What the record shows — and the lesson inside it.
IM Academy’s model combined subscription education (forex, then crypto and more) with an MLM compensation plan: members could have fees waived by recruiting two others, and top distributors marketed lavish lifestyles to recruit — disproportionately to young people. The warnings accumulated for years across jurisdictions: Colombia’s SFC from 2017, Spain’s CNMV in 2018 and again in 2020 after a rebrand, Belgium, Curaçao. In 2022, Spanish National Police arrested eight employees on suspicion of using misleading advertising to lure adolescents into a pyramid scheme.
In May 2025 the FTC and Nevada filed for an injunction alleging over $1.2 billion in worldwide consumer harm since 2018; the company — by then renamed IYOVIA — suspended operations, and in August 2025 three top promoters settled for $2.5 million. These are allegations and settlements, not criminal convictions of the company, and we state them exactly as the record does. The lesson is not subtle: when the product is a subscription and the business is recruitment, the education is the costume. If you came out of that world, the antidote is everything IM never offered: a printed one-off price, a syllabus you read first, a regulator you can look up, an exam someone external marks, and no commission for bringing your friends.