You might be wondering what IM Academy is and depending on who you ask you’ll get a range of different answers. On the surface IM academy is a Forex trading software and educational site meant to help its users learn the skill of Forex trading. As you first come across Forex trading most likely you will see advertisements on social media. There will be pictures of the profits these people are making with captions like ¨earn money while your sleeping!¨, ¨why waste your time on a 9-5 getting minimum wage when you could become one of the top earners¨ , ¨take this opportunity while you can, don’t miss your chance!¨ and ¨all you need to do is copy and paste to make money- it’s that simple¨ Notice how I say on the surface. The site definitely balances on the fence of a legitimate trading software and a multi level marketing business.  

What is Forex? Is it legit? 

Before I go into whether or not it’s a scam, I need to explain Forex and Multi-Level Marketing. Many people think that Forex itself is a scam or pyramid scheme, and don’t bother looking into it. I’m here to clarify for all of these people. Forex is a legitimate trading market where the world’s currencies are traded on a digital platform. Essentially, trading with foreign exchange is to predict changes between two international currencies (for example: Euro to Japanese yen or US dollar to Canadian dollar). To do this, you’ll either predict if the graph will be going up or down in a specified time period. Depending on which currency has a stronger value by the time your trade expires you will either make or lose the money you put into it. It is possible to find success and make money with the Foreign Exchange Market (if you put time, work and lots of research into it), but it’s very difficult and takes years to master. Currencies don’t fluctuate as widely as stocks nor do they have CEO’s or quarterly earnings calls so that shareholders can judge their performance. 

Where it gets even more complicated is that, just like the Stock Market, Real Estate and just about any other legitimate investment, many pyramid schemes and scams have been invented around the Forex market. One of the main ways to tell if you are being scammed is to remember ¨if it seems too good to be true then it probably is.¨ IM Academy is just one example of these types of businesses that sell an idea of getting rich quick by trading and usually doesn’t live up to that.

What is MLM? (Multi-Level Marketing)

MLM companies sell their products or services through person-to-person sales. That means you’re selling directly to other people. If you join an MLM program, the company may refer to you as an independent “distributor”, “participant” or “contractor”. IM academy basically sells an idea: an idea of getting rich quick and not having to work to be successful. 

IM Academy promises you a bundle of learning resources as well as online mentorship through webinars and livestreams, equipping you with the “skill sets to be in control of your financial success.”  And this can be very enticing as the enrollment fee of $324.94 along with a monthly fee of $274.95 which to a new trader that is already taking a jump into a risky business is not ideal. And to convince you that it is worth it to pay all of this money for some helpful information that can be found on the internet for free, they sell an idea. Don’t get me wrong though, there are lessons with experienced traders trying to teach you things and some useful tools to use while trading. 

But the main way to make money through this company is by inviting people into it. With every 2 people you invite to learn under you, your monthly fee is waived in IM Academy, so as long as they are continually learning under you, you don’t have to pay for the subscription. If one of your recruits leaves, then you will have to pay again until you can find a replacement. Adding to this; with every 3 recruits, you level up in the scheme ¨become platinum 500!¨ ¨only 6 more people until I get to chairman 60!¨ As you keep leveling up, you get paid more by the company and since there is only a certain amount of space near the top of a pyramid, only the top earners, top marketers and the people that are preaching to you about finding success and making thousands of dollars a month are the only ones actually able to make a comfortable living in this market (keep in mind that they are getting thousands of dollars from marketing (recruiting), so someone could be promising success without even making that much money from the actual Foreign exchange aspect). I dug and found some data from 2018 and found that 95% of their users made less than $300. The top 5% did well, however…

Getting back to their marketing strategies, not only do they preach about being able to make money by pressing a button or copy and pasting, once you’re actually in the business they contradict themselves, which is better than just saying you’ll make money in minutes the whole time I guess, but once you start trading they will tell you it takes hard work dedication and positivity in order to be successful, and that you can’t expect to make money immediately. Well that’s what you told me, isn’t it? Not only this but if you lose half your money or get frustrated with the business in general (usually because they’re not that helpful and mostly just talk about recruiting) they will turn it all back on you. They will say that it’s up to you to be dedicated and to take this seriously, and that you shouldn’t be missing all of those calls (again, all about recruiting) that you only missed because you need an actual substantial job to make up for everything you’re losing in this process due to their empty promises and barely up to par information and tools on trading. 

Why does this matter? 

You may be wondering why this matters or what is bad about being a part of a business like this, so ill give you some background. The Founder and CEO of IM Academy is a man by the name of Chistopher Terry. You’d think the founder of a trading software company would be an experienced investment trader with a long history of finance and investing, right? 

Nope, in fact Chistopher Terry worked in construction until he began his long shady past in multi-level marketing companies. In fact IM Mastery Academy is just a copy of his former company: iMarketsLive. Now when I say copy, I mean copy. It is the exact copy of his former company only with new products. In some of the videos and in the information on the website, the company still refers to itself as IML.  iMarketsLive was the same as IM Academy; officially an MLM but the only way to make money was through recruiting. It was an outright pyramid scheme. And to avoid the lawsuit that was soon to come he changed the name of the company to IM Mastery Academy and changed his strategy as well by adding products to the company: courses on how to trade with currencies-Forex. They say that this combination of a trading platform and an MLM company works because of a rule that an IMMA representative has to have more than 50% of the sales/commission from the product retail before they can recruit. This gives a legitimate aspect to IMMA and keeps the company (barely) within the boundaries of an MLM business. This rule seems very fair and would make sense, considering the representatives would need to at least be seeing some success and have made progress in this business before recruiting people into it. So is IM Academy using this rule for recruiting people? Nope.  

Since I have an inside scoop on IM Academy, I’ve seen the whole recruitment process and seen how quickly they pressure recruitment on you. As soon as you sign up for IM academy and start participating on the live calls that are meant to give useful information on trading and make it so everyone can work together, they will begin teaching you how to recruit and honestly the majority of the meetings that they preach as being important information on trading end up being long rants on how to get people into the company, how to market, and what to say to get people to feel like they’ll be missing out on a big opportunity if they don’t join. They train you on what to say, how to be positive (yes they really do) and basically just how to be a salesperson. 

So, is it a Pyramid Scheme or a Scam?

As you can see, it’s a bit more complicated than to give a simple yes or no answer. There are some legit aspects, as IM Academy has a product to sell, and gives some useful information and tools to learn how to trade with Forex. But there are many other factors to consider; do you want to be a salesperson and to be taught mostly how to lure people into the business? Do you want to have to pay money for only some useful tools while being force fed contradictions and a positive attitude, only to be blamed for not trying hard enough if the promises they fed to you end up being empty?  MLM businesses like this are not pyramid schemes, although they do have many qualities of them, and only the the people at the top will find success only off of the market. They are not bad if you don’t mind advertising and want to mainly market instead of focussing on trading. But if you want to become a skilled trader and not be bothered and pressured into marketing instead of just trading, I would suggest putting time, effort and tons of research into it to find the best possible trading software, brokers and learning platforms. Don’t go somewhere where they tell you trading will be easy and effortless, or where you can copy and paste to earn money. Real traders put work into it, and that’s what it takes to get skilled.