Is EmpiresX a scam? | 7 Red Flags You Need to Know

If you’re here because you’re asking “is EmpiresX A Scam?”, you have to brace yourself as we go through the seven major red flags that you need to know before saying yes to the “opportunity”.

Throughout this investigation, I really thought I would just end with a conclusion that it’s just your typical MLM, little did I know that there was more to uncover….

EmpiresX Review Summary

Product Name: EmpiresX

Owners: Emerson Pires, Flavio Goncalves

Price:
$200 for leaders
$400 for investors

Rating: 1/100

Best For: None

Recommended: Not Recommended (21st January 2022: seems to be a SCAM, closing down)

What is EmpiresX  About: EmpiresX presents itself as an investment opportunity about trading and cryptocurrency.

Summary: Without any associated company mentioned in their website, EmpiresX remains to be a risky investment platform especially as none of the founders or personas associated with the brand are recognized in regulated finance and trading institutions.

What is EmpiresX About?

EmpiresX claims to have their monthly growth of 30% with expectations of 6000% for 2023. But is it true or is EmpiresX a scam?

According to their EmpiresX presentation, they have officially existed since 2017 and then only launched EmpiresX last 2020. They also claimed that they have not lost money in the stock market during the pandemic as they have been strategizing with their “head trader” to get “exponential profit”. So to sum it up quick, EmpiresX offers a trading bot that you can choose to just invest into or sell as an affiliate from which you can get commissions and you can also opt to be their investor in just a few quick steps.

They offer three options which are detailed below:

Option	Capital Indication Bonus	Everyday Generation	Dividend to 20 Levels above	Eligible Downline Members
Investor	10%	1%	0.2%	Investors only
Affiliate	10%	0.6%	0.2%	Affiliate, Investor
Private Investor	10%	1%	0.6%	Investors only

Sounds promising right? But is it a good investment opportunity, or is EmpiresX a pyramid scheme?

Let’s get on to that on the next section.

What is a Pyramid Scheme?

Most investment opportunities that give you incentives for recruitment can either be an affiliate opportunity, an MLM or a pyramid scheme. Let’s try to go over the three and what a Ponzi scheme is and I’ll let you in on what I think later in this article.

An affiliate marketing opportunity lets you enjoy perks when you have referred people to buy the brand’s products or services as a direct benefit of your effort. An MLM, on the other hand, is a marketing strategy where you also refer people to buy products or services but you become their upline and those you have recruited are your downlines which you can profit from depending on level perks by the company.

A stark difference between an affiliate and an MLM is that an affiliate can freely choose the brand they want to partner with plus there is no pressure on letting people on in their recommendation, on the other hand, an MLM will focus on endorsing only the company’s product and they are aggressively recruiting to get perks. Although some MLM products and services are actually good, it’s not for everyone.

Why is it not for everyone?
1. You may need good connections and influence to recruit people to become your downline
2. You need to take care of and maintain your downlines so you can also maintain your level perks
3. Not all MLMs are profitable, some are promising guaranteed income when in fact their income disclaimers say otherwise.

While you may think that we’ve gone far from our original topic, well a pyramid scheme is actually like an MLM, only that it’s illegal and unregulated. On the other hand, a Ponzi scheme is an illegal investment venture that offers unrealistic gains and high returns with no risk.

When I initially heard of EmpiresX and read its offer I actually thought that it’s the typical MLM! But here’s what I found.

Is EmpiresX a Pyramid Scheme? Or is it a ponzi?

Well, for us to see if EmpiresX is a pyramid scheme or if it’s a Ponzi we will have to first look for its registration. Why? Because all investment and financial trading businesses are required to be first be registered under the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and no business is exempted even if it’s dealing with cryptocurrency. Some people may tell you that it doesn’t have to be registered because cryptocurrency is supposed to be a decentralized system.

But think about this, what if a company decided to rug pull all the assets… who will you turn to if it’s not a registered business?

If a business isn’t registered and it decided to just take every investment of its members one day, a business with a registration PLUS a recognition from the Securities and Exchange Commission will make them be liable for everything that could have been stolen. Now I hope you realize how important a SEC registration is to every trading and investment venture that you may come into.

TIP: It’s not enough that a business claims and shows you documents of its registration. It’s your due diligence to make your own research as most business registration details are public and most states and countries will likely have websites for you to verify their registration.

Now let’s start.

Most of the time you can learn about which company a website is under through its Terms and Conditions/ Use or sometimes under its Privacy Policy too.

Well, our first red flag is: EmpiresX website doesn’t have those pages!

Now think about it, who would be liable if they would take all your money away? Would you risk investing in something that’s not associated to any company? But wait here’s another claim that they have on their Telegram, this was posted last July 6, 2021:

It would be unfair to claim that they are not registered just because we can’t find any mention of a company on their website. So let’s dig deeper…

But before we go into that, did you know that they have two websites? Here’s what I found about them:

Website	Date Created	Backlinks
empiresx.org	June 2021	51
empiresx.com	December 2019	554

Now, why are the website’s date of creation and backlinks important? Backlinks are an important website metric because the legitimate business would take their time and put enough resources to market their website. So far the websites of EmpiresX both have a good number of backlinks. And when you check into them, you’ll see that most backlinks are affiliate links back to their website.

A website’s date of creation can let us know if the website is new, and if they claim that they are established for XX years we can easily verify it. In the case of EmpiresX their .com website was acquired December 2019 which if we cross-check with their claim is quite consistent as they mentioned that they only launched it last 2020. This is what’s inside their presentation:

I tried to look into both websites that I mentioned earlier and there was no mention of any company in them so to try and associate them with one, we’ll look at the people behind EmpiresX.

People Behind EmpiresX

Inside their presentation in the .org website, they mentioned two people who we will further look into for this article. Here’s what they say about them:

Emerson Pires

When you check this name on LinkedIn you’ll find a handful of Emerson Pires, but there’s only one that is connected to an Empires X Corp and an Empires Consulting. With this information, we now have a lead. But we’ll probe this after we have investigated the personas associated with EmpiresX.

Now that we have a state related to our persona, we can then try to look if they are registered in the state. And here’s what I found:

Well, it seems like the Empires X Corp has been inactive/dissolved since last year!

But their consulting firm is still active and look who’s signed up as their VP: FLAVIO GONCALVES!

Flavio Goncalves or Gocalves

In my attempt to find any proof (or otherwise) of their business registration for this EmpiresX review I tried to find the other business that they are venturing together so I can check later on Florida’s LLC directory and hopefully find them too on SEC. I found two businesses which they are in it together:

But if you look closely… You’ll see that it’s two different Flavios! A Gocalves and a GoNcalves. Now we wonder if they are two different people…

And here is a list of companies which are under his name… or names.

Under Goncalves he’s associated with EMPX and 2U Business Consulting.

On the other hand, he’s had different positions under Empires Consulting Corp under Gocalves

It’s quite alarming that the name of the registered officer they had for their corporation under Florida may have had a misspelling for years! Now we’re not sure if it’s the same person but we do know for sure that they are venturing together in businesses in Florida.

It’s good to find businesses registered under Emerson Pires and Flavio Goncalves but the question is, which of these companies is EmpiresX under? It’s very important that a website offering services and products are under a specific company so that they can be held liable in case of fraud.

Also let me just mention too that brokers and firms offering trading, investment and financial services should be registered in the Securities and Exchange Commission, FINRA and state securities regulators before they conduct their business.

Joshua David Nicholas “Josh Gregg”

Now here’s another name that comes up whenever EmpiresX is promoted. “Josh Gregg” who they like to call their master trader.

They claim that Josh works for Goldman Sachs and true enough you can confirm it through FINRA’s Broker Check there is indeed a Joshua Gregg… but previous reviews has already exposed that HE IS NOT THE JOSHUA GREGG REGISTERED IN FINRA because his real name is Joshua David Nicholas who had a history of financial blunders with his late firm (JDN Capital LLC) and was banned by National Futures Association for 8 years.

For a full document here’s the link and below is an overview of the decision.

Despite being banned and even when his real identity has already been exposed, it seems like EmpiresX is continuously using his Josh “Gregg” persona as he is still posted in a video in their EmpiresX Global Facebook page some three weeks ago:

It’s very alarming.

Registrations

Now that we have a list of business names and people, we can now cross-check their registration. I checked on the following platforms the names associated with EmpiresX and the businesses handled by the “founders”:

FINRA Broker Check: No Result
SEC Registration: No Result
Division of Securities (Florida): No Result.

With this information alone, what do you think, is EmpiresX a scam? I would’ve run if I were recruited just knowing these!

How Does EmpiresX Work?

When you check their website and cross-reference it to their presentation, you might see a disjunction of one’s reality and expectations.

Claims or Expectation

Here are the things that they claim to attract members.

Well is it really? Let’s check it out.

Reality

This page alone about withdrawal already debunks the Withdrawal with Automatic Payment and Freedom With Your Capital.

As much as they claim that they offer instant withdrawals, they mentioned in the earlier part of their presentation that they require emailing for each withdrawal request with a “secondary security password”. Plus you can read from above that capital withdrawal can only be done three times and they have percentage fees on the first three months. So there isn’t really much freedom with your capital right?

No monthly charges? Yeah right, but the company gets 20% of each profit from the trading bot every day!

Refund

I looked inside their platform and looked around their websites and there was no mention of any refund. That’s understandable because they are an investment platform.

Can You Really Make Money Through EmpiresX ?

The viable ways you can do to make money through EmpiresX would be by:

1. Becoming an Investor or Affiliate then ranking through the network levels through recruitment
2. Actual profiting from the trades.

But has anyone actually profited from it?

Surprisingly, their Trustpilot reviews abound with positive reviews with a 4.3 rating. But a load of positive comments are quite unjustifiable as they were mostly flooded last August:

Here are some of the positive and negative EmpiresX reviews on the platform:

But here’s a more convincing review straight from their Telegram community. It seems like people were having a hard time with their withdrawals. Take notice of the dates:

And just recently they posted something on the Facebook Page about “back office issues”:

Is the system collapsing? Or are they thinking of new ways to take advantage of people?

On the 5th of December 2021, this is what the person trying to recruit me said.

Currently, they are migrating their whole system over as they are expanding. It’s a long story. They are currently doing everything manually so their are huge delays with their withdrawals. All of this should be resolved within the month. They might be getting a bad wrap regarding this..

I’m in the support channel so I see all of their issues..

If people are hesitant they can wait until the new system is up and running.

Mmmm….this doesn’t give me any confidence, how about you?

How Much Does It Cost to Join EmpiresX ?

You have two options for your membership:
1. Affiliate – $200
2. Investor – $400

7 Red Flags of EmpiresX

• No mentioned associated company which could be held liable in case of fraud
• Not registered on SEC, FINRA and Division of Securities
• Co Founder has inexplicable misspelled surname on registered company details
• Master Trader, Joshua David Nicholasm is continuously impersonating “Josh Gregg” and is actually banned by NFA
• 20% of any trading profit goes to company
• Suspicious flooding of positive reviews last August 2021 on Trustpilot
• Users reports being unable to have their withdrawals and use the platform itself.

The EmpiresX Scam [Is EmpiresX a Scam?]

I really thought at first that EmpiresX will be just the typical MLM with aggressive recruitment tactics, but with all the red flags that I found during my investigation, it’s likely that it is a pyramid scheme or a Ponzi scheme or both. While it’s okay to recruit people into investment opportunities, it’s much safer and would be best if an investment firm, company or platform are registered on finance, trade and securities organizations.

Since the website and the companies related to its owners are not registered in SEC, FINRA and the Division of Securities in Florida, it’s fair to say that they are illegally operating. Business, corporation and LLC registration are different from the act of registering a firm or company as a regulated firm or broker. Additionally, as Joshua David Nicholas continues to impersonate Josh Gregg and with the possibility of him handling the trades, it’s quite alarming that EmpiresX continues to recruit when Joshua himself is deregistered from the National Futures Association.

Just to be fully transparent with you, I am not an affiliate or investor of EmpiresX myself and I do not endorse it in any way.

I have researched the website, testimonials, and information on the Internet to get to the bottom of what EmpiresX genuinely does. This is because I have been burnt from programs just like this in the past and I want to prevent others from making the same mistakes. If you’d like to learn Ways to Avoid Online Scams then click the highlighted text. 

** UPDATE** EmpiresX seems to be Closing Down

Refer to heading below, with this update from 21st January 2022, I am glad we did our research and hope that you read this. We can now say, sadly that EmpiresX is a SCAM.

Pros and Cons of EmpiresX 

EmpiresX Pros

None

EmpiresX Cons

• Website is not associated to any company
• Website and companies handled by founders are not recognized by SEC, FINRA and Division of Securities in Florida
• Master trader is impersonating an actual trader with a good track because he himself is deregistered by the NFA
• Suspicious flooding of positive reviews last August 2021
• Users can’t withdraw and use platform

Final Thoughts – EmpiresX

I don’t see the point of going on with the impersonation of Josh Gregg. If EmpiresX is indeed an honest and truthful company, they would not trick people into believing that their “master trader” is actually Josh Gregg in FINRA. For reference here is the FINRA details of Joshua Nicholas, the real name of EmpiresX Master Trader.

Instead of putting out bland community statements about their legitimacy, they should show verifiable evidence of their registration, not just for transparency but it could also double as a good marketing strategy.

If they continue to dodge Ponzi and pyramid scheme allegations by just flooding positive reviews or hijacking comments on a defensive mode, they will continuously be branded as a fraud and a likely scamming venture that’s most likely to collapse anytime. However, if you, reader, would still wish to try their platform… I hope you won’t stake an amount that you can’t bear to lose.

Yep. We already warned you.

** UPDATE** Is EmpiresX Closing Down?

Wow I am glad I did thorough research into EmpiresX, found all the red flags and didn’t invest despite the person trying to recruit me!
This is what I learned on 21st of January 2022 from this group of investors:

IMPORTANT ❗❗

Ok guys i have some news for you..

 *EmpiresX is closing.* 

But they are going to pay investors back their original capital from what we are told. I highly doubt we will get paid our compounded earnings. Its only initial capital expected back.

We are been told we will be paid by Feb end. Again if im honest i wont be surprised if that timeline gets delayed to March or April. 

But they will definitely pay as Interpol & US lawyers are now involved as some US leaders had started legal proceedings. And the owners know if thet dont pay capital back to all investors they will be in deep shit. 

They have made the money so they have enough to pay everyone back.

Kindly ensure your wallet addresses are accurately updated in back end. 

Its unfortunate this project didnt turned out the way it was promised despite the 1st year going smoothly. But i guess greed took over the owners & it messed up everything.  

Whats important is we all get our capital back. There is no need to panic or chase anybody for any more info. 

All you need to ensure is wallet addresses are maintained in your account.

“EmpiresX passive trading group”

How I Make a Passive Income Online

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