I've been sucked into forever living!! Why do I feel like the bad guy?

[KindergartenKop]

Recently an acquaintance emailed me to ask if I could 'help' her by trying a few products and giving her some feedback. Being the nice person I am I agreed. When the bag of samples turned up the penny dropped and i realised that she's trying to sell them to me (I'm naive I know!). I thought id just buy a little bubble bath. Its fucking 14 quid! No way. I'm sending the bag back and pleading eczema. Does this whole company operate by guilting friends and family into purchasing crap quality at ridic prices?

lastuseraccount123 - Thanks for your support, but I seem to be somewhat out of place on this forum. I am, therefore, extending an invitation to all members of MN with concerns about their MLM-influenced friends, and/or relatives, to contact me via [email protected]

E-mails should be marked 'MN Contact.'

eyes, i really appreciate what you do as well as the others. and i'm serious when i say i would love MN to start a campaign about this issue.

great idea re: email

eyespying I've really enjoyed your posts, they are quite sobering and I'm horrified at the naked cynicism. They've helped me understand some of the underlying mechanics of MLMs and I appreciate the information. I think however we need to keep the energy up on this thread and keep the readership as wide as possible and I don't know if that's always compatible with such long posts? I would love to know what (if anything) we can DO about this mass fraud! Could we have a Mumsnet Campaign or even a Facebook link through to this post?

Surely this is something that Alex Gibney would love to get his teeth into with the right lawyers behind him and enough evidence? I watched his brilliant HBO Expose, Going Clear, about the Scientology cult, surely MLMs are next in line?

lazycoo Thanks - Please feel free to e-mail me?

My initial advice to every concerned member of MN from the UK, would be to get together and write clear complaints to your national political representatives and also contact Action Fraud.

www.actionfraud.police.uk/

Also try contacting local and national newspapers and ask their editors why they have never investigated 'MLM' cults, and have too often reported them as though they are authentic businesses?

The killer question which all politicians and law enforcement agents usually refuse to answer is:

Given the mass of damning information available on the Net, what would you say to a member of your own family, or to a close friend, if he/she came to you and told you that he/she had signed up with a company offering an 'MLM income opportunity?'

Bovnydazzler - Over the years, I, and others, have tried to interest investigative journalists and film makers in the 'MLM' phenomenon, and in various countries, but with little result. Currently, there at least two 'MLM' documentaries in production in the USA.

As you probably know, Gibney's 'Scientology' exposé was based on a book written by a former deluded adherent of Hubbard's poinsonous fantasies. Probably due to time restrictions, parts of Gibneys film were quite weak; particularly, when he touched on Hubbard's 'heroic' WWII activities. That said, overall Gibney's film was an unusually accurate picture of a cultic racket. 'Scientology's' paranoid reaction to the truth, was equally (if not more) revealing as the film. Vicious character assassination videos were made about every single person who appeared in Gibney's film.

You might be interested to know that quite a number of deluded 'Scientology' initiates are also deeply involved in 'MLM' cults, but (as far as I know) the leadership of 'Scientology' hasn't yet instigated an 'MLM' racket.

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2015/01/tim-sales-ariix-herbalife-hlf-and.html

I second what lazycoo said

I am not doubting your arguments eyes just trying to explain why I am worried they detract from the main message this thread was getting out to people, about the risks at the individual level

I would love to get involved in advising people at least of the risks of participating
Eg similar to the requirement when you invest in shares that you are told "the value of your investment may go up as well as down".

Also agree that at a more fundamental level there is a need to start challenging the inertia of regulators and policy makers

Ps I have posted some links to this thread on other social media (eg mums networks etc and it has provoked a fascinating range of responses...)

Including some people who genuinely love the forever products and really seem to believe they are miracle cures. But when I looked at the ingredients of some products gifted to me by my flbot they were no different from any cheap supermarket type product. Big placebo effect at best there! And these are intelligent, educated people, including some with nursing etc backgrounds

throwingpebbles - My main article on the 'FLP' racket has (to date) attracted almost 100 000 page visits. There is no doubt that I have recently succeeded in limiting the spread of 'FLP;' particularly, in the UK. Most people who are approached by grinning recruiters, now tend to Google-search. The only real way to challenge 'MLM' racketeering, is to challenge all of it, because even if you succeed in closing one group down, another hundred will appear.

Usually, when an individual 'MLM' racket attracts serious investigation, its bosses close their front-companies and the group fragments. This had led many informed observers to descibe the phenomenon as behaving like a virus or cancer.

I have also tended to describe cultic racketeering as being the original self-perpetuating computer virus designed to search out and infect unprotected human minds.

throwingpebbles I've been challenging the inertia of regulators and policy makers for at least 20 years.

After all my energetic and informed complaints (which involved my gathering and sending UK victims to UK regulators and bringing Eric Scheibeler to meet with senior UK regulators), I managed to get the UK government to try to close 'Amway UK Ltd' in 2007. Sadly, my mother didn't live to witness this.

Behind the scenes, the chief forensic accountant who led the DTI's Companies Investigations Branch team, Peter Bott, described 'Amway' to me as being 'like the KKK in a suit and tie.'

Sadly, the UK Companies Act prevents UK civil servants from offering any opinion publicly about any coporate structure legally registered in the UK.

The full story of how (and probably why) the UK government failed to close 'Amway' using only civil bankruptcy procedures, is quite frightening, but it's too long to detail here.

heading out now, but just been doing a bit of curious googling and was interested in the guardian's take on Forever

www.theguardian.com/money/2002/oct/18/consumernews.consumeraffairs1

admittedly from 2002 but its a fairly half hearted critique!

Ms FL bot is doing the clean9 again for the SIXTH time in FIFTEEN months! She's on a high at the moment two of her team have been promoted to supervisors after only being with FL for four weeks. #Shebelievedshecouldsoshedid . Cringeworthy also lot's of arselicking towards one of the FL poster girls and a FL "power couple". Ooooohh

Throwing what a lame article, but at least it's not a brainless endorsement. Reads to me like the lawyers got to it lol!

eyespying congratulations on getting to close to these racketeers, perhaps with help from others with their horror stories, you can resurrect this?

Right... I have no FLbots on my FB, what are they all saying today? (Yes I know I said they were victims but still, gotta love the shite they spout!)

Haha spot on it reckon lazycoo

ooh goody rubs hands together

is that correct, really, about the Companies Act by the way???

A lady I know has suddenly joined FB and only posts " inspirational" things and photos of conferences and her team.
I don't think it's FL as everyone involved seems to be Asian, any ideas what it could be? I have FL bots already on FB but I think this is something else.

eyespying would you clarify the relevant legislation you are referring to when you say
", the UK Companies Act prevents UK civil servants from offering any opinion publicly about any corporate structure legally registered in the UK."

I'm genuinely interested, in part because it has some tangential relevance to my job. I've had a good scan through the Companies Act 2006 just now but cant see anything remotely relevant, and that is the main piece of Companies legislation now (that said, it has 1300 sections and 16 schedules so I could have missed something!)

If you have got a helpful relevant link I would love to have a read

throwing is this a spoof? ???????? Wonder how many people she's fleeced and what % of her marks are still 'reaching for their dream'?

throwingpebbles UK companies legislation is drawn like a sword by regulators when they are looking for an excuse not to do anything. The rot set in when the Thatcher government (influenced by Milton Friedman) began to remove common sense regulations from markets and passed one size fits all pro-business legislation designed to protect confidence in markets rather than to protect the public from criminals. The theory was that the markets would expand and regulate themselves. The legislators seemed to have overlooked the fact that markets are without morality. Into this regulatory vacuum, expanded all manner of self-appointed self-regulators including the so-called UK Direct Selling Association (which fronts numerous US-based MLM rackets). Representatives of so-called DSAs have been lobbying governments all over the world, and they have influenced the wording of anti-pyramid schemes legislation, so that this invariably is effectively toothless.

UK civil servants openly state that private individuals who are not bound by the Companies Act, have far more liberty than they do when it comes to warning the public about dodgy companies.

no no lazycoo she is real, she is always posting comments on my pet FLbots (a relative)'s posts

eyespying I was asking for the particular statutory reference? Companies legislation has been pretty much codified into the Companies Act 2006 which is why I looked there. I am interested in this particular point you made and in understanding the precise statutory basis for it as is relevant to my job and also work I do in a voluntary capacity. I have spent years studying / researching legislation including at times business/ company legislation so I am not looking for a history lesson just genuinely curious about the particular point you made.

She's like an Alpha (fl) Bot!

Yeah! Part of me wants to start following her, the other part of me worries about being inadvertently "sucked in" by her photos of glamorous weekends at, erm, centre parks and her constant "love my life" posts!