Awaken Dreamers: a youth entrepreneurship trap that connects with a financial beach bar in Spain

 

• Under the umbrella of an "entrepreneurship academy," Awaken Dreamers connects with IMarketsLive, an American company
• The National Securities Market Commission does not authorize this company to operate in Spain and considers it a "financial beach bar"
• We investigate how they capture their partners, how they operate, and the two ways to make money they propose:
• trading
• network márketing

• Success, fame, money, youth, leisure, fun and many motivational phrases: that's the image Awaken Dreamers conveys on their social networks. They call themselves a "social movement of entrepreneurs" and look for young Spaniards eager to make money using "the power of new technologies" through mobile and computer. They don't give too many details about what to do: they know that the candy wrap is attractive and that many will be interested in privately asking what it's all about. After the first contact, Awaken Dreamers disappears to make way for IMarketsLive, a company that offers online stock exchange courses and is not authorized in Spain to provide investment services since May last year by the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), which calls it a "financial beach bar".

  The first brand is only the claim to attract the public until the second. One of his promotional videos on YouTube,uploaded a month ago, shows young people living life in a big way between travel, paradise places, expensive cars and parties: "Young entrepreneurs traveling around the world. Changing the way you make money" are the only phrases that appear in the clip. It's not much different from the image conveyed by some of their leaders on Instagram, the primary medium in which Awaken Dreamers collects volunteers for their cause. They also have Facebook.

  Your account on this social network has hardly any content. On Instagram, however, it's riddled with photos with motivational phrases: "To win big sometimes you need to take big risks," "The only difference between a rich and poor person is how they spend their time" or"Live without limits." The latter is the slogan of Awaken Dreamers and is the message preached by those at the top level. But in the talks and conferences that give in several latin American countries and now in Spain they do not sell this brand, but another: IMarketsLive. It is the same company that in our country is considered a financial beach bar by the CNMV, as in the United Kingdom,France and Belgium.

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  What is Awaken Dreamers?

  Awaken Dreamers has already held several meetings so far this year in our country. At least three: in January they were in Pamplona and in February, in Seville and Barcelona. Next Saturday they will be in Jaén, at hotel Xauen. When we call the property to ask what it's about, the person on the other side can't give many details: "Educational information about financial information. It starts at seven o'clock and will last a couple of hours. I don't know if it costs money, they haven't told me." The next day, Sunday, they will meet in Pamplona at the Tres Reyes Hotel. "It's a Unleash Your Success event. It's a six-to-nine talk with 400 people, but we don't know much more. It's not like it's organized by the hotel. They will pay on departure for the rent of the lounge," they say from the property. Desata Tu Éxito is not listed as a company in Spain or as a trademark in the register of the Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (OEPM).

  Awaken Dreamers also does not appear as a company in our country. It does so as a trademark in a state of processing since 7 February, when it was filed with the registration. The owner is Ivan Briongos, who also has other brands such as Vive sin Jefes: on this website he gives stock exchange courses and also talks about IMarketsLive, redirecting users to use the same product that ultimately offers Awaken Dreamers.

  Constituting the brand is the next step after recruiting the employees, boys and young girls who will spread the name Awaken Dreamers through social networks: in January they were looking for people to work with them in Milanuncios and Jobs Today(1 and 2),and on November 25 they created the website,which offers very little information. Just one sentence ("Living Without Limits") and a section ("Notifications") where the user can leave his or her first name, last name and mail to contact him/her.

  There's one more method. Write directly to Awaken Dreamers through the links sponsored by some users on their Twitter and Instagram profiles. This newspaper has tried to contact several of them, who have refused to explain. He has also obtained several screenings through a person who wants to maintain his anonymity and who demonstrate the connection between Awaken Dreamers and the company IMarketsLive.

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  The modus operandi is as follows: clicking on the link of the above mentioned accounts opens an invitation to contact these brand representatives via WhatsApp. As can be read from the screenshots, the product is sold as "an entrepreneurial movement" that is "changing the lives of thousands of people". They also send an invitation to a fake 36-minute live video conference. It is false because, when entering that link and registering an email, the user has the feeling of waiting for a chat to start when it is actually a video hosted on YouTube and that it appears as "hidden" so that it cannot be found through the search engine.

• The fake streaming is presented by Adrián Andújar, one of the leaders of IMarketsLive. On his open Instagram,photos appear showing an elevated life train and high economic power. Also, it gives talks and conferences around the world and you are an investor in Forex (forex market) and cryptocurrencies. Like him, they have similar profiles Ivan Briongos, Fran Terriza, David San Martín, Jon Lumbier or Albert Ferrer,among others, who are the recruiters who encourage other young people to be part of Awaken Dreamers. The last three will be at next Sunday's event in Pamplona.

  The "successful" CEOs that no one knows

  In the video, Andújar does not mention the Awaken Dreamers brand at any time. He claims to be 28 years old and has been working on the Network for eight years, although "two years ago" he made the decision to leave his job to "live off the Internet." After a brief introduction to what Forex and cryptocurrencies are, Andújar presents IMarketsLive as "a trading academy focused on financial education". Its website was created on January 29, 2013 and is located in New York; they registered it there in August of that same year as a company. According to the streamer,"it is already in more than 120 countries" and in Spain it has "more than 3,000 people". However, it is not registered with the DSA,the US Direct Selling Association.

  On the IMarketsLive website,as in Andújar's presentation, the three managers of the company appear: Christopher Terry, Alex Morton and Isis de la Torre. The first is said to have "earned nearly $300 million" in the sector, which charges "$15,000 per conference" and has more than 25 years of experience. This newspaper has contacted several traders and brokers specializing in the stock exchange, but none know Terry or the other managers.

  The fake streaming also mentions Morton, "recognized in Rolling Stones magazine and Forbes as the most successful young man on the Internet." This fact is not entirely true: although Morton appeared in Forbes magazine in November 2015,he did so in a sponsored ad within it. In the Rolling Stones he also appeared,but in an article that talked about Vemma (an old company of his) and put him in the spotlight for being in charge of a possible pyramid scam. In 2016, his company was sanctioned by the US FTC (Federal Trade Commission).

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  "All the stars are being part of this business," continues Andújar, who makes no mention of Isis de la Torre. A quick Google search by entering your name gives hundreds of results that speculate on whether IMarketsLive is a pyramid scam or a successful company. At Open Corporates, a global database of companies, Isis de la Torre does appear as an administrator at three of the company's four headquarters around the world: two in the UK, two in the US and one in Mauritius, a tax haven included in the EU greylist.

  Two ways to make money from your couch

  In the last part of the video, Andújar explains how to make money through IMarketsLive. It always refers to "the tools", but emphasizes that the results depend on oneself. To access content that will give users the knowledge they need to invest in Forex, they have to pay a monthly fee to keep their account active. A portion of those lessons they offer can be found watching this video for more than two minutes on YouTube. There are two packages: Platinum and Platinum Plus, although Andújar only refers to the first. The fee is 218 dollars (193 euros) in the first month and 162 dollars (143 euros) the following.

  However, Andújar mentions that this fee can be free at the time the user brings in two people, who always have to be active. And it still gets better: "With two you get free, but with three people you charge 150 dollars [132 euros]," says the streamer. This is the other way to make money that the company proposes: bring people to recommend other people and form ever bigger teams. According to Andújar's slide, with 30 people the user would be charging $1,000 a month (885 euros), with 75 would earn $2,000 (1,770 euros) and in the top rank, called Chairman 10 and who needs 500 people, $10,000 per month (8,849 euros) would be charged. "There are two options to make money, trading and network marketing,this is teaming up," says the presenter.

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  In this document,the US Government lays the foundation for what pyramid schemes are. They adopted a protocol following the 1970 Koscot Interplanetary case, in which the company sold cosmetic products and offered a program with motivational talks. Customers, if they wanted to move up, had to pay $2,000 to be supervisors or $5,400 to become directors. Through commissions for recruiting other participants or selling the products, different levels of distributors made money.

  The same company under another brand, Wolfdream, already tried to expand last year in some Latin American countries, such as Paraguay. When the case jumped into the media, she released a statement on Facebook re-signed "to bring a new concept of leadership and change of mindset to our generation" and willing "to teach for free" wherever necessary. Matías Insaurralde explains it perfectly in this QDSA post. The case of IMarketsLive also recalls the famous unetenet case uncovered by El País in 2015.

  "As brands burn, they suffer the consequence of loss of reputation and renew them," esADE's eldiario.es Franc Carreras, a marketing teacher, explains. "Being the big scale, if you keep throwing marks of these tiny, new ones, and you get an equis percent very big, in the end it's a huge business," he continues. The professor considers that, within network marketing,"there are very reputable and very serious people, with studies". But at the same time he insists that "these are exploiting two things that can have positive use and turn it around to abuse."

  Joaquín Gual, CEO of MásQueTrading,points directly at companies like IMarketsLive: "Our sector is very bad for all this bunch of chorizos that play with people's illusions." He talks about "pyramid scam" and how the one who gets into these associations "pringa to his friends, his acquaintances and his family". A similar line shows Carreras, who claims that "these platforms exploit the weakness of some people who are easy to convince or have an insecurity or a need at that time."

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  "It doesn't look good," Gual continues, an opinion also added to by Moisés Romero, a journalist specializing in the stock exchange: "For me, Forex is a scam from start to finish. It is riddled with complaints and notifications from regulators. There are a thousand companies like this and they're all the same: they end up taking your money." Experts also emphasize that because the amounts they ask for are small, it is very difficult to create associations to report.

  No one knows how long Awaken Dreams will continue to sponsor the IMarketsLive product. Meanwhile, be suspicious: "As grandmas always said, 'no one gives four pesetas hard,'" Carreras concludes.