QNET Ltd
A decades-old, Manchester City-sponsoring direct seller with a genuine 2017 Indian court win on the money-circulation question - operating alongside fresh criminal arrests tied to its India franchisee as recently as March 2026, and no income disclosure of any kind.
A real product company with genuine sponsorships and one substantive Indian court win sits alongside an unusually large, current, multi-country enforcement file - including fresh Indian arrests in March 2026 - that the company has never fully resolved.
Legal status
CONTESTED - no conviction of the corporate entity (QNET Ltd or Vihaan) has been found in any jurisdiction; a 2017 Karnataka High Court judgment (Criminal Petition No. 9308/2016) ruled specifically that the model does not meet India’s statutory definition of a "Money Circulation Scheme" and quashed a chargesheet on that basis; separately, active and ongoing Indian criminal, money-laundering and consumer-protection proceedings continue, including fresh arrests as recently as March 2026, an Enforcement Directorate PMLA investigation with asset freezes exceeding ₹350 crore since 2014, an unresolved December 2024 CCPA notice, and an unresolved NCLT winding-up petition against Vihaan; individual (not corporate) field-agent criminal convictions exist in Senegal.
Confidence: Medium
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 Hong Kong-incorporated direct-selling company, founded in 1998 as GoldQuest and renamed QuestNet then QNET, selling a genuinely diversified physical-product catalog - Kent-co-branded water purifiers, Amezcua wellness/energy pendants, Bernhard H. Mayer Swiss-branded watches, personal care and skincare, and QVI Club holiday products - through independently incorporated national franchisees, the largest and most legally active of which is Vihaan Direct Selling (India) Private Limited.
What is real and should be said first: decades of continuous operation with shippable products, not a bare recruitment shell; genuine, sustained, top-tier sports sponsorships (Official Direct Selling Partner of Manchester City FC since 2014); a real, government-partnered university (Quest International University, Malaysia, roughly 15,000 students from 50 countries) under the same QI Group parent; membership in good standing in the Direct Selling Associations of Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines; and a genuine, on-the-merits judicial win - the Karnataka High Court’s 2017 ruling that the model does not meet India’s statutory definition of a money-circulation scheme.
Against that, an unusually large and currently active enforcement file, concentrated in India but echoed across Nepal, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Senegal, that has continued generating fresh criminal activity for more than a decade - including 32 arrests across three Indian states in March 2026, six months before this report’s research date.
No confirmed transparent entry-fee price exists, an ongoing monthly repurchase requirement is needed to keep earning, and no income disclosure statement of any kind has ever been located - only a legal earnings disclaimer.
The compensation plan itself, as currently written, is an ordinary retail/repeat-sales/rank-ladder MLM structure without a Howey-type promised return baked into the paper design - a genuinely important distinction this report keeps separate from the securities-adjacent language used by regulators describing field-level conduct.
QNET’s own claimed aggregate payout ratio on a $100 product sale
Built from the one figure QNET itself has put into circulation - its 2015 "Q10" launch press release and current marketing copy state the plan pays out "up to 50% of sales" across its 8/10 Ways to Earn. This is the company’s own maximum theoretical aggregate ratio across the whole compensation pool, not a per-IR guarantee, and QNET does not publish how that 50% is actually distributed between Retail Profit, Repeat Sales Commission and Step Commission, or how concentrated it is toward the top of the rank ladder - a real disclosure gap this row split cannot resolve.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| HomePure Nova (premium water purifier) The most expensive confirmed product in the catalog; priced roughly 4-6x a comparable A-brand alkaline RO unit at ordinary retail (see replacementStack). |
₹1,50,550 (~US$1,800) incl. tax, plus ₹2,100 shipping one-time purchase |
retail profit + RSP-based repeat-sales commission (rate unconfirmed) |
| KENT-QNET Smart Alkaline RO+UV+UF+TDS purifier Co-branded with Kent, an established non-MLM Indian appliance manufacturer - a real commercial partnership, priced roughly double a comparable non-QNET Kent unit at ordinary retail. |
₹42,230 (~US$505) incl. tax, plus ₹3,000 shipping (a reseller listing shows ~₹38,500) one-time purchase |
retail profit + RSP-based repeat-sales commission (rate unconfirmed) |
| Amezcua wellness/energy line (Chi Pendant, Bio Disc, Himalayan Crystal and others) Marketed on "energy field" and bio-resonance-type claims with no mainstream clinical support; no honest priced substitute product exists for this specific category. |
US$150-US$670 per item one-time purchase |
retail profit + RSP-based repeat-sales commission (rate unconfirmed) |
| Bernhard H. Mayer watches (Mecanique Collection and others) Swiss-branded luxury watches; priced above a genuine Japanese automatic at the low end and above a genuine Swiss-made automatic even at the high end of the range. |
US$700-US$3,500 per watch one-time purchase |
retail profit + RSP-based repeat-sales commission (rate unconfirmed) |
| Physio Radiance (personal care/skincare line) Brand existence confirmed via company-portal listings; itemised pricing could not be located in this research. |
Unconfirmed - not located to a specific figure one-time or repeat purchase (unconfirmed) |
unconfirmed |
| QVI Club holiday/travel packages Brand existence confirmed across multiple company-portal search snippets; pricing not located. |
Unconfirmed one-time purchase (package) |
unconfirmed |
| Monthly Repeat Purchase Program volume Ongoing personal or team purchasing volume required to remain "Active" for Repeat Sales Commission - a mandatory recurring cost, not an optional add-on. |
Amount unconfirmed but structurally required monthly (per some material, quarterly) |
generates Repeat Sales Points feeding RSC |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
London School of Economics graduate (1984) and Southern Illinois University MBA (1986); worked in manual labor across Europe and later as an information-systems engineer, including at IBM, before co-founding GoldQuest/QNET and QI Group in 1998 with Joseph Bismark. A published author (claimed 500,000+ copies of "In the Sphere of Silence") and founder of the RYTHM Foundation philanthropic arm and Quest International University. Personally named in a February 2014 Indian Enforcement Directorate PMLA money-laundering case registration alongside QNet, Vihaan and Michael Ferreira - an investigation/case-registration stage, not a conviction. Separately reported to have been the subject of a May 2007 Interpol Red Notice and a roughly three-week Jakarta detention arising from a Philippine business dispute, with the underlying charge later dismissed by a Manila court and no conviction resulting. No source located in this research shows Vijay Eswaran ever convicted of a crime anywhere.
Born 1962 in the Philippines; a 3rd Dan Taekwondo black belt and former Philippine national-team member. Ran a Philippine figurine-manufacturing venture in the early 1990s before co-founding GoldQuest/QNET and QI Group with Eswaran in 1998, and remains Deputy Chairman of QI Group. No independent criminal or regulatory action naming Bismark individually, as opposed to the company or Vihaan collectively, was located in this research.
QNET Ltd (Hong Kong) is the brand owner and global compensation-plan licensor; Vihaan Direct Selling (India) Private Limited is a separately incorporated Indian company operating under license, not a subsidiary or branch. This is standard, lawful international-franchise practice, and it is also the structural reason most India-specific criminal and regulatory liability below attaches formally to Vihaan rather than to the Hong Kong parent - even though QNet Ltd and Eswaran personally have both been named in at least one Indian federal proceeding (the 2014 ED case). A reader should hold both facts at once: the corporate design is lawful, and it has not fully insulated the QNET brand or its founder from India’s federal enforcement apparatus.
Registered address
Hong Kong (QNET Ltd, the brand-owning direct-selling subsidiary); QI Group maintains regional offices across Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines
QNET Ltd licenses its business model to independently incorporated national franchisees rather than operating every market directly. In India - by far the largest source of the enforcement file below - the licensed operator is Vihaan Direct Selling (India) Private Limited, registered in Karnataka (CIN referenced as U52399KA2011PTC060730 in company-registry aggregator listings), headquartered in Bengaluru. Vihaan is a separately incorporated Indian private company, not a branch office of the Hong Kong parent, and nearly every Indian criminal FIR, ED money-laundering case, MCA/NCLT proceeding and the December 2024 CCPA notice names Vihaan as the primary respondent - though several filings, including the 2014 ED case, also name "QNet Ltd." and founder Vijay Eswaran personally alongside Vihaan. QI Group’s wider portfolio (education, hospitality, luxury manufacturing) has no located public audited financial statements; it is a private conglomerate.
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? |
WATCH
QNET Ltd, a Hong Kong-incorporated company under the QI Group conglomerate, licenses its brand and compensation plan to independently incorporated national franchisees. Its Indian operator, Vihaan Direct Selling (India) Private Limited, is a separately incorporated company, not a branch of the Hong Kong parent.
|
| What does it really cost? |
CONCERN
Unconfirmed. No current global or India-specific starter-pack price could be located despite extensive searching, and an ongoing monthly (or quarterly) repurchase requirement is mandatory to stay commission-active.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
CONCERN
No. QNET publishes an "Earnings and Income Disclaimer" - a legal disclaimer, not a statistical disclosure - with no average, median or percentage-profitable figure of any kind.
|
| Regulatory or legal action against the company, ever? |
RED
Yes, extensively, mostly attaching to the India franchisee Vihaan and, in at least one federal case, to QNet Ltd and founder Vijay Eswaran personally - including a genuine 2017 court win, ongoing ED/PMLA asset freezes exceeding ₹350 crore, an unresolved December 2024 CCPA notice, and fresh arrests as recently as March 2026. No conviction of the corporate entity anywhere.
|
| Can the company change the deal after you sign? |
WATCH
QNET has run at least one comp-plan "enhancement" cycle (moving qualification cadence from quarterly to monthly, per company material), and country-specific plan variants exist across its many national portals - full current terms should be confirmed directly before joining.
|
| Can you get your money back? |
WATCH
Not established in this research; no refund policy figure was located, and the unconfirmed starter-pack price makes any "get your money back" calculation impossible to state precisely.
|
| What does the compensation structure actually pay on? |
WATCH
Retail profit margin, Repeat Sales Commission tied to actual repurchase points, and Step Commission tied to a two-leg placement tree - commissions on real product movement, not a promised return on a static position, per the current written plan.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
CONCERN
A genuine merchant of real, diversified physical products with real retail infrastructure - but priced well above real-market equivalents, with a mandatory ongoing repurchase requirement and no confirmed entry price, which pushes the realistic participant economics toward the miner end of the spectrum despite the real underlying products.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Minimal participant: starter pack only, no personal product purchase beyond minimum, thin resale network | the starter-pack price itself, which could not be confirmed if this participant makes zero retail sales and recruits no one, 100% of spend is a loss; break-even requires enough retail margin or downline RSC to exceed the pack cost plus any minimum monthly repurchase volume - with no confirmed pack price or monthly minimum, this is reported as a component-level illustration, not an invented dollar figure. |
| "Personal use" participant who also buys one flagship product to demonstrate it credibly | starter pack (unconfirmed) plus one KENT-QNET RO purifier (~$505) or one Amezcua item (~$150-670) a plausible all-in year-one spend in the $700-2,500 range before any resale; break-even requires reselling that unit at a typical MLM retail-versus-wholesale spread or earning equivalent RSC from a small downline, which industry-wide MLM income-disclosure data (generic, not QNET-specific) consistently shows most entrants do not achieve. |
| Aspiring builder investing in the premium watch line to "wear the brand" | starter pack (unconfirmed) plus one Bernhard H. Mayer watch at the low end (~$700) or high end (~$3,500) at least ~$700-1,000+ exposure at the low end; at the high end, a single-item exposure of $3,500+ that requires reselling that specific high-ticket item at a profitable spread, or recruiting/selling substantially more broadly, to recover cost within a year. |
| Rank-chasing participant maintaining monthly Repeat Purchase Program volume to stay RSC-active | a conservative ~$50-150/month in qualifying volume, structurally confirmed to exist though the exact threshold is unconfirmed compounds to roughly $600-1,800/year in ongoing repurchase spend on top of the initial pack/product purchase, meaning realistic total year-one break-even could sit well above $1,500-3,000 once qualification volume is included, before any travel or seminar costs. |
Read this twice
All four scenarios are built from confirmed component prices with explicitly stated gaps, not from an official QNET break-even disclosure, because no such document exists. The single largest unknown in every scenario is the starter-pack/registration-fee price itself, which could not be confirmed via extensive targeted search - a defensible headline "cost to join" figure would require sourcing the current official price directly from a country-specific QNET portal at time of reading, or presenting the ₹30,000-₹7,00,000 range found in Indian case filings explicitly labeled as total alleged historical exposure per complainant in fraud cases, not as the price to join.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
QNET does not publish a per-product or per-customer commission rate anywhere this report could locate, so this slider is built on the one concrete unit-economics figure the compensation-plan material does disclose: one full Step Commission cycle - six Step Commissions - pays a combined $1,250 plus 10 eVoucher Points. Completing even one full cycle a month is a genuinely demanding pace, which is why the realistic preset starts at zero. The cost line is a labeled estimate, not a company figure: QNET requires ongoing personal or team purchase volume through its monthly Repeat Purchase Program to remain commission-active, but the exact dollar threshold is not published anywhere this report could find; $100 a month sits inside the report’s own break-even Scenario D range and should be read as illustrative rather than official. Retail profit and Repeat Sales Commission on individual product sales are excluded entirely because QNET has not disclosed the underlying percentages for either. Your own subscription cost of $100/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
QNET’s own confirmed prices against ordinary retail equivalents for the same product categories, at real 2026 market prices, with no MLM markup and no joining requirement of any kind.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| KENT-QNET Smart Alkaline RO+UV+UF purifier (~₹42,230 / ~$505) | Kent Grand Plus RO+UV+UF purifier, ordinary non-QNET retail | ~₹15,000-20,000 (~$180-240) |
| HomePure Nova premium purifier (~₹1,50,550 / ~$1,800) | A-brand RO+alkaline unit (mid-range Livpure/AO Smith-tier alkaline model), ordinary retail | ~₹25,000-35,000 (~$300-420) |
| Amezcua Chi Pendant wellness/energy item (~$150-670) | Ordinary stainless-steel or silver pendant jewelry, no health claim | ~$15-60 |
| Amezcua Bio Disc-type bio-resonance/crystal wellness product | No mainstream medical-device or nutrition-science equivalent exists at any price - the underlying "energy field" claim has no mainstream clinical support | N/A - honest replacement is $0, no purchase |
| Bernhard H. Mayer Mecanique automatic watch, mid-tier (~$700-3,500) | Seiko Presage or Orient Bambino automatic watch, genuine Japanese movement, ordinary retail | ~$150-450 |
| Bernhard H. Mayer watch, higher tier (~$3,000+) | Tissot or Hamilton Swiss-made automatic watch, genuine Swiss movement, ordinary retail | ~$500-1,200 |
| QNET wellness-range supplement item (price unconfirmed) | Store-brand or NSF-certified multivitamin/supplement, a major pharmacy or supermarket private label | ~$10-25/month |
| Physio Radiance skincare set (price unconfirmed) | A well-reviewed drugstore-brand skincare routine with comparable actives (e.g. CeraVe or Neutrogena-tier) | ~$30-80 |
| Total as sold confirmed component prices run roughly $505-$3,500+ per flagship item, before any starter pack or ongoing repurchase volume |
Total, built yourself real-vendor equivalents for the same categories run roughly $15-$1,200 per item, at ordinary retail with no joining requirement |
Price-to-value
On every confirmed comparison where a real-vendor equivalent exists, QNET’s price runs roughly double to several times the ordinary-retail figure for comparable capability. In one category - the Amezcua bio-resonance/crystal wellness line - no honest substitute product exists at any price, because the underlying "energy field" claim itself has no mainstream clinical support; the fair comparison there is not a cheaper product but no purchase at all.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
The Retail-Only Hobbyist
buys a starter pack plus one low-end Amezcua item and sells casually to friends and family, modeled from confirmed component prices - not a QNET-published case study
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 40% | -$500 |
| 6 mo | 30% | -$550 |
| 1 yr | 22% | -$500 |
| 3 yr | 12% | -$400 |
| 5 yr | 8% | -$300 |
The Small-Team Builder
buys a starter pack plus a KENT-QNET RO purifier and recruits a handful of IRs in year one, modeled from the confirmed six-step, $1,250 commission-cycle figure - not a QNET-published case study
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 15% | -$800 |
| 6 mo | 12% | -$400 |
| 1 yr | 9% | $0 |
| 3 yr | 5% | $300 |
| 5 yr | 3% | $500 |
The Watch-Line Aspirant Chasing Rank
buys a starter pack plus a high-end Bernhard H. Mayer watch and pursues mid-tier rank, modeled from confirmed component prices and reported ongoing qualification volume - not a QNET-published case study
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 4% | -$3,200 |
| 6 mo | 3% | -$3,000 |
| 1 yr | 2% | -$2,800 |
| 3 yr | 1% | -$1,500 |
| 5 yr | 0.5% | -$800 |
Methodology note. These are modeled illustrative outcome ranges, not claims and not a QNET-published case study - QNET publishes no percentile- or cohort-based earnings table of any kind. They are built from the brief’s confirmed component prices (starter-pack cost unconfirmed; flagship product prices confirmed; the $1,250 six-step commission-cycle figure confirmed; ongoing monthly qualification volume structurally confirmed but its exact threshold unconfirmed) and from the generic, industry-wide MLM pattern that most entrants do not recover their initial spend - not from any QNET-specific disclosure, because none exists. The declining "p" values reflect assumed attrition consistent with the rank-ladder structure described in comp above, not a QNET-published retention figure.
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
141Fresh criminal arrests as recently as March 2026
2No income disclosure statement exists
3Starter-pack/entry-fee pricing could not be confirmed anywhere
4Five independent national regulators have each characterized the model as investment/money-circulation-like
5India’s Enforcement Directorate has frozen or attached well over ₹350 crore since 2014
6Mainstream logistics providers suspended courier service to the India franchisee
7The Ministry of Corporate Affairs sought to wind up Vihaan via the NCLT
8Actual criminal convictions of individual QNET-linked agents exist
9Founder Vijay Eswaran was personally named in a 2014 Indian PMLA case registration
10The founding product itself was treated as an investment vehicle by multiple regulators
11A mandatory ongoing repurchase requirement is needed simply to keep earning
12Field-level income and health-claim misconduct recurs specifically, despite a written ban
13The scheme reportedly persisted after formal bans in at least two countries
14The two-tier corporate structure genuinely complicates accountability
Green flags
81Decades of continuous operation with real, shippable physical products
2Genuine, long-running, top-tier sports sponsorships
3A real, accredited, government-partnered university under the same parent group
4A specific, on-the-merits judicial win in its largest single market
5Membership in good standing in multiple national Direct Selling Associations
6A written, correctly drafted compliance framework exists on paper
7A diversified, real corporate parent beyond direct selling
8Mainstream co-branding with an established non-MLM Indian appliance manufacturer
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Publication of a genuine, audited income disclosure statement with average and median figures, an active-versus-total participant definition, and a stated methodology.
- A confirmed, transparent, single global or clearly country-by-country starter-pack price published prominently before purchase.
- A sustained multi-year period - three years or more - with no fresh criminal arrests tied to the India franchisee, against the current pattern of arrests recurring roughly annually through March 2026.
Downward
- A criminal conviction of the corporate entity itself - QNET Ltd or Vihaan - as opposed to individual agents, in any jurisdiction.
- A confirmed PMLA conviction or a confirmed adverse NCLT winding-up order against Vihaan.
- A confirmed CCPA finding of unfair trade practice, or a fine, against Vihaan arising from the December 2024 notice.
Grade is D. A real, decades-old operating company with genuine products, sponsorships and one substantive legal win coexists with an unusually large and currently active enforcement file that the company has never fully resolved.
What is genuinely real here should be said first. QNET is not a bare recruitment shell: it has sold shippable physical products continuously since 1998, sustains a Premier League-level sponsorship (Manchester City FC, since 2014) that a fraud operation would be unlikely to fund for over a decade, and its parent group runs a real, government-partnered university educating roughly 15,000 students. Its founders are credentialed, published and publicly documented, not anonymous. And in its largest single market, the Karnataka High Court ruled in 2017, after a full hearing, that the company’s model does not meet India’s statutory definition of a money-circulation scheme - a genuine, on-the-merits legal win, not spin.
That legal win, however, addressed one specific chargesheet under one specific statute, and it has not stopped fresh criminal cases from being filed against the same India franchisee, Vihaan, by different police forces in different states in the years since - including 32 arrests across three states as recently as March 2026. Independently of each other and across two decades, regulators in India, Nepal, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Bhutan have each characterised some version of the model as investment- or money-circulation-like. India’s Enforcement Directorate has frozen or attached more than ₹350 crore in assets since 2014 under money-laundering law, and both India Post and Blue Dart at one point suspended courier service to the franchisee following a regulator letter. None of this amounts to a conviction of the corporate entity anywhere - the confirmed criminal convictions in this file belong to individual field agents in Senegal, not to QNET Ltd or Vihaan - but the pattern is current, large, and geographically wide, not a closed historical chapter.
The economics compound the legal picture. No confirmed starter-pack price exists anywhere, an ongoing mandatory monthly repurchase is required simply to stay commission-active, no income disclosure statement of any kind has ever been published, and confirmed retail prices - a $505 water purifier, watches running $700-3,500 - sit well above real-market equivalents for comparable capability. A written policy correctly bans income and health claims, but field-level enforcement has not reliably held that line for over a decade. Taken together, the nine scored dimensions already reflect this record without needing an additional cap: a real company, with a real and unresolved problem.
Do not treat the 2017 Karnataka HC ruling as a blanket clearance
It resolved one chargesheet under one statute; it has not stopped fresh criminal cases from being filed against the same India franchisee in different states, including arrests as recently as March 2026.
Get the actual starter-pack price in writing before paying anything
No confirmed current figure exists publicly for any market; ask for it directly and in writing, and treat a reluctance to provide it as itself informative.
Price the mandatory monthly repurchase into any return calculation
Ongoing personal or team volume is required simply to remain commission-active - model it as a recurring cost against any expected commission, not as an optional extra.
If buying the product, compare it against the real-vendor equivalent first
Confirmed prices for the water-purifier and watch lines run roughly double to several times ordinary retail for comparable capability - buy the product only at a price you would pay knowing that.
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.
- Criminal Petition No. 9308 of 2016 - QNET/Vihaan v. State of Karnataka (Karnataka High Court judgment text)
Justice Anand Byrareddy’s written judgment quashing chargesheet C.C. No. 23238/2016 against QNET/Vihaan, holding the direct-selling model does not meet the statutory definition of a "Money Circulation Scheme" or "Prize Chit" under the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978 - the single strongest legal win in this file, addressing one chargesheet under one statute.
Not established by this document: Seen via a search-result citation to the case text on Indian Kanoon, not independently re-fetched and read in full in this research; full text nuance beyond the holding described here is unverified.
- Central Consumer Protection Authority issues notices to 17 direct-selling entities (press release reference)
The CCPA’s own 13 December 2024 notice to 17 direct-selling entities including Vihaan Direct Selling (India) Pvt Ltd, described as "a sub-franchise of QNet Group, Hong Kong," for alleged unfair trade practices, service deficiencies and violations of the Consumer Protection (Direct Selling) Rules, 2021.
Not established by this document: The full PDF/press-release text could not be directly fetched in this research; relied on secondary reporting of its contents. Vihaan’s specific status within the "13 under investigation / 3 replies awaited" split, and any resolution since, is unconfirmed.
- QNET Policies & Procedures (PDF)
QNET’s own written compliance framework: explicitly prohibits IRs from making income claims, using their own or others’ incomes as an indication of assured success, or representing the business as an investment or get-rich-quick scheme.
Not established by this document: A country-portal-hosted copy referenced via search; a fully current global version was not independently re-verified.
- QNET Earnings and Income Disclaimer
Establishes the central payout-dimension finding of this report: the document at this URL is a legal disclaimer stating income examples are estimates with no guarantee and testimonials reflect exceptional results, not a statistical income disclosure statement - no average, median or percentage-profitable figure appears anywhere on it.
Not established by this document: Page content confirmed via search-result summary of its text, not an independent full re-fetch; identical disclaimer pages exist on multiple country portals and were not each separately verified.
- Thiès Magistrates’ Court: seven presumed members of a QNET network convicted
Reports a Thiès, Senegal court convicting seven individuals of criminal conspiracy and fraud tied to QNET network marketing, sentencing each to six months’ imprisonment, suspended - the clearest confirmed individual criminal convictions of QNET-linked agents located in this research.
Not established by this document: Seen as a news report of the court’s finding, not the court record itself; exact docket details are unconfirmed.
- QNET and Manchester City partnership page
Manchester City’s own partner page confirming QNET as Official Direct Selling Partner since 2014 and sleeve sponsor of Manchester City Women’s FC since 2018 - independent, first-party confirmation of the sponsorship green flag.
Not established by this document: None material; the club’s own page is the primary confirmation of an ongoing commercial relationship.
- CAF announces QNET sponsorship of Total CAF Champions League and Total CAF Confederation Cup
CAF’s own announcement of a QNET sponsorship of its flagship club competitions, corroborating the sustained sports-sponsorship pattern beyond Manchester City alone.
Not established by this document: Exact sponsorship term and value not stated in the located material.
- Supreme Court of India rules in favor of QNET
Reports the March 2017 Supreme Court stay of coercive action following the Karnataka HC quashing, and a further reported January 2019 no-coercive-action direction covering 60-plus pending FIRs - a procedural stay, not a merits ruling on those FIRs.
Not established by this document: A trade/industry-adjacent outlet, not a court record; case numbers for the stay orders are not independently confirmed.
- QNET’s decade in Indian courts: Supreme Court stay, 2025 defamation victory
Reports the 2 April 2024 Bangalore City Civil and Sessions Court interim injunction for Vihaan against a victims’-association group, and the 13 March 2024 Karnataka High Court order (W.P. 7603/2024) allowing India Post courier service to Vihaan to continue.
Not established by this document: A legal-news aggregator; exact case numbers and full judgment text for both 2024 items are not independently confirmed beyond this single source.
- QNET EOW freezes Rs.45 crore in two bank accounts of the MLM
Reports the August 2013 Maharashtra Economic Offenses Wing cheating case alleging QNET sold disease-cure-claiming products and collected roughly ₹425 crore via a banned binary-pyramid model, with ₹45 crore frozen across two accounts.
Not established by this document: No final trial verdict in this case was located anywhere in this research; status remains chargesheet-filed/bail-granted per the most recent confirmable reporting.
- QNET: Bombay HC asks five including Michael Ferreira and Suresh Thimiri to surrender
Reports the Bombay High Court, Division Bench, refusing relief on a petition to quash the FIR and ordering five named accused including Michael Ferreira to surrender in the Mumbai EOW ₹425-crore case.
Not established by this document: Final disposition of the underlying case beyond bail/surrender orders is unconfirmed.
- Hyderabad: 32 arrested in QNET fraud case, police conduct raids across three states
Reports the March 2026 Hyderabad Police SIT arrest of 32 people across four new cases in coordinated raids across Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, charged under the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act - the most recent, and most significant, "current state" fact in this file.
Not established by this document: None material to the arrest fact itself; any subsequent trial outcome postdates this research.
- 32 arrested in massive fraud case linked to QNET franchisee
A second independent outlet corroborating the March 2026 32-arrest, three-state raid described above.
Not established by this document: Corroborating source only; no additional facts beyond the ETV Bharat report used.
- Hyderabad Cyberabad police commissioner says no stay orders on QNET probe
The Cyberabad police commissioner’s public statement that no stay orders blocked the QNET probe as of February 2019, implying continued investigative activity past the 2017 Supreme Court stay of specific named proceedings.
Not established by this document: None material.
- QNET Enforcement Directorate registers case against the MLM
Reports the February 2014 ED PMLA case registration for an alleged ₹425 crore scam, naming "QNet, Vihaan Direct Selling, Ferreira and QNet founder Vijay Eswaran and three other independent representatives" - the source for Eswaran’s personal naming in a federal money-laundering case.
Not established by this document: Investigation/registration stage only; no PMLA conviction confirmed anywhere in this research.
- QNET ED freezes 36 bank accounts connected to Vihaan Direct Selling in a money-laundering case
Reports January 2023 ED searches across Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai freezing 36 bank accounts holding more than ₹90 crore, connected to Vihaan - part of the cumulative ₹350 crore-plus preventive-seizure total cited in this report.
Not established by this document: None material.
- QNET ED attaches assets worth Rs.150 crore of Gold Quest
Reports an ED asset attachment of ₹150 crore connected to "Gold Quest," QNET’s predecessor brand - a separate but connected preventive-seizure action contributing to the cumulative ED total cited in this report.
Not established by this document: None material.
- QNET MCA files winding-up petition against Vihaan Direct Selling, initiates penal action
Reports the Registrar of Companies (Karnataka) inspecting Vihaan’s books, finding indications of activity intended to dupe investors, and filing a Section 271 Companies Act winding-up petition before the NCLT Bengaluru bench, plus Look Out Circulars against twelve named individuals including Michael Ferreira.
Not established by this document: Final NCLT order/outcome not located anywhere in this research; petition status as of September 2026 is unconfirmed.
- QNET: India Post and Blue Dart stop courier services to Vihaan Direct Selling after RoC letter
Reports both India Post and Blue Dart suspending courier/parcel services to Vihaan following the Registrar-of-Companies letter citing pending criminal cases - a real, material third-party commercial consequence separate from any court ruling.
Not established by this document: None material; later resolved on this specific point per the March 2024 Karnataka HC order cited separately above.
- Over 100 nabbed over illegal network business
Reports Nepal’s Central Investigation Bureau raiding a QNET meeting, detaining 102 people and subsequently charging 14, with a reported joining fee of Rs 350,000 per member marketed via holiday-tour packages.
Not established by this document: No confirmed final trial verdict for the 14 charged was located.
- OJK Satgas Waspada Investasi: QNET violates rules
Reports Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority (OJK) investment-alert task force publicly stating PT QNet violated its direct-selling permit terms and characterizing its operation as pyramid-style with unusually high promised returns.
Not established by this document: An executive/regulatory designation, not a criminal court finding; company denial is on the record separately.
- OJK releases 182 illegal businesses, QNET one of them
Reports OJK’s Satgas Waspada Investasi press release listing PT QN International Indonesia (QNet) among 182 illegal investment entities ordered to cease operations - the regulator’s own designation, reported via the news outlet.
Not established by this document: Full OJK press-release text not independently re-fetched; relied on this outlet’s reporting of its contents.
- QNET denies conducting a bogus investment practice and using a Ponzi scheme
QNET’s own on-the-record denial of the OJK characterisation - included here for fairness/balance alongside the Indonesian regulatory finding.
Not established by this document: None material.
- Central Bank of Sri Lanka updated list of prohibited pyramid schemes includes QNET
Reports the Central Bank of Sri Lanka’s 20 January 2025 updated prohibited-pyramid-scheme list including QNET - a current, dated regulatory designation, not a criminal conviction.
Not established by this document: Full CBSL list/notice text not independently re-fetched; relied on this outlet’s reporting.
- Many Bhutanese still losing millions to QNET despite the ban
Reports Bhutan’s Office of Consumer Protection naming "QNET, operated in Bhutan by Vihaan Direct Selling Pvt. Ltd., India" as a pyramid promotional scheme in a 26 August 2022 public notice, and describes continued losses despite the ban - one of the clearest instances of a foreign regulator naming Vihaan directly as the operator.
Not established by this document: The article’s further claim that the scheme persisted under aliases ("E-commerce," "Bi Global," "Beyond Infiniti") is single-sourced to this outlet and could not be independently cross-verified; it is not treated as established fact in this report and is listed in unverified.
- QNET agent sentenced to prison, Thiès court
Reports a Thiès court convicting two QNET agents of defrauding a student, sentencing one to one year’s imprisonment and the other to six months suspended plus a fine - a second, separate Senegal conviction corroborating the individual-agent conviction pattern.
Not established by this document: Seen as a news report of the court’s finding, not the court record itself.
- Scheme subverted curbs on Iran
Reports 30 members arrested in Iran, including 13 in Tehran, on charges of defrauding people of more than 5 trillion rials, in connection with GoldQuest/QNET-linked activity, with QNET disputing the characterisation.
Not established by this document: Exact date of the underlying arrest episode is not clearly stated in the located reporting; no confirmed trial verdict was located.
- What is QI Group?
QNET’s own description of QI Group as the multinational holding conglomerate founded in 1998, umbrella for direct selling, education, hospitality, luxury goods and retail.
Not established by this document: Company-authored source; independent QI Group financial statements do not exist publicly.
- Vihaan Direct Selling (India) Private Limited company registry listing
Confirms Vihaan Direct Selling (India) Private Limited as a separately incorporated Karnataka-registered company (CIN U52399KA2011PTC060730), headquartered in Bengaluru - the primary registry-level confirmation of the two-entity structure this report treats as central.
Not established by this document: A registry-aggregator listing, not the Ministry of Corporate Affairs’ own filing portal, though the CIN and registration details are of the kind such aggregators reproduce directly from official filings.
- Vijay Eswaran career profile
Confirms Eswaran’s LSE degree (1984), Southern Illinois University MBA (1986), IBM information-systems engineering background, and the 1998 founding of GoldQuest/QNET and QI Group with Joseph Bismark.
Not established by this document: None material.
- Direct Selling Association of Malaysia: QNET (M) Sdn Bhd member portfolio
DSAM’s own membership listing for QNET (M) Sdn Bhd, member since 2010 - independent confirmation of the DSA-membership green flag.
Not established by this document: None material.
- QNET launches new global compensation plan (Q10)
QNET’s own 2015 press release for the "Q10" plan launch, the source of the company’s own "up to 50% of sales" aggregate payout claim used in payoutSplit above.
Not established by this document: A distributed press release, not the full compensation-plan document itself; per-SKU or per-rank commission distribution underlying the aggregate 50% figure is not disclosed here or elsewhere located.
What we could not get
- The current, exact global or India-specific QNET starter-pack/enrollment-fee price - not located despite multiple targeted searches; a material gap for any "true cost to join" figure.
- Vihaan’s specific individual status within the December 2024 CCPA notice’s reported "13 under investigation / 3 replies awaited" split, and whether that notice has since been resolved, fined, or closed - no confirmed 2025/2026 resolution was located.
- The final outcome of the Mumbai EOW ₹425-crore case - a chargesheet was filed and bail granted, but no confirmed final trial verdict (conviction or acquittal) was located anywhere in this research.
- The final outcome or current status of the NCLT winding-up petition against Vihaan - the petition was confirmed filed (reported August 2019) but its resolution is unconfirmed.
- The claim, from a single Bhutanese outlet (The Bhutanese), that QNET has continued operating in Bhutan after its ban under aliases including "E-commerce," "Bi Global" and "Beyond Infiniti" - this could not be cross-verified against a second independent source and is not treated as established fact in this report.
- Reported regulatory actions or bans in Egypt, Rwanda, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, China, Turkey, Ghana and Afghanistan - sourced only to secondary aggregation or listicle-style content in this research, with no primary or near-primary institutional source identified for any of them.
- Whether QNET/PT QN International Indonesia’s APLI (Indonesian direct-selling association) membership, once reportedly granted, survived the 2019 OJK Satgas regulatory action.
- Exact current (2026) compensation-plan percentage tables, RSP-to-value thresholds and Group Business Volume minimums by rank - only partial or historical figures were retrievable, and current country-specific plan PDFs could not be directly fetched in this research.
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
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QNET - frequently asked
QIs QNET the same company as Vihaan Direct Selling?
QHas QNET ever been convicted of a crime?
QDoes QNET publish an income disclosure statement?
QIs the December 2024 India CCPA notice against QNET’s franchisee still open?
QHas any court ever ruled that QNET’s business model is legal?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - QNET’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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