MLM Blog – Network Marketing Blog

YTB International, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: YTBLA) ("YTB" or the "Company"), a provider of e-commerce business solutions for individual consumers and home-based independent representatives in the United States, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Canada, today announced its financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2010.

Total net revenue for the third quarter of 2010 was $9.9 million, compared to $15.9 million for the third quarter of 2009. Net loss for the quarter ended September 30, 2010 was ($0.7) million, or ($0.01) per diluted share, compared to a net profit of $0.4 million, or $0.00 per diluted share, for the same period of 2009.

Source: Bradenton.com
 

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This came across my desk today. It's from a company that evaluates domain names.

According to WebTrafficAgents.com the domain YTBTravel.us is worth $0.00. They do say that the potential annual income from the domain is $3.45. Which is more, from my understanding, than many YTB reps earn annually.

The domain now redirects to a Blogspot site promoting Zamzuu. Which I believe is a shopping site similar to iJango.

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I assume that Zamzuu or whatever they are calling this company today could be affected by this as well....

Madison Record:

A group of multi-state plaintiffs filed a putative class action lawsuit against YTB International and its officers, charging the company is operating an illegal pyramid scheme.

The plaintiffs, who are from Illinois, Missouri, Georgia and Utah, allege that Wood River-based YTB offers no direct selling opportunity, only a never-ending chance to recruit others into the program.

Attorney Christian G. Montroy of Montroy Law Offices in East St. Louis and Jay L. Kanzler Jr. and Brian J. Massimino of Witzel, Kanzler, Dimmit, Kenney and Kanler on St. Louis will be representing the putative class.

In their complaint filed June 10 in Madison County Circuit Court, the plaintiffs claim that the YTB program -- based upon selling cheap online travel agencies to recruits, then allowing the new recruits to retrieve others to do the same thing while requiring them to maintain certain levels of monthly services -- is a fraud.

YTB has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue through the use of independent marketing representatives, who are the salespeople charged with recruiting others to buy the online travel agencies, the plaintiffs say. In fact, about 75 percent of the $162 million YTB earned in 2008 was derived from the independent marketing representatives, yet a majority of the representatives -- about 80 percent -- failed to earn a profit, according to the complaint.

Travel Agent Central:

Ever controversial multilevel marketer YTB International anticipates a net loss of $9.9 million for the fiscal year 2009, compared to a net loss of $4.5 million for the prior year, the company told the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

YTB also said that it is unable to file its Annual Report (Form 10-K) for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2009 by the SEC deadline ”without unreasonable effort and expense.”

I've heard from multiple sources that up to 40 people were layed off last Friday at YTB headquarters in Wood River, Illinois.

Can anyone confirm this?

I heard that some are heading from YTB over to Fortune Hi Tech.  Fortune has a similar compensation plan and has recently been in trouble with an Attorney General, (see previous MLM Blog post), Could this be out of the frying pan and into the fire for YTB associates?

Speaking of YTB. Is this the end?

YTB International faces a new legal challenge with the year-end filing of a class action lawsuit that alleges that YTB has “perpetrated an illegal pyramid scheme that represents one of largest fraud(s) in the history of the State of Illinois and the history of this nation.” The plaintiffs are requesting $ 100 million in actual and punitive damages and was filed U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, East St. Louis Division. The action has once again focused attention on multilevel marketing companies and industry standards.

“The defendant corporations have taken over half a billion dollars from their unsophisticated customers, selling them on the dream of cheap travel and million dollar pay-outs when the only way that Plaintiffs and their class could make a net profit was by recruiting others to join the illegal pyramid scheme,” the plaintiffs argue. “While over half of the its customers received no travel commissions at all, the directors of YTB International, Inc. each paid themselves multi-million dollar salaries while also siphoning tens of millions of dollars from their publicly traded corporation to privately owned corporations that they owned and controlled. Plaintiffs and their proposed class ask this Court to end Defendants’ massive fraud and to enter a judgment that compensates them for the hundreds of millions of dollars that Defendants swindled. Plaintiffs’ claims are typical to those of their proposed class because they arise out of Illinois common law.”

MSN Money:

Total revenue for third quarter dropped 62 percent to $15.9 million, down from $42.2 million for the third quarter of 2008.

YTB attributed the decline in revenue to a drop in the number of new Internet Business Centers sold during the quarter and a decrease in the number of active IBC site owners.