International Markets Live, Inc. (IYOVIA)
A closed file rather than a live offer: a $795,763,490 stipulated federal judgment, a permanent industry ban on the founders, a receiver who describes the businesses as permanently closed - and a compensation plan whose own first rank paid less than it cost to hold.
The median participant earned $0 while 21 people took $242 million of the $1.242 billion collected - and on 1 June 2026 a federal court entered a $795,763,490 judgment and banned the founders from the sector permanently.
Can you actually make money with Iyovia?
No, and the economics are not the reason. There is nothing left to join. A federal court entered a $795,763,490 judgment on 1 June 2026, stipulated, with the right of appeal expressly waived, and permanently barred the founders from any trading training service or investment opportunity. A receiver holds the estate and describes the businesses as permanently closed. Every IBO agreement was canceled at once on 23 May 2025 and app access was cut off the same day. Everything below this line grades an offer that no longer exists.
That still matters, because the websites are up and one of them says join. Checked on 31 July 2026, iyovia.com was a stale shell still rendering prices behind a 2024 copyright line, with a /join page returning 404 and hundreds of injected foreign-language gambling links in the footer. The other domain no longer serves the academy at all and resolves to an unrelated crypto-casino affiliate review site. Neither carries a receiver notice, a shutdown notice or a consumer warning. Somebody searching the brand today can land on something that looks alive.
The plan is worth reading for what it shows. The company's own 2022 income disclosure recorded median IBO earnings of $0 and 45% of IBOs net-negative, with nearly 80% under $500 for the year and that group averaging $77.51. The cheapest realistic year cost $2,961.10: $249.95 to enroll, one academy at $184.95 every 28 days, and the $24.95 monthly fee. The first paid rank, Platinum 150, returned roughly $1,950 a year. The first rung did not cover the cost of standing on it, and the 2018 disclosure records that 87.13% of 52,706 IBOs never advanced a rank at all.
Two things belong on the other side of this file and they are not throwaways. No participant capital was ever taken in for investment. No fund, no pool, no managed accounts, no promised return on the fee, and the FTC pleaded no securities count at all, which is a materially lower category of harm than an unregistered offering. And an income disclosure was published, including under the final brand, warning in its own text that IBO expenses may exceed the amounts earned. The figures in it were terrible. Printing them still counts for something.
the cheapest realistic year one - $249.95 enrollment, $184.95 every 28 days for one academy ($2,411.75 a year at 13.04 billings), and the $24.95 monthly IBO fee. No live version of this offer exists.
- A live offer to grade. There is not one. Until something is filed, priced and lawfully enrollable, no paragraph on this page describes a decision a reader is in a position to make.
- The two abandoned domains taken down, or made to say what happened. A shutdown notice on both would stop a dead brand from collecting search traffic that still reads as a working business.
- Rank thresholds counted in sales rather than in active members and group volume. Platinum 150 asked for 3 active members and 435 GV, while the fast start on an actual sale paid $25 against a $184.95 first payment, about a tenth of it.
- The written income-claims rules enforced against the people hardest to enforce against. Section 11.1 banned income projections and exotic-car imagery outright. The FTC found the three-strikes policy stated but not enforced while 21 promoters took $242 million.
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 NOW CLOSED - and the geography has to be stated precisely, because it is not the same everywhere. In the United States there is a permanent federal industry ban and a receivership: on 1 June 2026 the District of Nevada entered Document 361 in FTC and State of Nevada v. International Markets Live, Inc., No. 2:25-cv-00760-CDS-EJY, a stipulated final order carrying a $795,763,490.00 joint-and-several judgment and a permanent injunction against creating, marketing or selling any "Trading Training Service or Investment Opportunity." It is stipulated - the defendants neither admit nor deny the allegations - and both sides expressly waived all rights of appeal. A stipulated order is a settlement, not a litigated finding of fact after trial, and this report treats it as such throughout. In Belgium there is something different and stronger in kind: the criminal court at Tongeren convicted the predecessor entity of operating a pyramid scheme and fined it €60,000, with four Belgian recruiters fined €4,000 to €16,000 each. That is a criminal conviction in one jurisdiction. It is not the same thing as the US order, and the two must not be collapsed - the FTC pleaded no pyramid count at all. Elsewhere the file is open or unresolved and could not be confirmed: eight arrests in Spain in March 2022 with no verified outcome, an investigation reported in Luxembourg in 2023 with no verified outcome, and administrative warnings in France, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Luxembourg and New Zealand that are alerts rather than findings of liability. Say the obvious thing plainly: the letter grade on this page is not a legality verdict. A company banned in one jurisdiction may have been trading lawfully in others, and several of the warnings above are precisely that - a regulator saying a firm is not authorized in its market, which is a different statement from a finding that it broke the law.
Confidence: 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 subscription business selling online trading-education content - foreign exchange, binary options, digital currency, stocks and futures, plus e-commerce and social-media modules - marketed worldwide through independent affiliates called IBOs on a multi-level plan that paid flat stipends attached to maintained ranks. The operating entity, International Markets Live, Inc., was a New York corporation founded in 2013. It was not a broker, not a fund and not a licensed adviser, and its own terms said so in terms.
The good parts should be stated first, because they are real. Content genuinely existed and was delivered: live educator sessions, recorded modules, a mobile app and eight subject academies. The plan carried a written retail requirement most plans lack - a Customer Leg Rule demanding a minimum 55% retail-customer volume in every leg, a 40% cap on how much qualifying volume any single leg could supply, and a policy clause stating flatly that "IBOs are not compensated other than for sales to Customers." The IBO fee itself was low, at $15 rising to $24.95 a month across a decade, with no mandatory starter kit and no monthly autoship quota. An income disclosure statement was published, including under the final brand name, and it warned in its own text that participant costs "may exceed the amounts earned." And the written income-claims policy was among the strictest anywhere: §11.1 banned income projections, claims and guarantees outright and named cash, exotic cars and yachts as prohibited imagery.
Then the economics. From the company’s own 2022 disclosure: median IBO earnings of $0, nearly 80% earning under $500 a year and averaging $77.51 within that group, 83% at or under $500 once the IBO fee is netted, and 45% of all IBOs net-negative. The FTC’s analysis of 2020-2022 data put 99.23% under $25,000. Against that, a single academy cost $184.95 every 28 days - 13.04 billings a year, not 12 - for $2,411.75 annually, plus a $249.95 enrollment fee and a $24.95 monthly IBO fee: about $2,961 in year one at the cheapest workable configuration, and roughly $7,638 for an active builder with a bundle, one add-on tool, one event and modest advertising. The first paid rank, Platinum 150, returned about $1,950 a year. It did not cover the cost of holding it.
And then the distribution, which is the whole case in one line. Of $1.242 billion taken in from consumers since 2018, over $242 million - 19.5 cents in every dollar - went to 21 people. On 1 June 2026 the District of Nevada entered a stipulated final order carrying a $795,763,490.00 joint-and-several judgment and a permanent ban on the founders and all three corporate defendants from any trading-training service or investment opportunity. It is a settlement in which the defendants neither admit nor deny the allegations, with appeal expressly waived; it is not a litigated finding of fact. Separately, and by a different body under different law, the criminal court at Tongeren in Belgium convicted the predecessor entity of operating a pyramid scheme and fined it €60,000 - while the FTC pleaded no pyramid count at all. Those are two different findings and a reader should not let them collapse into one.
There is nothing to join. Every IBO agreement was canceled on 23 May 2025, the direct-to-consumer pivot that replaced the MLM lasted about a week, and a permanent receiver has been in place since 10 November 2025 describing the businesses as permanently closed. Checked on 31 July 2026: im.academy no longer serves the academy at all and now resolves to an unrelated crypto-casino affiliate review site, while iyovia.com is a stale shell still displaying "Join now" and still rendering prices, with hundreds of injected foreign-language gambling spam links in its footer, a 2024 copyright line, a /join path returning 404, and no receiver notice, shutdown notice or consumer warning anywhere on it. No live, priced, enrollable offer could be confirmed. Anyone being pitched this brand in 2026 is not being pitched by the company.
Where every $100 of participant money went
Two rows are hard figures from the FTC complaint - the $242 million paid to 21 top sellers and the owners’ extraction - against total consumer intake of $1,242,000,000 since 2018. The remaining rows are this site’s modeled reconstruction of the balance and are labeled as estimates, not company disclosures.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Foreign Exchange academy (FRX) The core product and the one most participants bought. $2,411.75 a year at 13.04 billing cycles. The $25 fast start is about 10.6% of the first payment - deliberately small, because the plan paid on rank, not on sales. |
$249.95 then $184.95 every 28 days |
$25 fast start |
| Stocks and Crypto academy (SFX/DCX) Same price and same commission basis as the foreign-exchange academy. Volume counted toward personal and group volume, which is what actually drove rank and therefore pay. |
$249.95 then $184.95 every 28 days |
$25 fast start |
| Transform Bundle Any two academies plus the personal-development module and the travel product, with a four-day reward trip after twelve continuous months. $3,259.35 a year. The reward trip is a retention device attached to twelve uninterrupted billings. |
$274.95 then $249.95 every 28 days |
plan volume |
| E-Commerce academy (ECX) $1,629.35 a year. Part of the 2023 expansion beyond trading into e-commerce, social media and personal development - breadth added to a subscription whose six-month abandonment rate was already 90%. |
$149.95 then $124.95 every 28 days |
plan volume |
| Add-on tools and strategies About $1,304 a year per add-on, per the FTC’s stated band. Most active IBOs held more than one, which is how a $2,400 subscription became a $7,600 year. |
~$100 then ~$100 every 28 days each |
plan volume |
| IBO subscription $299.40 a year, and it bought no product whatsoever - only the right to earn commissions and a back office. It was $15 in 2016 and $16.71 in 2020. This is the line the securities analysis turns on: a fee marketed as a stake against promised commission income. |
$24.95 monthly |
— |
| ALL-IN Pack and IMPowered Bundle The top bundles. Both product pages render empty price fields and no price could be confirmed from any retrievable source; the $400-per-28-days figure used in the heaviest cost scenario is inferred from the FTC’s stated $100-$400 auto-renewal band, not read from a page. |
not verified every 28 days |
plan volume |
| "Refer 2 and yours is free" Refer two other retail customers onto the identical package before the next billing date and your own subscription is free. Marketed as customer generosity; economically it converts a customer into an unpaid recruiter and contaminates the 55% retail-volume rule the plan relied on to look retail. |
$0 subscription per billing cycle |
— |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
Began in network marketing in the early 1990s with a household-name direct-selling company, where by his own account he acquired a mindset rather than earnings, and founded iMarketsLive in 2013. He marketed himself as a trader who had made tens of millions in forex and futures; his own site records no formal education. He is now permanently enjoined by a US federal court from creating, marketing or selling any trading-training service or investment opportunity anywhere, and is jointly and severally liable for $795,763,490.00. The FTC alleged he and his co-founder received over $20 million in direct payments on top of owning an enterprise that took in $1.242 billion. Assets surrendered jointly with his co-founder include eight homes in New York, Nevada, Florida and Dubai, thirteen residential lots near Las Vegas, nineteen vehicles including a Bentley and a Rolls-Royce, a yacht and jewelry including a 15-carat diamond ring - an FTC-stated value of nearly $90 million. No criminal charge, personal bankruptcy or prior securities or commodities action against him personally could be located, and several blogs asserting more than the court record are unsourced and are not relied on here.
Co-founder and Chief Financial Officer from 2013, and the sole officer and shareholder of both affiliates the FTC alleged commingled funds with the parent: IM Mastery Academy Ltd. in England and Assiduous, Inc. in Delaware, the entity that took cryptocurrency payments. That structure placed the UK-facing operating arm and the non-refundable crypto payment rail in one person’s hands. She carries the same permanent ban and the same joint-and-several liability. No prior venture, regulatory history or court history before 2013 could be located for her - a negative finding, recorded as one.
Five field leaders were named as defendants alongside the owners, which is unusual and worth understanding. The highest-paid salesperson was alleged to have taken over $76 million and settled on 4 September 2025 for a $76,200,000 judgment with $10,000,000 paid, plus a permanent bar on taking part in any multi-level marketing of trading-training services. Two others and their Nevada LLC, which received over $33 million, settled on 7 August 2025 on a joint $36,000,000 judgment with $2,500,000 paid. A fourth settled for a $6,300,000 judgment with $500,000 paid. Relief defendants settled on 16 July 2026 for $5,580,616 joint and several with asset surrender inside ten days. All of these are stipulated, consented orders, not litigated findings. Collectively, 21 top sellers were paid over $242 million between 2018 and 2023. Notably, the highest earner had previously been a top distributor at an energy-drink MLM that the FTC shut down as an illegal pyramid targeting college students in 2015 - a promoter track record that was public and available to anyone who looked.
Every consumer refund and unpaid commission obligation sits with International Markets Live, Inc. and is now administered through the receivership estate rather than by any company. The redress pool is roughly $90 million of surrendered assets plus about $13 million in cash from the earlier settling defendants, against a stated consumer harm of $1.242 billion - so any individual recovery will be pennies on the dollar. As at the date of this review no consumer claims portal had been published; the receivership page carries only an email address and a warning that responses may be slow. Whether final IBO commissions were paid after the 23 May 2025 mass termination and before the 11 August 2025 asset freeze could not be established either way.
Registered address
Tarrytown, New York and Henderson, Nevada, USA - now administered by a court-appointed receiver
The rename chain is the structural fact worth holding on to, and it is this company’s own lineage rather than a comparison with anyone else. iMarketsLive became IM Mastery Academy became IM Academy became IYOVIA. The legal entity never changed once: International Markets Live, Inc., a New York corporation formed in 2013, is the same respondent the CFTC fined in September 2018, the same firm nine foreign regulators warned about, the same defendant the FTC and the State of Nevada sued on 1 May 2025, and the same entity enjoined on 1 June 2026. Four brands, one company, one liability. The UK arm, IM Mastery Academy Ltd. (company no. 10325974, incorporated 11 August 2016), is itself a named defendant; its registered office has reverted to the Companies House default address in Cardiff and its accounts to 31 August 2025 are overdue. Thomas W. McNamara was appointed Monitor in August 2025, Temporary Receiver in October 2025 and permanent Receiver on 10 November 2025; the receivership’s own status page states that the businesses "have been permanently closed."
The veteran's checklist
Eight questions that decide whether this is a business or a transfer mechanism. Same eight, every review.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Can you join it today? |
RED
No. Every IBO agreement was canceled on 23 May 2025, the direct-to-consumer pivot lasted about a week, and a permanent receiver has held the businesses since 10 November 2025 and describes them as permanently closed. No live, priced, enrollable offer could be confirmed anywhere.
|
| Who legally owns it? |
RED
International Markets Live, Inc., a New York corporation founded in 2013 by Christopher and Isis Terry, with IM Mastery Academy Ltd. in England and Assiduous, Inc. in Delaware. The legal entity never changed across four brand names. All three corporates and both owners are permanently enjoined; the estate is administered by a court-appointed receiver.
|
| What does it really cost? |
CONCERN
$2,961.10 in a cheapest realistic year one - $249.95 enrollment, $184.95 every 28 days for one academy ($2,411.75 a year at 13.04 billings), and $24.95 a month for the IBO subscription. An active builder with a bundle, one add-on, one event and modest advertising was at roughly $7,638.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
CONCERN
Yes - including under the final brand, dated 4 November 2024, and it warns that costs may exceed earnings. The 2022 edition showed a median of $0, nearly 80% under $500 a year averaging $77.51, and 45% net-negative. The 2024 table is an image and could not be transcribed.
|
| Regulatory action against the company? |
RED
A $795,763,490.00 stipulated federal judgment and permanent industry ban entered 1 June 2026 (2:25-cv-00760-CDS-EJY, D. Nev.), neither admit nor deny, appeal waived; a settled CFTC administrative order in September 2018 with a $150,000 penalty; and warnings from regulators in France, Spain, the UK, Colombia, Luxembourg and New Zealand.
|
| Was it a pyramid scheme? |
RED
It depends entirely on the jurisdiction, and the distinction matters. A Belgian criminal court at Tongeren convicted the predecessor entity of operating a pyramid scheme and fined it €60,000. The FTC pleaded no pyramid count at all - its case ran on deceptive earnings claims, negative-option billing and telemarketing rules - so no US court has adjudicated the structural question either way.
|
| Can you get your money back? |
RED
Seven days under §10.6, full refund, expressly excluding Bitcoin purchases - and a Delaware affiliate existed specifically to accept crypto. Beyond that window, the only route now is a receivership estate holding roughly $90 million of surrendered assets plus about $13 million in cash against $1.242 billion of stated harm, with no claims portal published.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
RED
Miner, decisively. Ranks were denominated in active members and group volume - 3 at the first rank, 75 at Platinum 2000, roughly 30,000 subscriptions at the top - while the commission on an actual sale was $25, about 10.6% of the first payment. Pay was a flat stipend attached to a maintained rank, not a margin on anything sold.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Buy the education as a customer and get value from it | $2,661.70 of value in year one $249.95 enrollment plus $2,411.75 of subscription - impossible to break even in cash, because a customer earns nothing |
| Cover the cost of being an IBO on front-end commissions alone | 119 personally enrolled customers a year $2,961.10 of annual cost divided by the $25 fast start - more than two new retained customers every week, against 60% one-month churn |
| Hold the first paid rank, Platinum 150 | 3 active members and 435 group volume pays $37.50 a week, about $1,950 a year, against $2,961.10 to hold it - a loss of $1,011.10 with no new enrollments |
| Turn cash-positive on residual alone | Platinum 600 - 12 active members and 1,740 group volume $150 a week, $7,800 a year; the 2018 disclosure records that 87.13% of 52,706 IBOs never achieved any rank promotion at all |
Read this twice
The decisive fact in this file is that the plan’s own first rank did not pay for itself, and every figure needed to see it comes from the company’s own documents. Platinum 150 required three active members and 435 group volume - three packages - and paid $37.50 a week, or $1,950 a year. Holding it cost $2,961.10 in year one: a $249.95 enrollment fee, $2,411.75 for a single academy at $184.95 every 28 days, and $299.40 for the IBO subscription. Net, at the first rank, with no new enrollments: minus $1,011.10. To clear cost on residual alone a participant had to reach Platinum 600, which meant twelve active members and 1,740 group volume, and the 2018 income disclosure records that 87.13% of 52,706 IBOs never achieved any rank promotion whatsoever. Two honest caveats belong here and both cut in the operator’s favor. The IBO fee was genuinely low - $15 in 2016, $16.71 in 2020, $24.95 by the final era - and §4.1 disclaimed any purchase obligation beyond it, so a participant who sold to real customers without buying an academy themselves faced a much smaller fixed cost than the figures above; and the 55% Customer Leg Rule meant rank could not be built purely on a downline of subscribers who were all also distributors, at least on paper. Against both: the plan sold both products to the same person and nothing stopped an IBO holding a customer subscription; "Refer 2 and yours is free" converted customers into recruiters; and the FTC found the compliance policy that was meant to police all of this "was stated but not enforced." The annualisation is also worth stating twice, because it is the quietest number here: billing every 28 days is 13.04 cycles a year, not 12, an 8.7% uplift over what a buyer reading "monthly" would assume.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
The Fast Start bonus paid $25 for each academy subscription sold - that is the whole of what a participant earned for an actual sale, on a product priced at $234.95 to start and $174.95 a month to keep. The binary cycle and the rank stipends are excluded because they paid on organization size rather than on anything sold: 19.5% of all intake, $242 million of $1.242 billion, reached twenty-one people. Cost is the $2,411.75 annual all-in for one academy spread monthly. Note what the arithmetic says about the much-advertised "refer two and yours is free" mechanic: at $25 a sale it takes seven continuously active paying referrals to cover a single $174.95 subscription, not two. Read the whole thing as historical. All IBO agreements were canceled on 23 May 2025, a stipulated federal judgment of $795,763,490 was entered on 1 June 2026 with a permanent ban on offering any trading-training service or investment opportunity, and the present-day figure at every slider position is zero. Your own subscription cost of $201/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
The comparison that matters is not "was this a scam" but "what does the same money buy in the open market." Every replacement below is deliberately generic or non-branded, and every one of them is available to anybody without recruiting a single person. Prices were checked in July 2026. The anchor on the left is the verified subscription cost of one academy at $184.95 every 28 days.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| One academy subscription - $2,411.75 a year at 13.04 billings | Free structured trading curricula published by regulated brokerages for anyone who asks | $0 |
| Live educator sessions and recorded modules | A general online-course subscription - thousands of university and industry courses, including a Nobel laureate’s course on financial markets, with certificates | $399 / yr |
| Proprietary charting "strategies" sold as add-ons at ~$100 per 28 days each | A mainstream charting and market-data subscription - the same platform those strategies were drawn on | $155.40 / yr |
| Trading-psychology and risk content inside the academies | The three canonical published books on trading psychology, position sizing and expectancy, and why most active retail trading loses to an index fund | ~$75 for all three |
| Practice inside the company’s own tools | A broker paper-trading account with live data and unlimited risk-free practice | $0 |
| The "Master Trader" title, awarded internally | A recognized professional technical-analysis credential - enrollment plus exam, externally examined | ~$1,500 (optional) |
| "Education" that expressly disclaims being advice | Two hours with a fee-only fiduciary financial planner - regulated, personally accountable advice, which is a legally different product | ~$600 (optional) |
| Proving your ability to a compensation plan | A proprietary-trading firm evaluation, where a funded account is won on a measured track record rather than bought | set by the firm - no price sourced in this review |
| $24.95 a month for the right to earn commissions | No fee, because there is nobody to recruit | $0 |
| Total as sold $2,411.75 a year for one academy - $2,961.10 in year one with the enrollment and IBO fees, and roughly $7,638 for an active builder |
Total, built yourself $629.40 in year one |
Price-to-value
The serious-learner stack - free brokerage education, a general course subscription, a charting and data subscription, three canonical books and a paper-trading account - totals $629.40, about 21% of the cheapest year here. Add the external credential and two hours of regulated fiduciary advice and the whole professional stack still lands under $1,800, roughly 60% of that cheapest year. The sharpest line in the comparison is the credentialing one: an externally examined technical-analysis qualification costs about $1,500 and is recognized by people who hire, while the "Master Trader" title cost more per year, was awarded internally, and in the one case the FTC examined was held by someone with documented negative returns from 2018 to 2021 while the S&P 500 gained about 78%. None of the replacements auto-renews every 28 days, none excludes crypto payments from refunds, none requires you to recruit anybody, and none of them has been permanently banned by a federal court.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Student recruited on social media
the modal participant - buys one academy plus the IBO fee, enrols a couple of friends
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 1% | −$900 |
| 6 mo | 1% | −$1,700 |
| 1 yr | 2% | −$2,900 |
| 3 yr | 2% | −$8,300 |
| 5 yr | 2% | −$13,700 |
Part-time promoter
10-15 hrs/wk, two-academy bundle, one add-on tool, one event, modest advertising
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 1% | −$2,000 |
| 6 mo | 2% | −$3,900 |
| 1 yr | 3% | −$6,200 |
| 3 yr | 4% | −$17,000 |
| 5 yr | 4% | −$28,000 |
Full-time builder
40+ hrs/wk, full stack, international events, real ad spend, chasing Platinum 1000 and above
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 1% | −$5,200 |
| 6 mo | 2% | −$10,000 |
| 1 yr | 5% | −$18,000 |
| 3 yr | 8% | −$45,000 |
| 5 yr | 9% | −$70,000 |
Methodology note. These are modeled outcome ranges, not claims, not promises and not anybody’s reported results. ANCHORED to published and pleaded figures: the company’s own 2022 income disclosure showing median IBO earnings of $0, nearly 80% under $500 a year averaging $77.51, 83% at or under $500 once IBO fees are deducted and 45% net-negative; the FTC’s analysis of 2020-2022 data putting 99.23% under $25,000; the 2018 disclosure recording 52,706 IBOs, 87.13% never promoted, 40.25% earning nothing at all, 58 people at Chairman rank or above (0.11%) and full-time income at about 1 in 909; and the verified cost side - $249.95 enrollment, $184.95 every 28 days, $274.95 and $249.95 for the two-academy bundle, roughly $100 per 28 days per add-on, and the $24.95 monthly IBO fee. The published rank economics are also anchored: $37.50 a week at Platinum 150, $150 at Platinum 600, $250 at Platinum 1000, $500 at Platinum 2000, and a $25 fast start on a single-academy enrollment. MODELED by us: the cohort definitions, which the company never segmented; the share of each cohort in cumulative profit; and event, travel and advertising expense, which the disclosure lists as costs without quantifying. Read the "top" column carefully - it is roughly a ninetieth-percentile outcome within each cohort, not the Chairman tier, and the full-time builder’s best case at one year, plus $6,600, corresponds to holding Platinum 2000 with 75 active members: roughly $550 a month for what was unambiguously a full-time job. Two structural cautions apply to every horizon. First, none of these figures nets tax or self-employment cost. Second, and decisively, every horizon beyond May 2025 is hypothetical: on 23 May 2025 every IBO agreement was canceled at once and all residual income went to zero overnight, which is a risk no participant priced and no rank protected against.
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
151A $795,763,490.00 federal judgment and a permanent industry ban
2Median IBO earnings of $0
319.5 cents of every dollar went to 21 people
4A criminal pyramid conviction in Belgium - and no US pyramid count at all
5Rank was priced in headcount, not in sales
6The first paid rank did not cover the cost of holding it
7"Refer 2 and yours is free" contaminated the retail rule
8Strong written rules the payout schedule contradicted
960% one-month churn and 90% six-month abandonment
10Chargebacks above 1% for three consecutive years
11Instructors without verifiable trading records
12Nine years of warnings answered with renames, not fixes
13A 28-day billing cycle and a seven-day refund window excluding crypto
14Every IBO agreement canceled at once on 23 May 2025
15The abandoned websites are still a hazard
Green flags
81No participant capital was ever taken in for investment
2The content genuinely existed and was delivered
3An explicit retail requirement written into every rank
4A low fee to participate, with no purchase requirement to earn
5An income disclosure was published, including under the final brand
6The written income-claims policy was among the strictest anywhere
7A seven-day refund window existed, and leaving was easy
8The enforcement outcome was fast, comprehensive and consumer-facing
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- A machine-readable release of the November 2024 income disclosure showing a materially better distribution than the 2022 figures, or verified evidence that the final IBO commissions promised after the 23 May 2025 mass termination were in fact paid in full before the 11 August 2025 asset freeze.
- Publication by the receiver of a consumer claims process with a stated distribution ratio, giving people who paid a real route to some part of their money rather than an email address and a warning that replies may be slow.
- Confirmation that the Belgian pyramid conviction was overturned on appeal, which would remove the only criminal finding in the file - and, separately, an unconnected operator relaunching the education product with no affiliate layer, at a market price, with a published verified-track-record standard for instructors.
Downward
- The suspension of the $795,763,490.00 judgment being lifted for concealed or misstated assets, which would establish that the sworn financial statements underpinning the settlement were false.
- Any of the banned individuals resurfacing in a new income-opportunity venture - which would be both a fresh consumer harm and a contempt exposure under an injunction that carries no geographic limit and binds them personally wherever they are.
- Convictions arising from the Spanish or Luxembourg proceedings, adding a second and third criminal finding; or evidence that iyovia.com is still taking payments, which would convert a stale shell into a live hazard.
Grade is F, score 2.0. There is no live offer to grade: the plan was terminated on 23 May 2025, the businesses are in receivership and permanently closed, and both founders are permanently banned from the sector.
Start with what was genuinely true in this operator’s favor, because the rest of the report is unrelenting and the good marks have to be real. No participant capital was ever taken in for investment - no fund, no pool, no managed accounts, no profit share, no promised return on the fee - and the FTC pleaded no securities count. The content existed and was delivered. The fee to participate was low, at $15 rising to $24.95 a month over a decade, with no starter kit and no autoship quota. The plan carried a written retail requirement most plans do not have: 55% retail-customer volume in every leg and a 40% cap on any single leg. An income disclosure was published, including under the final brand, and it warned that costs could exceed earnings. And the written income-claims policy was among the strictest in this industry - it banned income projections outright and named cash, exotic cars and yachts as prohibited imagery. Somebody in that building knew what good looked like and wrote it down.
The numbers then dismantle it, and every one of them comes from the company or from the regulator’s reading of the company’s own records. Median IBO earnings: $0. Nearly 80% under $500 a year, averaging $77.51. Eighty-three per cent at or under $500 once the IBO fee is netted. Forty-five per cent net-negative. Against a cheapest realistic year one of $2,961.10 - a $249.95 enrollment, $2,411.75 for one academy at $184.95 every 28 days across 13.04 billings, and $299.40 of IBO fees - rising to about $7,638 for anyone actually working it. The plan’s own first rank, Platinum 150, paid roughly $1,950 a year and cost roughly $2,961 to hold. Advancement was denominated in active members and group volume, not in retail revenue: three members at the first rank, seventy-five at Platinum 2000, five thousand at Chairman 100, and about 30,000 subscriptions at the top. The fast start on a real sale was $25. And of $1.242 billion taken in, over $242 million - 19.5 cents in every dollar - reached 21 people.
Then the legal record, and it needs its stage labels kept straight because collapsing them would be the easiest mistake to make here. On 1 June 2026 the District of Nevada entered a stipulated final order: $795,763,490.00 joint and several, a permanent ban on any trading-training service or investment opportunity, roughly $90 million of assets surrendered, most of the balance suspended conditional on the truthfulness of sworn financial statements, and appeal expressly waived by both sides. Stipulated means the defendants neither admitted nor denied the allegations; it is a settlement, not a finding of fact after trial. Quite separately, a Belgian criminal court at Tongeren convicted the predecessor entity of operating a pyramid scheme and fined it €60,000 - a criminal conviction in one jurisdiction, under EU unfair-commercial-practices law, on a theory the FTC never pleaded. Around both sit nine years of warnings from regulators in France, Colombia, Spain, the UK, Luxembourg and New Zealand, a settled 2018 CFTC order over a mirror-trading service affecting roughly 500 accounts, and a 2020 self-regulatory decision from the industry’s own body - which is not a government finding and carries no legal force - that was simply ignored. The practical position today: the MLM was terminated in May 2025, a receiver has held the businesses since November 2025 and calls them permanently closed, im.academy now resolves to an unrelated crypto-casino affiliate site, and iyovia.com is a spam-injected shell still displaying "Join now" with no warning on it at all. No live, priced, enrollable offer could be confirmed.
If someone is pitching this brand to you in 2026, walk away
There is no functioning enrollment, no compensation plan, no IBO agreement - all were canceled on 23 May 2025 - and no commissions. Both founders and all three corporate entities are permanently enjoined. Anyone still offering enrollment under any of these four names is either operating a stale artifact or running something of their own, and in neither case are they the company or authorized by it.
Buy the education in the open market for a fifth of the price
Regulated brokerages publish full structured curricula free to anyone who asks. A general online-course subscription is $399 a year and includes a Nobel laureate’s course on financial markets. A mainstream charting and data subscription is $155.40 a year. The three canonical books on trading psychology, position sizing and why most active retail trading loses to an index fund cost about $75 together. Paper-trading accounts are free. That is $629.40, against $2,411.75 for one academy - and nobody has to be recruited for any of it.
Check the promoter, not just the program
The highest-paid seller here had already come out of an energy-drink MLM the FTC shut down as an illegal pyramid targeting college students in 2015, and that history was public the whole time. Before paying anything to a trading-education program marketed on the same affiliate model, search the person pitching you against enforcement dockets and settled orders, not just the brand name. Names change; the file follows the person.
Prefer an examined credential and regulated advice to an internal title
An externally examined technical-analysis qualification costs about $1,500 and is recognized by people who hire. Two hours with a fee-only fiduciary planner at roughly $300 an hour buys advice someone is legally accountable for - categorically different from "education" that expressly disclaims being advice. And a proprietary-trading firm evaluation lets a measured track record earn capital, rather than a compensation plan paying you for recruiting.
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.
- Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction, Monetary Judgment and Other Relief - FTC and State of Nevada v. International Markets Live, Inc., No. 2:25-cv-00760 (D. Nev.) (PDF)
Stipulated Order for Permanent Injunction, Monetary Judgment and Other Relief, Doc. 361, filed 1 June 2026 - FTC and State of Nevada v. International Markets Live, Inc., No. 2:25-cv-00760-CDS-EJY (D. Nev.), Judge Cristina D. Silva: $795,763,490.00 joint and several, permanent ban on any "Trading Training Service or Investment Opportunity," neither-admit-nor-deny, express appeal waiver, suspension conditional on sworn financial statements, 10-year record retention
Not established by this document: The FTC posts the stipulated order as filed 13 May 2026; the docket entry number cited in the prose (Doc. 361, 1 June 2026) is the court-entered version and was not separately retrievable outside PACER.
- Federal Trade Commission v. International Markets Live, Inc., No. 2:25-cv-00760 - full docket
- FTC case page: IM Mastery - index of every filed complaint and settlement order
- Complaint for Permanent Injunction, Monetary Judgment and Other Relief (redacted), filed 1 May 2025 (PDF)
FTC complaint, filed 1 May 2025 and published unredacted 29 May 2025 - $1.242 billion consumer intake since 2018; over $242 million to 21 top sellers 2018-2023; over $20 million in direct payments to the owners; median IBO earnings $0 and 45% net-negative from the 2022 disclosure; 99.23% under $25,000 and 80.48% under $500 across 2020-2022; 60% one-month and 90% six-month churn; chargebacks above 1% for three years; FTC written synopses served 26 October 2021 and 9 December 2022; FTC Act §5, ROSCA §§4-5, Telemarketing Sales Rule and Nevada Deceptive Trade Practices Act counts, and no pyramid count
- Complaint for Permanent Injunction, Monetary Judgment and Other Relief (unredacted), published 29 May 2025 (PDF)
- Plaintiffs' Motion for a Preliminary Injunction, 29 May 2025 (PDF)
- FTC, State of Nevada Take Action Against IM Mastery Academy for Deceiving Consumers - press release
- Lead Defendants in the IM Mastery Academy MLM Scheme to Turn Over Tens of Millions of Dollars in Assets to Settle FTC Charges - press release, 13 May 2026
FTC press release, 13 May 2026, and Nevada Attorney General release - settlement announcement, nearly $90 million of assets surrendered including eight homes, thirteen residential lots, nineteen vehicles, a yacht and jewelry; over 5,000 Nevada consumers affected and approximately $9 million in Nevada losses
- Attorney General Ford Announces Defendants in IM Mastery Scam Will Turn Over Nearly $90 Million in Assets to Compensate Victims - 5,000+ Nevada consumers, ~$9 million Nevada losses, $795.8 million judgment
- Stipulated Order as to Global Dynasty Network, LLC, Jason Brown and Matthew Rosa, 7 August 2025 (PDF)
Stipulated orders against the field leaders - 7 August 2025 ($36,000,000 joint, $2,500,000 paid), 4 September 2025 ($76,200,000 with $10,000,000 paid, and $6,300,000 with $500,000 paid), and the relief-defendant order of 16 July 2026 ($5,580,616 joint and several); all consented, none litigated
- Stipulated Order as to Alex Morton, 4 September 2025 (PDF)
- Stipulated Order as to Brandon Boyd, 4 September 2025 (PDF)
- Relief-defendant Stipulated Order, Doc. 379, filed 16 July 2026 (PDF)
- Three Defendants in the IM Mastery Academy Scheme Agree to Pay $2.5 Million to Settle FTC Allegations - press release
- Defendants in IM Mastery Academy Scheme to Pay $10.5 Million to Settle FTC Allegations - press release
- Order Instituting Proceedings and Imposing Remedial Sanctions - In re International Markets Live, Inc., CFTC Docket No. 18-24 (PDF)
CFTC Order, Docket No. 18-24, 14 September 2018 - settled administrative order, offer of settlement without admitting or denying: approximately 500 customers automatically mirrored trades in their forex accounts between March 2017 and March 2018; unregistered commodity trading advisor findings under CEA §2(c)(2)(C)(iii)(I)(bb), §4m(1) and Regulation 5.3(a)(3); $150,000 civil monetary penalty plus cease and desist
- CFTC Charges Multiple Forex and Binary Options Dealers with Registration Violations - press release covering the 14 September 2018 orders
- iMarketsLive Compensation Plan, © 2016 International Markets Live (PDF)
iMarketsLive Compensation Plan 2016 and IM Mastery Academy Compensation Plan v2020.03.31 - rank qualification table (3, 12, 30, 75, 225, 500, 1,250, 2,500, 5,000 active members; 435 to 4,350,000 group volume), weekly residual schedule $37.50 to $500,000 a month, $25 and $50 fast start, Rank Achievement Bonus schedule, Chairman Infinity Bonus with per-leg caps of $1,000 to $40,000, 40% Leg Rule, 55% Customer Leg Rule, "refer two and yours is free," IBO fee at $15 and $16.71
- IM Mastery Academy Compensation Plan, version 2020.03.31 - rank table, Chairman Infinity Bonus per-leg caps $1,000–$40,000 (PDF)
- IM Academy Statement of Policies and Procedures, 21 April 2022 (PDF)
IM Academy Statement of Policies and Procedures, 21 April 2022 - §3.2(d) compensation only on sales to Customers, §3.6(a) one-year non-solicitation, §4.1 no purchase requirement, §4.9(a) termination "for any reason," §8.2(b) Las Vegas arbitration, §9.3(a) commission clawback on refunds, §10.6 seven-day refund excluding Bitcoin, §11.1 income and lifestyle claim ban, §14.4(a) domain and trademark prohibition, §14.4(c) affiliate disclosure
- IM Academy policies landing page (host of the Statement of Policies and Procedures)
- International Markets Live Inc. Income Disclosure Statement, dated 4 November 2024 (PDF)
International Markets Live Inc. Income Disclosure Statement, 4 November 2024, and third-party analysis of the 2018 and 2020 statements - 52,706 IBOs in 2018, 87.13% never promoted, 40.25% earning nothing, entry-level average $52, 58 people (0.11%) at Chairman rank or above, full-time income about 1 in 909; 99.21% under $25,000 in 2020; Massachusetts and Wyoming excluded; costs stated as not deducted
- IM Academy Income Disclosure Statement 2022 (PDF)
- iMarketsLive Financial Document Debunks Income Claims - analysis of the 2018 income disclosure (52,706 IBOs, 87.13% never promoted)
- IYOVIA / IMMA / IML income-claims evidence database
- US crypto trading platform iMarketsLive convicted of fraud in Belgium - criminal court at Tongeren, €60,000 company fine
Belga News Agency reporting on the criminal court at Tongeren - conviction of the predecessor entity and four Belgian recruiters for operating a pyramid scheme and defrauding subscribers, €60,000 company fine and €4,000-€16,000 individual fines, members paying €145 a month and required to recruit to recoup; plus the FSMA determination that the company was not authorized in Belgium
- Warning issued by the Belgian FSMA regarding the activities of International Markets Live LTD (iMarketsLive) - relayed determination that the firm was not authorized
- AMF warns the public against International Markets Live LTD (iMarketsLive) - news release
Regulator and watchdog file - France AMF December 2017, Colombia SFC October 2017 and December 2021, Spain CNMV January 2018 and March 2020 with eight arrests in March 2022, UK FCA May 2018, Luxembourg CSSF 24 May 2023, New Zealand FMA 21 September 2023; Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council decision 9 September 2020 and Case #211-2025 administratively closed on 1 May 2025; receivership status page (Thomas W. McNamara, businesses "permanently closed"); Companies House record for company no. 10325974; im.academy and iyovia.com as they stood on 31 July 2026
Not established by this document: The DSSRC decision of 9 September 2020 and the Colombia SFC notices of October 2017 and December 2021 could not be located at a stable primary URL; only the 2025 DSSRC administrative closure is linked here.
- International Markets Live Ltd (iMarkets Live LTD) - AMF blacklist entry
- CNMV issues warning to the public on unregistered firm - International Markets Live, 23 March 2020 (English text, PDF)
- International Markets Live Limited trading as iMarketsLive - FCA warning list entry
- Warning regarding International Markets Live Inc (IM Mastery Academy), 24 May 2023
- IM Academy - overseas warnings listing
- Beware of solicitations by IM Academy (International Markets Live Inc.)
- DSSRC Case #211-2025: Administrative Closure - IYOVIA, closed 1 May 2025
- IML Receivership status page - Thomas W. McNamara, court-appointed receiver
- IM MASTERY ACADEMY LTD (formerly INTERNATIONAL MARKETS LIVE LTD), company no. 10325974 - Companies House record
What we could not get
- The November 2024 income disclosure table. The PDF is live and dated 4 November 2024, but the numerical table is an image rather than text and could not be transcribed. Every income figure in this report therefore comes from the FTC’s analysis of the 2022 statement or from third-party analysis of the 2018 and 2020 statements, and none of it is drawn from the current-brand document.
- Any official 2024 or 2025 compensation plan document. The only indexed copy sits behind a JavaScript paywall and returned no content. All plan mechanics here come from the 2016 and 2020 documents; the newer rank names introduced at the November 2024 rebrand, and the "Chairman 750 at $750,000 a month" claim, are sourced from a watchdog and from the FTC complaint rather than from any plan document.
- The prices of the two top bundles, the ALL-IN Pack and the IMPowered Bundle. Both product pages render empty price fields and no price could be confirmed anywhere. The $400-per-28-days figure used in the heaviest cost scenario is inferred from the FTC’s stated $100-$400 auto-renewal band, not read from a page.
- Event and convention ticket prices. No published price for any event was retrievable; the ticket subdomain redirects and the November 2024 event page shows no pricing. The $500-$3,000 event and travel figures used in the cost scenarios are estimates and are flagged as such wherever they appear.
- The exact date of the Belgian criminal conviction and whether it was appealed. Reporting confirms the court, the convicted parties, the €60,000 company fine, the individual fines and the pyramid finding - but not the judgment date and not the appeal status, so the conviction is not stated here as final.
- The outcomes of the Spanish and Luxembourg proceedings. Eight arrests in Spain in March 2022 and an investigation reported in Luxembourg in 2023 are documented; no conviction, acquittal or discontinuance could be located for either. They are recorded as open, not as findings.
- Whether the final IBO commissions promised at the 23 May 2025 mass termination were ever paid, before the asset freeze of 11 August 2025. No filing addressing the point could be found, and no consumer claims portal has been published by the receivership.
- Whether any successor program exists. Claims that the top promoters moved on to named ventures could not be verified - the one source returned an access error and is a low-quality reputation blog rather than a reporting outlet - so no program is described here as a successor to this one. What is verifiable is that four of those promoters carry permanent court-ordered restrictions.
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
- No company has paid for a grade, and no report carries an affiliate link
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Iyovia - frequently asked
QCan I still join Iyovia or IM Academy?
QWhat is the $795 million judgment, and is it final?
QWas Iyovia a pyramid scheme?
QWhat did it cost, and what did people actually earn?
QWhat should someone learning to trade buy instead?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - Iyovia’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
Tell me if this grade changes
Iyovia is graded F as of July 31, 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 Iyovia 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.
This address reaches a person, not a form. We do not require a takedown demand, an NDA or a lawyer to accept a correction, and we do not remove a report because a company disputes its conclusion - only because the underlying facts turn out to be wrong.