FTC Sues Digital Altitude, Aspire, et al For Over $14 Million: Michael Force Forced To Shut Down?

The time has come and I’m so happy to hear of this news!  The FTC is suing Digital Altitude/Aspire, it’s owner Michael Force, plus all related parties, for their business coaching scheme.  The suit was filed Jan. 29, 2018 in California federal court and the FTC issued a press release on Feb 8, 2018.

The Federal Trade Commission is suing Digital Altitude/Aspire for violating the FTC Act, taking over $14 million from consumers who were seeking to start their own online business with their digital marketing system.

The defendants’ operation misled tons of consumers by making them think they will be making a substantial income by using grossly exaggerated marketing tactics like making “six figures in 90 days or less”.

 

 

 

QUICK SUMMARY

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There are many more details I will go over below, but I’ve been telling you all not to join Digital Altitude/Aspire for quite some time now as they are nothing more than a bunch of people that tell lies to make their money.

The most obvious thing to me and what I figured out was that their coaching system was nothing more than some sleazy sales system to make you spend money.

It always sounded great that you were going to get our own millionaire coach and a sales team to close sales for you but they are one of the same!

Your coach was your sponsor’s sales team, and your referral’s coach was your sales team.

It’s confirmed in the suit as follows:

These “coaches” are in fact salespeople for Defendants who are paid on commission to sell Digital Altitude memberships. They are not required to have any business coaching qualifications. Indeed, Digital Altitude encourages consumers to use its “sales team” to close sales for them, but many consumers do not realize the “sales team” and the “coaching” staff are one and the same—that their sales tactic is to play the role of “coach.”

No one is actually being coached by any millionaires and no one is really making any six figures or making that in 90 days or less.

 

 

FTC’s complaint states that most of Digital Altitude/Aspire’s customers never made any significant amounts of money and some customers even giving them as much as over $50,000.

I’m not surprised one bit and glad FTC is finally taking action and shutting down this scheme.

The defendants list is long and consists of the following:

• Digital Altitude LLC
• Digital Altitude Limited
• Aspire Processing LLC
• Aspire Processing Limited
• Aspire Ventures Ltd
• Disc Enterprises Inc.
• RISE Systems & Enterprise LLC (Utah)
• RISE Systems & Enterprise LLC (Nevada)
• Soar International Limited Liability Company
• The Upside LLC
• Thermography for Life LLX, dab Living Exceptionally Inc.
• Michael Force
• Mary Dee
• Morgan Johnson
• Alan Moore
• Sean Brown

Many of the companies on this list were created to apply for more merchant accounts since they were being shut down by merchants multiple times for the amount of chargebacks they had.

These guys still continued on by using new companies and even using their personal names to apply for merchant accounts.

This just all show the extent they will go to continue to scam innocent people who’s really wanting to learn how to make money online.

 

 

If You Don’t Want To Waste Anymore Time On Scams,
See My #1 Recommended Way of Making Money Online:

 

 

HOW THE DIGITAL ALTITUDE / ASPIRE SCAM WORKED

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Digital Altitude is the company that produces the Aspire program and the Aspire program is the one that is often being promoted.

Their Aspire program was often promoted by email marketing and many other ways as per FTC’s press release:

The defendants promoted their scheme via webpages and social media platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, and offered their marketing materials for consumers to use in posting their own ads touting the scheme.

How they promoted their program was often unethical by using different branded names to promote a system that’s supposed to make people loads of money but most of the time the actual system of Aspire was never mentioned.

 

Examples of Aspire Being Promoted Under Different Names:

 

They would promote Aspire as different systems that runs 100% on autopilot, everything done for you basically, including giving you a millionaire coach and your personal sales team to close sales, and using their system would make them a lot of money very quickly.

In none of their marketing efforts do they ever disclose to their potential customers that there are significant costs to their program that is required before they can start making any of the commissions they boast about in their sales videos.

Instead, you’re led to believe you only have to work 30 minutes a day, get a magical done-for-you system, for a small price of $37 or $47, sometimes even try for $1 or free for 14 trial days.

Little do all these people know what’s in the works for them after that initial payment.

 

How They Get You

After you join, you will go through some training but you won’t be able to get far into the training without needing to get on the phone to talk to your “coach”.

Your coach in reality is never a real coach that has made their own six figure online business but some sales person trying to make you spend money and acts as your sponsor’s (the person that got you to join) sales team.

In the Aspire program, you need to join membership levels and buy high ticket programs to be able to make any money with their system – a little fact that nobody gets to know about before they join unless they did some research and see a review like mine.

They call this the “licensing rights” model while traditional affiliate marketing model doesn’t require this and this is what I called them on when I first reviewed them.

Here are the different membership levels:

1. $47/month
2. $97/month

Here are the high ticket packages:

1. Base – $597
2. Rise – $1,997
3. Ascend – $9,997
4. Peak – $16,997
5. Apex – $29,997

 

The way this worked is that if you haven’t bought into a level or package, you can’t make money from their system.

So if you don’t want to miss any commissions, one must invest $97/month plus over $59K!

But once they have your money, where’s the coach?  Bye bye coach!

That is why this FTC suit was filed because most people who have paid these outrageous fee never make the kind of money that they were advertised to:

Defendants extract steep fees for membership, but the vast majority of consumers who pay Defendants never earn substantial income, much less the claimed “six figures.”

 

Furthermore, in the suit, FTC also cited:

Defendants also tell consumers, for example, that Digital Altitude salespeople will “do all the work” for the consumer to generate sales, which will yield commissions—the consumer’s anticipated income. This is not the case. Instead, the consumer is responsible for advertising, generating internet traffic, and bringing new consumers to Digital Altitude. For many consumers, even doing all of this yields few if any sales, and little or no income.

 

I have always brought up this point in my reviews of fake systems that actually promote Aspire, the people who join this will actually have the hardest job of this whole “done-for-you” system, the recruiting.

You would need to do massive recruiting to find the very few who could also have thousands of dollars to put into this system and in doing so, you’ll be spending even more money, in the thousands, to promote such a system.

 

 

LESSONS LEARNED

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Will Michael Force strike again with a new program after this suit is over?

Who knows, but I hope he’s learned his lesson and will not be misleading and deceiving people again to make his money.

The other lesson to learn is on you, people who are looking for opportunities to make money online.  There are many other scams out there and FTC can only go after one at a time.

You need to learn that:

• Making money online takes time.
• Making money online takes real hard work, not 30 mins a day but more like 20 hours a week or more if you’re serious.
• You don’t have to pay money thousands of dollars to make thousands of dollars.
• There are no magical systems out there that will just dump cash into your bank account with a click of a button (or a few buttons).

If you can learn those lessons, you will be able to get away from at least half the scams that are out there because they usually lure you with quick easy money which doesn’t exist online.

There are definitely ways to making money online but it depends on what you want to do.

I’ve tried many things like 2 handmade ecommerce shops, social media influencer, PTC sites, but I always have liked affiliate marketing because the ease of it and barrier to entry is still very much wide open because you can build this business with any topic you’d like.

If you haven’t checked out what I do and what I’ve used to learn everything I’ve built, you can read my free guide here:

 

As I hate being misled or deceived, you won’t be finding any of that in my free guide, just honest information about what I’ve done and what worked and what didn’t.

Nothing is left out and you’ll see the training I used to help me get started that I still use today because of all the help I get with it.

I’m also there to help you as well so that you don’t have to worry about not being able to ask questions, in fact, you’ll be able to ask questions to a community of people.

I’ve been there since Sep ’16, and haven’t left because it’s really a resourceful community to be in as well as always learning something new there.

So if you’re ready to build a real online business and not be side tracked by shiny objects like Aspire that lie about making tons of money in the next 90 days, you’re welcome to join me and work hard together.

GET MY FREE GUIDE NOW!

 

If you have any questions or thoughts regarding FTC suing Digital Altitude, Aspire, & Michael Force, or anything else, please do not hesitate to leave me a comment below. I always reply to my readers! 🙂

 

Let’s make money online!