Friday 19 April 2024

The Express publishes the pernicious 'Multi-Level Marketing' fiction as 'fact,' but doesn't mention 'MLM.'

Side hustle: Single mum makes £2,600 a month from the comfort of her own home | Personal Finance | Finance | Express.co.uk

The article linked-above appeared in the personal finance section of the Express online, January 13th 2024. It has only recently been brought to my attention.

Temie Laleye

The article has obviously never been researched, and it is not clear what was the actual motivation of Temie Laleye - the journalist who signed it.

Director General of the DSA, Susannah Schofield OBE, on BBC Radio (youtube.com)

I could be wrong, but I suspect that Ms. Laleye has been approached, and groomed, by Susannah Schofield, 'Director General' of the so-called 'UK Direct Selling Association,' who is quoted in the article. Despite its official sounding label, this corporate structure is a privately controlled limited liability commercial company - a member of the US-based, so-called 'World Federation of Direct Selling Associations.'

Whatever was Ms. Laleye's motivation, the article reports the pernicious 'MLM' fiction as fact - ie. highly-misleading carefully-scripted, anecdotal statements made by a 43 year old British woman, Kelly Quick, who has been under contract to a UK registered so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing' company, known as 'The Juice Plus + Company (UK) Ltd.' These take-it-or-leave-it 'MLM' contracts invariably have clauses which prevent their signatories from making 'unapproved statements' to the media. 'The Juice Plus + Company (UK) Ltd.' is a subsidiary of a contraversial American owned multi-national corporation.

'MLM' The American Dream Made Nightmare: 'Juice Plus +' - O.J. Simpson, Bear Grylls and Theresa May - their connection with the 'Amway' copy-cat 'MLM' racket known as 'Juice Plus.' (mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.com)

As explained in my previous article, in the past, 'Juice Plus' was fronted in the USA by none other that OJ Simpson (who has recently been in the news, due to his sudden death). That is, until OJ Simpson found himself compelled to break his own employment contract and to tell the truth about his fraudulent paid-activities on behalf of the wealthy bosses of 'Juice Plus.'

Weeding Out Juice Plus' Illegal Health Claims - Truth in Advertising

Had Temie Laleye applied her critical faculties, the briefest research would have revealed that 'Juice Plus' has faced various civil regulatory investigations/prosecutions around the world, because what the American bosses of 'Juice Plus' have actually been peddling, is quite obviously a poisonous-cocktail of 'medical' and 'financial' quackery, designed to exploit the vulnerable and financially-illiterate.

Kelly Quick

Sadly in the Express article, Kelly Quick is pictured with her young daughter. She claims to have been earning as much as £2600 per month, and to have been able to give up her traditional employment and spend more time with her daughter, as a result of becoming 'an independent direct seller with Juice Plus.' Tellingly, the article does not specify whether Ms. Quick's income claims represent a net-income or a gross income. Indeed, the journalist who wrote this thoughtless piece, will not have seen, and will not have asked to see, any quantifiable evidence (in the form of income tax payment receipts) demonstrating the reality of Ms. Quick's financial situation with regards to 'Juice Plus.'

The Express article fails to explain that 'Juice Plus' offers a so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing Income Opportunity.' Tellingly, so-called 'MLM' has never been described by those peddling it, as a 'net-income opportunity.' The Express article merely describes Kelly Quick's activity as, 'Direct Selling.'

However, it is generally accepted (even by trade regulators) that far less than 1% of 'MLM' contractors generate a net-profit each year, and this income doesn't come from just selling products. Due to many built in anti-commercial factors and inevitable operating expenses, in reality, it has been effectively-impossible for the average participant to make an overall net-profit lawfully by regularly retailing 'MLM' products to members of the general public (ie. persons who are not 'MLM' contractors themselves) based on value and demand. Thus, so-called 'MLM' companies have all offered commission payments to their contractors based on their contractors' own purchases of products and/or services, and on the purchases of the recruits of their contractors, and on the purchases of the recruits of their recruits, etc. etc. ad infinitum. Contractors' payments from so-called 'MLM' companies have, therefore, really been based on finding further recruits to purchase the products, and/or services, not on genuine retail sales to members of the general public.

In order to lure further unwary recruits into handing over their cash in return for an effectively-unsaleable investment commodity, 'MLM' contractors need to pretend to have been earning money, and to hide their true financial situation. Indeed, 'MLM' contractors are actually indoctrinated to ignore the reality of their situation as 'negative thinking,' and to 'duplicate a step-by step positive mindset plan to achieve success.' What these so-called 'positive mindset plans' actually comprise have been what are technically defined as: 'totalistic thought reform programs.' In everyday terms, 'MLM' contractors, like Ms. Quick, have been programmed to commit themselves to, and robotically to execute, the exploitative, non-rational, pseudo-economic theory, that endless-chain recruitment + endless payments by the recruits = endless profits for the recruits. They have been further tricked into believing that they are 'independent business owners,' and that any financial losses they incurred, must have been 'entirely their own fault.'

Consequently, so-called 'MLM' companies have all set no common-sense limits on the number of contractors being recruited, and have never published (in an easy-to-understand format) the overall net-loss churn rates of their contractors. Imagine if the McDonalds company set no common-sense limits on the number of restaurant franchises it sold, or common-sense restrictions on the sites where these restaurants were located. How could any of the vast concentration of franchisees expect to keep finding enough real customers to make an overall net-profit?

In simple terms, so-called 'MLM' companies like 'Juice Plus' (which has claimed 14000 contractors in the UK) have all been essentially-identical corporate-fronts, hiding in plain sight whilst peddling a financially-suicidal, insidious form of self-perpetuating, blame-the-victim pyramid fraud. The extraordinary history of the Big 'MLM' Lie can be found in 'Ponzinomics,' by Robert FitzPatrick.

As to the latter part of the Express article which includes ludicrous, and ourageous, false average 'MLM' earnings claims (£833 per month) from Susannah Schofield's so-called 'UK Direct Selling Association.'

Laughably, without employing the increasingly-contraversial term, 'MLM', Ms. Schofield is quoted reciting elements of the pernicious 'MLM' fairy story, but she fails to mention that one of the member 'MLM' companies of the so-called 'UK DSA' has been 'Herbalife UK Ld.' Again, this is a subsidiary of a US-based multi-national corporation. The main 'Herbalife' company recently was obliged to hand over $200 millions to the US Federal Trade Commission, in order to settle an outstanding civil prosecution in which the company was accused of fronting a pyramid scheme. Around 350 000 compensation cheques were then issued by the FTC to recent American victims of 'Herbalife.' This 'MLM' front company is now supposedly reformed and operating under independent regulatory surveillance, but only in the USA.

Another 'UK DSA' member that Ms. Schofield failed to mention, has been 'Amway UK Ltd.' This company (again a subsidiary of a US-based multi-national corporation) mysteriously survived a public interest civil bankruptcy petition filed by the UK Consumer Affairs Minister in 2007. The government investigation discovered that between 1973 and 2006, around one million UK and Irish citizens were churned through 'Amway's' so called 'MLM income opportunity.' In private, UK regulators described 'Amway' to me as 'operating like the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.'

'Amway India Enterprises' has recently been charged by the Indian Enforcement Directorate with being the corporate-front for a pyramid scheme preying on millions of financially-illiterate Indian citizens, as well as being the front for a $7 billions international money laundering racket. Around $200 millions of 'Amway India Enterprise's' assets have already been seized by the Enforcement Directorate.

Another 'UK DSA' member which Ms. Schofield again failed to mention, has been 'Tiens UK Ltd.' This is a subsidiary of the world's largest 'MLM' cult, which is Chinese based. Yet infinite level product-based pyramid schemes peddled as 'MLM income opportunities,' are specifically identified as being intrinsically fraudulent, and are banned by law in China. 'Tiens' has lately claimed 40 millions adherents, and it has even been suggested that it could be a corporate-front for Chinese intelligence agencies.

The so-called 'UK DSA' has lately claimed 630 000 UK and Irish citizens under contract to its member companies - more than 95% are women. However, this figure is just a misleading snapshot, because at least 50% of 'MLM' contractors are known not renew their annual contracts. In some official investigations (like that of 'Herbalife' in the USA), the hidden annual 'MLM' net-loss churn rate, has been discovered to exceed 90%. This means that in the UK, at least 315 000 people are currently being quietly churned through these eality-controlling so-called 'MLM income opportunities' each year, or 3.15 millions per decade. However, this figure is a conservative estimate.

Worldwide, more than 130 millions persons have lately been claimed as contractors of 'DSA' member companies, but not all 'MLM' front companies have been 'DSA' members. This means that at least 65 millions persons are being churned through these dissimulated cultic rackets each year, or 650 millions per decade. The true figure could easily be in excess of one billion per decade.

Thus, the Express article (in its entirety) is dangerous drivel - Utopian propaganda that has been fed to Ms. Laleye by the agents of foreign-based cultic racketeers. Indeed, the Express article can actually be used to lure unwary persons into de facto servitude, and eventually prevent them from facing reality and complaining to law enforcement agents, investigative journalists, legislators, etc.

Friday 12 April 2024

'Juice Plus +' - O.J. Simpson, Bear Grylls and Theresa May - their connection with the 'Amway' copy-cat 'MLM' racket known as 'Juice Plus.'

The disgraced American celebrity, O.J. Simpson, is dead.

OJ Simpson, NFL star acquitted in ‘trial of the century’, dies aged 76 (bbc.com

Before his spectacular, and widely publicized, fall, O.J. Simpson (aka. 'The Juice') was once the paid celebrity face of the 'Amway' copy-cat 'Multi-Level Marketing' cult known as, 'Juice Plus +.' Even when O.J. made international headlines, after he was filmed being chased in his white SUV across California by police, arrested and put on (televised) trial for committing a brutal double murder with a knife, the 'Juice Plus +' mob had not yet publicly dropped him. Part of OJ.'s defence was that his arms and hands were too weakened by arthritis for him to grip the murder weapon. However, during the trial, a 'Juice Plus +' propaganda video was cited by the prosecution featuring O.J. apparently bursting with energy; both insisting and demonstrating how his arthritis had been 'cured by Juice Plus + products.' O.J. had claimed in the video that he was able to grip, and freely-swing, his golf clubs again and lower his handicap. When challenged by the prosecution, O.J.'s immediate response to this evidence was that he'd merely been acting a scripted-role. Under oath, he said that 'Juice Plus+' products actually had no effect on his arthritis and that he had continued to suffer from it.

Thus, in reality, the promotional video showed O.J. knowingly-defrauding 4000 cheering 'MLM' adherents at a pay-to-enter 'Juice Plus +' rally. However, the video had also been widely-circulated and used to defraud countless other 'Juice Plus +' recruits. Furthermore, according to the pernicious 'Juice Plus +' fairy story recited by O.J. - the products were so safe and effective that he had been able completely to stop taking his previous medically-prescribed anti-inflammatory treatments. However, again as part of his defence, OJ now declared that he had been lying about that for money as well. He said that he had never stopped taking sulsasfrazine and Ibuprofen. His past and present prescriptions would confirm this.

Only at this point did the 'Juice Plus+' mob publicly end their association with O.J. He was air-brushed out of the group's controlling narrative and the fraudulent propaganda video was ditched.

It is quite obvious that 'Juice Plus +' has been the corporate-front for a ludicrous, but nonetheless dangerous, quack-medical scam combined with an 'MLM' cultic racket - classically hiding an inevitable overall net-loss/churn rate for participation of effectively 100%.

Just like the 'Amway' racket, the 'Juice Plus +' racket has been global. It has been allowed to operate in plain sight in the UK for years, where its bosses have paid another celebrity, Bear Gylls, to act as pitchman. Although Bear Grylls doesn't seem to be currently employed by the 'Juice Plus +' mob, today his name and image still remain highly-visible in the group's reality-controlling narrative. Again, this tactic of associating with celebrities, can make it seem impossible to the average victim that 'Juice Plus +' is a fraud.

Juice Plus+ opens new offices in Maidenhead - Maidenhead Advertiser (maidenhead-advertiser.co.uk)

Why we're appalled that an MP and Government Minister promoted MLMs like Amway in Parliament - Talented Ladies Club

In 2015, the 'Juice Plus +' mob lured the (then) UK Home Secretary (Minister for the Interior), Theresa May, into playing the role of 'Useful Idiot' in their propaganda. Indeed, it's very likely that Bear Grylls' enthusiastic endorsement of 'Juice Plus+' was used to fool her. Theresa May's parliamentary office was subsequently contacted by phone and, at the (verbal) request of one of her assistants, she was sent much information and analysis regarding the 'Juice Plus + MLM' racket. Theresa May and her staff did not acknowledge receipt of this important information which contained my written request for her (the Minister with responsibility for the UK Police) to pass this intelligence (concerning a foreign-controlled major organized crime group, preying on significant numbers of vulnerable UK citizens), to the relevant UK law enforcement agencies. To date, my own approaches to UK Law enforcement agencies regarding these serious matters, have never been taken up.

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Multi-Level Marketing' Warning.

The following deconstructed analysis has been formulated to sharpen the critical and evaluative faculties of all unwary persons approaching so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing' from the dangerous (subjective) point of view that it must be a business/industry, rather than from the safe (purely-objective) point of view that they don't really know what it is.
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More than half a century of quantifiable evidence proves beyond all reasonable doubt that:

the widely-misunderstood phenomenon that has become popularly-known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' (a.k.a. 'Network Marketing') is nothing more than an absurd, non-rational, economic pseudo-science maliciously-designed to lure unwary persons into de facto servitude, dissociate them from external reality and not only steal their money, but also deceive them into unconsciously acting the role of bait to lure other unwary persons (particularly their friends and family members) into the same trap.

the technical-sounding made-up jargon term, 'MLM,' is therefore, the misleading title for an enticing structured-scenario of control which has been developed, and constantly acted out as reality, by the instigators, and associates, of various copy-cat, major and minor, ongoing organised crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim 'Long Cons' - comprising self-perpetuating rigged-market swindles, a.k.a. pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites') and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate: training and motivation, self-betterment, programs, recruitment leads, lead generation systems,' etc.).

apart from an insignificant minority of shills (whose leading-role in the 'Long Con' has been to pretend that anyone can achieve financial freedom simply by following their unquestioning example and exactly-duplicating a step-by-step-plan of endless-chain recruitment and self-consumption), the hidden overall net-loss/churn rate for participation in so-called 'MLM income opportunities,' has always been effectively 100% by design.

The enticing structured-scenario of control fundamental to all 'rigged-market swindles' is that people can earn income by first contributing their own money to participate in a profitable commercial opportunity, but which is secretly an economically-unviable fake due to the fact that the (alleged) opportunity has been rigged so that it generates no significant, or sustainable, revenue other than that deriving from its own ill-informed participants. For more than 60 years, 'Multi-Level Marketing' racketeers have been allowed to dissimulate rigged-market swindles by offering endless-chains of victims various banal, but over-priced, products, and/or services, in exchange for unlawful losing-investment payments, on the pretext that 'MLM' products/services can then be regularly re-sold for a profit in significant quantities via expanding networks of distributors. However, since 'MLM' products/services cannot be regularly re-sold to the general public for a profit in significant quantities (based on value and demand), 'MLM' participants have, in fact, been peddled infinite shares of their own finite money (in the false expectation of future reward).

Thus, in 'MLM' rackets, the innocent looking products/sevices' function has been to hide what is really occurring. i.e The operation of an unlawful, intrinsically fraudulent, rigged-market where effectively no non-salaried (transient) participant can generate an overall net-profit, because, unknown to the non-salaried (transient) participants, the market is in a permanent state of collapse and requires its non-salaried (transient) participants to keep finding further (temporary) de facto slaves to sustain the enticing illusion of stability and viability.
Meanwhile an insignificant (permanent) minority direct the 'Long Con' - raking in vast profits by selling into the rigged-market and by controlling/withholding all key-information concerning the rigged-market's actual catastrophic, ever-shifting results from its never-ending chain of (temporary) de facto slaves.

Although cure-all pills potions and vitamin/dietary supplements, household and beauty, products have been most-prevalent, it is possible to use any product, and/or service, to dissimulate a rigged-market swindle. There are even some 'MLM' rackets that have been hidden behind well-known traditional brands (albeit offered at fixed high prices). Some 'MLM' rackets have included 'cash-back/discount shopping cards, travel products, insurance, energy/communications services' and 'crypto-currencies' in their controlling scenarios.

No matter what bedazzling product/service has been dangled as bait, in 'MLM' rackets, there has been no significant or sustainable source of revenue other than never-ending chains of persons under contract to the 'MLM' front companies. These front-companies always pretend that their products/services are high quality and reasonably-priced and that for anyone prepared to put in some effort, the products/services can be easily sold on for a profit via expanding networks of distributors (based on value and demand). In reality, the underlying reason why it has mainly only been (transient) 'MLM' contractors who have bought the various products /services (and not the general public) is because they have been tricked into unconsciously playing along with the controlling scenario which constantly says that via regular self-consumption and the recruitment of others to do the same, etc. ad infinitum, anyone can receive a future (unlimited) reward.

I've been examining the 'MLM' phenomenon for around 25 years. During this time, I've yet to find one so-called 'MLM' front-company that has voluntarily made key-information available to the public concerning the quantifiable results of its so-called 'income opportunity' in an easy-to-understand format.

Part of the key-information that all 'MLM' bosses seek to hide concerns the overall number of persons who have signed contracts since the front companies were instigated and the retention rates of these persons.

When rigorously investigated, the overall hidden net-loss churn rates for so-called 'MLM income opportunites' has turned out to have been effectively 100%. Thus, anyone claiming (or implying) that it is possible for the average participant to make a penny of net-profit, let alone a living, in an 'MLM,' cannot be telling the truth and will not provide quantifiable evidence to back up his/her anecdotal claims.

Although a significant number of 'MLM' front-companies (like 'Vemma', 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing', 'Wake Up Now') have been shut-down by civil trade regulators in the USA, some of the biggest 'MLM' rackets (like 'Amway' ,'Herbalife', Forever Living Products' ) have continued to hide in plain sight whilst secretly churning tens of millions of losing participants over decades

The quantifiable results of the self-perpetuating global 'Long Con' known as 'Multi Level Marketing,' have been fiendishly hidden by convincing victims that they are 'Independent Business Owners' and that any losses they incurred, must have been entirely their own fault for not working hard enough.

Chronic victims of 'MLM' cults are invariably incapable of describing what they were subjected to in accurate terms. Even though they are no longer physically playing along with the 'Long Con's' controlling-scenario, they unconsciously continue to think, and speak, using the jargon-laced 'MLM' script – illogically describing themselves as 'Distributors, Ambassadors, Business Owners’ etc.'

Chronic victims of blame-the-victim rackets who have managed to escape and confront the ego-destroying reality that they’ve been systematically deceived and exploited, are invariably destitute and dissociated from all their previous social contacts. For years afterwards, recovering victims can suffer from psychological problems (which are also generally indicative of the victims of abuse): depression; overwhelming feelings (guilt, grief, shame, fear, anger, embarrassment, etc.); dependency/ inability to make decisions; retarded psychological/ intellectual development; suicidal thoughts; panic/ anxiety attacks; extreme identity confusion; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; insomnia/ nightmares; eating disorders; psychosomatic illness, fear of forming intimate relationships; inability to trust; etc.

Wednesday 3 April 2024

The cult of Donald Trump is a classic example of a contagious mind virus.

Why We Want You to Be Rich - Wikipedia

Donald Trump's direct involvement in blame-the-victim 'MLM' cultic rackets, and his associations with 'Prosperity Gospel/self-betterment' gurus, never gets mentioned, let alone explained, in media interviews with Steve Hassan. Furthermore, the concept which Steve Hassan describes as 'Mind Hacking,' is not original. Let's face it, one doesn't need a degree in psychology, to recognize the pernicious fairy story that controls the thinking, and resulting behaviour, of Trump's deluded followers.

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Following on from work he began in 1941, in 1950, Dr. Alan Turing published a paper, 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence,' in which he discussed the existing philosophical question of whether machines can think. He then proposed a test, in the form of a blind question and answer game, where computers would be used to try to convince humans that they were not engaging with machines, but with other humans. Thus, despite its appearance, the 'Turing Test' is not a high-brow parlour-game or even a scientific experiment to determine whether machines can think, but a rudimentary, logical test of whether an artificial mind can be made to appear to have the same cognitive capacity as the human mind.

In recent years, various people have suggested ways in which the 'Turing Test' can be reversed, but, as far as I am aware, no one has yet suggested that Dr. Turing's celebrated thoughts on artificial intelligence, can also be applied to the study of the cult/totalitarian phenomenon; for, due to their incapacity to engage with external reality, the inflexible core-adherents of totalistic cults have often been compared to robots. However, the way that exploitative, self-perpetuating non-rational ritual belief systems bait, trap and enslave their prey, by reflecting common human instinctual desires as being obtainable in exchange for absolute subservience, can also be compared to a phenomenon which Dr. Turing did not live to witness - computer viruses. Had Dr. Turing been able to continue his work, he might have eventually felt the need to propose a rudimentary, logical test of whether an artificial mind can be made to appear to have the same ego-related capacity to become delusional as the human mind; for although cult adherents insist that no one is controlling them and that they are excercizing free-will, nonetheless, illogically, and without exception, they all see the world in mechanical two-dimensional terms ('negative vs positive', 'us vs them' , 'good vs evil' , 'winners vs losers', etc. ), communicate in code-like thought-stopping language and obey their de facto programmers without question (no matter what suffering this entails).

Given a detailed knowledge of any Utopian fiction modifying the personalities and behaviour of the core-adherents of a particular cultic group, it would, therefore, be a relatively simple matter to program a machine to duplicate the adherents' systematic responses (or indignant refusal to respond), to a series of blind questions concerning the contents of the group's controlling narrative. In other words, the predictable answers given by deluded core-cult adherents, and those given by machines programmed to duplicate human minds dissociated from external reality, would be indistinguishable.

Friday 29 March 2024

Robert FitzPatrick reviews 'Selling the Dream.'

The Plainest Truth of MLM is the Most Avoided | Pyramid Scheme Alert

The Plainest Truth of MLM is the Most Avoided

A Review of “Selling the Dream” by Jane Marie, published by Atria Books

by Robert L. FitzPatrick, Author of PONZINOMICS and FALSE PROFITS

Author’s Note: Having worked decades when publishers would not publish any “anti-MLM” book, I am very supportive of all new books that offer a consumer perspective and critique of MLM, as “Selling the Dream” does.

Regarding this new book, I was extensively interviewed and consulted for the author’s podcast, “The Dream, Season One.” I provided the podcast producers with years of my research on MLM, its history and politics that are in my book, PONZINOMICS, which was published shortly after I was in “The Dream” podcast in 2018.

This book review responds to questions I am receiving about my views of the new book that is based on that podcast. Beyond more “anti-MLM” books getting published, it is also a positive new development that these books can be critically reviewed by colleagues, as my own book has also been reviewed.

Some have described their personal awakening to MLM’s terrible reality as “peeling an onion.” Discovering the nasty lies on the onion’s surface leads to more and greater lies at the next layer and the next. Others speak of “going down a rabbit hole”, each compartment leading to another containing deeper and darker deceptions. Most people abandon the search when they glimpse the darkness of where it might lead. A useful inquiry requires admitting to not knowing what MLM is and that what is believed might be untrue. Add in need for courage to speak a truth that can lead to scorn and gaslighting.

Having dug deeply into MLM and over a long period (my first national media interview was on CBS 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace in 1999) I liken my own MLM learning path to Dante Alighieri’s epic search for truth that took him through eight levels of Hell. In his famous allegory, The Divine Comedy, written about 1320, Dante descended successively through terrifying regions of evil. He visited the regions of Lust, then down into Gluttony, deeper into Greed, Anger, Heresy, and Violence.

Finally, he arrived at the very bottom of Hell, equivalent in my journey to grasping the true nature of MLM. He came to the regions of Fraud and Betrayal, which are also the core truths of MLM.

These terrible truths are avoided in documentaries, podcasts, news stories, and academic treatments of MLM. Selling the Dream by podcaster Jane Marie offers a lot of good information about MLM while staying safely on that well-travelled path of avoidance. It repeats years-old research from other writers, including much from Ponzinomics, on the origins and history of MLM dating to the 1940s. The stories of the founders of early MLMs are told again. There are the sad stories of victims as told in numerous podcasts. One hapless guy claims he lost $200,000 because he said the products are overpriced and he kept buying MLM “tools” for “success.” Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman’s short-selling fiasco is included. There’s a long repetition about MLMs selling snake oil remedies.

If Selling the Dream were about mouse traps and written to help mice, the book would offer a lot of interesting information about various cheeses and other baits, their quality, taste, color, etc. It would tell the mice some colorful stories about the trap’s inventors. But it would avoid telling the mice right from the start, clearly, and forcefully that the cheese sits on a malevolent device designed to break their little necks! It would not definitively explain that the device is a murderous trap, not a plate of free food, as it is disguised.

There are understandable reasons for avoiding the core realities of Fraud and Betrayal. Facing them can be extremely unsettling. MLM is experienced on a person-to-person basis among those we trust and identify with and may even love. MLM lures each person to betray their own values and personal responsibility and then to betray friends and family.

One way that Selling the Dream avoids the brutal realities is by omitting all history of the anti-MLM movement, the earlier books and websites, the pioneers, and how the lives of whistle-blowers were affected. Websites were shut down. Many were sued into bankruptcy or forced to settle with the coerced promise never to speak of the MLM again. A few left the country. Reputations were trashed. This is how traffickers in Fraud and Betrayal operate. It’s hard to describe that history in an upbeat or snarky tone.

At the levels of law enforcement, political leadership, Wall Street, publishers, the news media and academia, Betrayal involves abetting the Big Lie that MLM is an “industry” based on “direct selling.” Betrayal is withholding the truth that MLM is a calculated trap designed to break necks, financially, not provide “income.” Telling the plain truth of this can make some people in high places unhappy.

The reality of Fraud is avoided for similar unsettling reasons. To acknowledge this core truth means having to drop the popular pretense that MLM is a “complex business” that mysteriously escapes the rule of law, even as it inflicts losses on 99%, year after year. Avoiding the reality of Fraud includes avoidance of the frightening reality of cultic mind control, even as MLM recruits shockingly behave as self-sabotaging robots.

In fact, the basic nature of MLM is obvious, not new, not complex. MLM’s “endless chain” recruiting model, as regulators used to say, is inherently unfair and deceptive. Pyramid schemes purposefully use deception and cause harm. Loss to victims is by design. That design can be deconstructed to show how any enterprise using the MLM model will always produce the same results: loss to 99%. It’s hard to acknowledge this in an entertaining way.

Selling the Dream correctly reports that MLMs are “blame the victim” schemes though it obscures whom to blame. It diverts the focus away from actual perpetrators, the ones Dante put in his lowest regions of Hell.

The first diversion redirects attention back toward all of us humans. The book explains how we can’t seem to grasp exponential math (5x5x5…), making it easy to deceive us with MLM’s “endless chain” proposition. This is not presented in Selling the Dream, however, to call for making such a false proposition per se illegal, as it used to be. Rather, the problem is with us. We just don’t seem to get that it’s “marketing.” Our bad.

Then, we seem to be hard-wired to recoup past losses, or “sunk costs,” leading us to obey, when MLMs tell us, “Don’t quit!” The book also explains that we humans desperately want “community”, even when it is artificial and only lasts the short time of involvement in MLM. We grasp for hope, even false hope. MLM, which the FTC says is “legal,” routinely uses these lures, tricks and promises as part of its “business.” So, the losses we suffer must be on us. Buyers should beware.

The other diversion has to do with law enforcement, in particular the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Selling the Dream correctly reports the FTC is doing very little to protect consumers from MLM abuse. But it advises not to blame this poor little agency. We should feel sorry for it. It has very limited resources, and many other priorities. It does the best it can, putting responsibility back on us.

Selling the Dream does not explain why the FTC should be in charge. Its job is to regulate “trade.” Fraud is not trade. Pyramid scheme rackets are not “business.” Why doesn’t the FTC just refer evidence of widespread pyramid fraud to the Department of Justice for prosecution? This more powerful path of inquiry is not pursued in Selling the Dream, and the author never plainly or forcefully offers her own position on what MLM is – a business or a disguised pyramid fraud?

Since law enforcement is not to blame, the book asks why doesn’t the market mechanism of “buyer beware” work? By now, shouldn’t there be enough consumer experience and information that most people would not sign up with MLMs? What’s wrong with us that we keep joining these “scams”?

It’s a question I am frequently asked by journalists. It seems reasonable, but it is not based on reality. Yes, a lot of people have listened to “anti-MLM” podcasts, documentaries about “bad” MLMs, and maybe even heard about the 99% losses. But they have real and immediate need of income, and they also hear much louder, more authoritative voices – FTC, SEC, Chamber of Commerce, Department of State, State AGs, Governors, military leaders, pastors, sports stars, celebrities, university professors, major news media – that MLM is “legitimate and legal.” They hear these voices say it’s not a pyramid scheme. It can’t be! Pyramid schemes are illegal. The FTC says MLM is legal. The voices say MLM’s not a cult. MLMs are businesses. Cults are not allowed into the US Chamber of Commerce! Hedge funds don’t buy the stock of cults!

Whom are people to believe, a witty and ironic podcaster or university Ph.Ds, elected officials, beloved celebrities, and law enforcement? And, maybe, just maybe, they are influenced by MLM stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange or former Presidents even a former Secretary of State working as paid MLM promoters?

Finally, the book laments the special plight of young women today, or struggling mothers, who, sadly, are the main prey for MLM predators. But, between the FTC doing all it can, and our innate weak spots and deep-seated needs, and with the US economy putting more and more of us in the hole, it seems there really is only ourselves to blame if we sign on with MLM.

The book concludes that this is all quite tragic, but also interestingly ironic how the American Dream has become such a sad spectacle, almost a nightmare. And, it admits, it is kind of entertaining to watch these psycho MLM leaders, spouting bible verses and wearing fake eye lashes, exciting so many people, almost into ecstasy. It would make a great podcast, except a really good one was already done, called The Dream.

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Multi-Level Marketing' Warning.

More than half a century of quantifiable evidence proves beyond all reasonable doubt that:

the widely-misunderstood phenomenon that has become popularly-known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' (a.k.a. 'Network Marketing') is nothing more than an absurd, non-rational, economic pseudo-science maliciously-designed to lure unwary persons into de facto servitude, dissociate them from external reality and not only steal their money, but also deceive them into unconsciously acting the role of bait to lure other unwary persons (particularly their friends and family members) into the same trap.

the technical-sounding made-up jargon term, 'MLM,' is therefore, the misleading title for an enticing structured-scenario of control which has been developed, and constantly acted out as reality, by the instigators, and associates, of various copy-cat, major and minor, ongoing organised crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim 'Long Cons' - comprising self-perpetuating rigged-market swindles, a.k.a. pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites') and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate: training and motivation, self-betterment, programs, recruitment leads, lead generation systems,' etc.).

apart from an insignificant minority of shills (whose leading-role in the 'Long Con' has been to pretend that anyone can achieve financial freedom simply by following their unquestioning example and exactly-duplicating a step-by-step-plan of endless-chain recruitment and self-consumption), the hidden overall net-loss/churn rate for participation in so-called 'MLM income opportunities,' has always been effectively 100% by design.

Although a significant number of 'MLM' front-companies (like 'Vemma', 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing', 'Wake Up Now') have been shut-down by commercial regulators in the USA, some of the biggest 'MLM' rackets (like 'Amway' ,'Herbalife', Forever Living Products' ) have continued to hide in plain sight whilst secretly churning tens of millions of losing participants over decades