'FL / MLM' Thread 3

[Eyespying]

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

Over in Mrs Gloss on FB , we are currently discussing this very topic. You'd all be welcome to join us

m.facebook.com/groups/1044951072183563

I continued my conversations with the whistleblower yesterday evening.

One of the topics we covered are the reasons why people with money get caught up in the 'MLM' fairy story. The whistleblower's ex-wife was not wealthy, but she wasn't exactly short of money. She was a businesswoman and she had inherited a bit of money. Her husband had his own business and he was generous with her.

Shills are 'building the MLM business', because they want the adulation of the adherents. Being the 'positive leader' on stage whom all the adherents dream of emulating, is an ego-inflating addiction. Whilst they remain under the influence of the 'FLP' fairy story, shills are prepared to go to any almost lengths to get hold of the money to keep buying the 'Case Credits' and climb the hierarchy or maintain their positions. They also have to shell out for flashier cars, houses and clothes, and for travelling expenses, 'Mindset' training expenses, etc. It's not difficult to imagine the shame these 'big heads' would feel, if they had to admit they'd been demoted, but imagine the shame they would feel if they had to admit that they'd never made any net profits, and that the money was coming from other sources.

Other than the big 'FLP' bosses, under-boss shills are de facto slaves, prisoners of their egos.

I've also been told about several quite wealthy 'FLP' shills, who fit the above description, but who come from the British Sikh and Muslim communities. These people have been paying for members of their families to rise in the 'FLP' ranks.

AnnaBanana11 Thank you for your kind invitation. I'm very pleased that so many people are getting right to the heart of what is going on in 'MLM' cults. I'm not a FB user, so please could you post my above comment in the FB discussion or direct people to it.

I think this is a very important aspect of the problem to understand. British shills are also victims. The people who really control big 'MLM' cults like 'FLP,' are few in number and they are in the USA.

BTW, are you by any chance Anna Banana (of 'Married to an Ambot' fame)?

Ha no, I'm married to a police officer

Just keen to highlight this con. The discussion is going well but predictably we have had some members extol the virtues of MLM

Shills are 'building the MLM business', because they want the adulation of the adherents.
They love the attention don't they? I baulk at the desperate posing and posturing on their pages, from actually posing in their underwear to artistically retouching their photos using an app for that purpose.
One or two even have their Facebook pages set as 'Public Figure.' Just like pop stars and models do. You can see how that hyped up fake adulation on a success day is addictive to some.

and the 'shelling out' - even those who appear to be receiving six figure cheques regularly, my brother has an actual real six figure income and does not live in an enormous barn, nor does he drive a flashy car. He doesn't even go on foreign holidays. He's doing what any non-brainwashed high income family man might do - paying off the mortgage as fast as he can and trying to get some significant savings built up before the kids leave school and want to go to uni.

Thanks -That's very interesting.

Has your husband encountered 'MLM' -touting police officers? I'm presuming you are in the UK.

'MLM' racketeering first infected the police in the UK in the 1970s with 'Amway'. In the 1990s, I complained about a group of 'Amway' adherents in W. Yorkshire who were exclusively police officers. My complaint went nowhere. The reason why I complained was because deluded 'MLM' adherents in my family insisted that 'MLM' couldn't be a fraud simply because police officers were involved.

The overall number of police officers who have been churned through 'MLM' rackets in the UK, probably runs into thousands. No organised effort has ever been made to educate, and/or warn, law enforcement agents about MLM rackets.

I've had quite a few ex-police officers in the UK contacting me (anonymously) via my Blog. Sadly, only one has ever identified himself, but he's never gone public.

sminkypink - 'MLM' shills are constantly pressured to acquire the trappings of wealth, but then, they are constantly told to duplicate exactly the example of their own 'Upline.'

The flashier the cars they drive and the houses they live in: the easier the shills think it will be for them to recruit.

My brother (who never had any success as a recruiter) completely idolised the American leader of his 'Amway Network,' Dexter Yager (a former beer salesman). My brother had piles of books and recordings of the great Dexter's 'words of wisdom.'

Dexter Yager is now retired (his sons have taken over his racket), but in his pomp, he took vulgar displays of 'MLM' wealth to an entirely new level of absurdity.

This is laughable non-sexual pornography, yet my brother (a university educated teacher) became addicted to it.

BTW, the Rolls Royce video clip came from a '60 minutes' documentary, broadcast in the USA in the early 1980s. The makers of this programme never asked any really searching questions, whilst almost all of the scripted statements which the Yager's made, went unchallenged.

Meanwhile, in Malaysia, people are getting arrested for being involved in 'MLM' rackets.

www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2016/01/13/telco-founder-charged-in-multi-level-scam/

So that jewellery mlm bot advertised her beautiful (ymmv) bling or alternatively you could work for her and earn 30% sales commission. Why on earth would anyone advertise their margin like that?

WidowWadman - The real reason why 'MLM' adherents are trained to advertise fat 'profit margins,' is as follows.

Since the late 1940s, a growing number of 'MLM' racketeers have been getting away with running, and dissimulating, closed-market swindles (a.k.a. pyramid schemes) by steadfastly pretending that the 'income opportunity shemes' which they sponsor are entirely-lawful open-markets based on networks of non-salaried commission agents ('distributors') regulary retailing good value products, and/or services, for a profit to customers and end-users (based on value and demand).

The prominently advertised 'retail profit margins' have been part of this vast 'direct selling' charade.

In reality, in hundreds of copy-cat 'MLM' rackets, precious little selling has been occuring, and certainly not for a net-profit to the general public. The overwhelming majority of so-called 'retail sales' have been unlawful losing investment payments (based on the false expectation of future reward) made by never-ending chains of temporarily deluded contractees of the front companies. The 'MLM' wampum products real function has been to launder these unlawful payments.

Due to their exorbitant fixed prices, and banal quality, 'MLM' wampum products have been effectively-unsaleable on the open-market to members of the general public with fully functioning critical, and evaluative, faculties.

Over the decades, in this way, billions of dollars have been transferred from countless millions of victims, into the pockets of a relatively small number of wealthy racketeers (many of whom are US citizens). These racketeers have used a significant percentage of their ill-gotten gains to infiltrate traditional culture, and to buy political protection and association with celebrities, opinion makers, etc., all around the globe.

Ginormarse and sparkly72

I read your comments on the other thread and, as members of the medical profession in the UK, what do you think of these 'FLP' propaganda videos?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOsZbjRsiY4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNqSeQijUjA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycJyearCiE8

Ginormarse following on from your comments and questions on the other thread:

Sending birthday and Xmas cards to 'downline' adherents (and, particularly, to their children) is a very common, devious technique of persuasion used in 'MLM' rackets. It makes the economic cannon-fodder believe that their leaders really love them and care about them. Obviously, the adherents only continue to receive such attentions, so long as they remain obedient.

Virtually everything core- 'MLM' adherents say and do, has been exactly duplicated from the 'positive' example of their 'successful upline'

Thus, 'FLP' FB posts follow a very specific pattern. There are even training packs to teach the faithful exactly what to post.

I'm a long time lurker on these MLM threads and getting pretty outraged at it all. I saw a post on Facebook today that has pushed me over the edge and to posting on a thread for the first time ( I have one FL bot and several Arbonne bots). It said something like 'The chances of winning the no Powerball are 1 in 292 million. The chances of becoming a millionaire through MLM is 1 in 100. Just say sayin'. How can they make these claims? Most don't even publish income figures and I know a 'national vice president' which I understand is pretty much top of the tree and I know they do not earn this much. Plus a Powerball ticket is $2. How much are people ploughing in to their 'businesses' with these MLMs!

finallyregisteredtopost - Welcome.

According to evidence recovered by UK government civil investigators in 2007, between 1973 and 2006, around one million UK and S. Irish citizens were churned through 'Amway' alone. During this period, the only people who made millions from 'Amway' in the UK, were the handful of criminals in the USA who peddled the insolvent British and Irish adherents endless publications, recordings tickets to meetings, etc, on the fraudulent pretext that these materials contained the secrets of 'success.' Up to one billion dollars is estimated to have been stolen by the 'Amway' racketeers from the UK and Ireland, but this is just a tiny fraction of what has been stolen from alll over the globe by dozens of copy-cat racketeers.

The '99% MLM failure/loss' rate is often quoted, but the chances of making an overall net-profit out of the operation of any so-called 'MLM income opportunity,' has always been effectively-zero.

Today, estimates as to how many individuals overall have been churned through 'MLM' rackets since they first appeared in the late 1940s, are quoted in the hundreds of millions.

Perhaps you have read earlier in these threads that I'm currently interviewing the ex-husband of an 'FLP' shill in the UK. The shill has been presented as someone living a perfect life and earning fortunes from her 'business'.

In reality, this 'FLP' shill's ex-husband retains evidence that, during 6 years, hundreds of thousands of pounds of his, and his ex-wife's, money was ploughed into maintaining this kitsch charade.

'MLM' adherence is just another form of non-rational belief in a future Utopian existence, but presented in a contemporary commercial jargon. You can call it a religion if you like, some have called it an addiction, others a delusion, whilst others say it's commercial cultism.

I prefer to MLM as the latest camouflage for the age-old problem of blame- the-victim cultic racketeering.

One thing's for certain, signing up for an 'MLM' racket, is the modern day equivalent of selling one's soul to the devil.

'of course having them banned completely is another thing entirely, but small steps, if we can get the word out there in their own battlegrounds - school noticeboards, send info in an easy digestable form, to school heads, hospitals, police stations, on Facebook etc.
Point out the way that conventional business and careers are mocked etc.'

sminkypink-

I've always taken the view that fraud is already banned, and that 'MLM' has been just a very fiendish way of hiding mass-fraud in plain sight.

By passing a law, but failing to enforce it, you effectively authorise the very crime you appeared to be prohibiting.

This may have been posted before. It's nothing major but something I came across

www.insidermedia.com/insider/midlands/146660-

penny1ane

Sadly, the ASA can only look at misleading advertising which the 'FLP' British front company has legal responsibility for. However, British 'FLP' adherents and shills have continued publicly to make outrageous, unsubstantiated medical claims which, if challenged, the front company (and its lawyers) will simply say are entirely the responsibilty of the individuals making them.

e.g. This following misleading anecdotal statement is typical. It was taken from an apparently independent website and it was signed by Teresa Morgan-Jones, a British 'FLP' shill:

breakthroughgroup.net/tag/toothgel/

'When I first joined Forever, I was suffering from gum disease (gingivitis) which my mother had years ago & unfortunately lost all of her teeth to, so this really worried me. I had swollen bleeding gums and terribly painful mouth ulcers, it was also costing me a fortune as I had to go to the hygienist every 6 months. I started drinking the aloe gel and using the forever bright toothgel, within 3 months all of that had changed, the inflammation went, my mouth ulcers disappeared, the only thing I’d changed was that I’d been taking & using aloe. My hygienist & dentist couldn’t believe it and within a year my plaque count had halved. That was nearly 6 years ago & I’ve never suffered since, I no longer have gum disease or suffer with mouth ulcers and only visit the hygienist once a year which has saved me money – fantastic – I will never ever stop using these...'

These people must have a siren that sounds or something : )

Over on MrsGloss&TheGoss on FB, someone has innocuously posted about wanting to go cruelty free re make up buying. We've had Arbonne, FL and Younique so far pop up to say that they're completely cruelty free... Is this true do we think?

And and and ... When I pull them up on it and state pointedly that there is to be no selling of FL etc and I will remove repeat offenders, they thank me with lots of xxxx's (and usually a gushing apologising email )

It's very odd

annabanana it's because they don't want you to remove them from the group as behind the scenes they will now be pming anyone who showed interest in that post.

Well now apparently my mil and sil's partner are now impressed with her "fl business", saying "how well she is doing". I am gutted, especially because I have discussed the fl scam with my mil and she seemed to be interested in what I was telling her. I have decided to leave them to it now, will not say anything about it and let them all ride off into cloud "cuckoo land " together. Their attitude towards me have changed also, I will be okay, just a bit sneeped at the moment.

Annie65 - This all sounds frighteningly familiar. It's very probable that your MIL has gone straight to her daughter and told her of your concerns that 'FLP' is a scam. Your SIL (with the guidance of her handlers) will then have blocked all rational arguments with the usual scripted 'MLM' bullshit.' How can a company which has existed for so long, and operates in 150 countries, be a scam?'

Passionate 'MLM' converts can be easily persuaded that the Internet is full of false information about the object of their devotion.

One of the factors which seems to convince friends and relatives that 'MLM is a good business,' is the genuine happiness and excitement the fairy story can create in people like your SIL. In the worse cases, 'MLM' converts can become euphoric, as though they've won the lottery

The happiness and excitement are quite real, but what is creating them, is completely false.

I saw exactly this situation with my brother, who infected his girlfrend and, eventually, my mother, with his blind faith in the 'Amway' fairy story. At first 'MLM' acted like a drug, and cured his depression.

My mother (a supporter of Margaret Thatcher) couldn't believe that 'Amway' - a company which had had Conservative Ministers speaking at its events in the UK- could be a fraud. Ironically, one of these speakers was Lord Archer (before he got jailed for lying and perverting justice).

It's also possible that your in-laws have been shown similar propaganda material with celebs (like Martyn Lewis) appearing to support 'FLP'.

Did your in-laws have anything to say about 'FLP's' deep 'Mormon' connections?