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