Fraud & Misuse Policy

1. What counts as fraud or misuse

The following are treated as fraud or misuse of ElevateU, regardless of intent:

• Fake or self-referrals: using disposable, duplicate or fake accounts (including your own alternate accounts) to inflate referral counts, signups or activity;
• Referral farming: referring accounts that are not genuine prospective students, or paying/incentivising signups outside the terms of the referral or ambassador programme;
• Fabricated evidence: submitting false, staged or manipulated proof of a mission, activity or outcome (screenshots, links, files or notes) to an ambassador mission or evidence review;
• Identity or eligibility misrepresentation: falsifying your college, enrolment status, or other eligibility details to join or remain in a programme;
• Reward and leaderboard manipulation: gaming points, badges, leaderboards, competitions or coupon/credit systems through automation, collusion or exploiting a bug rather than genuine use;
• Payment fraud: using stolen or unauthorised payment methods, or filing false chargeback or refund claims; and
• Anything elsethat circumvents the intent of a programme's rules for personal, financial or competitive gain.

2. How we detect it

We combine automated risk signals — for example unusual referral velocity, disposable email addresses, duplicate applications, low activation ratios on referred accounts, evidence submitted in unusual bursts, and prior warnings — with human review before any account-level consequence is applied. Automated signals only ever flag a case for review or auto-clear a clearly low-risk one; suspensions and programme removals are decided or confirmed by a human reviewer.

3. Consequences

As with content moderation, the response depends on the severity and history of the conduct — a single serious case (for example, payment fraud) can result in immediate suspension without going through every earlier step.

• FR-1 — Warning. Recorded on your ambassador membership or account; a pattern of warnings escalates the response to later cases.
• FR-2 — Forfeiture of unpaid rewards. Points, badges or payouts connected to the flagged activity that have not yet been paid out are withheld pending review. Consistent with how all Ambassador Program payouts work, payouts are always processed manually by a human from a reconciled export — nothing is auto-reversed from a bank account or payment instrument.
• FR-3 — Programme suspension.Your ambassador/campus-leader status is suspended (marked "warned" or paused) pending review, or for a defined period following a confirmed violation. Your underlying ElevateU account is not necessarily affected.
• FR-4 — Removal and/or account suspension. Permanent removal from the Ambassador Program for confirmed, serious or repeated fraud, and — where the conduct also breaches our Terms of Service or Moderation Policy — suspension or termination of your ElevateU account under Section 18 of the Terms.
• FR-5 — Referral to authorities. Conduct that is unlawful (for example, payment fraud or identity theft) may be reported to the relevant authorities and, where applicable, to our payment partner, in addition to any of the above.

4. How to appeal

If you were flagged or suspended for fraud or misuse (FR-2 through FR-5 above) and believe it was made in error, you can appeal:

• Appeals must be filed within 14 days of the flag or suspension.
• Sign in and submit your appeal referencing the fraud flag or suspension, together with your reason for disputing it. If you don't know the flag reference, contact contact@marshallridgeconsulting.in and we will look it up for you.
• You may have one open appeal per flag or suspension at a time.
• A staff member reviews the case and records a decision — upheld (the flag/suspension stands) or overturned (it was wrong) — together with a short written reason.
• If overturned, we reinstate your programme status and/or any forfeited rewards that are still outstanding, as applicable.

This is the same appeal mechanism used for moderation actions — see Section 5 of our Moderation Policy for the shared process.

5. Changes to this Policy

We may update this Fraud & Misuse Policy from time to time, for example to add new risk signals or clarify existing ones. Changes apply prospectively from the date they are published; we will revise the "Last updated" date above when we do.

6. Contact

Questions about a fraud or misuse decision, or about this Policy generally, can be sent to contact@marshallridgeconsulting.in.