As usual, I monitored the annual 'Multi-Level Marketing' conference.
2025 Session Schedule — Multilevel Marketing MLM Conference
On the second day of this stage managed event, one of the more astute academic presenters, Claudia Gross (who is based in the Netherlands), attempted to explain why the overwhelming majority of all the many of millions of people around the world who are known to have wasted, and who continue to waste, their own resources attempting to duplicate the so-called step-by-step 'MLM' plan to achieve total financial freedom, remain silent.
During her obviously well-intentioned, but typically restrained, presentation, Claudia Gross was confronted with two yes/no questions. These were submitted via the Internet anonymously:
- Do you agree that, given its results, the 'MLM business model' is really a plan to commit financial suicide?
- Do you think that anyone who has signed up for an 'MLM' has done so as a result of his/her fully informed consent?
Sadly, although she came very close to replying truthfully, the wordy answers that Claudia Gross gave to these yes/no questions, were ultimately vague and confusing. However, essentially the same common-sense yes/no questions could have been submitted in various different forms:
- In your opinion, given its known results stretching back decades, has the so-called 'MLM business model' actually been a devious mechanism for tricking vulnerable people into de facto servitude?
- During your research, have you ever found an example of a so-called 'MLM' company that has voluntarily made accurate data publicly available (in an easy to understand format) which reveals how many individuals overall have been churned through its so-called 'business/income opportunity,' since it was first instigated?
Although I took the considerable trouble of submitting it in writing to one of the conference moderators prior to the event, perhaps the most-fundamental yes/no question concerning the 'MLM' phenomenon (the only truthful answer to which is also a guide to answering the above yes/no questions truthfully), was not put to any academic or regulatory participant during this year's conference.
- Have you examined any quantifiable evidence (e.g. in the form of income tax payment receipts) proving that any contractor of any company offering a so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing business/income opportunity' has actually been able to establish a viable, and sustainable, business (i.e. a commercial enterprise which has generated an overall net-income after the deduction of all start up and operational costs) in which goods/services have been regularly retailed lawfully for a profit, based on value and demand, to members of the general public (i.e. persons who were not fellow 'MLM ' contractors motivated by a false-expectation of future reward)?
Meanwhile, more and more observers with fully functioning critical and evaluative faculties, and hopefully including Claudia Gross, are slowly coming to realize a remarkably simple truth. One which I have been broadcasting (without the slightest challenge) in accurate fully-deconstucted terms for more than 25 years. There is no quantifiable evidence anywhere in the world (in the form of income tax payment receipts) proving that anyone who has signed a contract with any 'Amway' copy-cat company peddling a so-called 'MLM business/income opportunity,' has actually generated an overall net-income (i.e. after the deduction of all start up and operational costs) via the regular lawful retailing of goods/services for a profit based on value and demand, to members of the general public (i.e. persons who are not fellow 'MLM' contractors motivated by a false-expectation of a future reward).
In even more simple terms, there is no such thing as an 'MLM business/income opportunity.' This phrase has merely been the made-up technical-sounding title for nothing more than an absurd 'commercial' fairy story designed to lure, ensnare and exploit ill-informed adults. Indeed, it is highly-revealing that the authors of this contagious nonsense included the essentially meaningless term, 'income opportunity,' rather than the accurate term, 'net-income opportunity.'
The fact that a bunch of (no doubt well-educated) trade regulators, academics, attorneys, etc., were again discussing something for which there is no quantifiable evidence of its existence, but as though it really does exist, would be high comedy, if it wasn't for the tragic results of their continuing gaff.
With an irony close to exquisite, the psychology at play here is remarkably similar to the psychology at play within the ill-informed ranks of 'MLM' cults, and which continues to prevent hundreds of millions of current, and former, 'MLM' adherents from facing up to the truth. For it is human nature for us to try to justify our previous behaviour, no matter how foolish this behaviour might have been.
Thus, once you understand all the above, the next logical question to address is:
How can a pile of money be made from a financially suicidal ‘business model’ that has been deliberately rigged to fail?
David Brear (copyright 2025)
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The Big 'Multi-Level Marketing' Lie.
Introduction
How can a pile of money be made from a financially suicidal
‘business model’ that has been deliberately rigged to fail?
In 1967, an American satirical movie offered a memorable
answer to this conundrum. I am of course referring to ‘The Producers,’ written
and directed by Mel Brooks.
Whilst this movie went over the heads of certain
humourless critics who described it as, ‘controversial,’ in 1968, it won its
author an Academy Award for best original screenplay. Indeed by 1996, ‘The
Producers’ had long-since achieved a cult status and was deemed to be of such ‘cultural,
historic and aesthetic significance,’ that it was selected by the Library of
Congress to be preserved in the United States National Film Registry.
For those readers who have never seen it, ‘The Producers’
presented the world with a classic comedy double act: Max Bialystock, an
outrageous caricature of a, once successful but now failing, New York Jewish
theatrical producer (evidently suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder)
played by Zero Mostel, and Leo Bloom, a deeply insecure Jewish accountant (evidently
suffering from Social Anxiety Disorder) played by Gene Wilder. In the movie, this
pair of physically and psychologically opposite characters come together and perpetrate
an absurd fraud - identified by the accountant and peddled by the producer. By
first planting a bedazzling utopian fantasy of future prosperity and
freedom in his mind, Bialystock persuades Bloom to become his partner in
crime. He then sets to work seducing a flock of wealthy, but lonely and
vulnerable, old ladies. One by one, Bialystock persuades them to buy a total of
25 000% of the projected profits from, what he assures them will be,
a sure-fire hit stage musical which he and Bloom are producing on Broadway.
However, he doesn’t disclose that the show has been written by a deranged devotee
of Adolf Hitler, Franz Liebkind, or that it will venerate the ‘führer’ and
the ‘Nazis.’ For the show, ‘Springtime for Hitler,’ has been selected
by its producers with the hidden motive of offending a sophisticated New York theatre
audience to such an extent, that it will be doomed to close after just one
disastrous performance. To make certain that it will immediately bomb, Bialystock
and Bloom recruit an aggressively kitsch transvestite, Roger DeBris, to direct
the show and they find a drug-fuelled pacifist-hippie, Lorenzo Saint DuBois (LSD), to play Hitler. On opening
night, Bialystock even makes an enemy of the New York Times theatre critic, by
offering him a bribe.
The devious plan being that, seeing as ‘Springtime for
Hitler’ has cost Bialystock and Bloom only a mere fraction of their available
financing to stage, when inevitably it sinks without a trace, the Internal Revenue
Service will have no reason to investigate Bloom’s fraudulent declaration that no
profit was made. Moreover, the old ladies who collectively have vastly
over-financed the show, will also assume that the production lost money. As
il-informed and isolated individuals they will have no reason to claim back any
of their investment. Thus, Bialystock and Bloom will be able quietly to steal
the large pile of excess finance. However, when, despite all their sabotage efforts,
‘Springtime for Hitler’ turns out to be a smash hit predicted to ‘run
and run,’ the producers along with the show’s author wind up behind bars. They
are ultimately seen duplicating the same fraud on their fellow inmates and the prison
warden, with Bialystock and Liebkind directing rehearsals and Bloom
over-selling shares in their latest sure-fire hit production, ‘Prisoners
of Love.’
Now most people would automatically assume that, in the
real world, it wouldn’t be quite so easy to perpetrate such a ridiculously
obvious swindle, albeit hidden behind a far more complex and confusing ‘sure
fire business model,’ but again one deliberately rigged to fail. A swindle not
just based on essentially the same one-off, financially suicidal modus operandi
as described above, but now expanded and duplicated on an industrial scale and
baited to keep ensnaring a much wider range of ill-informed victims. Indeed, to
the average person, the idea that numerous gangs of copy-cat charlatans have
been able to keep peddling the same insidious game of commercial make-believe
as reality, steadily exploiting, isolating and silencing vast numbers of
losing investors around the world over a period spanning several decades and thereby
get away with stealing a veritable mountain of money, would seem to be beyond
the bounds of possibility. However, it should be remembered that the best way of
hiding something, is to place it in plain sight and make as big as you possibly
can.
Thus, I managed to live more than three decades
without ever hearing the made-up impressive-sounding phrase, 'Multi-Level
Marketing,’ or its catchy abbreviation, ‘MLM.’ Today, I wish this contagious
nonsense had never entered my life, but unfortunately, I had no choice in the
matter. Whilst reading the account of my own nightmare encounter with the
original 'MLM commercial' cult known as 'Amway' (corruption of 'The
American Way'), bear in mind that, when these disturbing events first started
to unfold, I had no idea of the level of danger my family was in, or of the
true nature, extent and power of the phenomenon I was confronted with. As yet,
there was no full explanation of 'MLM commercial' cultism readily available.
That's why I began the thankless task of compiling one as long ago the late
1990s. However, at that time, I was still trying to find the right words to
identify it accurately. Even when I did find the right words, I discovered that
the ugly, but ultimately absurd, truth about the 'MLM commercial' cult
phenomenon was still unthinkable to most people. The truth being that what has
become commonly referred to as, 'the MLM business model,' has been
nothing more than a classic example of the notorious, reality-controlling,
totalitarian propaganda tactic known as the 'Big Lie.' That is to say, the
spreading of a falsehood which is so colossal and outrageous that the average
person cannot even begin to conceive that anyone would have the audacity to
invent it. Indeed, when I first began to challenge the Big 'MLM' Lie,
I was faced with the daunting situation where it had been repeated, largely unchallenged,
so often and for so many years, that a remarkable number of apparently
sophisticated and rational people had come to accept it as the truth.
The situation is still daunting, but lately it has begun
to change in that, mainly due to the Internet, an increasing number of
courageous 'MLM commercial' cult survivors have found accurate information,
as well as mutual support, enabling them to come forward and describe their
essentially identical experiences. Also, whereas in the past many 'MLM' converts
were men, who naturally found it hard to admit to the world that they'd been
duped, lately the majority of persons being lured into, and exploited by, these
pernicious groups, have been women. Furthermore, in 2019, my American associate,
Robert FitzPatrick, published 'Ponzinomics.' In this book, Robert not only goes
a long way towards identifying the true nature of the 'MLM commercial' cult
phenomenon, but he also traces the history and origins of the Big 'MLM' Lie
and explains how a pair of its earliest creators managed to obtain the
highest-level of protection in the USA. As a result, politically appointed
senior Federal Trade Commission officials effectively raised the white flag of
surrender to predatory criminals, albeit dressed up as respectable businessmen,
when, starting in the 1970s and despite significant levels of complaint, they
set aside an established, common-sense legal precedent which had automatically identified
and banned all endless-chain recruitment frauds, previously labelled as,
'pyramid selling schemes.' For, even though it had been under investigation for
years and was facing civil prosecution, these senior officials eventually latched
onto a convenient pretext not to go ahead and shut-down the corporate-front for
the original 'MLM commercial' cult upon which all subsequent versions have
been, and continue to be, modelled. This dubious decision was evidently made because
the bosses of 'Amway,' Messrs. Richard DeVos and Jay Van Andel, with a
Bible in one hand and the Stars and Stripes in the other, had purchased
association with their local congressman (fifth Michigan district) with
significant quantities of stolen money. The beneficiary of these ill-gotten
gains was none other than Gerald Rudolph Ford Jnr. - a politician not exactly
noted for his intellectual capacity, but nonetheless someone of great influence.
For those readers who are perhaps too young to remember
him, Gerald Ford was leader of the Republican party in the House of
Representatives 1965-1973, becoming US vice-president under Richard Nixon when,
in 1973, Spiro Agnew (who was under investigation for corruption), pled guilty to
a minor felony charge and was obliged to resign. Ford went on to become US
president 1974-1976 after Nixon himself was obliged to resign. Thus, Ford
remains the only person to have held both the office of US vice-president and US
president, without being elected to either. He is also the president who
granted a pardon to Nixon for the crimes he'd committed whilst in office.
However, the coopting of Gerald Ford to play the role of
‘Amway’s’ useful idiot was only one step in DeVos and Van Andel’s
well-financed infiltration, and subversion, of the US legislative process and justice
system. Indeed, there can be absolutely no doubt that, culminating in 1979, the
chiefs of an important civil regulatory agency of the US federal government
played politics, and in so doing, completely failed in their appointed task of
protecting the American public. As a direct consequence, the FTC brought about
the birth of the essentially meaningless phrase, 'Multi-Level Marketing is
legal.' In this way, an absurd, but nonetheless insidious, endless-chain
recruitment fraud was effectively authorized in the USA. Furthermore, this
major American regulatory lapse enabled the profitable racket of 'MLM commercial'
cultism not only to be extensively duplicated in the USA, but also to be
exported around the world, now hidden behind the pretence that ‘the MLM
business model (as developed by the founders of the Amway Corporation) had been
examined and approved by the US government.' Not surprisingly, subsequent
generations of politically appointed senior FTC officials have all refused to
admit publicly to their predecessors' catastrophic failure and their own chronic
negligence - for which, one day, a sitting American government might find
itself liable. In this way, the Big ‘MLM’ Lie was permitted to transform
and expand into a well-oiled machine for stealing and laundering money on a
global scale - each year bringing billions of dollars into the USA, and all
right under the noses of officials who have continued to allow this plunder to
be falsely-declared, with the paid-compliance of some of the world's largest accountancy
firms, as 'retail sales revenue.' However, plenty of senior FTC types,
as well as high-ranking US politicians, including a certain Donald John Trump,
have all had their snouts planted in this almost bottomless trough of foreign
and domestic loot, set before them by the bosses of a multiplication of 'Amway'
copy-cat 'MLM' rackets whose essentially identical camouflaged
criminal activities they have conveniently refused to identify. Indeed, the
number of senior FTC officials who have accepted, and continue to accept,
tempting offers of well-paid employment from 'MLM' front-companies, or
law and accountancy firms, co-opted to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no
evil whilst playing along with the Big 'MLM' Lie, is truly astonishing.
All this begs the not unreasonable question: other than
enabling a growing number of unoriginal gangs of devious con artists to get
away with thieving from the entire planet for the best part of half a century,
what exactly has been the point of having such a spineless, easily-corrupted
and, therefore useless government agency as the FTC?, when in 'Ponzinomics' one
independent American does far-more to protect his fellow citizens from the Big 'MLM'
Lie, than the entire one thousand five hundred + FTC staff (including more
than five hundred attorneys and seventy economists, with an annual budget of hundreds
of millions of dollars) have ever done. In fact, Robert explains in great
detail why, completely contrary to the ambiguous official message broadcast by
the FTC for more than forty years, it has not just been ‘a few bad apples,’
but all 'Amway' copy-cat so-called 'MLM Income Opportunities' that
have been centrally controlled rigged-market swindles, hiding their inevitable,
effectively 100%, overall net-loss/churn rates of endless-chains of transient
participants. For the crack-pot pseudo-economic theory which has been
falsely-labelled the 'MLM business model,' was maliciously designed to
be flawed-financially, to the point where it would be impossible for any
so-called 'MLM' company to derive the majority of its revenue lawfully
from persons who are not its own ill-informed investors motivated by the false
expectation of a future reward. In even more accurate terms, 'MLM/commercial'
cults have all comprised groups, and sub-groups, of susceptible individuals
who have been subjected to identifiable, co-ordinated devious techniques of
social, psychological and physical persuasion designed to shut down their
critical and evaluative faculties, and thereby convert them, without their
fully informed consent, to the self-perpetuating, and self-destructive,
non-rational belief that: endless recruitment + endless purchases by the
recruits = endless profits for the recruits. For this reason, Robert
FitzPatrick coined the word, 'Ponzinomics,' in an attempt to place an
appropriate label on the financially suicidal activity that, to their eternal
shame, generations of senior FTC officials, their advisers and political
masters, have permitted to be passed off and normalized around the world as, ‘a
viable and legal part of the direct selling industry.'
Thus, 'Ponzinomics' can be briefly defined as the
dark art of peddling vulnerable persons infinite shares of their own
finite money, because what the FTC has consistently refused to acknowledge
publicly, is the undeniable fact that any claim, or implication, that one
penny of extra net-income, let alone life-changing sums of money,
can be generated lawfully by participating in an 'MLM business opportunity,'
is dangerous comic-book nonsense designed to entice and deceive. Indeed, it
should be glaringly obvious that the Big 'MLM' Lie is far-too-good to be
true, whilst it's no secret that what used to be the traditional direct selling
industry (once known as ‘door-to-door peddling’), has long-since died out. Its
demise being due to many evolving social and economic factors; not least the
arrival of supermarkets, hard-discount stores and online shopping. Furthermore,
'MLM' products/services have been offered at fixed, often exorbitant,
prices, rendering them effectively unsaleable on the open market to persons
with fully functioning critical and evaluative faculties; whilst no so-called 'MLM'
company has ever set common-sense limits on the number of contractors being
recruited, or on the areas of population where these so-called 'distributors/direct
sellers' are supposed to find customers. Just imagine what would
happen if the bosses of McDonalds fixed the price of their company’s hamburgers
at twice that of their competitors and set no limits on the number of
franchises they sold, or any restrictions on the locations where all these demonstrably
unviable catering establishments were supposed to operate shoulder to shoulder?
Once the utter absurdity of the so-called 'MLM
business model,' is fully understood, anyone with a modicum of
common-sense, and/or the most-rudimentary hands-on experience of commerce,
ought to be immediately able to deduce that no ‘Amway’ copy-cat so-called
'MLM' company can ever have been, or will ever be, found by the FTC
voluntarily disclosing the true results of its economically incestuous activities
and operating lawfully. Indeed, this ongoing situation is beyond farcical,
because when asked the most obvious of questions, American trade regulators,
and their academic advisers, have never been able to come up with even one
solitary example of a so-called 'MLM' company that would be able pass independent
rigorous inspection. Yet despite the lengthy list of common-sense reasons proving
that there can be no such mythical creature as ‘a viable and legal MLM direct
selling income opportunity,' FTC officials, guided by a cabal of smug dunces
with diplomas, came up with a truly pointless and stupid ‘test.’ This
boils down to them throwing common-sense out of the window whilst trying, on
rare occasions and on a case-by-case basis, to determine that a so-called 'MLM'
company, suspected of being a pyramid scheme, has not been deriving the
majority of its income lawfully from authentic retail sales (i.e. based entirely
on value and demand) to members of the general public (i.e. persons who have
not been ill-informed contractors the so-called 'MLM' company motivated
by the false expectation of a future reward).
Laughably, FTC officials have listed other ‘pyramid
scheme red flags' for the public to look out for, and the agency has even posted
stern warnings that 'MLM companies have caused, and are still causing,
extensive damage to consumers, because some MLM income opportunities are actually
pyramid schemes in disguise.' At the same time, American trade regulators,
without the slightest concern for the extensive damage they themselves have
caused and are still causing, have continued bleating the Big 'MLM' Lie,
by insisting that 'MLM is a viable and legal branch of the direct selling
industry.' Yet no one at the FTC has ever seen a shred of quantifiable
evidence proving that this ridiculous adult fairy story can be true. In
fact, when asked in the most specific of terms, if they have ever seen such
evidence, like income-tax payment receipts, it has been impossible to get any
meaningful, let alone the only truthful, answer to this simple question.
Another highly revealing question that FTC types have obviously shied away from
answering, is: what would be your own reaction if a vulnerable individual you
care about suddenly underwent a radical personality transformation, and
declared that he/she had signed up for a so-called 'MLM income opportunity?'
Thus, in respect of their Orwellian refusal to tell the
truth publicly, and identify the Big 'MLM' Lie, Robert FitzPatrick has
compared the inflexible behaviour of FTC officials, and their advisers, to a body
of humourless scientists who have been paid to investigate the manifestly preposterous
claim that 'pigs might fly,' but after decades of examining an
assortment of pigs with no wings, they still insist on continuing their futile,
but financially-profitable, quest whilst systematically refusing to consider
even the suggestion that there can be no such creature.
At this point, I should perhaps point out that, although
I am an 'MLM commercial' cult survivor, I was never an adherent of one
of these pernicious groups. Unfortunately, I found myself shackled financially to
a person, my only brother, who at a time of vulnerability, had fallen
completely under the spell of the Big 'MLM' Lie. Again, when these disturbing
events started to unfold, I did not fully understand that my brother was ideal prey
to be lured and defrauded, then used as bedazzled-bait to lure and defraud
others; all for the benefit of a little gang of sanctimonious American
billionaire-charlatans posing as 'Compassionate Capitalists,' and whom
he had never met. Yet classically, my brother was an ideal subject to be
deceived, for the simple reason that he was completely convinced that he was
far too smart to be deceived. Thus, once enslaved inside the ‘MLM’
trap, the most powerful weapon in the hands of the criminals exploiting him,
was my brother’s own mind. However, initially I failed to grasp just how
dangerously deluded and devious, chronic 'MLM commercial' cult adherents
can be. That said, like many people whom they approach, I immediately realised
that they are living in a parallel reality - completely obsessed with trying to
recruit you into what is quite clearly a dumb pyramid scheme, but which they
insist is 'part of the legal MLM Direct Selling industry and definitely not
a pyramid scheme.' What took me much longer to fathom, is that core-'MLM
commercial' cult adherents are also living by a parallel, and perverted,
code of morality. Their destructive behaviour is controlled by the
self-righteous guided-delusion that, by recruiting you, and even by lying to
you, they are ultimately helping both themselves and you to achieve future
redemption in a secure utopian existence - a form of Capitalist Paradise on Earth
- where no one has a job, but everyone is his/her ‘own boss’ - a happy,
healthy, prosperous and free 'MLM business owner.'
Thus, it should always be remembered that chronic 'MLM'
adherents' belief can be quite genuine, but what they believe in, and have
bought into body and soul, is a colossal and bedazzling fake. The irony of all
this being, that the Big 'MLM' Lie has continued to thrive, because its most-fanatical
adherents have been tricked into wasting their own time and money spreading it
and hiding the truth about it, combined with law enforcement agents' and
legislators' chronic, and catastrophic, failure to identify it accurately. Although
they have no idea what they are really involved in, active 'MLM' adherents
are, in fact, proselytising-evangelists for a camouflaged, non-rational, ritual
belief system (call it a 'perverted religion' if you like) which has been
maliciously designed not only to spread like a contagious virus - enticing,
deceiving, robbing, exploiting and abusing susceptible individuals and their
friends and families - but also to load its victims with shame and guilt for
their inevitable failure to succeed, and thus, prevent them from facing reality
and complaining. Consequently, whilst they remain under the control of the Big 'MLM'
Lie, its most-dangerous adherents should be seen for what they
really are - the deluded deployable agents of a de facto syndicate comprising
the bosses of some the most-widespread, socially, psychologically and
financially destructive organized cultic crime groups to have emerged in recent
history.
David Brear (copyright 2025)
