Utah Connections.00002

Disclaimer: This post contains ongoing research. The research is only an attempt to make connections between various entities and individuals and should not be construed as a definitive conclusion as to whether or not these connections actually exist.

The bulk of the information within the post is based on information from the following sources:

• The Better Business Bureau
• Ohio Attorneys General Office
• The Utah Division Of Consumer Protection
• The Federal Trade Commission
• Justia.com Dockets & Filings
• DomainTools.com
• CNBC.com
• Consumerist
• City Weekly
• The Salty Droid
• John T. Reed
• Specific eMail lists that I have tracked.

Documentation that I have used has been preserved my me in the forms of video recordings, saved web pages, saved image files, and individual tracked eMail lists. Entity numbers are my own number system to help me keep track of which post mentions which entities.

Entity 0002a (Person) – Phillip Gannuscia – A familiar name at WorkAtHomeTruth

Date: March 29, 2013 From The Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program blog:

“ERSP Recommends Affiliate Marketer ‘YES International’ Discontinue Claims Made in Testimonials; Marketer Agrees to Revise Claims at Issue”

“New York, NY – March 29, 2013 – The Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program (ERSP) has recommended that YES International, LLC (d/b/a Vensure International, LLC and Novus North, LLC) modify or discontinue certain claims for YES International, a lead-generation affiliate marketing business.

ERSP is an investigative unit of the advertising industry’s system of self-regulation and is administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. The marketer’s advertising came to the attention of ERSP through a consumer challenge.”

The full article can be seen at The Electronic Retailing Self-Regulation Program (ESRP) blog here & at The Advertising Self-Regulatory Council‘s Reviews site here.

According to the the review, the testimonials in question at the time were as follows:

• “Meet Diane. She is one of our clients who has begun to achieve her financial goals. In her first three month she has made $16,000 online.”
• “I had over $10,000 in sales in December and should be about the same or perhaps higher in January so things are going really well. Monthly profit is coming in at about $6,000 currently.” [Kimberly T.B. Chandler, AZ]
• “Not many companies offer UNLIMITED EARNING POTENTIAL. YES International does!”

“The challenger in this case asserted that the marketer’s principal officer had registered domain names for a number of other affiliate marketing websites and ERSP did, as part of its review, examine the claims made at sites that included www.onlineprofitmasterssystem.com, www.homeprofitmasters.com, and www.365dailymaster.com.”

“Further, the company said, it “will strive to eliminate duplicate or replicated testimonials from any website it operates for the purpose of advertising its services and products, and to ensure that the testimonials are substantiated and do not overstate results from YES’ products and services.”

SIDE Note about the Kimberly T.B. Testimonial

Apparently the ESRP failed to notice that the exact same testimonial used on the YES International site is also being used on the Apply Knowledge Institute site at the time of this post:

Here’s what happened later in the year:

Date: 05/11/2013 – I post a video to YouTube showing Phillip Gannuscia’s Home Profit Masters site is using testimonials from an old FTC complaint against Make You Famous Consulting, Inc. You can watch the video below:

There were several other sites owned or controllwed by Phillip Gannuscia that I posted about over the past year and half:

• Online Profit Masters (February 5, 2012)
• Jane Simmons Income Masters Institute (April 12, 2012)
• Home Profit Masters (May 11, 2012)
• Profit Masters Academy (August 13, 2012)
• Home Profit Masters Scam Strikes Forever!

Entity 0002b (Person) – Ken Sonnenberg

Ken Sonnenberg popped up when doing this research until I read through a recently filed individual complaint entitled Ivy Videna vs Phillip Gannuscia, ECommerce Support LLC, Kenneth Sonnenberg and John Does 1-50 (dismissed with prejudice via the plaintiff). Here’s the part of that complaint that allegedly connects Ken Sonnenberg and Phillip Gannuscia:

“According to David Sellers, Ken Sonnenberg now obtains referrals from Phillip Gannuscia. David Sellers stated that Gannuscia owns Ecommerce Support LLC, as well as Vensure International and Yes International.”

Entity 0002c (Business) – Apply Knowledge, LLC 

Ken Sonnenberg is the owner of Apply Knowledge, LLC, which according to the Utah Secretary of State also does business as Coaching Department, LLC & Apply Knowledge Insitute, LLC

Again, according to the Ivy Videna complaint, Ken Sonnenberg obtains or at one point obtained referrals from Phillip Gannuscia. Also of note is that as of the date of this post, the Ohio Attorneys General office has a case pending against Phillip Gannuscia’s company, Novus North, LLC and Ken Sonnenberg’s companies Apply Knowledge LLC and VI Education LLC.

From Ohio Attorney General Dewine’s Announcement:

“According to the Attorney General, defendants Novus North LLC, doing business as Your eCommerce Support International LLC, YES International, Apply Knowledge LLC, doing business as Coaching Department, and VI Education LLC marketed a program that would help consumers create, develop, market, and run their own Internet businesses from home. The businesses also marketed additional products they claimed were essential to any successful business.”

Ohio Attorneys General Office Complaint Against Novus

Entity 0002d (Person) – Angela Bussio

Angela Bussio has been used as the spokesperson for several of Phillip Gannuscia’s lead generation sites. She is not named in the Ohio AG action. She is listed as a defendent in Sugng vs Bussio et Al

As of this post, she is being used as the spokesperon for a site called Web Fortune Master, a program which includes hidden monthly charges.

Entity 0002e (Business) Prosper

As I was researching information about Apply Knowledge LLC I came across an IP hosting 9 domain names as seen in the following image:

Here’s the break down of the Whois Registration information on the above domains at the time of this post:

1. akicrm.com – Dan Welch (Apply Knowledge Institute)
2. auctionburner.com – Domains By Proxy
3. auctiondna.com – Doba, LLC
4. auctionjump.com – Domains By Proxy, LLC
5. myauctiontool.com – Apply Knowledge Institute
6. mymediacreator.com – Apply Knowledge Institute
7. mysuppliersource.com – Apply Knowledge Institute
8. myvideoteam.com – Prosper, Inc.
9. suppliertrac.com – Prosper, Inc.

Typically, when so few domains are hosted on the same IP, they tend to be owned by the same company, person, or group of people. Again, there are certainly logical alternative explanation for why this could happen. At this point I’m just taking a look at data and not suggesting that you should draw any conclusions from what I present.

I wasn’t expecting to run into Prosper when I started this post, so I was surprised to see some of its sites to show up on the same IP as domains from  Apply Knowledge Institute & Doba, LLC.

Prosper Partners

Entities 0002f/g (Persons) David Clabeux & Ben Moskel (former Prosper Partners)

I had run into the same video mentioned at the SaltyDroid in his post called The Prosper Chronicles in one of the hundreds of email lists that I track. And I was reminded again of Prosper when I noticed that two former Prosper Partners Ben Moskel & Dave Clabeux were the subject of a recent FTC action (I had been tracking Ben & Dave’s eMail list and noticed that the last message that was sent was on September 24, 2012:

Ben & Dave’s partner page has been taken down from the Prospering.com site.

One other piece of data is that according a Prosper180.com page from 2012:

And the featured presenters were:

Entities 0002h (Person) Robert G. Allen

After I signed up for the Prosper180.com email list I started receiving emails from Robert G. Allen (the privacy policy n Prosper180.com did mention that they would possibly be sending targeted advertisements from other parties).

According to Prosper’s page here, Prosper & Robert Allen’s Enlightened Wealth Institute helped create one billion dollars in student profits between the years 2003 – 2006. I haven’t seen any independent verification of that and if true, there’s still the question of how many students were involved.

Other than that, I don’t know much about Prosper Partner Robert Allen, other than having coming across a 2010 Better Business warning here, BBB complaint history for his Enlightened Wealth Institute here, a rather scathing review of his teaching at the John T. Reed website, and consumer watchdog warnings such as the one in the CNBC  video below featuring Ben Popken when he was the managing editor of The Consumerist.

Related: Utah Connections.0001

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