Marlon Moore, also known as D.J. ASAP, and his wife LaShonda are being sued for allegedly scamming individuals out of tens of millions of dollars via an unlawful pyramid scheme.
The Christian Post reported that in a complaint filed on June 10 in federal court, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed that the Texas couple engaged in fraudulent trade practices in order to defraud their clients. He is attempting to have the couple's company, BINT (Blessings in No Time) Operations LLC, shut down by obtaining an injunction against them.
Approximately 200 consumer complaints have been filed against the couple, who were featured in the reality show "Family or Fiancé," since January 2021, claiming over $700,000 in BINT investments have been lost.
According to several of the complainants, they only decided to invest because they were guaranteed the opportunity to get a complete refund at any point in time.
"Marlon & Lashonda Moore & staff of B.I.N.T, LLC, used deceit, celebrity connections, name dropping & the collective fear, grief & trauma that Americans were experiencing during & after the 2020 Spring/summer riots to scam over 8k Black people out of over $40 million dollars. Blessings In No Time (BINT, LLC), was presented as a "Godly, ALL-Black, socially conscious gifting community" that came about on the tail-end of a lot of this past summer protest," one complainant said.
"They claimed that BINT was completely legal, they repeatedly said that they were not a sou sou or pyramid scheme, they said there is no way to lose money because guarantee," the complainant continued.
CP noted that the couple promised to "bless" and help disadvantaged members of the African American community and receive an eight-fold return of $11,200 if they make an initial investment of $1,400 to $1,425 in BINT and recruited other people to join them.
The couple ran the pyramid advertising business from their home in Prosper, Texas, for nearly a year.
Based on the allegations in the lawsuit, members were required to adhere to a formal condition of membership established by the pair, which prohibited any unfavorable evaluations of BINT on social media and all bad remarks about BINT in any venue, under penalty of losing their membership and all of their privileges.
Because they were preventing current members from speaking out about their scheme, they were able to continue misleading new people into joining their illegal pyramid scheme and raking in more money.
Fearing they'd lose their rights to a refund and other compensation they were owed; many victims were discouraged from using their rights to speak out against the scam and alert others about the unlawful scam perpetrated by the couple.
During a Zoom conference in January 2021, Marlon and LaShonda acknowledged that they will not be able to issue refunds as they had no more funds to do so. They also said that victims do not have a claim to a refund during the same discussion. A large number of refund requests have gone ignored.
The fear of losing their refund rights was no longer adequate to deter victims from speaking up after it became apparent that the couple would not issue refunds anymore. Numerous victims have now established a public website, https://www.bintscam.com/, in order to expose the Moores' fraudulent scheme despite threats of retribution against anyone who speak out.
