'FL / MLM' Thread 3

[Eyespying]

Continuing the valuable discussion of 'Forever Living' and other 'MLM/commercial' cults.

That's a remarkable bit of film, eye. What a pity the Australian Law agencies did not prepare their case competently. It would have been easier for the judge to rule against the company. Very sloppy, and worse, Lyonesse will feel vindicated and will use their victory to scam more people.

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2015/10/the-tragicomic-failed-prosecution-of.html

This limp quote from Justice Flick's recent ruling, beggars belief

'The manner in which pyramid selling schemes operate … is complex and elusive. The present Lyoness Loyalty Program is no exception,'

Sadly for the people of Australia (who pay his salary), Justice Flick doesn't seem to understand that, by their very nature, the external presentations of all pyramid schemes are maliciously designed to shut down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of not only their victims, but also those of all casual observers (including ill-informed judges). Behind the mystifying commercial bullshit lurks a far more simple truth - ie. pyramid schemes are closed-market swindles - without any significant, or sustainable, revenue other than that deriving unlawfully from their own losing-participants (in the false expectation of future reward).

I've had a FL agent insist that she gets no cut or no money from those she recruits. She gets commission from the company for recruiting - not from new agents. I also found this on a FL blog.

"You can make a good living by retailing products, but the larger incomes in Forever Living come from building a team. We guide you through every stage of building your own team, and as an Investor In People Gold Champion company Forever Living has many different training options available. You will be guided through identifying prospective team members, introducing them to the business, and helping them to join your team. You then earn a commission from the company based on any business your team members do as long as you achieve a certain level of personal business each month. Your team members do not pay anything directly to you just as you don’t pay anything to the person who introduced you to the business. You can expect to earn £800 – £2000 per month after 4-6 months of recruiting and team building, and would need to dedicate 4-9 hours minimum per week to your business."

Bambambini - To date, ill-conceived UK Trading Schemes legislation doesn't acknowledge the universal identifying characteristic of pyramids and Ponzis. Instead, it only makes it a criminal offence to sponsor any scheme in which significant investment payments have to be made by recruits, simply to join the scheme and to remain within the scheme.

This was the main crime with which 'Amway UK Ltd.' was charged in 2007.

'Amway' had not only been laundering unlawful investment payments into a dissimulated closed-market swindle by giving adherents effectively-unsaleable products in return, but adherents had also to pay an initial sign-up fee, and annual contract renewal fees. The UK government prosecutors largely ignored the unlawful payments for the wampum 'Amway' products and merely asked for 30-odd years of unlawful recruitment, and renewal, fees to be handed back, in the expectation that since 'Amway UK's' liabilities would then exceed its assets, the company could be automatically bankrupted and closed.

Incredibly, 'Amway' dodged the bullet by pretending affinity with UK regulators and removing its unlawful sign-up/renewal fees whilst pleading (previous) ignorance. Various other undertakings were also given to the Judge, who meekly accepted them, despite the fact that 'Amway' had been driving a coach and horses through UK law for 34 years.

The legal advisors to 'FLP' UK will be fully aware of what happened in the 'Amway UK' prosecution of 2007 and 2008.

That said, in the linked-video, UK 'FLP' shill, Andy Waring, boasts that the 'FLP MLM income opportunity' has precious little to with selling, and is actually based on 'geometric progression.' In this way, Mr. Waring has been habitually committing fraud on behalf of his American masters; for this video demonstrates that 'FLP' adherents are taught that they can all receive constantly expanding profits forever, simply by exactly duplicating a 'proven plan' where they all obediently hand over their cash each month whilst attempting to recruit others exactly to duplicate the same 'plan.'

Classically of an 'MLM income opportunity' racket, in 'FLP,' these unlawful losing investment payments (based on the false expectation of future reward) have been laundered as lawful sales ( based on value and demand), simply by giving victims pseudo-medical wampum (which has been arbitrarily given quasi-miraculous powers and an exorbitant fixed value, by the 'FLP' racketeers) in return for their cash. Self evidently, (from all rational points of view), this wampum might as well not exist, because its effects are unquantifiable and it has been effectively unsaleable on the open-market (i.e. to members of the general public with fully-functioning critical and evaluative faculties).

www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2015/2015fca1129

MN members (particularly those who are legally-qualified) might be fascinated to read this largely-incomprehensible Australian judgement. It quite literally beggars belief that Australian regulators, and prosecutors, did not confine their courtroom presentation to a detailed deconstruction the mathematically, and linguistically, mystifying Utopian fairy story habitually recited as reality during 'Lyoness' own presentations, combined with the hidden quantifiable results of the 'Lyoness' racket (i.e. effectively-universal financial losses for a never-ending chain of would-be millionaires) to be found with the Australian tax authorities.

I guarantee that any ordinary member of the public (without expert/common-sense guidance) trying to read, and comprehend, the recent Australian judgement, will find his/her critical, and evaluative, faculties, shutting down.

Assuming that he is not corrupt, what Judge Flick evidently failed to understand (by not applying elementary common-sense), is that any so-called 'marketing scheme' which has not had a significant, and sustainable, source of revenue other than its own participants, is a dissimulated closed-market swindle, based on the crackpot, and unviable, pseudo-economic theory that:

Endless-chain recruitment + endless payments by the recruits = endless profits for the recruits.

In the most simple terms, behind all the thought-stopping bullshit, the victims of all closed-market swindles are peddled 'infinite' shares of their own finite money.

I can't be the only well-informed person now wondering if (after completing his recent, dangerous judgement), Judge Flick sang three choruses of 'Walzing Matilda,' before falling down in a heap.

Sadly, Judge Flick has issued an open-invitation for cultic racketeers to come to Australia, because (on the evidence of this judgement) the chances of them being held to account, are evidently zero. That said, there are plenty of them already there.

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-27/herbalife-declines-after-n-y-state-senator-proposes-crackdown

This extraordinary confession of guilt has only just been recovered and posted on Youtube, by Michelle Celarier of the New York Post. It was made as long ago as 2005, by 'Herbalife' boss, Michael Johnson.

It begs the question:

Why hasn't this vast dissimulated criminal enterprise long-since been halted and Johnson, and his associates, held fully to account?

At one stage, Michael Johnson was being paid $80 millions annually from the 'Herbalife' racket.

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“It’s the recruiting, meaning bringing new distributors into our company, which is the most vital part of our bloodstream. We bring new distributors in, we grow. It’s that simple. It’s that simple. And the company has built its whole reputation, its whole life, on recruiting.

Our top dogs, Greg calls them The Hunters out there, our Hunters, our top distributors, our Chairman’s Club, our Price Team, they’re professionals at this [pointing to the word “Recruiting” on the slide behind him]. Nobody can do it better. You get next to Alan Lorenz [see: www.herbalifepyramidscheme.com/perpetrators/alan-lorenz] and he’ll recruit taxi cab drivers and busboys and waiters and everybody… He doesn’t care who it is and, boom!, he’s got ‘em in this game. Right away, he’s got everybody. How long he’s got ‘em is another question, but he’s got ‘em in this game [again pointing to the word “Recruiting” on the slide behind him]. And that’s what this company built itself on.

The recruiting tactics…very positive for the most part…sometimes led people down a false road. $4,000, jam it into ‘em, buy an instant distributorship, load that product in. See ya! Good luck! Credit card bill comes, spouse says, “Ahem, how are we gonna pay this? You didn’t sell the stuff that’s in the garage, that’s in the pantry, that’s out there. What are we gonna do?” Well, we could return it to the company. And you know it, in our marketplaces where our recruiting heavy…is very heavy [again pointing to the word “Recruiting” on the slide behind him], and we don’t have a balance of business, we got issues.

So what happens today? Today what are we? Today, we’re recruiting. We’re still a recruiting company, and we’ve got to never not be this [again pointing to the word “Recruiting” on the slide behind him]…”

Michael Johnson CEO 'Herbalife' ('Herbalife Global Management Meeting' 2005)

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2015/10/herbalife-hlf-racket-on-verge-of.html

MN members are invited to watch this is undercover video of a recent 'Herbalife' recruitment meeting for Hispanic Americans.

drive.google.com/file/d/0B14BJrEsDhfqYkdtYzYxcERHUmM/view

Thanks for the links Eye. Taking your time to keep us up to date on some of the bigger issues is appreciated. They certainly brightened up my tea break.

ambler21 Thanks for the thumbs up. As you can read on my Blog, it was US Senator Klein and various interested parties who released some of the most recent info.

quoththeravenresearch.com/2015/10/27/full-release-with-video-ny-senator-jeff-klein-calls-herbalife-shameful-and-house-of-cards-with-undercover-video/

However, at the risk of darkening your lunch, notice how Sen. Klein still naively imagines that (criminogenic) groups like 'Herbalife' can be reformed.

Notice also how Sen. Klein is not yet facing the embarrassing truth that so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing' has been an American-spawned lie of titanic proportions, or that that a pernicious 'capitalist American Dream' fairy story has been, and continues to be, peddled as reality to countless millions of vulnerable individuals all over the world, and has brought billions of stolen dollars into the USA - some of which has found its way into the coffers of major political parties and the pockets of senior politicians.

mobiusgeek Thanks. It's fascinating what info is available on the Net.

The so-called 'businesses' of 'MLM' shills will not stand up to the slightest scrutiny.

All 'MLM/Prosperity Gospel' Evangelists claim to be making lots of money (in order to lure others into the trap), but tellingly, you will never find one who is prepared to produce his/her 'MLM'-related income-tax payment receipts voluntarily. Indeed, if you ask them to produce quantifiable evidence of their 'profits,' they will immediately recite a closed-logic script and try to make you feel stupid, and/or guilty, for being so personal and doubting their honesty.

Yet, anyone with an ounce of commercial common-sense, can immediately sense that, because they are so wooden, evasive and defensive, 'MLM' shills must be hiding something.

All 'MLM' shills are obliged by the rules of their 100% positive game, never to disclose their ('negative') financial losses. In other words, they are programmed to lie and to withhold key-information systematically, just like machines, but they don't see themselves as liars or criminals, because they imagine that they are only trying to help people by recruiting them.

A while ago, I had an argument with an indignant, jargon-spouting British 'MLM' robot apologist, who insisted that no 'distributor' should be expected to show his/her accounts (particularly, income tax payment receipts) to 'prospects,' and that 'distributors' were perfectly entitled to keep their 'business' accounts private.

Yet, when selling a real ongoing business in the UK, you are obliged by law to disclose audited financial records to potential buyers. Indeed, if you were to withhold the evidence that any traditional business was insolvent, and sell it by pretending that it had been hugely-profitable, you would risk being sued in the civil courts, or even prosecuted in the criminal courts, for fraud.

"Yet, when selling a real ongoing business in the UK, you are obliged by law to disclose audited financial records to potential buyers. Indeed, if you were to withhold the evidence that any traditional business was insolvent, and sell it by pretending that it had been hugely-profitable, you would risk being sued in the civil courts, or even prosecuted in the criminal courts, for fraud."

Very good point, eye.

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2015/10/robert-fitzpatrick-explains-pyramid.html

stopfaffing Talking of hiding trading losses, I don't know if you followed the 'Enron' tragicomedy, but there are many alarming parallels between it and publicly traded 'MLM' racket front-companies, like 'Herbalife.'

Essentially the following original analysis (which was openly-published under my copyright several years ago) also applies to privately-held 'MLM' companies, like 'FLP' and 'Amway'.

Furthermore, no one has ever offered the slightest challenge to the validity of this analysis, because self-evidently, its irrefutable .

In brief, the bosses of 'Enron' who (although publicly shamed and jailed for securities fraud, etc.) were mysteriously never charged with racketeering, pumped the value of their company's share price, by off-loading chronic, and massive, trading losses onto a corporate labyrinth comprising more than 1500 apparently 'independent' companies which they had maliciously created, and which didn't appear in the main company's accounts.

The bosses of the 'Enron' racket hid in plain sight and were enthusiastically assisted by an army of amoral, and greedy, attorneys, accountants, bankers, politicians, former regulators, financial journalists, stock analysts, etc., who had all had their snouts in the stinking trough.

In this way, 'Enron' itself appeared to be consistantly generating massive, and growing, profits when, in reality, it was sinking in an ocean of rising debts. When the 'Enron' racketeers could no longer maintain their monopoly of information, they dumped their own effectively-valueless shares at the inflated price, before the whole illusion collapsed and agents of the FBI, SEC, etc., finally strolled in.

In the 'Herbalife' racket, chronic, and massive, trading losses have been off-loaded onto a labyrinth comprising millions of apparently 'Independent Business Owners.' These losses have never appeared in 'Herbalife's' own accounts. Thus, the main 'Herbalife' company has been given the appearance of consistantly generating massive, and growing, profits (and its share value pumped) when, in reality, it too has been sinking in an ocean of rising debts. For if ever reason and the rule of law prevailed, the bosses of 'Herbalife' front company held fully to account and obliged to pay back all the millions individuals they have cheated: their strangely-familiar tragicomic corporate illusion would also be revealed as being less than worthless.

It almost goes without saying that the bosses of the 'Herbalife' racket have hid in plain sight and have been enthusiastically assisted by an army of amoral, and greedy, attorneys, accountants, bankers, politicians, former regulators, financial journalists, stock analysts, etc., who have all had their snouts in the stinking trough.

The 'Herbalife' racket makes the 'Enron' racket look almost simple and straightforward, but its only one part of an ongoing criminogenic phenomenon of historic significance.

MN members might be interested to watch this jaw-dropping documentary film about 'Enron' made by Alex Gibney (who also made the recent film about 'Scientology').

Fascinating. I can't watch the Enron vid though, it appears to be blocked in my country (uk)

www.amquix.info/images/Amron/Enron_DeVos_Cover_Letter.jpg

In the late 1990s, the bosses of the 'Enron' racket hatched a deal with the bosses of the 'Amway' racket, and the two mobs then used deluded adherents of the 'MLM Income Opportunity' fairy story, to commit related-frauds in California.

Although briefly-reported by the (liberal) US media, these particular crimes have never been fully-investigated, let alone prosecuted.

"Enron started manipulating California's electricity market a month after it was deregulated in 1998, according to internal documents and phone transcripts, reported in the San Francisco Chronicle. Enron's manipulation of California markets coincided with Amway's 140,000 California distributors peddling 'Electricity by Enron' on doorsteps throughout the state. Amway took a percentage of the profit for each sale they made on behalf of Enron. Enron profited at least $1.6 billion during California's energy crisis by exploiting the state's deregulation plan."

www.michiganliberal.com/diary/4763/

mobiusgeek

Try this link.

I strongly advise anyone interested in 'MLM income opportunity' cultic racketeering to watch Alex Gibney's 'Eron' documentary.

documentaryheaven.com/enron-the-smartest-guys-in-the-room/

Sadly, Gibney did not offer any medical/psychological diagnosis concerning the bosses of 'Enron,' or of their under-bosses and foot-soldiers, but the instigators of the 'Enron' racket became classic sociopaths (initially exhibiting the diagnostic criteria of severe and inflexible Narcissistic Personality Disorder). The 'Enron' bosses were otherwise-mediocre, pyschologically-immature individuals who steadfastly pretended moral and intellectual authority whilst perpetrating all manner of crimes (principally, fraud and the obstruction of justice).

Thirty-one members of the US Congress have joined a new (so-called) 'Direct Selling Caucus,' co-chaired by Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Marc Veasey (D-Texas).

Laughably, the legally-registered corporate structures shielding a classic syndicate of major organised crime goups (which these thirty-one useful idiots have been co-oted to protect) can't prove that they have actually direct sold anything to the general public (based on value and demand). Their bosses, and attorneys, now all steadfastly pretend that the overwhelming majority of 'MLM distributors' were, in fact, 'MLM customers,' but this particularly imaginative chapter of the reality-bending 'MLM direct selling' fairy story was recently put forward by the bosses of the (now defunct) 'Vemma' racket, but rejected out of hand by US regulators and prosecutors.

Thus, if these thirty-one Congressmen/women sincerely believe that organizations like 'FLP', 'Amway', 'Herbalife', etc. have been entirely lawful enterprises, then they are evidently too stupid to be held to account.

Read more: www.politico.com/tipsheets/politico-influence/2015/10/herbalife-lobby-hits-the-hill-lobbyists-fundraise-for-would-be-rubio-successor-debate-poetry-210995#ixzz3q8E0U2A6

www.politico.com/tipsheets/politico-influence/2015/10/herbalife-lobby-hits-the-hill-lobbyists-fundraise-for-would-be-rubio-successor-debate-poetry-210995

MN members might be interested to read this exchange of comments on Robert FitzPatrick's recent article. (NB. It's not clear whether the anonymous comments/questions came from one person).

mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2015/10/robert-fitzpatrick-explains-pyramid.html

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Anonymous 1 November 2015 at 01:27

"12 publicly-traded MLMs and Amway have 2.5 million salespeople
in the USA, one for every 46 households in the entire country.
The DSA claims there are now 1,400 MLMs in the USA!"

I live in the UK where Facebook is crawling with 'oh so successful' MLMers. Do you know how many MLMs are now in Britain, how many salespeople they claim and what this represents per UK household?

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David Brear 1 November 2015 at 01:04

Anonymous - Robert's quoted-figures, if anything, are generous, because they don't include the big privately-owned 'MLM' rackets.

Currently, there are approximately 27 millions households in the UK.

The so-called 'UK DSA' claims 400 thousands so-called 'direct sellers' in the UK (88 thousands of whom are apparently under 25), but provides zero quantifiable evidence that any member of this constantly-churning flock of Britons has generated an overall net-profit by regularly retailing products or services to members of the general public (based on value and demand).

A quick calculation reveals that, on the above figures, there is a so-called 'direct seller' for approximately every 65-70 households in the UK. The so-called 'UK DSA' comprises most of the big US-based 'MLM' rackets + some home-grown ones.

Frighteningly, Lynda Mills, director general of the so-called 'UK DSA,' is quoted as recently saying:

“Direct selling is becoming more mainstream and offering a whole range of people a real alternative to traditional employment. The industry has been growing in popularity over the last few years and we’ve now reached the stage where younger people see it as an appealing career option.”

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Anonymous 2 November 2015 at 00:31

How can you be so sure no one makes money out of direct selling?

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David Brear 2 November 2015 at 00:45

Anonymous - It depends what you mean by this deeply-ambiguous question, because certain racketeers have made billions of dollars out of so-called 'direct selling'. Plenty of amoral attorneys, bankers, accountants, politicians, former regulators, etc., have also pocketed piles of stolen cash.

Please apply a little common sense, and confront the simple truth that in 'MLM' rackets, on the pretext that by 'exactly duplicating a plan to achieve financial freedom,' victims (arbitrarily described as 'distributors') have been required regularly to buy wampum products ( i.e. effectively-unsaleable, banal merchandise often of a highly-dubious pseudo-medical nature) for exorbitant fixed prices.

Thus, the only net-profits which have been made out of this economically-suicidal game of make-believe have gone to the minority of racketeers who keep setting it up (along with their associates), not to the majority of ill-informed players.

Excellent info, thx!. And I enjoyed the last paragraph, well put!

I've been reading through all the threads on FL so decided I should join and put my opinion across.

I joined FL a few years ago. It's taken quite a while for me to realise that I was never going to make money from it, in fact I have lost money as I put far too much pressure on myself to achieve 4cc's and didn't understand the marketing plan properly at the time, so ended up buying extra stock to make up my 4cc's as I didn't have lots of customers.

I thought 4cc's was compulsory to be paid your bonus on anything you buy, but it's not, it's only if you have a team, to get paid your team leading bonus. I do have a few customers but not enough for 4cc's.

As you'll all be aware by eyespying's posts, the business is very much on your mindset and that's apparently where I've been going wrong. A plan was put in place for me to get to Manager which involved talking to 5 people a day about Forever. I would privately message friends about the business (I found this extremely difficult) some people would reply and I actually built a small team and got a promotion within the marketing plan.

But there was always something that didn't sit right with me and I couldn't work out what it was until recently. I started to get really stressed and anxious all the time that I've recently been put on antidepressants (though I have been on them before so can't just say that's because of Forever)

It's because I hated talking to people about the business as most reject it or don't reply to messages. I was told that the more no's I get the closer I am to the yes's, but I'm a really sensitive person and felt like the rejection was personal hence why I felt so stressed, down and anxious all the time. I felt that they were rejecting me and not the business.

I was also told that if people are negative towards me then they aren't really my friends and I should distance myself from them and surround myself in likeminded people.

I've paid to go to trainings and success days hoping it would help grow my business but I never felt blown away by the stories being told.

I recently saw a group on fb all about juice plus and how people were sick of the false claims (curing everything from cancer to autism) and being constantly harassed by friends about the business, some of the people went on to say the same about Forever and that's when it clicked that people don't want to be approached and don't like the boasting of all the cars and holidays.

Because it didn't sit right with me I thankfully never did this. I'm a very truthful person and didn't like the though of wording a post to look like I was buying a new car or going on a holiday paid for by Forever. As someone said, it's all smoke and mirrors. I know there are people in Forever earning lots of money but they will make out they've bought a new house when in fact they are just renting it.

The recent thing I have seen on fb is some of the high-up people sponsoring children in Africa. Yes, it's wonderful that they are helping a child get a private education but one of them said it was £35 per month for their child, surely if they were earning a 6 figure salary they can afford to spend more than £35? (god that makes me sound like an awful person and I'm sure the little boy is grateful) but if I was earning the amount they are, I would be giving a lot more than £35

I'm worried and embarrassed about when people will ask me how forever is going now. I'm not doing anything anymore and I hate the thought of the 'I told you so' brigade coming out in force, but then maybe I can use it to my advantage and stop someone else from going through what I've been through and save them losing money.

I'm an educated, smart person so why was I sucked into it? Because I wanted to give my family a good life, but I know I already do this, I don't need Forever to make this happen.

Looking back, I wish I'd never come across Forever, but I'm learning from my mistake