Public records from Michigan show that Chad Eugene Willis is a convicted felon with an associated financial-services prohibition order, recorded restitution obligations, and warrant-status indicators that remain directly relevant to any risk, KYC, vendor, sponsor, investor or media due-diligence assessment.

• Michigan OTIS and court files confirm three felony convictions (two counts of Intent to Pass False Title and one count of False Pretences – $1,000 to $20,000) arising from conduct on 09 January 2001, sentenced on 01 June 2005.
• A Lifetime Prohibition Order issued by the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS Order #06-4287) permanently bars Willis from specified insurance / financial-services activity in that jurisdiction. This order remains in force.
• Court financial ledgers record outstanding restitution obligations originally totalling approximately USD $188,000. With statutory interest accruing over more than twenty years, the realistic restitution exposure is now materially higher; the precise current balance remains subject to custodian confirmation.
• Warrant-status indicators relating to the underlying felony matter, unpaid restitution, probation / supervision history, or enforcement activity have appeared in relevant public-record and law-enforcement contexts. The archive treats the active-warrant question as a high-priority unresolved verification issue, not a casual allegation.
• The issue is strengthened by the surrounding pattern: unresolved restitution indicators, a standing financial-services prohibition, long-term Mexico / Latin America operating patterns, and no apparent public disclosure of these adverse records in Plus Brand / AGUA Plus promotional, investor, sponsorship, licensing, or founder-profile materials.
• On 29 May 2026, further public-record verification requests were issued or prepared for the relevant Michigan / Oakland County custodians, including warrant-status, probation / absconder / fugitive, restitution-enforcement, and current restitution-balance issues linked to Oakland County Circuit Court case no. 04-197988-FH.

Practical point: taken together, the felony history, lifetime prohibition, unresolved restitution indicators, warrant-status indicators and non-disclosure pattern are material facts. Any regulator, sponsor, retailer, marketplace, payment partner, investor, journalist or compliance team reviewing Chad Eugene Willis or entities he controls should treat these issues as active due-diligence triggers pending direct agency confirmation.

Public records from Michigan indicate prior felony conviction(s) and a regulatory prohibition relating to financial services. Key references include:

• Oakland County, Michigan criminal court file 04-197988-FH (felony matter – “uttering & publishing”).
• Michigan DIFS Order of Prohibition #06-4287, issued July 2006, permanently prohibiting involvement in specified insurance/financial activities in that jurisdiction.

On 20 November 2025, the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services formally responded to FOIA Request #20477, providing an official copy of Order of Prohibition #06-4287 and confirming that any related examination or investigation records are confidential by statute and may only be disclosed to the Attorney General, regulatory agencies, law-enforcement officials, the courts, or in connection with an enforcement action. This confirms both the ongoing legal force of the order and the seriousness with which the underlying conduct has been treated by regulators.

Certified documents are preserved in the Evidence Vault; redacted versions are available for public viewing, with full copies reserved for law enforcement, regulators, and legal counsel.

Across the last ~15 years, publicly available material and first-hand communications suggest that Chad Eugene Willis has predominantly operated from Mexico / Latin America while presenting himself as the driving force behind U.S.–facing businesses, including Plus Brand / AGUA Plus.

If he is a U.S. person for tax purposes (citizen or green-card holder) and effectively controls or materially benefits from U.S.–source income, U.S.–domiciled entities, or intellectual property, then his long-term offshore operating pattern raises obvious questions for IRS reporting, disclosure, and enforcement. Those questions become more acute when combined with:

• a felony history and financial-services prohibition in Michigan;
• apparent avoidance of U.S. physical presence over many years;
• complex, multi-jurisdictional entity structures and cross-border flows; and
• ongoing investment-style and licensing schemes routed through U.S.-branded ventures.

This site does not assert tax evasion as an established fact; it flags a clear IRS-relevant risk pattern. A structured brief, including timeline, entities, and cash-flow narratives, is being prepared for potential submission to IRS Criminal Investigation and aligned agencies where appropriate.

Beyond financial conduct and sponsorship narratives, a critical pattern has emerged within the product and technology claims themselves. AGUA Plus / Plus Brand has promoted its water, filtration system, and All-Scratch!® technology using patent, global-protection, safety, health, and technical-performance language that requires careful verification against primary patent-office records, regulatory evidence, laboratory data, and independent documentation. These representations form part of the brand’s credibility architecture used in retail, sponsorship, investor-facing, and licensing contexts.

Public-facing materials from AGUA Plus / Plus Brand have described All-Scratch!® using escalating patent and global-protection language, including:

• “Patent-pending” or application-stage language in earlier promotional material.
• “Patented All-Scratch!® Technology” in later advertising, website copy, sponsorship, and partner-facing material.
• Patent-issued, published, protected, or globally protected language in relation to the United States, Europe, Mexico, India, and PCT-linked jurisdictions.
• “Protected across 150+ countries” or equivalent PCT / global-IP phrasing used to support licensing, retail, sponsorship, and investor-facing credibility claims.

29 May 2026 escalation: a clarification request was sent to Clark Hill PLC concerning its public statement that Clark Hill IP attorneys assisted Plus Brand Industries with “patent protection and published status in several markets globally”, and concerning whether broader Plus Brand / AGUA Plus public claims accurately reflect the actual patent-office record, PCT status, national / regional phase status, grant status, ownership, enforceability and claim scope. Status: response pending.

Verification issue:

• The issue is no longer simply whether any patent-related filing exists. The issue is whether Plus Brand / AGUA Plus public claims accurately describe the actual legal status, jurisdiction, ownership, grant status, application status, claim scope, enforceability, and commercial relevance of any patent, patent application, PCT filing, or trademark.
• A PCT filing can preserve or support a pathway to seek patent protection in multiple jurisdictions, but it does not itself create a single enforceable patent across 150+ countries. Patent rights must be examined and granted by national or regional patent offices.
• Trademark protection for names or brand marks, including marks such as ALL-SCRATCH!®, is not the same thing as patent protection over a technical invention. Trademark records protect branding; patent records must separately establish the technical invention, owner / assignee, claims, jurisdiction, status, and grant scope.
• Any public claim of “patented”, “globally patented”, “protected across 150+ countries”, or equivalent wording should be verified by patent number, application number, jurisdiction, filing date, publication date, grant date, assignee, claim scope, national-phase status, and current enforceability.
• Where public materials use patent or PCT language without clearly separating granted patents, published applications, pending applications, PCT filings, trademarks, and marketing language, the representation creates a material due-diligence issue for investors, sponsors, retailers, distributors, licensees, and regulators.

Status: Patent / IP Claims Require Primary-Record Verification — Plus Brand / AGUA Plus patent and global-protection language should not be accepted at marketing-copy level. The public-interest question is whether the actual patent-office records support the scope, wording, jurisdictional reach, ownership, and commercial claims being used in public, investor-facing, sponsorship, retail, and licensing contexts.

AGUA Plus markets its bottled water using a series of technical-sounding process claims designed to imply superior purification, scientific differentiation and proprietary advantages.

• “7-step purification system” (no system description, lab data or certification provided).
• “Ultra-purified alkaline water at pH 9+” (no independent analysis published).
• “Unique proprietary water-processing system” without supporting technical documentation.
• Promotional statements implying the water is structured or enhanced by methods that resemble scientific terminology without scientific basis.

Verification:

• No third-party lab certifications, chemical analysis reports or safety documentation have been published.
• No evidence of regulatory approvals or independent validation of the claimed process.
• No documentation supporting the 7-stage process has ever been provided despite direct requests.

Status: Unsubstantiated Technical Claims — no verifiable evidence for the purification system or proprietary processing methods.

AGUA Plus and Plus Brand have made a number of claims that imply health and safety benefits which would normally require regulatory-grade validation or third-party scientific evidence.

• “All-natural and non-toxic scratch ink” safe even if accidentally ingested. No toxicology data or certification is provided.
• Positioning of AGUA Plus as a superior health hydration product with no substantiating documentation.
• Promotional narratives implying that the product helps reduce “hygiene risks” or “health threats” related to bottle sharing — without providing epidemiological or safety evidence.

Verification:

• No publicly available toxicology analysis or material-safety data for All-Scratch ink.
• No medical, chemical, or regulatory evidence supporting the claimed health advantages.
• No disclosures meeting standard health-claim compliance requirements.

Status: Unverified Health Claims — the brand provides no supporting scientific or regulatory evidence.

A review of AGUA Plus and Plus Brand promotional history shows a progressive escalation in claims over several years, including:

• “Patent-pending” → “Patented” → “Protected across 150+ jurisdictions”.
• Filtration claims increasing in complexity without evidence.
• Health claims shifting from minor benefits to sweeping safety statements.
• Repeated removal, alteration, and reinstatement of claims in response to scrutiny.

This pattern of shifting representations is consistent with reputational positioning strategies, not with a stable, verifiable technology or legitimately patented product suite.

Overall Status: High-Risk Product Misrepresentation Pattern — across patents, technology, filtration, scientific claims and safety assertions.

In addition to historic criminal and regulatory actions, public materials show that Chad Eugene Willis has promoted investment-style opportunities, licensing-based revenue programs, and return-linked “loyalty” schemes through brands including AGUA Plus and Plus Brand Industries Inc.

These offerings go beyond simple product marketing. They function as financial solicitations and unregistered securities-style invitations (e.g., investor programs, licensing deals tied to volume or revenue, and structured participation schemes) – activities that are fundamentally incompatible with a lifetime prohibition order issued by the Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS Order #06-4287).

Within days of this archive going live, key website sections referencing investors, licensing, and related financial programs were quietly removed or drastically reduced from the AGUA Plus / Plus Brand public site. Their prior existence is preserved in date-stamped screenshots and screen recordings, including:

• Dedicated Investor navigation tab and associated pages.
• Public-facing materials describing licensing / programmatic participation tied to sales or technology usage.
• Additional dropdown content and calls-to-action relating to investment-style engagement.

First-hand accounts and preserved deal documents indicate that such structures have been used repeatedly over many years in ways that mirror regulated financial products — including promissory notes, investment pools, licensing revenue participation and “friends and family” capital raises — despite the standing prohibition order. The cumulative exposure across these deals is reported by affected parties to be in the tens of millions of dollars, with realistic lifetime exposure plausibly higher. Each affected investor or counterparty in such arrangements represents a separate instance of apparent non-compliance with the prohibition.

Regulatory relevance: A lifetime prohibition order combined with active investment solicitation and licensing-based financial schemes is a significant ongoing compliance issue. Evidence has been preserved for regulators, law enforcement, victims, and potential class-action firms. Detailed before/after comparisons and a chronological log of website changes appear on the Live Updates & Change Log page and in the Evidence Vault.

Over the last four–five years, public search results for “Chad Willis”, “Plus Brand”, “AGUA Plus” and related terms have undergone a marked shift. Historically, searches returned pages of scam reports, consumer alerts, and critical commentary from victims and watchdog sites. Today, results are heavily weighted toward self-curated, flattering profiles and controlled narratives associated with Plus Brand / AGUA Plus and its operators, including co-founder and COO Adam Gauer (also appearing in some materials as Adam Gower).

A clear pattern is visible:

• Search-result laundering & suppression of negative history. Multiple historic scam reports and consumer warnings that once ranked prominently now appear to have been removed, buried, or de-indexed, while neutral/critical independent commentary is far harder to surface via standard searches. At the same time, a cluster of highly favourable items — interviews, founder profiles, and self-written narratives — occupy prime search real estate, giving the impression of a clean, successful track record.
• Cloaked, search-only landing pages & misaligned snippets. In a number of cases, search results present snippets that heavily feature Chad Willis, Adam Gauer or AGUA Plus branding; clicking through loads a page on a third-party or aggregated site that cannot be reached from that site’s visible navigation and that contains long-form, highly flattering copy apparently authored or supplied by the subjects themselves. Once a visitor navigates away, the profile effectively disappears. This pattern is consistent with search-anchored “ghost” pages designed to influence first impressions without leaving an easily discoverable trail.
• Insertion of grandiose personal profiles. Pieces such as the IdeaMensch-style “entrepreneur” profiles (“lives in a world beyond the normal; what most fantasize about, he visualizes and makes a reality…”) present a highly polished, overtly narcissistic, self-aggrandising narrative that is not meaningfully grounded in audited results or transparent performance data. These items function as credibility wrappers when scanned quickly by retailers, sponsors, or investors.
• Engineered social proof asymmetry & pre-structured “ghost” assets. Social channels associated with AGUA Plus Alkaline show posts with tens of thousands of “likes” and views, while official Plus Brand accounts and other related pages remain comparatively dormant, with negligible organic engagement. This asymmetry is indicative of bought or artificially inflated engagement directed at whichever brand narrative is currently being pushed. In parallel, several domains and content streams (including AguaPlus.com and other Plus Brand–linked properties) appear to have been created and lightly populated years before being actively pushed, providing ready-made, apparently “aged” authority assets that can be activated or retired as circumstances change.

Taken together, these behaviours are consistent with a long-term reputation laundering and search-result manipulation strategy: systematically reducing the visibility of negative history while building a manufactured public image of success, benevolence, and authority that can be cited in decks, pitches, and due-diligence “quick scans”.

Practical implication: Retailers, sponsors, marketplaces, and investors should not rely on surface-level Google searches or curated interviews as evidence of credibility. Independent document review, background checks, and direct verification via the Registry & Records, Evidence Vault, and official regulators are essential.

Major retailers, sponsors, venues, and marketplaces typically maintain ethics and compliance standards requiring review — and in some cases suspension or termination — when credible information about serious past conduct surfaces.

• Truth-in-advertising and deceptive-practices standards (e.g. U.S. FTC guidance and analogous frameworks).
• Supply-chain, KYC, and integrity expectations for listed vendors and brand partners.
• Reputational risk policies where association with undisclosed criminal or regulatory histories may be unacceptable.

This archive has been structured so that compliance teams, boards, and risk committees can rapidly understand the documented pattern of conduct and decide whether continued association with Chad Eugene Willis, Plus Brand, AGUA Plus and related entities is compatible with their obligations to customers, investors, and the public.

This section consolidates the named sponsors, venues and retail partners that Plus Brand / AGUA Plus has used as centrepieces in decks, calls and public claims. Each entry sets out the headline positioning and the risk / disclosure issue created when those relationships are viewed against the underlying criminal, regulatory and investor record.

Claimed deal: publicly promoted as a USD $30,000,000 multi-year sponsorship agreement between AGUA Plus and Floyd Mayweather / TMT.

AGUA Plus is positioned as a core TMT hydration brand, featured in fight-night imagery, co-branded materials and social content. The stated USD $30m figure is repeatedly used as a flagship proof-point in investor presentations, retailer approaches and credibility pitches to imply deep capital backing and long-term alignment with an elite sports brand.

Issue: This “$30m Mayweather deal” functions as a primary credibility anchor while the controlling mind carries a felony conviction, a standing financial-services prohibition and long-running investor complaints. Counterparties relying on this headline figure need to ask whether full background disclosure has accompanied its use in any commercial or investment context.

Brand and sponsor materials present AGUA Plus as a featured or official hydration partner of the Aretha Franklin Amphitheatre, a prominent Detroit waterfront venue. The relationship is used to borrow the cultural weight of the Aretha Franklin name and the venue’s civic standing when speaking with retailers, sponsors and investors.

Issue: City-linked and culturally significant venues typically operate under strict ethics and reputational-risk frameworks. Once the full history of felony conviction, prohibition order and unresolved investor losses is placed alongside this sponsorship, internal compliance and governance teams must assess whether continued association is tenable.

AGUA Plus has been promoted as an official / featured hydration partner for Major League Pickleball and other pickleball properties – including branding on courts, player content, tournament-level assets and related media. These associations are cited to project nationwide sports penetration and high-trust positioning.

Issue: Leagues and governing bodies are expected to perform robust background checks on headline partners. Ongoing alignment with a principal who has a felony record, a prohibition order and a long trail of complaints presents an obvious governance and reputational risk once stakeholders are fully informed.

Promotional narratives reference minor-league baseball relationships and community sports activations, positioning AGUA Plus as a familiar presence at family-oriented games and local events.

Issue: These placements leverage family and community optics while obscuring the underlying pattern of investor losses, unpaid obligations and regulatory red flags. Community-aligned organisations have a direct interest in who ultimately monetises the goodwill attached to their events.

AGUA Plus / Plus Brand products have appeared on Amazon, Walmart and other U.S. outlets. Logos and screenshots from these platforms are routinely dropped into pitch decks, investor packs and sponsor approaches as shorthand for “mainstream validation” and “rigorous vetting”.

Issue: Major retailers and marketplaces are part of the perceived due-diligence ecosystem. Once they are on notice that they effectively front for a convicted, prohibited financial-services operator, they face pressure from regulators, payment partners and customers to decide whether continued listing aligns with their own KYC and ethics policies.

AGUA Plus is promoted into gyms, fitness centres and “hydration studio” environments as a performance and wellness-aligned product. Photos and references to these placements are used to reinforce the image of a health-focused, community-minded brand.

Issue: Health-oriented businesses that endorse or stock the product are unlikely to have been fully briefed on the criminal, regulatory and investor-loss history attached to the controlling mind. Once informed, they must weigh continued association against their duty of care to members and their own brand values.

Across multiple campaigns, AGUA Plus / Plus Brand leans heavily on celebrity cameos, influencer posts and staged photo-ops – including schools, charity-style events and “community impact” imagery – to build fast, skimmable social proof that can be repurposed in every direction.

Issue: These optics are engineered to shortcut real due diligence. When the documented history of felony conviction, prohibition order, restitution exposure and investor losses is set alongside the curated imagery, the gap between presentation and reality becomes a central risk question for every sponsor, venue, league, retailer and marketplace involved.

Purpose of this section: Each name above is more than branding – it represents a node in the risk and disclosure chain. Structured, documented notification packs can be drawn directly from this block, enabling sponsors, venues, leagues and retailers to make informed decisions about continuing, suspending or terminating their relationships with Plus Brand / AGUA Plus.

• Investment: ~USD $2.3M paid to Plus Brand Industries Inc. (March–September 2024) via multiple agreements.
• Rescission agreement: fully executed (electronic signature) in January 2025, requiring unwind/refund after the next financing event.
• Non-performance: no repayment, no amendments, and executive communications ceased after execution; agreement remains unfulfilled.
• Governance concerns flagged (public-record basis): undisclosed adverse history / barred-individual involvement reported as part of the case narrative.

Attribution: stored as J.M. unless and until consent is provided for public naming.