Prosperity.com warns parties behind ‘smear campaign’

Website marketing firm Prosperity.com has challenged its competitors and those engaged in a "smear campaign" against the company that it will not hesitate to prosecute them as the barrage of negative publicity continues to take its toll on the company's operations.

In a statement, Pros-perity.com's legal counsel Chan Robles & Associates said they will pursue legal proceedings against those engaged in the "illegal act of destroying, vilifying, defaming and maligning the good name and reputation" of the company, its owners, officers, and staff.

The law firm said the slew of black propaganda against Prosperity could have stemmed from the company's huge success in its Internet-based sales and marketing operations, which have spawned several other businesses of similar nature.

The company claims it now has about 50,000 subscribers or website owners since starting the business late last year.

Prosperity's lawyers argued that contrary to rumors being spread around, the company is not engaged in the sale of securities or investment contracts. Instead, it is marketing Internet-based products (website/webspace) for the personal or business use of its owners, the sale of which are not prohibited by law.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued a cease-and-desist order (CDO) against Prosperity.com last January for the unauthorized and unlicensed sale of the websites, which the corporate regulator deemed is an investment contract.

Prosperity, however, was able to obtain a 60-day temporary restraining order (TRO) from the Court of Appeals.

Prosperity's legal counsel also stressed that the company is not engaged in the illegal pyramid scheme for the simple reason that its clients derive profit from sale transactions, not from the recruitment of other subscribers as in the case of the pyramiding trade.

Prosperity hosts and designs 15 megabyte web sites or spaces for every subscriber who pays $294 for its exclusive use. If these clients decide to market the web sites on top of their own sites, Prosperity pays them commission after the sale, not upon recruitment.

In this system, Prosperity said the upline or the person on top does not necessarily earn the most money since a downline can earn more. Such is not the case for a pyramiding company where only uplines earn and the downlines are left to fend for themselves.