Zeek Rewards...A New Convoluted MLM

An acquaintance is singing the praises of Zeek Rewards, a rather convoluted multilevel marketing scheme that has been hybridized with penny auctions.  (Forgive my cynicism, but all that it needs to be the perfect storm of credulousness would be to include birtherism and UFOs.)  From the website: 

Here's How it Works:The company has created a Retail Profit Pool (RPP) and shares up to 50% of the daily net profits with its Qualified Affiliates*. You can access your Retail Profit Pool report in your ZeekRewards back-office.
When you sell Retail Bids or give away VIP Bids from ZeekRewards you can earn VIP Cash Awards every day for 90 days on the VIP Points you received just for placing ONE FREE AD for Zeekler.com daily and submitting the link to your ad through your ZeekRewards Ad Center in your back office. 
Every time you sell Retail Bids or give away VIP Bids as samples to retail customers through your ZeekRewards back office - those bids earn you points in your ZeekRewards VIP ProfitPoint balance. At the end of each day (7 days a week) the company determines its daily overall revenues and shares up to 50% of it's net profits with its Quaified Affiliates* based on each individuals VIP ProfitPoint Balance.

The head is still spinning trying to make sense of this.  As is typical of these sort of schemes, when you go out looking for negative comments about it, all you find are Zeekers praising it--and so many of them that if there are any negative comments, they are likely to be so far down the Google search results that you won't find them.  One of the few negative remarks I could find was here:

The above has consistently been one of my major criticisms of Zeek Rewards and changing the business model so that bids are actually given away to real customersbefore returns are paid out was suggested on BehindMLM roughly a month ago now.

A month later Zeek Rewards appear to have taken that suggestion on board and yesterday the company put out a press release acknowledging their business model was illegal.

Citing Federal laws, Zeek Rewards state that:

federal law has changed and we have been informed that we are no longer legally allowed to provide customers or leads for purchase.

There seems to be little actual news coverage, although this June 19, 2012 WFMY news report tells us:

The North Carolina Attorney General's office told News 2 they have received a handful of complaints when it comes to Zeekler and their sister site, Zeek Rewards. A court has not yet ruled whether this operation is legal or illegal.