Eddie Kona, identified as a co-founder and owner, promotes investment plans through a Las Vegas company called Profit Connect, promising annual returns as high as 30 percent. The operation offers minimal transparency about its actual management or where investor funds are directed, raising significant concerns for financial regulators.
Profit Connect claims to operate as an artificial intelligence and supercomputer software firm. Its public website, however, contains almost no details regarding the company's ownership or its leadership team. Mr. Kona appears prominently in the company's marketing videos and social media, but he has not disclosed the identities of any other co-founders.
Mr. Kona's prior business activities warrant scrutiny. Before establishing Profit Connect, he marketed an investment program known as iMarketsLive, using Profit Connect branding. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) previously acted against iMarketsLive for operating an unregulated retail foreign exchange scheme. That operation later rebranded itself as IM Mastery in late 2019 and continued to solicit participants. The CFTC has historically pursued enforcement actions against various entities that promise high returns through unregulated forex or crypto trading, particularly those that blend trading claims with recruitment incentives.
The investment products themselves resemble high-yield schemes. Profit Connect sells "Wealth Builder" investment plans, which come with fixed annual returns. For example, a "Youth plan" requires an investment between $500 and $30,000, promising a 20 percent annual return. A broader tier accepts investments from $1,000 up to $1 million, also with a stated 20 percent annual return. A "VIP tier" demands a quarter-million dollars upfront, dangling a 30 percent return. The company even offers a home equity plan, allowing individuals to mortgage their homes to fund their participation in the scheme.
Profit Connect accepts payments through various channels, including bank wire, personal check, cash, and bitcoin. This preference for less traceable payment methods, particularly cash and cryptocurrency, often signals an attempt to avoid standard financial oversight and regulatory reporting requirements. Such methods can make it difficult for authorities to track fund flows or for victims to recover lost money.
The actual financial engine of Profit Connect lies in its multilevel marketing (MLM) structure, detailed within its compensation plan. Affiliates directly recruit new investors and receive a 20 percent commission on the funds those individuals invest. The system then extends into a unilevel compensation plan, which pays cascading commissions down an unlimited chain of recruiters.
This payout structure works by distributing percentages of new investments upstream. An individual who recruits a new investor receives 20 percent of that investor's capital. The person who recruited the first-level recruiter then receives 10 percent of the new investment. The next person up the line receives 5 percent, and this halving continues down the recruitment chain indefinitely. This mathematical progression ensures money flows upward to those at the top of the pyramid, while the base must constantly expand with new capital.
This model is a textbook example of a pyramid scheme, masked with investment jargon. The promised returns do not stem from legitimate business operations or actual investment profits. Instead, they derive almost entirely from new money injected into the system by new recruits. This means the entire scheme becomes unsustainable and collapses when recruitment slows or new investor funds diminish. Without a continuous influx of new participants, the system cannot pay out the promised returns, leading to widespread losses for those at the lower levels.
Regulators, including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and various state securities authorities, have increasingly targeted and shut down operations structured in this manner. Nevada, where Profit Connect is based, has a reputation for relatively easy business formation, which can sometimes attract operations that seek to avoid stricter oversight found in other jurisdictions. Despite these regulatory pressures on similar schemes, Profit Connect continues to operate openly, actively soliciting investments across multiple platforms with minimal apparent regulatory scrutiny.
Potential investors should recognize several critical warning signs. The company's opaque ownership and management structure is a major red flag. Its leader's association with a previously sanctioned operation, iMarketsLive, further compounds these concerns. The promise of unusually high, fixed returns often indicates a high-risk or fraudulent scheme. And the compensation structure, which heavily rewards recruitment over any genuine product or service, points directly to a pyramid model designed to benefit only those at the top.
Profit Connect does not offer a legitimate product or service. It presents an illusion of easy wealth, drawing in new participants to sustain payouts for earlier investors, a cycle that inevitably leads to the financial detriment of most who join. Individuals who believe they have been defrauded can file a complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).