whatever the recruit spends at every tier, requires no sale to anyone outside the plan, has never published a single earnings figure in seven years, and whose company-promoted passive-return product stopped paying and stopped allowing withdrawals around 1 April 2026.
The plan pays the sponsor roughly 9% of the enrollment price at every tier and requires a package-holder in each binary leg before it pays anything at all - and the passive-return product the company funneled its own participants into switched off returns and failed withdrawals around 1 April 2026.
Can you actually make money with Crowd1?
No. The plan states what it pays for in one sentence, and it is not selling anything to anybody. To earn at all, the affiliate must personally hold an Education Package and also have one affiliate in every binary leg holding one. Buy in, then put a buyer under you on each side. There is no retail-sales qualification anywhere in the document: no outside-customer minimum, no 70% rule, no personal retail requirement.
The rate is the tell. The Education Package Sales Bonus pays the sponsor 90, 270, 720 or 2,250 Business Points when a recruit buys the White, Black, Gold or Titanium package. That is a flat 9% of the enrollment price at every tier, scaled to nothing except how much the new person spent walking in. Meanwhile the one genuinely retail-facing item, the Customer Sales Bonus, is the sole bonus in the plan whose rate is left blank.
After seven years there is still no income disclosure. What exists is an income disclaimer dated 15 February 2022 whose entire substance is that no money is promised. The only independent spend-and-measure result anybody has is the BBC Africa Eye test in November 2020: a €2,499 Titanium package bought and tracked returned €3.36 in a quarter. And the passive-return product this company funneled its own participants into stopped paying and stopped honoring withdrawals around 1 April 2026.
Two credits, because they are real. There is a genuine fourteen-day money-back guarantee written into the current Terms, which is more than several operators offer, and the governing documents are published openly with revision dates. Read the guarantee closely though: it terminates the moment the buyer uses any feature of their site, and a new recruit is onboarded straight into the back office. Governing law is UAE, Dubai, with single-arbitrator arbitration in English, so for somebody who lost €99 the cost of arbitrating exceeds the claim many times over.
the historic White package, mandatory before the plan pays anything; the cap structure pushes toward the €2,499 tier, and 2026 pack pricing is not published outside the back office
- A retail gate of any kind. As written, qualification is holding a package and having a package-holder in each leg, so a participant becomes eligible by recruiting two paying people and never selling to anyone outside.
- An income disclosure, after seven years and a company claim of millions of signups each year. A disclaimer saying no money is promised discloses nothing; an average, a median, a distribution or a zero-earner share would.
- A sponsor bonus that is not a flat percentage of what the recruit spent walking in. Ninety to 2,250 Business Points across four tiers works out at about 9% of the enrollment price every time, and it tracks nothing else.
- Termination that needs a reason, or a balance that survives one. The Terms let the company close an account at any point without giving any reason, and forfeit the account balance and any pending payout request along with it.
That call is computed, not chosen - the rule reads three of the nine published dimension scores and is printed on the methodology page. It describes this company's plan and the figures it publishes about the people already in it. It is not a prediction about you, and nothing on this site is advice.
Legal status
CONTESTED - and the letter grade on this page must not be read as a legality verdict. The position as of mid-2026 is jurisdiction-specific, and it is worth setting out precisely because most secondary coverage of this company states it wrongly. There are three outright prohibitions, not "ten-plus bans." The Bank of Namibia issued a directive on 24 February 2020 under section 55A of the Banking Institutions Act 1998 requiring Crowd1 Network Limited to cease business immediately, having declared it a pyramid scheme and stated that further action would follow non-compliance. The Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission issued a cease-and-desist order in May 2020 under Case No. 05-20-064, declared that order permanent on 2 July 2020 with the appeal denied, and revoked the certificate of registration of Crowd1 Asia Pacific, Inc. on 9 September 2020; a renewed investor alert of 10 May 2022 records continuing activity and exposes promoters to a fine of up to PHP 5 million and/or 21 years. And on 8 July 2020 the Ivorian Council of Ministers ordered the immediate cessation of all such activities and the closure of the websites concerned, directing local promoters to return subscribed capital to each member on pain of legal proceedings. Everything beyond those three is lighter and must be labeled as such: roughly thirteen further jurisdictions carry a warning listing, an investor alert or an unauthorised-business notice - Québec, Russia, Slovakia, New Zealand, Mauritius, Paraguay and South Africa, plus reported entries in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Vietnam, Gabon, Peru, Nepal and Bhutan. A warning listing is a register entry and a caution to the public. It is not a finding of liability, and it is not a ban. Norway, very widely reported as a ban, was not one: the Lotteritilsynet instrument of 26 June 2019 is an information letter, setting out the statutory test that more than 50% of revenue from recruitment or overpriced goods makes a scheme an illegal pyramid, requiring written acknowledgement by 15 July 2019, and imposing no fine and no prohibition. No subsequent Norwegian prohibition decision could be located. In South Africa the National Consumer Commission announced an investigation in June 2020 which press reporting indicates was not pursued, with no finding in either direction. The Swedish criminal matter is a conviction of individuals, not of the company: on 30 May 2025 Stockholm District Court sentenced three associates at first instance for aggravated corporate money laundering, and acquitted three co-defendants with the state ordered to pay their costs. Whether an appeal was lodged could not be confirmed. No UAE, EU-wide, UK or US enforcement action against the operator could be located anywhere - and the absence of action is not approval. The practical reading for a person being recruited: participation is prohibited or actively enforced against in the Philippines, Côte d’Ivoire and Namibia, and reported as declared illegal in Peru, Nepal and Bhutan; solicitation without registration is flagged in at least a dozen more markets; and the company continues to operate lawfully from the Dubai Media City free zone, which has taken no action against it. The F is a grade of what the offer does to a participant. It is not a ruling that the company is unlawful where you happen to live.
Confidence: Medium-High
Primary sources fetched directly where possible. Everything we could not verify is listed at the bottom of this page by name.
Follow the money
A Dubai Media City free-zone operator, contracting as Crowd1 Network FZ-LLC under registration 101067, selling what its own June 2024 Terms call "Element Starter Packages." The Terms are explicit about what the buyer is actually acquiring: a package grants "a designated spot in the C1 Binary Structure" and eligibility to earn bonuses based on sales activity and downline recruitment. The brand is now C1 - crowd1.com returns an HTTP 302 to c1.global - and signup remains open as of 30 July 2026, with the site advertising "185 Countries Served," a weekly payout structure and "industry-leading compensation plans."
The plan is a binary with a unilevel residual layered on top, and this is worth correcting because it is commonly described wrongly, including in our own earlier watchlist entry. Business Points accumulate in a left and a right leg, with at least 25% of converted volume required from the weaker leg. On top of that sits a Recurring Income bonus paid across network levels one to twenty-one, a 10% Matching Bonus up to five levels deep gated on holding four to twenty direct referrals, a quarterly Active User Pool, and the time-boxed "Fear of Loss Bonus." There is no matrix anywhere in the document. The historic tiers were 990, 2,990, 7,990 and 24,990 Business Points - about €99, €299, €799 and €2,499 at roughly €0.10 per point - and each paid the sponsor 90, 270, 720 or 2,250 points, a flat ~9% of whatever the recruit spent.
Several things about this company are better than its reputation and belong here before the rest. The Terms, Privacy Policy, Anti-Fraud Policy and Income Disclaimer are all published as open PDFs at a stable static URL with revision dates, which many operators in this category simply do not do. The compensation plan document is public and reasonably specific about bonus types, percentages, the weaker-leg rule, caps and qualification thresholds. Registration is genuinely free and the funnel does not force an immediate purchase. There is a real fourteen-day money-back guarantee in writing. The income-claims clause is correctly drafted. And when the partnered investment product failed in April 2026, the Network President said so on the record on a company webinar rather than going quiet. That is a low bar and it was cleared.
Then the substance. Qualification to earn anything requires holding a package and having a package-holder in each binary leg - you buy in, and you place a buyer on each side - and there is no retail-sales requirement anywhere in the plan: no minimum outside-customer volume, no 70% rule, no personal retail qualification. The only retail-facing bonus leaves its own rate blank. The Bank of Namibia, examining the model in February 2020, found the company "does not sell tangible products or render any service of essential value." No income disclosure has ever been published in seven years. The only independent measurement of what a participant receives is BBC Africa Eye’s test purchase: €2,499 in, €3.36 back in a quarter.
And the file has an ending, or at least a most recent chapter. From October 2025 the company funnelled participants through its own back office into "Stratify," a passive-return copy-trading program run by Tag Markets, which required an Elements Pack, activity points, recruitment or reactivation of others, and the company’s own Corebit token paired 1:1 with Tether - with post-collapse recovery tiers referencing $2,500 and $5,000. Around 1 April 2026 the returns stopped and withdrawals failed. On 2 April the Network President confirmed the contract was ended and disclosed that the chief executive and the network director had resigned. Four separate regulators had by then published warnings against the trading counterparty, and the two operators were publicly blaming each other for holding the money.
Where the seven bonuses in the official plan get their money
Classified from the company’s own compensation plan document, version 016 dated 7 July 2020, cross-checked against the 2021 plan and the June 2024 Terms. This is a count of bonus types, not of money paid - the company has never published a rand, euro or dollar of payout distribution.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| White package The entry tier, and the one the €99 headline refers to. Carried 50 "Crowd1 Rewards" units under the historic structure. The sponsor commission is 9.1% of the price and is triggered by the act of enrollment. |
€99 (990 BP) one-time |
90 BP to the sponsor |
| Black package 150 Rewards units. The sponsor commission is 9.0% - the same flat share of a larger purchase, which is the plan’s clearest structural tell. |
€299 (2,990 BP) one-time |
270 BP to the sponsor |
| Gold package 500 Rewards units, 9.0% to the sponsor. Nothing about the commission references a product being consumed or resold. |
€799 (7,990 BP) one-time |
720 BP to the sponsor |
| Titanium package The top historic tier, 1,750 Rewards units, 9.0% to the sponsor - and the only tier that lifts the weekly payout cap from 100,000 to 200,000 Business Points. The premium buys a doubled earnings ceiling. This is the tier BBC Africa Eye bought; it returned €3.36 in a quarter. |
€2,499 (24,990 BP) one-time |
2,250 BP to the sponsor |
| Current 2026 Element Starter Packages There is no public price list on c1.global. Pricing is visible only inside the back office, after registration. The €99–€2,499 range is historic and corroborated for 2020–21; it could not be confirmed as current. |
NOT PUBLISHED one-time |
not published |
| Account reactivation fee A member account goes inactive after a single calendar month with no activity; a customer account after 180 days. Small in itself, listed because the rule forces continuous purchase or recruitment to stay qualified. |
€2 per reactivation |
— |
| Corebit (CBIT) token and staking Announced April 2025 with a fixed ten-billion supply and a burn mechanism. The company’s own press release describes a "Claim & Stake model" and claims C1 and its partners "have incentivized over 80% of eligible Corebit holders to stake their assets." No exchange listing or independent market price could be located; the value appears to be internally determined. |
no independent price discovery located ongoing |
— |
| Stratify / Tag Markets copy-trading Promoted through the C1 back office from October 2025. Required an Elements Pack at Earth tier or above, C1 activity points, recruitment or reactivation of others, and Corebit paired 1:1 with Tether. Returns were switched off around 1 April 2026 and withdrawals failed; the contract was terminated on 2 April 2026. |
$2,500 / $5,000 tiers referenced one-time deposit |
separate MLM plan on top |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
Identified as founder in the company’s own April 2020 promotional interview, which billed him alongside the then chief executive. When the BBC Africa Eye investigation put its findings to him in November 2020 he denied holding the chief executive role despite evidence to the contrary, and dismissed the investigation on the basis that "what Crowd1 does is completely new." He has not been charged in the Swedish proceedings and no regulatory action against him personally was located, which should be stated plainly. What is on the file is silence: his last reported public post was 3 November 2025, and no primary source confirming his current status or location could be reached. For the founder of a company whose flagship product stopped paying its participants five months later, that is a material fact rather than a private one.
A well-known Swedish dot-com-era figure from Icon Medialab and LetsBuyIt, appointed chief executive of Impact Crowd Technology and heavily promoted as the company’s credibility anchor at the moment it was scaling into Africa and Asia. He resigned in December 2020, announced by company press release, roughly ten months after appointment and one month after the BBC broadcast. The contemporaneous industry-blog framing of that departure was commentary, not a finding; the confirmed facts are the appointment, the promotion of his name, and the resignation date. Borrowed institutional credibility that lasts under a year is a pattern a prospective participant should learn to read.
He is the person who confirmed the collapse on a 2 April 2026 webinar, saying "C1 has communicated that they have ended the contract with Stratify and Tag Markets," and separately that "there is a lot of people that have made the decision [over] the last couple of months, CEO, Network Director, to step down, resign from C1." He is also on record in May 2022 confirming ongoing payment delays to affiliates. He is reported by the principal industry watchdog to have previously held high rank in OneCoin, the collapsed cryptocurrency scheme - that is a well-sourced journalistic claim and no primary rank record could be reached, so it is recorded here as journalism rather than as a documented finding.
No executive team is named anywhere on c1.global. A trade publication lists a chief executive, but that is a trade listing rather than a filing, and the Network President stated in April 2026 that the chief executive had resigned - so nobody could confirm from a first-party source who runs this company as of July 2026. Three associates are in prison at first instance following the 30 May 2025 Stockholm judgment, and three co-defendants were acquitted. Separately, the alumni pattern is itself a datum: at least six near-identical ventures have been launched out of this participant base since 2021 - a crypto game, the migration of the virtual-shares product onto crypto rails, and four further programs through 2023 - before the officially partnered copy-trading product of 2025 that failed in April 2026. The recruiting pool for each was the previous scheme’s own membership.
Registered address
Dubai Media City free zone, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
The contracting counterparty a recruit signs with today is Crowd1 Network FZ-LLC, registration number 101067, at Premises No. 418, Fourth Floor, Building 08, Dubai Media City, with a visiting address at Arenco Tower in Al Safouh Second. That is the current entity in a trail of them. Crowd1 Network Ltd, the Dubai JLT company named on the 2020–21 compensation plan, was named by the Bank of Namibia and the Bank of Russia and has been superseded. Impact Crowd Technology S.L. of Madrid was the operating counterpart named by the New Zealand FMA and the National Bank of Slovakia; its status today could not be established. Impact Crowd Technology Scandinavian AB, the Swedish shell, petitioned for its own bankruptcy and was granted it on 9 June 2023, on the stated basis that the company was in insolvency which was not temporary. Crowd1 Asia Pacific, Inc. had its Philippine registration revoked on 9 September 2020. No audited or published financial statements exist for any entity in the chain. The revenue figures in circulation - $310 million for 2020 and $625 million repeated identically for each of 2021 through 2025 - come from a direct-selling trade publication, not from the company and not from an auditor, and a number repeated unchanged for five consecutive years is not a growth or stability datapoint. The only independent scale proxy located is web traffic: roughly 273,000 monthly visits to crowd1.com as of February 2025, with Russia at 52% and Sweden at 23% - the two largest markets being, respectively, one where the operator sits on a central-bank pyramid-scheme warning list and one where its associates were criminally convicted.
The veteran's checklist
Eight questions that decide whether this is a business or a transfer mechanism. Same eight, every review.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who legally owns it? |
RED
Crowd1 Network FZ-LLC, registration 101067, Dubai Media City free zone, per the company’s own June 2024 Terms. No executive team is named on the site, no first-party source confirms who is chief executive as of July 2026, and no audited accounts exist for any entity in the chain.
|
| What does it really cost? |
CONCERN
Registration is free. The historic packages were €99, €299, €799 and €2,499, with the top tier the only one that doubles your weekly payout cap. Current 2026 pricing is not published outside the back office. Add €2 per reactivation after any inactive calendar month.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
RED
None in seven years. Only an income disclaimer dated 15 February 2022 stating that no earnings are guaranteed and that any results shown are not typical. No average, no median, no distribution, no zero-earner rate.
|
| Regulatory action against the company? |
RED
Three outright prohibitions - the Bank of Namibia cease directive of 24 February 2020 under section 55A, the Philippine SEC permanent cease-and-desist order of 2 July 2020 with registration revoked, and the Ivorian Council of Ministers order of 8 July 2020. Roughly thirteen further jurisdictions carry warning listings, which are register entries and not findings of liability. Norway issued an information letter, not a ban.
|
| Has anyone been convicted? |
RED
Three associates were sentenced at first instance by Stockholm District Court on 30 May 2025 for aggravated corporate money laundering of roughly SEK 200 million - four years, three and a half, three and a half. Three co-defendants were acquitted with costs. That is a conviction of individuals, not of the company, and the appeal position could not be confirmed.
|
| Does the plan require selling to anyone outside it? |
RED
No. Qualification is holding a package and having a package-holder in each binary leg. There is no minimum outside-customer volume, no 70% rule and no personal retail requirement anywhere in the plan, and the only retail-facing bonus does not state its rate.
|
| Can you get your money back? |
CONCERN
There is a real fourteen-day money-back guarantee on the initial Starter Package - but it terminates immediately if you use any feature of your C1 site or the purchased products, and a new recruit is onboarded straight into the back office. Beyond that, termination by the company forfeits the balance and any pending payouts.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
RED
Miner, without ambiguity. The sponsor is paid a flat ~9% of the enrollment price at every tier, the binary pays on package-generated volume, the matching bonus pays a percentage of what your recruits earned, and a bonus named for fear of loss pays for four enrollments in fourteen days.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Hold an entry package for one year | €99 + €2 the historic White package, plus one reactivation after a lapsed month |
| Become eligible to earn anything at all | 3 packages, ~€297 minimum your own package plus one package-holder in each binary leg, at the cheapest tier |
| Double your weekly payout cap | €2,499 100,000 to 200,000 Business Points, available only at the top tier |
| Recover €2,499 at the only measured rate | ~186 years €3.36 a quarter, about €13.44 a year, from the BBC test purchase |
Read this twice
This is the shortest arithmetic on the site because the company has never published the numbers that would make it longer. After seven years and a claim of "millions of signups each year," there is no income disclosure statement - no average, no median, no distribution, no percentage earning nothing. What exists instead is an income disclaimer dated 15 February 2022 stating that "WE PROVIDE ABSOLUTELY NO GUARANTEE THAT YOU WILL EARN ANY MONEY" and that any results shown "ARE NOT TYPICAL." That is a disclaimer, and a disclaimer is the opposite of a disclosure. So the only figure anyone has for what a participant actually receives comes from outside the company: in November 2020 BBC Africa Eye bought a €2,499 Titanium package and tracked it, and it returned €3.36 in quarterly return. Annualised that is roughly €13.44 on €2,499 - about 0.54% a year, and only if the pattern held. An ordinary insured euro deposit account would have been broadly comparable in 2020 and many times better by 2024, while remaining fully liquid. Two structural points make the arithmetic worse rather than better. The plan pays nothing until you hold a package and have a package-holder in each of two legs, so the minimum viable position is three packages, not one - and in a binary of that shape most participants never reach the threshold. And Business Points expire after six months, so volume generated but not converted is simply lost. Three honest caveats belong on the other side. The €99 entry is real and the registration itself is free, so the downside at the entry tier is genuinely small in absolute terms. There is a fourteen-day refund on the initial package, which is more than several operators offer, though it voids the moment you use the back office. And the €99–€2,499 range is historic: current 2026 pricing is not published anywhere outside the back office, so a reader should verify what they are actually being asked to pay before treating any of these figures as live.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
The Education Package Sales Bonus on a Gold package - 720 Business Points, about €72 on a €799 sale, or roughly 9% of whatever the recruit spends at every tier. Read this one differently from the others. The money paid to you comes out of the package fee charged to the person you introduced, not out of margin on anything sold to an outside customer, and the plan carries no retail requirement at any rank. The binary is excluded because it accumulates on package purchases rather than on sales. Two things the sliders cannot show: the only independent measurement on record is €2,499 in producing €3.36 in a quarter, and the company-promoted passive-return product stopped paying around 1 April 2026 with withdrawals failing. No income disclosure has been published in seven years. Your own subscription cost of $0/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
What the €2,499 top tier nominally bought, priced against what the same capability costs on the open market. The comparison is deliberately generous to the company: it assumes every bundled capability is real, delivered and worth using, which is more than the evidence supports - BBC Africa Eye found the claimed partnerships either unverified or white-labeled third-party services, meaning the buyer is paying a wrapper markup on someone else’s product.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| Business and marketing online courses | A mainstream course-platform subscription, or individual courses on sale | ~$399/yr, or $10-20 each |
| Casual mobile gaming access | Free-to-play titles, or a general games subscription | $0-15/mo |
| Lottery and sweepstakes entry | Buying a ticket directly at face value | face value |
| Digital magazine | An ordinary digital magazine subscription | $0-40/yr |
| Crypto wallet, DEX access, NFT marketplace | Mainstream open-source wallets and exchanges | $0 |
| Travel booking | Free comparison sites at or below the same rates | $0 |
| A designated spot in the binary structure | No equivalent exists on the open market, because it is not a product | n/a |
| A doubled weekly payout cap (Titanium only) | No equivalent - this is the actual thing the top tier sells | n/a |
| Total as sold €2,499 for the top tier |
Total, built yourself free to roughly €500 a year |
Price-to-value
Every capability in the bundle is available openly, free or for under about €500 a year, and several of them cost nothing at all. That gap is not the whole story, though, and the honest version is sharper. The categories C1 lists are real categories and a bundled-services reseller is a legitimate business in the abstract - the failure is not the category. It is that no retail price list, no outside-customer sale and no customer-versus-affiliate revenue split has ever been published, and none could be located. The decisive question is whether a rational buyer would pay €2,499 for this bundle with no income offer attached. On a central bank’s finding that the operator "does not sell tangible products or render any service of essential value," on a broadcaster’s finding that the partnerships were unverified or white-labeled, and on the plan’s own rule that the top tier is what doubles your payout cap, the answer is no.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Entry-tier joiner
buys the €99 package, uses some of the bundle, never places a package-holder in both legs
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 3% | −€99 |
| 6 mo | 3% | −€105 |
| 1 yr | 3% | −€111 |
| 3 yr | 2% | −€135 |
| 5 yr | 2% | −€159 |
Top-tier builder
buys the €2,499 tier for the doubled payout cap, recruits actively, works both legs
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 4% | −€2,499 |
| 6 mo | 6% | −€2,300 |
| 1 yr | 7% | −€2,100 |
| 3 yr | 6% | −€2,400 |
| 5 yr | 5% | −€2,900 |
Passive-return participant
holds a pack, then funds the Stratify copy-trading tier with roughly $2,500 from October 2025
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 30% | +€90 |
| 6 mo | 4% | −€2,950 |
| 1 yr | 2% | −€3,150 |
| 3 yr | 2% | −€3,150 |
| 5 yr | 2% | −€3,150 |
Methodology note. These are modeled outcome ranges, not claims, not predictions and not anyone’s reported results - and the modeling here carries more of the weight than on any other page on this site, because the company has published no earnings data of any kind in seven years. ANCHORED to documents: the €99 / €299 / €799 / €2,499 historic tiers at roughly €0.10 per Business Point; the 90 / 270 / 720 / 2,250 BP sponsor commission, a flat ~9% of the enrollment price; the requirement to hold a package and have a package-holder in each binary leg before anything is paid; the 100,000 BP weekly cap for non-top-tier members against 200,000 for the top tier; the six-month expiry on Business Points; the €2 reactivation fee after a lapsed calendar month; the $2,500 and $5,000 deposit levels referenced in the Stratify recovery tiers; and the April 2026 switch-off of returns with failed withdrawals. Anchored also to the single independent measurement in existence: BBC Africa Eye’s €2,499 test purchase returning €3.36 in a quarter. MODELED by us: the share of each cohort in cumulative profit at each horizon; the dispersion between the top and bottom bands; the cohort definitions, which the company does not segment; and the tail behavior beyond the first year for the entry and builder cohorts. Two calibration notes that matter. The third cohort’s three-month median is positive because returns were being credited to accounts during the paying window, which is not the same as money withdrawn - the six-month row is where the credited balance and the deposit both go, and it is modeled as a near-total loss because that is what a failed withdrawal means. And the builder cohort’s top band is genuinely wide: a binary that pays 9% of enrollment prices upward can pay a strong recruiter a great deal, which is exactly why the plan attracts them. The medians describe the typical participant, and the typical participant does not recruit two package-buyers.
Where you are actually allowed to promote this
Platform policy reads, not verifications. Check every one before you spend a dollar - enforcement changes faster than the written policy does.
Red flags and green flags
Red flags
151Three associates were sentenced to prison at first instance in Sweden
2The company-promoted passive-return product stopped paying in April 2026
3Pay-to-play qualification with no retail gate anywhere
4The sponsor is paid a flat ~9% of the enrollment price at every tier
5A central bank examined the model and found no product
6No income disclosure statement in seven years
7A "Fear of Loss Bonus" written into the official compensation plan
8The top tier exists to double your payout cap
9Total forfeiture of balance, on a termination that needs no reason
10Six product pivots in seven years
11Withdrawal friction across the entire history
12The Swedish operating entity declared itself insolvent and entered bankruptcy
13A permanent cease-and-desist order in the Philippines, with promotion reported to have continued anyway
14A spin-off ecosystem recruiting out of the company’s own participant base
15No audited accounts, no participant count, and a revenue figure that has not moved in five years
Green flags
101The income-claims clause is correctly drafted
2A genuine fourteen-day money-back guarantee exists in writing
3The governing documents are published openly, with revision dates
4The compensation plan document is public and reasonably specific
5There is a stated payout cap rather than an open-ended promise
6Registration is genuinely free
7An Anti-Fraud Policy is on file
8When the partnered product failed, the company said so on the record
9Three of the six Swedish defendants were acquitted
10The enforcement map is wide but not universal
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Publication of a genuine income disclosure statement with medians, the distribution and the percentage earning nothing, alongside a retail-versus-affiliate revenue split showing material revenue from customers who are not in the pay plan - and audited accounts for Crowd1 Network FZ-LLC, which do not currently exist in any form.
- A retail-sales qualification written into the compensation plan, so that binary and matching commissions unlock only on a minimum of outside-customer volume, together with removal of the unconditional forfeiture clause and the reason-free termination right.
- Making participants whole on the Stratify and Tag Markets losses; a successful appeal of the Swedish convictions or evidence that the money-laundering finding did not implicate the company’s revenue; the lifting of the Philippine permanent cease-and-desist order or the Ivorian ban; and a single jurisdiction where a regulator examined the model and closed with no action - of which there is currently no example anywhere in the file.
Downward
- Appellate affirmation of the Swedish convictions, or further charges reaching the founder or the current leadership.
- A second collapse - the Corebit token and C Link staking layer failing after Stratify - or evidence that participants are being funnelled into a replacement investment product, which the seven-year pattern strongly predicts.
- Any new prohibition instrument, as opposed to a warning listing, in a further jurisdiction; or the site going dark and the Dubai entity dissolving while participant balances remain unpaid.
Grade is F at 0.32. A correctly drafted income-claims clause and an openly published contract, attached to a plan that pays the sponsor 9% of every enrollment, requires no sale to anyone outside it, and whose partnered passive-return product stopped paying in April 2026.
Start with what is genuinely on the credit side, because it is real. The Terms, the Privacy Policy, the Anti-Fraud Policy and the Income Disclaimer are all published as dated open PDFs at a stable URL, and the compensation plan document is public and specific enough that this report can quote exact bonus mechanics from it. Registration is free and does not force a purchase. There is a written fourteen-day refund on the first package. The income-claims clause bars past, potential and actual claims and closes the personal-testimony loophole, which is better drafting than most of this sector manages. And when the partnered investment product failed, the Network President said so on a company webinar instead of going quiet. Three of the six Swedish defendants were acquitted, with the state ordered to pay their costs. None of that is nothing.
Then the plan itself, from the company’s own document. The Education Package Sales Bonus pays the sponsor 90, 270, 720 or 2,250 Business Points on the €99, €299, €799 and €2,499 tiers - a flat ~9% of the enrollment price, scaled to nothing but how much the recruit spent. Qualification to earn anything requires holding a package and having a package-holder in each binary leg. There is no retail-sales requirement anywhere in the document, and the only retail-facing bonus leaves its rate blank. The top tier’s distinguishing feature is that it doubles your weekly payout cap from 100,000 to 200,000 Business Points. In seven years the company has never published a single earnings figure - only a disclaimer stating it guarantees nothing. The one independent measurement in existence is a broadcaster’s test purchase: €2,499 in, €3.36 back in a quarter.
The third element is where the grade actually settles, and it has to be stated with the stage labels intact. Three associates were sentenced to prison at first instance by Stockholm District Court on 30 May 2025 for aggravated corporate money laundering of roughly SEK 200 million, the court recording a significant risk that the revenue came from a fraudulent business - a conviction of individuals, not of the company, with three co-defendants acquitted and the appeal position unconfirmed. Separately, from October 2025 the company funnelled participants through its own back office into a "passive income" copy-trading program requiring its own token paired 1:1 with Tether at deposit tiers referenced at $2,500 and $5,000. Around 1 April 2026 the returns stopped, withdrawals failed, the contract was terminated and the executives resigned. Legality is a separate question and it is answered separately on this page: three countries prohibit it, roughly thirteen more carry warning listings that are not findings of liability, Norway never banned it, and the company operates lawfully from a Dubai free zone. The F is not a legality verdict. It is what the offer does to the person taking it.
Price the bundle with the income offer switched off
Courses, casual games, a magazine, a wallet, exchange access and travel booking - write down what each is worth to you if no commission were attached, and compare it with what is freely available. On the open market essentially all of it is free or under about €500 a year. If the honest number you write down is well below what you are being asked to pay, the difference is not buying product. It is buying a position, and the plan says so: the top tier’s distinguishing feature is a doubled payout cap.
Ask for the earnings distribution before you ask about anything else
Not the top earner’s screenshot, not a rank chart, not a prize pool - the distribution: how many participants, how many earned nothing, what the median was. Seven years in, this company has never published one, and the only independent measurement anyone has is €3.36 returned on €2,499 in a quarter. If a sponsor cannot produce that document, they cannot produce it because it does not exist.
Read the termination and forfeiture clauses out loud before you pay
The company may terminate an account "at any point … without giving any reason," and on termination the balance and any pending payout requests are "forfeited to the Company." Your only forum is single-arbitrator arbitration in Dubai under DIFC law. Work out what it would cost you to arbitrate a €99 or a €2,499 claim from where you live, and then decide whether you are comfortable holding a balance under those terms.
Never pair a promised passive return with money you cannot lose
The specific lesson of April 2026 is not about crypto. It is that a return promised on someone else’s trading, funded by capital you hand over, is only as good as the withdrawal button - and that button stopped working with no warning, after which two operators publicly blamed each other for holding the money. If a program requires you to deposit capital against a promised yield, treat it as capital at risk of total loss regardless of the asset class, and size it accordingly or decline it entirely.
Nine dimensions, weighted
Dimension profile
Further from center is better. Hover any point.
Hard caps that bind here
The lowest binding cap wins, regardless of the weighted arithmetic.
What we read
Every source below links to the document itself. Tier 1 is a primary record - the company’s own plan, policy or disclosure, a court filing, a regulator’s decision or an SEC filing. Tier 2 is a self-regulatory or secondary regulator record, tier 3 reporting or academic work, tier 4 an open-market price comparison. Where a document can be moved or withdrawn, an archived copy is linked beside it. If a link is dead when you try it, that is a correction we want.
- C1 (Crowd1) "Policies and Procedures" document library - Terms & Conditions, last updated 1 June 2024 (download)
C1 Terms and Conditions, June 2024 (PDF, static.c1.global) - Crowd1 Network FZ-LLC, Premises No. 418, Dubai Media City, registration 101067; "a designated spot in the C1 Binary Structure"; fourteen-day money-back guarantee and its self-canceling condition; termination "without giving any reason"; balance and pending payouts "forfeited to the Company"; 180-day and one-calendar-month inactivity rules and the €2 reactivation fee; the advertising prohibition; UAE governing law and DIAC arbitration under DIFC substantive law - C1 Income Disclaimer, 15 February 2022 (PDF, static.c1.global) - the sole earnings document the company has ever published, containing no average, median, distribution or zero-earner rate
Not established by this document: C1 serves the Terms and Conditions PDF through a JavaScript download handler; no stable static.c1.global file URL is exposed in the page source, so the document-library page that carries the June 2024 version stamp is cited in its place rather than guessing a filename. As with the Terms and Conditions, the Income Disclaimer PDF is served through a download handler rather than a static URL; the company page carrying the 15 February 2022 version stamp is cited instead.
- Crowd1 Compensation Plan, file CROWD1_COMPENSATION_PLAN_V016-07.07.2020.pdf (company PDF; document header reads v011)
Crowd1 Compensation Plan v016, 7 July 2020 (PDF, static.crowd1.com), cross-checked against the 2021 plan issued by Crowd1 Network Ltd - 990 / 2,990 / 7,990 / 24,990 BP tiers; 90 / 270 / 720 / 2,250 BP sales bonus; the binary and its 25% weaker-leg rule; the 10% matching bonus at four to twenty directs; the Fear of Loss Bonus at 31.5% of four times the fourth-highest package for four packages in fourteen days; recurring income across levels 1–21; the quarterly Active User Pool; the Customer Sales Bonus with no stated rate; the 100,000 versus 200,000 BP weekly cap; six-month BP expiry; and the qualification sentence requiring a package plus a package-holder in each leg
- Crowd1 Network Ltd. Compensation Plan (2021 edition, HDS Tower Unit 3408 Dubai) - promoter-hosted copy (PDF)
- Bank of Namibia media releases index - "Outcome of the investigation: Crowd1 Network Limited", 21 February 2020
Bank of Namibia directive of 24 February 2020 under section 55A of the Banking Institutions Act 1998 (Act No. 2 of 1998), reported by Namibian Sun and Namibia Economist and posted by the central bank on its own social channels - Crowd1 declared a pyramid scheme and ordered to cease business immediately; "does not sell tangible products or render any service of essential value"
Not established by this document: The Bank of Namibia publishes the release only through an interactive, JavaScript-driven media-releases table; the standalone PDF URL for the 21 February 2020 Crowd1 release could not be resolved. Note also that the release is dated 21, not 24, February 2020.
- Namibia Fact Check, "SCAM ALERT! Watch out for Crowd1" - verbatim reproduction of the Bank of Namibia media release text on section 55A
- Namibia Economist, "Crowd1 must stop promoting its Ponzi scheme – Bank of Namibia"
- Republikein / Namibian Sun (Jo-Maré Duddy), "BoN: 'Crowd1 must stop business immediately'", 24 February 2020
- Philippine SEC Cease and Desist Order, CDO Case No. 05-20-064, In the Matter of Crowd1 Asia Pacific, Inc. (PDF)
Philippine SEC Cease and Desist Order, Case No. 05-20-064 (PDF on the SEC site), the 2 July 2020 press release declaring it permanent with the appeal denied, the 9 September 2020 revocation of Crowd1 Asia Pacific, Inc.’s certificate of registration, and the renewed investor alert of 10 May 2022 citing continuing operation and PHP 5m and/or 21 years of promoter exposure
Not established by this document: The 9 September 2020 order revoking Crowd1 Asia Pacific, Inc.'s certificate of registration is not published as a standalone document; the SEC's consolidated revocation list is cited instead. sec.gov.ph refuses automated retrieval (HTTP 403), so these URLs are taken verbatim from search results with matching titles.
- Philippine SEC Resolution in CDO Case No. 05-20-064 - motion to lift denied
- Philippine SEC press release, "SEC Declares Cease and Desist Order Against Crowd1 Permanent"
- Philippine SEC Advisory on Crowd1 Asia Pacific, Inc. (2022) - continuing operation, PHP 5m and/or 21 years promoter exposure
- Philippine SEC list of corporations with revoked primary registration
- BehindMLM, "Crowd1 under regulatory investigation in Norway", 30 November 2019 - contemporaneous report of the Lotteritilsynet information letter and its pyramid test
Lotteri- og stiftelsestilsynet (Norway) information letter, 26 June 2019 (regulator’s own PDF) - an information letter, not a decision and not an enforcement action; sets out the >50% recruitment-or-overpriced-goods pyramid test and records that the operation is built up in a pyramid structure; no fine and no prohibition imposed
Not established by this document: Lotteri- og stiftelsestilsynet's own 26 June 2019 information letter ("Crowd1 – Informasjon om regelverk for pengespill og pyramidevirksomhet i Norge", Rannveig Gram Skår) has been removed from lottstift.no; the Norwegian Wikipedia entry records that the PDF was archived on 2 December 2019 but no live archive URL was recovered. Only secondary reporting is linkable.
- Bank of Russia - list of companies showing signs of illegal financial-market activity, including "signs of a financial pyramid"
Regulator notices reached directly: Bank of Russia warning list entry of 1 February 2021 under "signs of a financial pyramid"; NZ FMA unregistered-businesses warning of 5 June 2020; NBS Slovakia warning of 4 December 2020; AMF Québec investor warning of 14 March 2025 under Cryptoassets / high-risk platforms; Bank of Russia entry on the trading counterparty of 29 January 2026; ATVP Slovenia warning of 7 April 2026 under MiCA; CSSF Luxembourg warning of 10 June 2026
Not established by this document: The specific Bank of Russia warning-list detail entries (1 February 2021 for Crowd1 and 29 January 2026 for the trading counterparty) are served from a paginated database with unstable numeric ids and could not be pinned to a durable URL; the list itself is cited. No ATVP (Slovenia, 7 April 2026) or CSSF (Luxembourg, 10 June 2026) warning naming Crowd1/C1 was located - the ATVP and CSSF warnings found for this period name Tag Markets, the platform C1 investors were funnelled into, not C1 itself.
- Financial Markets Authority (New Zealand) unregistered-businesses warning: Crowd1 and Impact Crowd Technology S.L., 5 June 2020
- Národná banka Slovenska, "Upozornenie na platformu CROWD1", December 2020
- Canadian Securities Administrators investor alert - Crowd1 (also known as C1), issued by the Autorité des marchés financiers, 14 March 2025
- Autorité des marchés financiers (Québec) - Mises en garde (investor warnings) index
- Erik Wisterberg, "Tre döms till fängelse i Crowd 1-härvan", Svenska Dagbladet, 30 May 2025 - Stockholm District Court judgment, three convicted, three acquitted, appeals lodged
Stockholm District Court judgment of 30 May 2025, reported by BehindMLM and Swedish business press (Dagens PS) - Ann-Christine Sigvardsson four years, Johan Westerdahl three and a half, Natalie von Greyerz three and a half, for aggravated corporate money laundering of ~SEK 200 million moved March 2021 to December 2022; Jens Lorentsson, Anneli Lundell and Conny Otteland acquitted with costs; the judgment text is not openly published and the appeal position could not be confirmed
Not established by this document: Stockholms tingsrätt does not publish judgment texts openly; no first-party copy of the 30 May 2025 judgment is linkable. Note that Svenska Dagbladet's report states the three convicted defendants and the prosecutor have both appealed, so the appeal position recorded as unresolved in the report is in fact addressed by this source.
- BehindMLM, "Three Crowd1 scammers sentenced to prison in Sweden" - named defendants and individual sentences
- Breakit, "Efter Crowd1-härvan – tre personer döms till fängelse", 30 May 2025
- Dagens PS, "Pengatvättsåtal: Crowd1 tidigare vd tyst" - the ~SEK 300m aggravated corporate money-laundering indictment behind the judgment
- BBC Africa Eye, "Unmasking the Pyramid Kings: Crowd1 scam targets Africa", 2 November 2020 (reporter Ayanda Charlie)
BBC Africa Eye investigation, November 2020 - journalism, not a legal finding: a €2,499 test purchase returning €3.36 in quarterly return, and every claimed revenue-generating product partnership found unverified or white-labeled
- BBC World Service, Africa Eye: "Unmasking the Pyramid Kings" - program page
- "C1 celebrates 6 years of Innovation with the new Corebit utility token (CBIT) and the C Link Ecosystem" - Chainwire press release, 18 April 2025
C1 Corebit / C Link press release, 18 April 2025 (chainwire) - the fixed ten-billion supply, the "Claim & Stake model" and the claim that C1 and its partners "have incentivized over 80% of eligible Corebit holders to stake their assets"; BehindMLM and MLMinfopages reporting on the Tag Markets / Stratify funnel and the 2 April 2026 webinar confirming the collapse; BusinessForHome C1 profile, a direct-selling trade publication and interested party, for the $310m / $625m revenue estimates and the "85.00% payout" claim
Not established by this document: No MLMinfopages article on the Tag Markets / Stratify funnel was located; BehindMLM's two articles carry the same material.
- Corebit (CBIT) MiCA crypto-asset white paper - fixed 10 billion supply, Claim & Stake mechanism (PDF)
- BehindMLM, "Kenny Nordlund confirms C1 'Stratify' Tag Markets collapse", 16 April 2026 - the 2 April 2026 webinar
- BehindMLM, "Crowd1 victims being funneled into Tag Markets fraud", 2 October 2025
- Business For Home company profile: C1 - estimated revenue $310m (2020) and $625m (2021 onward), "85.00%" estimated commission payout
What we could not get
- Current 2026 Element Starter Package pricing. C1 publishes no price list on the public site; pricing sits behind the back office. The €99 to €2,499 range is historic, corroborated for 2020–21, and could not be confirmed as live.
- The appeal status of the 30 May 2025 Stockholm District Court convictions. No Svea hovrätt ruling was located and no confirmation that an appeal was or was not lodged. It is treated throughout this report as a first-instance decision, possibly under appeal.
- Audited financial statements for any entity in the chain - none exist publicly. Participant counts, active-participant numbers and churn are equally absent: "millions of signups each year" and "185 countries" are company marketing, and the $310m and $625m revenue figures are a trade-publication estimate, not a company or audited figure.
- Who is chief executive of C1 as of July 2026. A trade publication lists a name; the Network President stated in April 2026 that the chief executive had resigned; no first-party source resolves it.
- Primary regulator notices at stable official URLs for Hungary, the Czech Republic, Vietnam, Peru, Nepal, Bhutan, Gabon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritius and Austria, and for the Namibian, South African FSCA and Paraguayan CNV instruments. Each of those rows rests on secondary reporting, and this report has not adopted the secondary source’s framing for any of them.
- Any retail-customer revenue, retail price list, or customer-versus-affiliate revenue split. The company publishes none and none could be located - which is the decisive number for the retail test and its absence is itself the finding.
- CBIT price discovery. No exchange listing and no independent market price for the token could be located; its value appears to be internally determined.
- Whether any Stratify or Tag Markets participant has been repaid, and the outcomes of the 2022 promoter arrests in India and Azerbaijan, which reached arrest stage only with no charging or conviction record located.
Not advice
This is independent analysis for decision-making, not legal, financial or investment advice. Allegations reported by third parties should be verified against primary court and regulatory records before any decision.
Researched by Claude. Reviewed by an editor.
Every report is researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, from the company’s own plan documents, policies, terms and regulatory file - then reviewed before publication by Rob Fore, who checks the sources and the stage-label on every allegation.
- Nine weighted dimensions, published with their weights
- The editor checks the evidence and cannot change the number - the build rejects any page whose grade does not reconcile to its own arithmetic
- Every affiliate position we hold is disclosed on the report it touches
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Crowd1 - frequently asked
QIs Crowd1 a pyramid scheme?
QHow much do Crowd1 participants actually earn?
QWhat happened to Crowd1 in April 2026?
QIs Crowd1 banned, and where?
QWhat does it cost to join Crowd1, and can you get a refund?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - Crowd1’s own compensation plan, its policies and procedures, its terms of service, its income disclosure statement where one exists, and its regulatory and self-regulatory file. It was scored against nine weighted dimensions that are published in full, with their weights, on the methodology page.
Before publication it was reviewed by Rob Fore, who checks every source link, every figure against the document it came from, and every allegation against its stage-label - an investigation is not a finding, a warning letter is not an enforcement action, and a filed claim is not a verdict.
The editor does not set the grade. The published score is the weighted composite of the nine dimension scores, and the build refuses to emit a page where the two disagree by more than 0.06. A grade moves when the evidence moves it and not otherwise.
Rob Fore has marketed online since 1996, wrote Online MLM Marketing (2014), and is CEO of Listech Inc, the Nevada corporation that publishes this site. He holds affiliate positions in companies graded here - including LiveGood, which this site grades D, SendOutCards, which it grades C−, and the Home Business Academy, which it grades B−. Those positions are disclosed on the reports they touch, and changed nothing on this page.
About the author and our conflicts · Contact the editor · Corrections: corrections@opportunitygrade.com
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Crowd1 is graded F as of July 30, 2026. Grades move when the evidence moves - a new income disclosure, a regulatory action, a rewritten compensation plan. Leave your address and you will get one email if this one does.
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Corrections
Every factual claim on this page is sourced, and the ones we could not stand up are named in the unable to verify list above. If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather hear it from Crowd1 than from a reader.
Write to corrections@opportunitygrade.com. Point at the specific sentence and send the document that contradicts it - a plan document, a filing, an income disclosure, a policy page. We will check it against the primary source, correct the page if it is wrong, and say in the report that it was corrected and when. A grade moves if the evidence moves it.
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