$1.2 Billion Since 2018: Inside the Forex Trading 'Academy' That Sold Lifestyle, Not Trading Skill

Three defendants involved in a sprawling investment training and multi-level-marketing scheme most recently known as IYOVIA — but branded over the years as IM Mastery Academy, iMarketsLive, and IM Academy — have agreed to pay $2.5 million to settle allegations that the operation used false or baseless earnings claims to persuade people to pay for financial training programs and a recruitment-driven business venture.DOCUMENTED

The joint state-federal complaint alleges the scheme has caused more than $1.2 billion in consumer harm since 2018, targeting young people in particular through social media posts showcasing luxury lifestyles supposedly funded by forex trading profits and recruitment commissions.DOCUMENTED

Trading education as a front for recruitment

According to the complaint, the operation promised participants the opportunity to profit both through forex and cryptocurrency trading education and through commissions earned by recruiting new members into the same program.DOCUMENTED In practice, the complaint alleges the business relied on exaggerated or baseless income claims, with few consumers actually making meaningful money from either the trading education or the recruitment structure — a pattern consistent with the mechanics of a multi-level-marketing scheme, where most participant income depends on recruiting new members rather than any external product or service.REVIEWED

Marketing specifically targeted young adults through social media, using imagery of expensive cars, luxury travel, and lavish spending presented as the natural result of successful trading and recruitment income — imagery that, according to the complaint, did not reflect the actual experience of the large majority of people who paid to join.DOCUMENTED

Coaching people to evade detection

Among the additional defendants who later settled, Alex Morton — the operation's executive vice president of sales — was accused of advising top salespeople on how to post deceptive earnings claims online in ways specifically designed to evade both the company's own compliance program and law enforcement scrutiny.DOCUMENTED Brandon Boyd, a salesman who earned nearly $6 million from the scheme, was featured in training videos instructing others how to recruit new members and was marketed as a "Master Instructor" despite having no trading expertise, investment industry licenses, or accreditation of any kind.DOCUMENTED

How the case unfolded across multiple settlements

The case against IM Mastery Academy's various brand names and individual defendants resolved in stages rather than all at once. The August 2025 settlement with Global Dynasty Network, Jason Brown, and Matthew Rosa imposed a $36 million judgment, suspended after payment of $2.5 million unless the defendants are found to have misrepresented their finances.DOCUMENTED That settlement permanently bars the defendants from making earnings representations without written evidence that such results are typical, and from violating telemarketing rules related to earning potential.DOCUMENTED

The following month, Morton and Boyd settled separately for a combined $10.5 million, with Morton's $76.2 million judgment suspended after payment of $10 million and a permanent ban from any multi-level marketing of trading-training services.DOCUMENTED By May 2026, regulators secured settlements with the operation's ringleaders, Chris and Isis Terry, along with several remaining defendants, requiring surrender of assets valued at nearly $90 million.DOCUMENTED

A salesman who earned nearly $6 million from the scheme was marketed as a "Master Instructor" despite having no trading licenses, accreditation, or investment expertise of any kind.

Why the scale kept growing across the case

The operation's willingness to rebrand — from iMarketsLive to IM Mastery Academy, IM Academy, and finally IYOVIA — while continuing substantially the same business model illustrates a recurring pattern in large-scale MLM enforcement: a name change alone neither undoes existing consumer harm nor typically changes the underlying compensation structure driving that harm.REVIEWED Because the case involved so many individual defendants across different levels of the organization — corporate entities, executives, and individual salespeople — the eventual full accounting of consumer harm and asset recovery took years to assemble, with each successive settlement adding another piece to the total picture regulators pursued.REVIEWED

How the recruitment structure obscured the real numbers

A defining feature of multi-level-marketing schemes built around financial training is that a small number of early, highly visible participants can generate genuinely large incomes — often through recruitment commissions rather than actual trading success — creating social-media-ready success stories that then get used to recruit the much larger base of participants who never come close to matching those results.REVIEWED Complaint materials describing Brandon Boyd's nearly $6 million in earnings, despite having no trading credentials, illustrate exactly this dynamic: his income came predominantly from his position within the recruitment hierarchy, not from any demonstrated trading expertise the "Master Instructor" title implied he possessed.REVIEWED

For consumers evaluating any investment-training program that combines paid education with a recruitment-based compensation structure, the case underscores a specific red flag: if the people showcased as successful earners derive most of their income from recruiting new members rather than from the underlying skill being taught, the program's central promise — that the training itself produces the wealth shown in the marketing — is unlikely to hold up under scrutiny.REVIEWED

The near-decade span the scheme operated under various names before facing a fully resolved enforcement action — from a 2018 starting point to settlements still concluding in 2026 — also illustrates how long a large, well-funded MLM operation can continue generating new consumer harm while regulatory investigation and litigation slowly works through each layer of the organization's leadership and financial structure.REVIEWED By the time the last defendants settled, an entirely new generation of young consumers had likely been exposed to the same recruiting pitch that first drew scrutiny years earlier.REVIEWED

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