FTC Files Massive Lawsuit Against International Markets Live For Doing A Pyramid Scheme

Corporate Greed Case Study: International Markets Live / IYOVIA & Its Impact on Young Marginalized Consumers

TL;DR: According to a legal complaint filed by federal and state regulators, International Markets Live (IML), a company that has generated over $1.242 billion in sales, operated a massive deceptive scheme. IM Mastery Academy sold bogus investment training programs and a multi-level marketing business opportunity by making false promises of wealth, specifically targeting young, Black, and Latino consumers. Internal communications reveal executives knew their marketing was deceptive and feared being “shut down by the feds,” yet they continued to profit from the practices, leaving the vast majority of participants with significant financial losses.

This investigation uncovers an illustration of a predatory economic system that enables such behavior. Continue reading to understand the mechanics of the immoral scheme, the regulatory failures that allowed it to flourish, and the devastating human cost of a business model built on broken promises.

Introduction: A Calculated Deception

In a private message to top salespeople, the CEO of International Markets Live (IML), Christopher Terry, was blunt about the company’s marketing. “I went through Instagram… I’m mortified by the lifestyle claims that we have,” he wrote. “We’re going to end up getting shut down by the feds. I promise you.”

His warning was an acknowledgment of a calculated risk inside a business that had already raked in more than $1.242 billion worldwide.

For years, IML, which also operated as IM Mastery Academy and later rebranded to IYOVIA, allegedly ran a sprawling deceptive scheme targeting some of society’s most financially vulnerable: young adults, including Black and Latino consumers, lured by the promise of easy money and financial freedom.

IM Mastery Academy sold “Trading Training Services,” claiming to teach customers how to get rich trading complex financial instruments like foreign exchange, cryptocurrency, and binary options. Simultaneously, it pushed a multi-level marketing (MLM) “Business Venture,” where participants, called Independent Business Owners (IBOs), were promised lucrative commissions for recruiting others into the fold. This dual-pronged approach created a powerful engine for revenue, fueled by a constant stream of deceptive earnings claims.

The story of IML is a case study in the failures of modern capitalism, where the relentless pursuit of profit is incentivized, regulatory oversight is treated as a game to be won, and the financial ruin of thousands of people becomes a predictable cost of doing business. This is how a system designed to maximize shareholder value can systematically harm the very people it claims to empower.

Inside the Allegations: A Two-Part Trap

The business model described in the legal filings was a carefully constructed trap with two interlocking parts: the product and the recruitment scheme. Both were sold with aggressive, unsubstantiated claims of life-changing wealth.

First came the Trading Training Services. IML offered various “academies” promising to teach profitable trading strategies. These courses, with names like FRX Academy and DCX Academy, cost consumers hundreds of dollars to sign up and hundreds more in recurring monthly fees.

The marketing was relentless. IML salespeople, often referred to as “mentors,” filled social media with images of luxury cars, private jets, and stacks of cash. They peddled slogans like “copy, paste and profit” and promised that customers could make “money in minutes” with little effort or experience.

Behind the curtain, the value of these services was allegedly nonexistent. The training videos often contained information readily available for free online. Many of the so-called “Master Educators” lacked formal investment training, licenses, or a history of successful trading. One instructor, touted as a “Master Trader,” actually had negative trading results over a three-year period, while another admitted in a private chat, “I actually really suck” at trading.

The second part of the alleged trap was the Business Venture. Shortly after purchasing a training package, customers were pressured to become IBOs by paying a monthly fee. They were told they could earn huge commissions by recruiting new people to buy the training services and join the business venture themselves.

This MLM structure is where the scheme’s financial incentives became clear. An IBO’s income was primarily based on the size of their “downline”—the network of people they recruited. This created a powerful motivation for salespeople to repeat the same deceptive lifestyle and income claims they had fallen for, perpetuating a cycle of recruitment built on false hope.

Timeline of an Alleged Scheme

The legal complaint lays out a timeline of warnings, internal admissions, and continued deception.

DateEvent
May 2016Quebec’s financial regulator takes action against IML and Chris Terry for unlawful securities distribution and targeting a “young, vulnerable clientele.”
Dec. 2017France’s financial markets regulator issues a public warning that IML is “specifically targeting very young people, including high school students.”
June 2018The consumer advocacy group TINA provides IML with over 50 examples of deceptive earnings claims made by the company and its top salespeople.
Sept. 2018The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) files charges against IML for acting as an unregistered Commodity Trading Advisor. IML settles the charges.
Dec. 2019TINA files a complaint against IML with the Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council (DSSRC), citing an additional 200 noncompliant earnings claims.
March 2020CEO Chris Terry tells salespeople during the COVID-19 pandemic, “We have the world’s perfect business. Now with the globe falling apart…”
June 2021Chris Terry texts top leaders, “We’re going to end up getting shut down by the feds. I promise you,” due to the “mortify[ing]… lifestyle claims.”
Oct. 2021The FTC sends IML an official Notice of Penalty Offenses, warning that making deceptive earnings claims violates federal law.
Dec. 2022The FTC sends similar notices directly to top salespeople Alex Morton and Matthew Rosa.
Nov. 2024The company rebrands from IM Mastery Academy to “IYOVIA,” though its services and marketing methods allegedly remain the same.
May 2025The FTC and the State of Nevada file their complaint against IML and its key executives and salespeople.

Regulatory Capture & Loopholes: The Facade of Compliance

In a neoliberal economic system, corporations often treat regulation not as a moral obligation but as a strategic obstacle. They engage in what can be called legal minimalism: doing just enough to create an illusion of compliance while exploiting loopholes and weak enforcement to continue their profitable, harmful behavior. The IML case, as detailed in legal filings, is a masterclass in this approach.

IML created a detailed set of policies and procedures that, on paper, prohibited the very income and lifestyle claims its business model depended on. It instituted a “three strikes and you’re out” policy for salespeople who violated these rules. IM Mastery Academy repeatedly assured regulators and consumer advocates that it was cracking down on deceptive marketing.

This compliance program was allegedly a sham. When compliance staff recommended terminating high-earning salespeople for repeated violations, CEO Chris Terry often overturned their decisions. Top earners who brought in millions of dollars were given more “strikes” and allowed to continue making the same deceptive claims that fueled their success. An outside compliance consultant hired by IML in 2018 found a “culture that is out of control” where corporate executives routinely overrode the compliance team, leaving IM Mastery Academy “vulnerable to both federal and state regulatory violation.”

Even more cynically, IML executives and top salespeople allegedly conspired to help the salesforce evade detection altogether. They instructed IBOs to stop using hashtags like #IMAcademy on social media, making it harder for the company’s own monitoring tools and law enforcement to find their posts. In a text exchange, top salesman Alex Morton endorsed the idea of flying “under the radar.” Others discussed using the “close friends” feature on Instagram to hide lifestyle posts from the public and regulators, with one noting it was a “great” way to show the dream without it being public.

This is the system working as intended. When fines are merely a cost of doing business and enforcement is weak, companies are incentivized to build a facade of compliance while profiting from deception. The law becomes a risk to be managed, not a standard to be met.

Profit-Maximization at All Costs: Rewarding the Deceivers

The logic of late-stage capitalism dictates that profit is the ultimate measure of success. Under this model, ethical considerations become secondary to revenue generation. The legal complaint against IML paints a picture of a company where the most successful deceivers were not punished, but handsomely rewarded.

The compensation flowing to top executives and salespeople was immense. Alex Morton, the company’s highest-paid salesperson, received over $76 million from the scheme. Jason Brown and Matthew Rosa, operating through their company Global Dynasty Network, LLC, received over $33 million. CEO Chris Terry and his wife, CFO Isis Terry, personally received at least $20 million.

These massive payouts were directly tied to the success of a marketing system built on what regulators allege were lies. All of these individuals were aware of the deceptive earnings claims being made throughout their sales network. They not only made such claims themselves but also instructed others on how to do so effectively.

Instead of terminating salespeople who generated massive revenue through deceptive means, IML’s leadership protected them. When a high-earning salesperson faced suspension, executives like Chris Terry would intervene, sometimes even approving the payment of commissions lost during the suspension period. This sent a clear message down the hierarchy: the rules applied to the small fish, but the big earners who fueled the company’s profits were untouchable.

This incentive structure is a hallmark of a system prioritizing profit above all else. When deception is more profitable than integrity, the choice for a company operating under this logic is clear. The financial harm caused to consumers is not a bug; it is a feature of a business model that has monetized false hope.

The Economic Fallout: A Mountain of Losses

The flashy social media posts and promises of weekly incomes rivaling old annual salaries hid a devastating financial reality. While a handful of individuals at the top became multi-millionaires, the overwhelming majority of people who bought into the IML dream lost money. The company’s own data, though presented in a misleading way, confirms this devastating outcome.

IML published an official “Income Disclosure Statement” (IDS) that summarized the earnings of its IBOs. Even this document, which regulators claim inflates earnings by omitting mandatory fees, reveals a financial disaster for the average participant.

A look at the company’s 2022 IDS tells the story:

Annual Earnings Tier% of IBO RepresentativesAverage Annual EarningsMedian Annual Earnings
Over $100,0000.17%$482,780 (avg)N/A
$10,000 to $100,0001.78%$27,708 (avg)N/A
Under $10,00098.05%$945 (avg)N/A
Under $50079.37%$77.51$0

As the table shows, nearly 80% of all IML salespeople made less than $500 a year in gross earnings. For this massive group, the median income was zero, meaning at least half of them made nothing at all. The average earnings of just $77.51 for the year would not even cover a single month of the recurring fees for many of IML’s products.

When mandatory IBO fees are factored in, the picture becomes even bleaker. An FTC analysis included in the complaint shows that for the years 2020-2022, 80.48% of IBOs made under $500, and 45% of all IBOs actually lost money. This does not even account for other business expenses like travel, or more importantly, the money consumers lost trying to trade using IML’s supposedly expert strategies.

This is the economic fallout of a system that extracts wealth from the many to enrich the few. The $1.242 billion in worldwide sales IML generated did not come from successful trading. It came from the pockets of hundreds of thousands of consumers who paid for a dream and were left with nothing but debt and disillusionment.

Community Impact: A Strategy of Targeted Exploitation

Predatory business models thrive by identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities. The legal complaint against IML details a deliberate strategy to target specific communities where financial precarity and the desire for upward mobility are most acute. The company’s marketing zeroed in on young people, particularly Black and Latino consumers, with messages tailored to their aspirations and cultural touchstones.

The targeting was explicit. In a text message exchange about sending a Black speaker, David Imonitie, to a recruiting event, an IML salesperson told Defendant Jason Brown, “Because the demographic is blacks bro[.] They need to see a [Black person] come up[.] Like that’s all they need to see to believe[.] Rich black people[.]” Brown responded, “Lol.” The company then heavily promoted Imonitie as the “highest paid African-American Home Based Business Income Earner in the World,” using his image to sell the dream of overcoming systemic economic barriers.

This strategy extended to social media, where IML salespeople used hashtags like #blackexcellence and #blackwomeninbusiness alongside income claims and images of luxury lifestyles. Marketing materials were created for a “Teen Edition” event featuring Black teenagers, with hashtags like #retiredat19 and #blackwallstreet. The company also targeted Latino consumers with Spanish-language events and social media posts claiming the system was so simple an 11-year-old could master it.

This targeted approach became even more predatory during the COVID-19 pandemic. As fear and economic uncertainty swept the globe, IML allegedly saw a golden opportunity. CEO Chris Terry told his salespeople, “We have the world’s perfect business. Now with the globe falling apart…” Salespeople urged consumers to “turn a pandemic into a BANDemic” (a reference to a “band,” or $1,000) and to invest their government stimulus checks into the IML scheme, promising to “multiply your funds!!” This monetization of public crisis reveals a business ethos stripped of any moral compass, willing to prey on collective anxiety for financial gain.

The PR Machine: Silencing Critics and Faking Praise

When a business model relies on deception, controlling the public narrative is essential. Beyond its misleading advertising, IML and its executives allegedly engaged in tactics designed to manufacture a positive reputation while suppressing negative information. This involved creating fake reviews and attempting to shut down the social media accounts of critics.

According to the complaint, Defendant Jason Brown, a high-level executive, hired a company to post fake positive online reviews about IML. These manufactured endorsements were published under the pseudonym “George Torre.” This tactic serves to dilute the volume of legitimate consumer complaints and create a false impression of satisfaction, misleading prospective customers who are doing their due diligence.

In addition to faking praise, the company allegedly sought to eliminate criticism. Brown also directed a consultant to find ways to disable or shut down the social media accounts of third parties who were critical of IML online. These efforts to de-platform critics represent a direct attempt to silence dissent and control the flow of information, ensuring that the company’s marketing narrative faced as little public challenge as possible. Such actions are not those of a company confident in the value of its product, but of an organization that sees public scrutiny as a direct threat to its revenue.

Wealth Disparity & Corporate Greed: The Alarming Numbers

The extreme wealth accumulated by IML’s inner circle stands in steep contrast to the financial devastation experienced by its customers. The flow of money within the operation illustrates a core feature of predatory capitalism: the aggressive upward transfer of wealth from a broad base of consumers to a tiny elite at the top. The system was not designed for shared prosperity; it was an extraction machine.

While 45% of IML’s salespeople lost money and nearly 80% earned less than $500 a year, the company’s leaders became fabulously wealthy.

  • Alex Morton (Executive Vice President): Received over $76 million.
  • Jason Brown & Matthew Rosa (Top Salespeople): Received over $33 million through their shared company.
  • Christopher and Isis Terry (CEO & CFO): Received at least $20 million.
  • Brandon Boyd (Salesperson & Instructor): Received over $5.8 million.

These figures lay bare the true purpose of the business venture.

The money paid by hundreds of thousands of hopeful consumers for training packages and monthly fees didn’t create a community of successful traders as advertised. Instead, it funded the private jets, luxury cars, and multi-million-dollar lifestyles that were then used in marketing materials to lure the next wave of victims. This is a closed-loop system of wealth extraction, where the spoils of the scheme become the bait for its continuation.

Global Parallels: A Pattern of Predation

The regulatory actions against IML were not confined to the United States. Financial watchdogs across the globe independently identified the same pattern of predatory behavior, particularly the targeting of young and inexperienced consumers. These international actions underscore the systemic nature of the alleged scheme and demonstrate a global consensus that IML’s practices were harmful.

As early as 2016, financial regulators in Quebec, Canada, took action against IML and Chris Terry for, among other things, pursuing an “aggressive advertising campaign directed at a young, vulnerable clientele.” A court ordered the company to cease its activities and block its website to residents of the province.

In 2017, France’s financial markets regulator issued a public warning that IML was “specifically targeting very young people, including high school students.” In 2022, Spanish National Police arrested several IML salespeople for targeting adolescents for recruitment. And in 2023, authorities in Luxembourg issued a warning about IML targeting youth on social media and raided a sales event, arresting recruiters who had been targeting secondary school students. The fact that law enforcement in at least four different countries took action against the company for similar conduct shows that the alleged harm was a feature of IML’s global business model, not an isolated issue.

Corporate Accountability Fails the Public

A key feature of neoliberal capitalism is the erosion of corporate accountability. Fines become a manageable business expense, executives are shielded from personal liability, and companies often continue their harmful practices even after being caught. The history of IML, as laid out in the legal complaint, is a case study in this failure.

The company had been on the radar of U.S. regulators for years. In 2018, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) charged IML for violations of federal law. IML settled the case, paid a penalty, and simply changed its marketing name from iMarketsLive to IM Mastery Academy while continuing its operations.

More damningly, IML and its top leaders allegedly ignored direct warnings from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In October 2021, the FTC sent IML a formal Notice of Penalty Offenses, explicitly stating that making false or unsubstantiated earnings claims is illegal. CEO Chris Terry shared this notice with his top lieutenants, warning them it could lead to tens of millions in fines.

Despite this clear warning from the nation’s top consumer protection agency, the company and its salespeople continued to make the same deceptive claims. The FTC sent additional notices to Alex Morton and Matthew Rosa in December 2022. Even after receiving these warnings, they continued to post images of luxury lifestyles and make implicit promises of wealth. This blatant disregard for federal warnings demonstrates a belief that the potential profits from continuing the scheme outweighed the risks of getting caught—a cynical calculation that is all too common in a weak regulatory environment.

Pathways for Reform & Consumer Advocacy

The IML case is a powerful argument for strengthening the systems meant to protect consumers from corporate predation. When a company can allegedly cause over a billion dollars in harm while ignoring direct warnings from regulators, it is clear the existing guardrails are insufficient. Meaningful reform is necessary to prevent future schemes from flourishing.

First, regulatory enforcement must have sharper teeth. Fines must be large enough to be a true deterrent, not just a cost of doing business. The cycle of a company paying a modest settlement, changing its name, and continuing its practices must be broken.

Second, there must be greater individual accountability for corporate executives. When CEOs and top officers know their company is engaged in illegal practices, they should face personal liability that puts their own wealth at risk. Shielding executives behind the corporate veil creates a moral hazard that encourages reckless behavior.

Finally, consumer education and advocacy are crucial. Predatory schemes like the one alleged in this case thrive on information asymmetry—they know the truth while their victims are sold a fantasy. Supporting independent consumer watchdogs and funding public education campaigns about the dangers of multi-level marketing and “get rich quick” schemes can help inoculate the public against this type of exploitation.

Conclusion: The System Worked as Intended

It is tempting to view the story of International Markets Live as an anomaly—a case of a few bad actors breaking the rules. But to do so would be to miss the point entirely. The legal action here doesn’t describe a system that failed; it describes a system that worked exactly as neoliberal capitalism designs it to.

In an economy that lionizes wealth and prioritizes profit above all else, entities like IML are a predictable result. It created a product with little intrinsic value and sold it with intoxicating promises, extracting recurring fees from hundreds of thousands of people whose primary qualification was hope. It targeted vulnerable communities because they were the most profitable markets. It created a sham compliance program because the appearance of legitimacy is cheaper than actual legitimacy. And its leaders became fantastically wealthy because the system rewards extraction more than it punishes deception.

The harm here is not just financial. It is the corrosion of trust, the exploitation of aspiration, and the reinforcement of a cynical worldview where everything is a transaction and the vulnerable are there to be monetized. The case against IML is an indictment of a system that has repeatedly proven it will not regulate itself.

Frivolous or Serious Lawsuit?

Based on the evidence presented in the 71-page complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission and the State of Nevada, this lawsuit is exceptionally serious. The claims made here are supported by internal communications, financial data from the company itself, examples from international law enforcement actions, and a documented pattern of deceptive conduct spanning many years.

The inclusion of direct quotes from executives admitting they feared regulatory action while continuing their practices provides powerful evidence of knowing and willful deception.

The detailed financial analysis showing the vast majority of participants lost money provides a clear picture of widespread consumer injury. This is not a frivolous case, but a significant legal action addressing what regulators allege is a massive, predatory scheme that caused substantial and foreseeable harm to the public.

FTC I-Markets-ComplaintDownload

Here is a press release on this destructive scandal: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/05/ftc-state-nevada-take-action-against-im-mastery-academy-deceiving-consumers

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