Stefan Dessalines is peddling a familiar con: OPM Wealth promises six-figure earnings in 12 weeks, a scheme that requires participants to recruit others and pay upfront. This model, devoid of actual products or retail sales, pays 60% commission on a new recruit and 10% on their recruit, two levels deep.
The core of the OPM Wealth operation involves instructing members to obtain personal loans, often by artificially inflating credit scores, and then using these borrowed funds to purchase membership packages. Crucially, participants are advised to misrepresent the purpose of these loans to financial institutions, effectively engaging in credit fraud to fund their entry into the scheme.
Dessalines, the venture's public face, operates from behind the scenes in his own promotional materials. Little is publicly known about his background beyond a history of unsuccessful digital marketing ventures. A May 2021 video he produced, titled "OPM Video How It Works," discussing business categories like dating, weight loss, and finance, was removed from YouTube by March.
Transactions within OPM Wealth are exclusively handled in bitcoin, a cryptocurrency favored by those seeking to evade regulatory oversight. This choice of currency is typical for operations attempting to distance themselves from traditional financial systems.
The scheme's lack of originality is striking; it closely mirrors defunct operations like Digital Altitude and MOBE, with the addition of blockchain technology. The promises, the sales tactics emphasizing third-party closers, and the directive to secure loans all echo previous fraudulent enterprises that bilked thousands of people out of millions collectively before their collapse.
Regulatory bodies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) eventually intervene in such schemes, though this can take years. By the time enforcement actions occur, the architects often succeed in moving funds and initiating new ventures. Dessalines may or may not face legal repercussions. What remains certain is that most individuals who join at lower membership tiers will lose their initial investment and incur debt from the loans taken to participate.
OPM Wealth will continue to operate until its recruitment base can no longer sustain payouts. This cyclical failure is an inherent characteristic of pyramid schemes, a pattern that has repeated across numerous similar operations.