Craig Haywood, based in Gauteng, South Africa, registered the website domain for Easy Cash 4 Ads on October 29, 2016. This scheme operates as a cash gifting model, requiring new participants to pay existing affiliates directly. Haywood is listed as the owner of the operation.
Haywood's online presence, including his Twitter profile, identifies him as a "marketer, author, programmer, speaker, and coach." His social media primarily promotes general internet marketing content. While Easy Cash 4 Ads appears to be his first venture as an owner in the multi-level marketing industry, records show his involvement as an affiliate with Global Domains International dating back to 2005.
Easy Cash 4 Ads offers no retailable products or services to external customers. The only item available for "purchase" is an affiliate membership itself. This structure means all revenue within the system comes exclusively from new participants joining the scheme.
The compensation plan relies on a "2-up" cash gifting model, organized through a unilevel structure. Affiliates directly gift $10 to the person who recruited them. This system mandates that the first two gifting payments received by any new recruit must be "passed up" to their own recruiter.
Under the unilevel compensation structure, an affiliate sits at the top of their team. Every person they personally recruit occupies their first level. If a level 1 affiliate recruits others, those new individuals fall onto level 2 of the original affiliate's team, and so forth, theoretically down an infinite number of levels. The "2-up" rule applies at every stage: the first two $10 payments generated by any new recruit on any level are not kept by that recruit but are passed upwards through the recruiting line.
Joining Easy Cash 4 Ads requires a payment of $17. Of this sum, $7 goes to an administrative fee collected by the scheme's owner. The remaining $10 is immediately gifted to the affiliate who recruited the new member. This setup means a new affiliate must recruit at least three people to begin seeing a return, with the first two payments passed up and the third payment covering their initial $10 gifted amount.
Cash gifting schemes are illegal in many countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service, for example, classifies gifting schemes as illegal pyramid schemes. These operations depend entirely on a continuous influx of new participants, rather than the sale of genuine products or services, to pay off earlier investors. When recruitment inevitably slows, the majority of participants at the bottom of the structure lose their money.
Regulatory bodies worldwide frequently issue warnings against such schemes. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the U.S. and similar consumer protection agencies caution the public about programs that promise returns based solely on recruitment. They highlight that these schemes are inherently unsustainable, designed to benefit only those at the very top.
The Easy Cash 4 Ads website uses common internet marketing templates filled with sales pitches and testimonials, typical of schemes designed to attract new members quickly. Consumers who suspect they have been targeted by or participated in a cash gifting scheme can report it to their national consumer protection agency or the local police.