'FL / MLM' Thread 3

[Eyespying]

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

Gimlet1994 BTW several of the 'GEPM' shills were members of the French National Front and the retired Gendarme whom I met, was a big fan of Jean- Marie Le Pen.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-35446193

Jesus wept. You'd have thought that he'd done just a smidgen of research before trying to recruit Mumsnetters for bloody Aloe Vera.

I have a very good contact with the ex-wife of a deluded 'Zinzino' Bot. She might like to come and join us on MN.

http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/legalmoneymatters/2562393-mlm-bot-watch-5-juice-forever-living-younique-arbonne-newbie-ariix-and-our-own-parslai-powered-timeless-vie

darceybussell The only important question is: What has been the real reason why people have kept giving their money to participate in so-called 'MLM' schemes?

1. Because they wanted a good value product and/or service?

1. Because they believed that through regularly buying the products and/or services, and recruiting others to do the same, they could receive a future financial reward?

Did you know that when Carlo Ponzi was arrested, there were no laws which specifically defined the dissimulated closed-market swindle he'd been running, and at first, it looked like he'd get off. Many of his victims tried to defend him. Ponzi was eventually jailed essentially for lying to take people's money, but his scheme had already collapsed because of media ridicule. The media had to bring a reformed, convicted swindler to explain Ponzi's swindle to the journalists.

'MLMs' came along in the late 1940s and 1950s, and they cleverly escaped prosecution by hiding unlawful investment payments behind effectively unsaleable products and services, but they were essentially no different to Ponzi's 1920s crackpot investment sheme lie. The only real money flowing into Ponzi's scheme, and into all MLMs, came, and has come, from the participants. But the participants were deceived into believing that endless profits would be coming from legitimate sales transactions, not just their accumulated contributions.

UK trading schemes legislation is very badly written, because it doesn't yet recognise the essential dissimulated closed-market characteristic of all Pyramids and Ponzis. Essentially, it makes it a criminal offence only to promote a scheme in whch more and more participants have to pay to join. If you can make it appear that victims are buying products and/or services, because they want them, you can instigate a pyramid scheme in Britain right under the noses of regulators. In other words, the current UK law was designed to prohibit Ponzi-style money-circulation schemes without products to launder the payments, but then it was poorly adapted to prohibit really-obvious product-based pyramids which encouraged massive inventory loading.

Yet, UK criminal law simply defines fraud as lying to, or withholding key-information from, people in order to take their money (which is a form of theft). This common sense law could easily be used to shut down 'MLM' rackets, but it never is. In MLM rackets, the real source of the cash and the effextively-100% churn/insolvency rates have always been hidden from the public.

BSintolerant - Eric Sheibeler once worked as a federal auditor, so he got on well with UK trade regulators in Company Investigations Branch of the old DTI. The regulators accepted that this was a massive scam, but they only were looking for the quickest and cheapest way to close 'Amway UK Ltd.' They also didn't want to have to explain publicly why they had allowed this to exist in the UK since 1973. The 'tools scam' (which was the major part of the racket) was beyond the remit of CIB.

I was not allowed to be present when Eric met CIB, but he came straight to Paris afterwards to give me a debriefing. If I recall correctly, this was 2004. Various senior regulators had read Eric's book and they'd also been contacted by a small number of isolated victims in the UK (one of whom was a former 'Diamond'). Mysteriously, it was later decided that it wouldn't be a good idea to produce any victims during the prosecution 'Amway.'

I was eventually told that the 'Amway' Public Interest Bakruptcy Petition/prosecution in the High Court would be held in private, which was a lie.

When I met with CIB assessment lawyers and the Deputy Inspector of UK Companies, Cliff Calaghan, the atmosphere was not what you would call friendly. At that point, I'd been complaining for more than 10 years and it hadn't yet been decided to prosecute 'Amway'. I was asked if I would be prepared to infiltrate 'Amway' meetings in the UK, because CIB officials were not authorised to do so. I declined on the grounds that that investigating on behalf of their employers, the public, was what CIB officials were paid to do.

Whilst waiting for the meeting to start, a junior CIB official asked me if I was aware that my life could be danger.

A Home Office spook also attended this CIB meeting. He was from a multi-role Dept. supposedly with responsibility for advising the Home Secretary about cults. The truth is that legalistically cults do not exist in Britain, because a flock of influencial British academics (some with very dubius connections to the 'Moonies') have been blocking all common-sense public debate of the issue, since the 1980s. Several £ millions of UK tax payers money has funded these co-opted academics. They have created an information gathering/dispersing charity called 'INFORM' (Information about New Religious Movements, Minority Religions and Alternative Spiritualities)
and still they frequent the London School of Economics Sociology Dept. Various people have been campaigning to have 'INFORM's' public funding stopped.

The average MN member knows far more about cults than anyone at 'INFORM,' yet this conraversial NGO has been the only adviser to the UK Government for more than 30 years.

Blimey. I thought it was shocking enough when you mentioned about the Cult Awareness Network being taken over by scientology. To have academics involved in hiding realities is really sad. I wonder what benefit they gain (money / privileges??) or have they simply not looked at the problem deeply enough or from the right perspective?

ambler21 Professor Eileeen Barker was the instigator of 'INFORM,' but she's now virtually retired.

Barker originally trained as an actress at RADA, but then became a housewife. I'm reliably informed that she went back into education as a means of recovering from depression. She chose sociology, but then specialised in the 'sociology of religion.'

Prof. Barker was once flown to the USA and entertained for an extended period at the expense of the so-called 'Moonies.' After living with the members of this notorious cult, she then produced a book called 'The Making of Moonie,' which is an pitiful apology for cultic racketeering, but thinly-disguised as an objective, non-judgemental, academic study of a new religious movement.

Many people suspect that Eileen Barker either became a secret convert of the Rev. Moon, or that she was bought, but I suspect that she's merely a twit, but a very dangerous twit at that.

Essentially Barker has told the UK government policy makers a lie which they wanted to hear - i.e. there is no need to commit any money to combat a problem which doesn't really exist in Britain.

ambler21

This is what happened to CAN.

Eye

That is disturbing to put it mildly. If you're referring to a potential fraud trial, I wonder if it was decided not to call Amway victims as witnesses because it would prolong the court hearing and rack up sky high legal costs? Also, if victims has been called to give evidence in person (rather than letting a judge rely solely on written witness statements) there could have been a good chance that a skilled barrister would have done a hatchet job on the lot of them during cross-examination. Amway would have had access to the best legal team money could buy and it wouldn't take much for a clever barrister to tie a witness in knots - it's what they're trained to do.

I suspect a lot of people (intelligent or otherwise) who don't have a great understanding of how cults / psychopaths work may think that those who compare mlm schemes with cults are jealous, paranoid, deluded, liars who don't want to admit that they're bearing a grudge because they've lost everything due to lack of hard work, or failure to follow the plan. The odds are against the victims in the first place.

BSintolerant You are aware that Amway UK Ltd.' briefly employed the former deputy director of the UK Serious fraud Office, Peter Kiernan?

The CIB regulators gave me verbal assurances that there was legal precedent for closing companies fronting pyramid frauds in the UK, by filing a public interest bankruptcy petition in the High Court. I was assured that once 'Amway' was closed using civil procedures, a SFO criminal investigation would follow.

Personally, I wanted CIB to forget all idea of a feeble little court case, and go directly to the UK cabinet office with a full explanation of the extraordinary phenomenon they had begun to uncover.

I consider that due to its duration, scale and depth of infiltration into traditional culture, 'MLM' cultic racketeering poses an ongoing threat to democracy and the rule of law.

US-based centrally-controlled criminogenic cultic organizations, like 'Amway,' have been using economic and psychological warfare tactics to enslave and rob millions of UK citizens, and prevent them from complaining.

One senior CIB regulator told me (off the record) that he considered 'Amway' to be the Ku Klux Klan in a suit and tie.

This video has just been posted.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNM3MB04qFk

May be late to the party here but is 'my showcase stylist' another MLM ?

KenDoddsDadsDog No, my initial reaction is that this doesn't really look like an 'MLM'. It looks more like an up-dated version of an old fashioned direct selling scheme. That said, there are a number common-sense questions which should be asked this scheme.

e.g. Have restrictions been placed on the number of sales agents operating in given geographical areas?

Thanks , a Facebook friend has set up a page (and a party )

KenDoddsDadsDog I'll have a deeper look for you later. From what I've already found, there doen't seem be any suggestion that this company is peddling the fraudulent theory that endless recruitment + endless payments by the recruits = endless profits for the recruits.

It seems to be recruiting women who with the idea of getting them to sell products to people with who they already enjoy relationships based on love and trust. This is not necessarily unlawful, but it isn't particularly ethical.

Usually, the biggest red flag is if the sponsors of a scheme offer participants commission payments on their own purchases, and on those of their recruits, and those of the recruits of their recruits, ad infinitum.

Thank you , from what I can see its kind of a modern Pippa Dee ! Selling the idea that everyone needs a stylist .

As this is the "serious" MLM thread, I'll add my 2p definition.

Xenu1 I think we might sum up what you've just written with the phrase:

When the quantifiable evidence is examined, the thought-stopping ritual jargon term, 'MLM Distributor,' can be translated into accurate English, as de facto slave or serf.

That said, in certain respects 'MLM' defacto serfs are worse off than their historic equivalents, because they are actually obliged not only to keep working for free for their wealthy Lords and Masters, but also to keep paying to money to make their Lords and Masters even wealthier.

Is this the most recent bot watch thread going at the moment ? If so, has anyone seen the Herbalife doc on Netflix ? I was truly at the scandalousness of it all! I've seen a few sponsored posts on FB but had honestly thought MLM's/pyramid schemes had finally died a death.