Botwatch 86!!! the continuing saga of MLM. When 99.6% of people joining MLM are destined to lose money is that an opportunity or a scam?

[Spongebobette]

On this thread we are botwatchers - watching multi level marketing bots and exposing their manipulations and misleading claims

I knew yawn was a imbecile but this is just idiotic. To actively and openly mislead the beyond stupid twonks sucking up her every lie just staggers me. How are they all so thick as to actually believe she knows Deborah?? I'm truly baffled.

Apparently Yawn goes to the money tree when she wants to attract abundance and gives it a shake.

Abundance is the new code for six figure income. I don't know what this money tree looks like but I'm picturing a dried up stick with one wilting leaf hanging on. If anyone believes Yawn has anything useful to say about earning or investing then they are certainly barking up the wrong money tree.

Ha ha they may as well have written ‘no whooping’

I wonder if the tree can shake off £230,000?

And I love the ‘look how close the nearest public car park is’ (YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO PARK ON SITE)

It's OK, yawn and her adoring flock will shake a tree and magically manifest a carpark. Can't wait to see how long she waits till she buys the 5000 new bots. I wonder if you get discount for buying in bulk?

lol @YouOKHun and @Spongebobette I was having a right giggle at the new building rules too. They're obviously paranoid that they're going to be chucked out and the no parking UNLESS collecting an order was very funny.

"We only have white Rangey shaped spaces in our car park and now most of you have vehicles that give away our downward spiral we don't want anyone seeing a collection of rusty Morris Marinas and ancient souped up and clocked vehicles you bought from a man in a lay-by (ex-BFF) or that ridiculous penis extension Mr Yawn drives. So please park miles away at your own expense.

Also, nobody is allowed into ARSESolihull in leggings. Headband has to stay in the lobby until she has worked off her zaniness. Nobody is to corner an employee of one of the other companies in the lift and drag them by the hair to our new facility, the Aloe Bar if they really don't want to go. We would rather you didn't try and recruit in an obvious way so we have set some man traps in the car park. While employees from other companies are waiting for the fire service to free them you may invite them to view the opportunity, as long as this is out of sight of the reception desk.

If you see a confused new bot wondering about in a daze move them into the car park. Rugby tackle them in the reception area if they look a bit common and look like they might be about to say 'I'm with Forever Living', we don't want anyone who looks vulnerable or down at heel associated with us in a relatively public place. This is especially important now that we can't hide them in the tent.

Can we remind the organisational cannon fodder that they must not embarrass us now that we are not hidden away on an industrial estate. Also, no hawking or selling second hand wands and chipped Buddhas in the public areas".

“No Eeeeeeeking.” etc …

Isn't giving financial advice regulated in the UK? By the FCA?

I don't understand something: when Yawn borrowed the $200,000, who actually put up the money? Forever Living, or Yawns own "business". If the latter, then effectively Yawn owes the money to herself. Yes?

Can anyone explain who actually wrote the cheque(s) to Yawn.

@CanadianJohn

My understanding…

She has a limited company, and at the heyday in 2016, this company made £200k (global bonus, commissions from FL)

The accountants put through an equal an opposite ‘provision’ of £200k so her limited company would avoid having to pay corporation tax.

Instead of taking the cash out as income or dividends (and paying tax on it), a directors loan was taken out.

overdrawn DLAs are taxed as of income… however there is illegal ‘bed and breakfasting’ going on where the accountant notes the loan is repaid and taken out as a new loan each year.

She doesn’t actually owe ‘£200k’ as the provision of £200k is likely a provision to pay her a salary.

So to sort it out, she can take it as a dividend and company would owe corporation tax as would release the provision.

Or she can take it as income, pay income tax, and company will have to pay NI.

Both ways, you’re looking at around £100k owing to HMRC via corporation tax/NI/income/dividend tax which has never been paid.

Basically - it’s a tax dodge - you can’t make £200k and pay no tax. Not many accountants would agree to this treatment.

Can they avoid the tax by winding up the company like John Lewis bot did? I know she was in dispute with HMRC about tax owing but I think in the end got away without paying what she owed. There was a report on Companies House saying she was expecting a lump some to pay off her tax (presumably a Chairman’s Bonus cheque) but of course that year she received a minuscule amount

Yes, they could wind it up.

HMRC would then seek to reclaim it from the director personally, and look at what assets the director owns that can be sold to pay the liability.

Negotiations is possible, and the liquidator may not always keep pushing to recover debts if they don’t think it’s fruitful.

I would be nervous to have this hanging over me though.

@ZerotoSixtySnail there is an accountant in a midlands spa town who seems very keen to recommend exactly what you describe!

Yes that accountant is the default one for Forevet Living bots!

@ZerotoSixtySnail Thanks for your explanation, I thought it must be something like that. I wasn't aware of MLMs during the 'glory days', and find it hard to believe bots were once making $200,000.

Yes she had a huge cheque from FL back in 2015/16 for about £200 grand so she was obviously doing well back then, I'm not sure if she put it down as a deposit for the Thatch or put it in to the business, but either way when you set up a Ltd company you are a seperate legal entitiy from the business, so she owes her company that money, if she doesn't pay the loan off within 9 months of taking out the loan then it's subject to corporation tax, it doesn't matter that you technically owe the money to yourself you still have to pay it back to the company and pay the hefty taxes on it, it can be written off but by that point it will be subject to income tax at 40% and not corporation tax, however even if it's written off you can be disqualified from future Directorships and running a Ltd company, either way it's bad news!

Yawn's cheque in 2016 was $157,990.02, so considerably less than £200k. I think that must have been her best cheque but I don't have a record of 2015. I think 2017 was the beginning of smaller cheques wasn't it?

We also need to remember that the big cheques come at considerable expense. Castle got a cheque for $416k in 2017, less than the sum she said her parents had lent her to 'invest' in her FLP business (i.e. purchase garage stock through carefully selected downlines in order to qualify for the cheques). So even the CB cheques are smoke & mirrors.
For info, Yawn got a cheque for $55k in 2017, followed by zilch in 2018 and a couple of yoga mats since.

There definitely was a cheque for $180,000 in one of the years, she paraded it around for ages....but yes after 2016 it was downhill all the way

All that money they received and hardly anything to show for it....fool and their money and all that

Just goes to show.

Ms Sponlie has a video on her FB page where she talking to a woman who was in Younique before getting sucked into UR. It's really a classic tale of being vulnerable, being love-bombed, groomed, gaslit and intimidated. Then being terrified to act once it was clear UR was bad news and she was beginning to realise the dangers of MLM.

She talks about the courage she had to find to look at her finances and work out what she had earned as a moderately successful bot with 2 or 3 active recruits versus what she had spent over the years she was in UR. Based on what she found from that exercise she has yet to find the courage to examine her "earnings" from Younique. Spoiler: she is thousands of pounds out of pocket.

The video is long (2-3 hours) and I've only listened to the first hour and a quarter as it's a bit of a time commitment! It's nothing we haven't heard before sadly, but it is a really good example of how a decent and intelligent but vulnerable person can get caught up in MLM and why they don't walk away when the alarm bells are ringing. I admire the woman's honesty - we know it takes bravery to speak out and to hold your hands up to mistakes.

"What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

Join us tonight for an inspiring webinar where we’ll share real stories of people who took a chance and built incredible businesses. Learn how they overcame doubt, took action, and created success on their own terms".

I don't know about anyone else but I have a real problem with Uber posting 'what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?'. It's exactly the same as saying 'this business opportunity is guaranteed' and it's just wrong (morally) and wrong (incorrect).

If her audience tonight heard 'what would you do if you knew the likelihood of losing money was 99%+?' then they would be better able to protect themselves from harm. If only they realised that the examples they will be shown are well rehearsed people willing to present their struggles as cast iron success, or Uber's fellow sharks, prepared to say anything. Meanwhile many many more examples of the reality of involvement in Forever Living are silenced.

What Uber does is 100% endorsed by Forever Living. Just by this post it's clear the usual misrepresentations and lies will be happening. It's basically unfair trading by misleading omission by a pyramid scheme relying on recruitment and internal sales. Wouldn't it be nice if this was recognised and FLP and their bots weren't essentially exempt from the laws that stop other organisations and their representatives lying with impunity?