Judge Orders Zaken Corporation to Pay 25 Million for Work-at-Home Scam

U.S. District Court judge ordered The Zaken Corp. and company president, Tiran Zaken, to pay $25 million after finding that the company made false and misleading statements to consumers regarding their expected earning capacity after purchasing the defendant’s QuikSell program. Out of the 110,000 consumers that purchased the QuikSell program, the court found that “more than 99.8 percent never earned any commission whatsover.” In response to this finding, the court ordered the defendants to pay $25,406,781 to compensate consumers for their injury.

The Zaken Corp. deceived consumers into purchasing a “Wealth Building Home Business Plan” called QuikSell. After paying the initial $148, consumers would become Associates of QuikSell Liquidations and received a manual with instructions on how to locate businesses with excess inventory. In theory, purchasers of the program were supposed to identify and notify Zaken after finding businesses that were interested in selling their excess inventory. Then Zaken would find buyers for the inventory and if the corporation was successful in negotiating a sale, they would give the associate, a commission equal to half of the profit of sale.

The Zaken Corp. mislead customers’ expectation by stating that for just two to four hours a week, purchasers of the program could expect to earn between $3,000 and $6,000. Further the corporation claimed that “the average commission check . . . will be approximately $4,280” when in actuality less than one percent of the consumers ever earned any income at all. After purchasing the program, consumers received additional advertisements to purchase “tools” that ranged from hundreds to thousands of dollars. The Zaken Corp. told customers that if they were “serious about this business and really wanted to make the kind of money that others made” that they would need to make an additional investment of $2,300. After consumers paid the additional $2,300, they were given a directory that consisted of “largely outdated numbers of companies who were out of business.”

After learning this information, the court found that The Zaken Corp. and the company’s president made false claims about consumers’ earning potential in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Business Opportunity Rule which requires sellers of business opportunities to provide truthful and specific information to consumers prior to their purchase. In addition to ordering the defendants to pay $25 million, the court granted a permanent injunction which effectively bans The Zaken Corp. and Tiran Zaken from ever advertising or selling any work-at-home opportunities again.

If you have been a victim to online business schemes, you may be entitled to relief. Please contact Khorrami Boucher, LLP for a confidential consultation.