Friday 12 April 2024

'Juice Plus +' - O.J. Simpson, Bear Grylls and Theresa May - their connection with the 'Amway' copy-cat 'MLM' racket known as 'Juice Plus.'

The disgraced American celebrity, O.J. Simpson, is dead.

OJ Simpson, NFL star acquitted in ‘trial of the century’, dies aged 76 (bbc.com

Before his spectacular, and widely publicized, fall, O.J. Simpson (aka. 'The Juice') was once the paid celebrity face of the 'Amway' copy-cat 'Multi-Level Marketing' cult known as, 'Juice Plus +.' Even when O.J. made international headlines, after he was filmed being chased in his white SUV across California by police, arrested and put on (televised) trial for committing a brutal double murder with a knife, the 'Juice Plus +' mob had not yet publicly dropped him. Part of OJ.'s defence was that his arms and hands were too weakened by arthritis for him to grip the murder weapon. However, during the trial, a 'Juice Plus +' propaganda video was cited by the prosecution featuring O.J. apparently bursting with energy; both insisting and demonstrating how his arthritis had been 'cured by Juice Plus + products.' O.J. had claimed in the video that he was able to grip, and freely-swing, his golf clubs again and lower his handicap. When challenged by the prosecution, O.J.'s immediate response to this evidence was that he'd merely been acting a scripted-role. Under oath, he said that 'Juice Plus+' products actually had no effect on his arthritis and that he had continued to suffer from it.

Thus, in reality, the promotional video showed O.J. knowingly-defrauding 4000 cheering 'MLM' adherents at a pay-to-enter 'Juice Plus +' rally. However, the video had also been widely-circulated and used to defraud countless other 'Juice Plus +' recruits. Furthermore, according to the pernicious 'Juice Plus +' fairy story recited by O.J. - the products were so safe and effective that he had been able completely to stop taking his previous medically-prescribed anti-inflammatory treatments. However, again as part of his defence, OJ now declared that he had been lying about that for money as well. He said that he had never stopped taking sulsasfrazine and Ibuprofen. His past and present prescriptions would confirm this.

Only at this point did the 'Juice Plus+' mob publicly end their association with O.J. He was air-brushed out of the group's controlling narrative and the fraudulent propaganda video was ditched.

It is quite obvious that 'Juice Plus +' has been the corporate-front for a ludicrous, but nonetheless dangerous, quack-medical scam combined with an 'MLM' cultic racket - classically hiding an inevitable overall net-loss/churn rate for participation of effectively 100%.

Just like the 'Amway' racket, the 'Juice Plus +' racket has been global. It has been allowed to operate in plain sight in the UK for years, where its bosses have paid another celebrity, Bear Gylls, to act as pitchman. Although Bear Grylls doesn't seem to be currently employed by the 'Juice Plus +' mob, today his name and image still remain highly-visible in the group's reality-controlling narrative. Again, this tactic of associating with celebrities, can make it seem impossible to the average victim that 'Juice Plus +' is a fraud.

Juice Plus+ opens new offices in Maidenhead - Maidenhead Advertiser (maidenhead-advertiser.co.uk)

Why we're appalled that an MP and Government Minister promoted MLMs like Amway in Parliament - Talented Ladies Club

In 2015, the 'Juice Plus +' mob lured the (then) UK Home Secretary (Minister for the Interior), Theresa May, into playing the role of 'Useful Idiot' in their propaganda. Indeed, it's very likely that Bear Grylls' enthusiastic endorsement of 'Juice Plus+' was used to fool her. Theresa May's parliamentary office was subsequently contacted by phone and, at the (verbal) request of one of her assistants, she was sent much information and analysis regarding the 'Juice Plus + MLM' racket. Theresa May and her staff did not acknowledge receipt of this important information which contained my written request for her (the Minister with responsibility for the UK Police) to pass this intelligence (concerning a foreign-controlled major organized crime group, preying on significant numbers of vulnerable UK citizens), to the relevant UK law enforcement agencies. To date, my own approaches to UK Law enforcement agencies regarding these serious matters, have never been taken up.

________________________________________________________________________

Multi-Level Marketing' Warning.

The following deconstructed analysis has been formulated to sharpen the critical and evaluative faculties of all unwary persons approaching so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing' from the dangerous (subjective) point of view that it must be a business/industry, rather than from the safe (purely-objective) point of view that they don't really know what it is.
_________________________________________________________________________

More than half a century of quantifiable evidence proves beyond all reasonable doubt that:

the widely-misunderstood phenomenon that has become popularly-known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' (a.k.a. 'Network Marketing') is nothing more than an absurd, non-rational, economic pseudo-science maliciously-designed to lure unwary persons into de facto servitude, dissociate them from external reality and not only steal their money, but also deceive them into unconsciously acting the role of bait to lure other unwary persons (particularly their friends and family members) into the same trap.

the technical-sounding made-up jargon term, 'MLM,' is therefore, the misleading title for an enticing structured-scenario of control which has been developed, and constantly acted out as reality, by the instigators, and associates, of various copy-cat, major and minor, ongoing organised crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim 'Long Cons' - comprising self-perpetuating rigged-market swindles, a.k.a. pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites') and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate: training and motivation, self-betterment, programs, recruitment leads, lead generation systems,' etc.).

apart from an insignificant minority of shills (whose leading-role in the 'Long Con' has been to pretend that anyone can achieve financial freedom simply by following their unquestioning example and exactly-duplicating a step-by-step-plan of endless-chain recruitment and self-consumption), the hidden overall net-loss/churn rate for participation in so-called 'MLM income opportunities,' has always been effectively 100% by design.

The enticing structured-scenario of control fundamental to all 'rigged-market swindles' is that people can earn income by first contributing their own money to participate in a profitable commercial opportunity, but which is secretly an economically-unviable fake due to the fact that the (alleged) opportunity has been rigged so that it generates no significant, or sustainable, revenue other than that deriving from its own ill-informed participants. For more than 60 years, 'Multi-Level Marketing' racketeers have been allowed to dissimulate rigged-market swindles by offering endless-chains of victims various banal, but over-priced, products, and/or services, in exchange for unlawful losing-investment payments, on the pretext that 'MLM' products/services can then be regularly re-sold for a profit in significant quantities via expanding networks of distributors. However, since 'MLM' products/services cannot be regularly re-sold to the general public for a profit in significant quantities (based on value and demand), 'MLM' participants have, in fact, been peddled infinite shares of their own finite money (in the false expectation of future reward).

Thus, in 'MLM' rackets, the innocent looking products/sevices' function has been to hide what is really occurring. i.e The operation of an unlawful, intrinsically fraudulent, rigged-market where effectively no non-salaried (transient) participant can generate an overall net-profit, because, unknown to the non-salaried (transient) participants, the market is in a permanent state of collapse and requires its non-salaried (transient) participants to keep finding further (temporary) de facto slaves to sustain the enticing illusion of stability and viability.
Meanwhile an insignificant (permanent) minority direct the 'Long Con' - raking in vast profits by selling into the rigged-market and by controlling/withholding all key-information concerning the rigged-market's actual catastrophic, ever-shifting results from its never-ending chain of (temporary) de facto slaves.

Although cure-all pills potions and vitamin/dietary supplements, household and beauty, products have been most-prevalent, it is possible to use any product, and/or service, to dissimulate a rigged-market swindle. There are even some 'MLM' rackets that have been hidden behind well-known traditional brands (albeit offered at fixed high prices). Some 'MLM' rackets have included 'cash-back/discount shopping cards, travel products, insurance, energy/communications services' and 'crypto-currencies' in their controlling scenarios.

No matter what bedazzling product/service has been dangled as bait, in 'MLM' rackets, there has been no significant or sustainable source of revenue other than never-ending chains of persons under contract to the 'MLM' front companies. These front-companies always pretend that their products/services are high quality and reasonably-priced and that for anyone prepared to put in some effort, the products/services can be easily sold on for a profit via expanding networks of distributors (based on value and demand). In reality, the underlying reason why it has mainly only been (transient) 'MLM' contractors who have bought the various products /services (and not the general public) is because they have been tricked into unconsciously playing along with the controlling scenario which constantly says that via regular self-consumption and the recruitment of others to do the same, etc. ad infinitum, anyone can receive a future (unlimited) reward.

I've been examining the 'MLM' phenomenon for around 25 years. During this time, I've yet to find one so-called 'MLM' front-company that has voluntarily made key-information available to the public concerning the quantifiable results of its so-called 'income opportunity' in an easy-to-understand format.

Part of the key-information that all 'MLM' bosses seek to hide concerns the overall number of persons who have signed contracts since the front companies were instigated and the retention rates of these persons.

When rigorously investigated, the overall hidden net-loss churn rates for so-called 'MLM income opportunites' has turned out to have been effectively 100%. Thus, anyone claiming (or implying) that it is possible for the average participant to make a penny of net-profit, let alone a living, in an 'MLM,' cannot be telling the truth and will not provide quantifiable evidence to back up his/her anecdotal claims.

Although a significant number of 'MLM' front-companies (like 'Vemma', 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing', 'Wake Up Now') have been shut-down by civil trade regulators in the USA, some of the biggest 'MLM' rackets (like 'Amway' ,'Herbalife', Forever Living Products' ) have continued to hide in plain sight whilst secretly churning tens of millions of losing participants over decades

The quantifiable results of the self-perpetuating global 'Long Con' known as 'Multi Level Marketing,' have been fiendishly hidden by convincing victims that they are 'Independent Business Owners' and that any losses they incurred, must have been entirely their own fault for not working hard enough.

Chronic victims of 'MLM' cults are invariably incapable of describing what they were subjected to in accurate terms. Even though they are no longer physically playing along with the 'Long Con's' controlling-scenario, they unconsciously continue to think, and speak, using the jargon-laced 'MLM' script – illogically describing themselves as 'Distributors, Ambassadors, Business Owners’ etc.'

Chronic victims of blame-the-victim rackets who have managed to escape and confront the ego-destroying reality that they’ve been systematically deceived and exploited, are invariably destitute and dissociated from all their previous social contacts. For years afterwards, recovering victims can suffer from psychological problems (which are also generally indicative of the victims of abuse): depression; overwhelming feelings (guilt, grief, shame, fear, anger, embarrassment, etc.); dependency/ inability to make decisions; retarded psychological/ intellectual development; suicidal thoughts; panic/ anxiety attacks; extreme identity confusion; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; insomnia/ nightmares; eating disorders; psychosomatic illness, fear of forming intimate relationships; inability to trust; etc.

Wednesday 3 April 2024

The cult of Donald Trump is a classic example of a contagious mind virus.

Why We Want You to Be Rich - Wikipedia

Donald Trump's direct involvement in blame-the-victim 'MLM' cultic rackets, and his associations with 'Prosperity Gospel/self-betterment' gurus, never gets mentioned, let alone explained, in media interviews with Steve Hassan. Furthermore, the concept which Steve Hassan describes as 'Mind Hacking,' is not original. Let's face it, one doesn't need a degree in psychology, to recognize the pernicious fairy story that controls the thinking, and resulting behaviour, of Trump's deluded followers.

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Following on from work he began in 1941, in 1950, Dr. Alan Turing published a paper, 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence,' in which he discussed the existing philosophical question of whether machines can think. He then proposed a test, in the form of a blind question and answer game, where computers would be used to try to convince humans that they were not engaging with machines, but with other humans. Thus, despite its appearance, the 'Turing Test' is not a high-brow parlour-game or even a scientific experiment to determine whether machines can think, but a rudimentary, logical test of whether an artificial mind can be made to appear to have the same cognitive capacity as the human mind.

In recent years, various people have suggested ways in which the 'Turing Test' can be reversed, but, as far as I am aware, no one has yet suggested that Dr. Turing's celebrated thoughts on artificial intelligence, can also be applied to the study of the cult/totalitarian phenomenon; for, due to their incapacity to engage with external reality, the inflexible core-adherents of totalistic cults have often been compared to robots. However, the way that exploitative, self-perpetuating non-rational ritual belief systems bait, trap and enslave their prey, by reflecting common human instinctual desires as being obtainable in exchange for absolute subservience, can also be compared to a phenomenon which Dr. Turing did not live to witness - computer viruses. Had Dr. Turing been able to continue his work, he might have eventually felt the need to propose a rudimentary, logical test of whether an artificial mind can be made to appear to have the same ego-related capacity to become delusional as the human mind; for although cult adherents insist that no one is controlling them and that they are excercizing free-will, nonetheless, illogically, and without exception, they all see the world in mechanical two-dimensional terms ('negative vs positive', 'us vs them' , 'good vs evil' , 'winners vs losers', etc. ), communicate in code-like thought-stopping language and obey their de facto programmers without question (no matter what suffering this entails).

Given a detailed knowledge of any Utopian fiction modifying the personalities and behaviour of the core-adherents of a particular cultic group, it would, therefore, be a relatively simple matter to program a machine to duplicate the adherents' systematic responses (or indignant refusal to respond), to a series of blind questions concerning the contents of the group's controlling narrative. In other words, the predictable answers given by deluded core-cult adherents, and those given by machines programmed to duplicate human minds dissociated from external reality, would be indistinguishable.

Friday 29 March 2024

Robert FitzPatrick reviews 'Selling the Dream.'

The Plainest Truth of MLM is the Most Avoided | Pyramid Scheme Alert

The Plainest Truth of MLM is the Most Avoided

A Review of “Selling the Dream” by Jane Marie, published by Atria Books

by Robert L. FitzPatrick, Author of PONZINOMICS and FALSE PROFITS

Author’s Note: Having worked decades when publishers would not publish any “anti-MLM” book, I am very supportive of all new books that offer a consumer perspective and critique of MLM, as “Selling the Dream” does.

Regarding this new book, I was extensively interviewed and consulted for the author’s podcast, “The Dream, Season One.” I provided the podcast producers with years of my research on MLM, its history and politics that are in my book, PONZINOMICS, which was published shortly after I was in “The Dream” podcast in 2018.

This book review responds to questions I am receiving about my views of the new book that is based on that podcast. Beyond more “anti-MLM” books getting published, it is also a positive new development that these books can be critically reviewed by colleagues, as my own book has also been reviewed.

Some have described their personal awakening to MLM’s terrible reality as “peeling an onion.” Discovering the nasty lies on the onion’s surface leads to more and greater lies at the next layer and the next. Others speak of “going down a rabbit hole”, each compartment leading to another containing deeper and darker deceptions. Most people abandon the search when they glimpse the darkness of where it might lead. A useful inquiry requires admitting to not knowing what MLM is and that what is believed might be untrue. Add in need for courage to speak a truth that can lead to scorn and gaslighting.

Having dug deeply into MLM and over a long period (my first national media interview was on CBS 60 Minutes with Mike Wallace in 1999) I liken my own MLM learning path to Dante Alighieri’s epic search for truth that took him through eight levels of Hell. In his famous allegory, The Divine Comedy, written about 1320, Dante descended successively through terrifying regions of evil. He visited the regions of Lust, then down into Gluttony, deeper into Greed, Anger, Heresy, and Violence.

Finally, he arrived at the very bottom of Hell, equivalent in my journey to grasping the true nature of MLM. He came to the regions of Fraud and Betrayal, which are also the core truths of MLM.

These terrible truths are avoided in documentaries, podcasts, news stories, and academic treatments of MLM. Selling the Dream by podcaster Jane Marie offers a lot of good information about MLM while staying safely on that well-travelled path of avoidance. It repeats years-old research from other writers, including much from Ponzinomics, on the origins and history of MLM dating to the 1940s. The stories of the founders of early MLMs are told again. There are the sad stories of victims as told in numerous podcasts. One hapless guy claims he lost $200,000 because he said the products are overpriced and he kept buying MLM “tools” for “success.” Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman’s short-selling fiasco is included. There’s a long repetition about MLMs selling snake oil remedies.

If Selling the Dream were about mouse traps and written to help mice, the book would offer a lot of interesting information about various cheeses and other baits, their quality, taste, color, etc. It would tell the mice some colorful stories about the trap’s inventors. But it would avoid telling the mice right from the start, clearly, and forcefully that the cheese sits on a malevolent device designed to break their little necks! It would not definitively explain that the device is a murderous trap, not a plate of free food, as it is disguised.

There are understandable reasons for avoiding the core realities of Fraud and Betrayal. Facing them can be extremely unsettling. MLM is experienced on a person-to-person basis among those we trust and identify with and may even love. MLM lures each person to betray their own values and personal responsibility and then to betray friends and family.

One way that Selling the Dream avoids the brutal realities is by omitting all history of the anti-MLM movement, the earlier books and websites, the pioneers, and how the lives of whistle-blowers were affected. Websites were shut down. Many were sued into bankruptcy or forced to settle with the coerced promise never to speak of the MLM again. A few left the country. Reputations were trashed. This is how traffickers in Fraud and Betrayal operate. It’s hard to describe that history in an upbeat or snarky tone.

At the levels of law enforcement, political leadership, Wall Street, publishers, the news media and academia, Betrayal involves abetting the Big Lie that MLM is an “industry” based on “direct selling.” Betrayal is withholding the truth that MLM is a calculated trap designed to break necks, financially, not provide “income.” Telling the plain truth of this can make some people in high places unhappy.

The reality of Fraud is avoided for similar unsettling reasons. To acknowledge this core truth means having to drop the popular pretense that MLM is a “complex business” that mysteriously escapes the rule of law, even as it inflicts losses on 99%, year after year. Avoiding the reality of Fraud includes avoidance of the frightening reality of cultic mind control, even as MLM recruits shockingly behave as self-sabotaging robots.

In fact, the basic nature of MLM is obvious, not new, not complex. MLM’s “endless chain” recruiting model, as regulators used to say, is inherently unfair and deceptive. Pyramid schemes purposefully use deception and cause harm. Loss to victims is by design. That design can be deconstructed to show how any enterprise using the MLM model will always produce the same results: loss to 99%. It’s hard to acknowledge this in an entertaining way.

Selling the Dream correctly reports that MLMs are “blame the victim” schemes though it obscures whom to blame. It diverts the focus away from actual perpetrators, the ones Dante put in his lowest regions of Hell.

The first diversion redirects attention back toward all of us humans. The book explains how we can’t seem to grasp exponential math (5x5x5…), making it easy to deceive us with MLM’s “endless chain” proposition. This is not presented in Selling the Dream, however, to call for making such a false proposition per se illegal, as it used to be. Rather, the problem is with us. We just don’t seem to get that it’s “marketing.” Our bad.

Then, we seem to be hard-wired to recoup past losses, or “sunk costs,” leading us to obey, when MLMs tell us, “Don’t quit!” The book also explains that we humans desperately want “community”, even when it is artificial and only lasts the short time of involvement in MLM. We grasp for hope, even false hope. MLM, which the FTC says is “legal,” routinely uses these lures, tricks and promises as part of its “business.” So, the losses we suffer must be on us. Buyers should beware.

The other diversion has to do with law enforcement, in particular the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Selling the Dream correctly reports the FTC is doing very little to protect consumers from MLM abuse. But it advises not to blame this poor little agency. We should feel sorry for it. It has very limited resources, and many other priorities. It does the best it can, putting responsibility back on us.

Selling the Dream does not explain why the FTC should be in charge. Its job is to regulate “trade.” Fraud is not trade. Pyramid scheme rackets are not “business.” Why doesn’t the FTC just refer evidence of widespread pyramid fraud to the Department of Justice for prosecution? This more powerful path of inquiry is not pursued in Selling the Dream, and the author never plainly or forcefully offers her own position on what MLM is – a business or a disguised pyramid fraud?

Since law enforcement is not to blame, the book asks why doesn’t the market mechanism of “buyer beware” work? By now, shouldn’t there be enough consumer experience and information that most people would not sign up with MLMs? What’s wrong with us that we keep joining these “scams”?

It’s a question I am frequently asked by journalists. It seems reasonable, but it is not based on reality. Yes, a lot of people have listened to “anti-MLM” podcasts, documentaries about “bad” MLMs, and maybe even heard about the 99% losses. But they have real and immediate need of income, and they also hear much louder, more authoritative voices – FTC, SEC, Chamber of Commerce, Department of State, State AGs, Governors, military leaders, pastors, sports stars, celebrities, university professors, major news media – that MLM is “legitimate and legal.” They hear these voices say it’s not a pyramid scheme. It can’t be! Pyramid schemes are illegal. The FTC says MLM is legal. The voices say MLM’s not a cult. MLMs are businesses. Cults are not allowed into the US Chamber of Commerce! Hedge funds don’t buy the stock of cults!

Whom are people to believe, a witty and ironic podcaster or university Ph.Ds, elected officials, beloved celebrities, and law enforcement? And, maybe, just maybe, they are influenced by MLM stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange or former Presidents even a former Secretary of State working as paid MLM promoters?

Finally, the book laments the special plight of young women today, or struggling mothers, who, sadly, are the main prey for MLM predators. But, between the FTC doing all it can, and our innate weak spots and deep-seated needs, and with the US economy putting more and more of us in the hole, it seems there really is only ourselves to blame if we sign on with MLM.

The book concludes that this is all quite tragic, but also interestingly ironic how the American Dream has become such a sad spectacle, almost a nightmare. And, it admits, it is kind of entertaining to watch these psycho MLM leaders, spouting bible verses and wearing fake eye lashes, exciting so many people, almost into ecstasy. It would make a great podcast, except a really good one was already done, called The Dream.

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Multi-Level Marketing' Warning.

More than half a century of quantifiable evidence proves beyond all reasonable doubt that:

the widely-misunderstood phenomenon that has become popularly-known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' (a.k.a. 'Network Marketing') is nothing more than an absurd, non-rational, economic pseudo-science maliciously-designed to lure unwary persons into de facto servitude, dissociate them from external reality and not only steal their money, but also deceive them into unconsciously acting the role of bait to lure other unwary persons (particularly their friends and family members) into the same trap.

the technical-sounding made-up jargon term, 'MLM,' is therefore, the misleading title for an enticing structured-scenario of control which has been developed, and constantly acted out as reality, by the instigators, and associates, of various copy-cat, major and minor, ongoing organised crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim 'Long Cons' - comprising self-perpetuating rigged-market swindles, a.k.a. pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites') and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate: training and motivation, self-betterment, programs, recruitment leads, lead generation systems,' etc.).

apart from an insignificant minority of shills (whose leading-role in the 'Long Con' has been to pretend that anyone can achieve financial freedom simply by following their unquestioning example and exactly-duplicating a step-by-step-plan of endless-chain recruitment and self-consumption), the hidden overall net-loss/churn rate for participation in so-called 'MLM income opportunities,' has always been effectively 100% by design.

Although a significant number of 'MLM' front-companies (like 'Vemma', 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing', 'Wake Up Now') have been shut-down by commercial regulators in the USA, some of the biggest 'MLM' rackets (like 'Amway' ,'Herbalife', Forever Living Products' ) have continued to hide in plain sight whilst secretly churning tens of millions of losing participants over decades

Saturday 16 March 2024

Julie Anderson challenges the Big 'MLM' Lie, whilst journalists generally remain unable to look beyond the ends of their noses.

Twelve years ago, I opened this Blog with the following scathing-analysis of the mainstream media's moral and intellectual failure to challenge the Big 'MLM' Lie.

In 1945, whilst most, contemporary mainstream commentators were unable to look beyond the ends of their noses, with a perfect sense of irony, George Orwell presented fact as fiction in an insightful 'fairy story' entitled, 'Animal Farm.' He revealed that totalitarianism is merely the oppressors' fiction mistaken for fact by the oppressed. In the same universal allegory, Orwell described how, at a time of vulnerability, almost any people's dream of a future, secure, Utopian existence can be hung over the entrance to a totalitarian deception. Indeed, the words that are always banished by totalitarian deceivers are, 'totalitarian' and 'deception.' Sadly, when it comes to examining the same enduring phenomenon, albeit with an ephemeral 'American/Capitalist' label, most contemporary, mainstream commentators have again been unable to look further than the ends of their noses. However, if they followed Orwell's example, and did some serious thinking, this is the reality-inverting nightmare they would find.

Today, Julie Anderson is following Orwell's example and is courageously speaking out. When it comes the Big 'MLM' Lie, Julie has discovered that most, contemporary mainstream commentators still have not.

chatelaine magazine shills for MLM pyramid schemes (youtube.com)

Saturday 27 January 2024

Robert FitzPatrick - why challenging individual 'MLM' cults in US courts is pointless.

The Futility of Private MLM Lawsuits and FTC “Cases” | Fitzpatrick (pyramidschemealert.org)

The Futility of Private MLM Lawsuits and FTC “Cases”

Jan 19, 2024 | News

This past week, a civil lawsuit in the name of consumers harmed by MLMs lost in court. That suit charged deception by the most famous of all MLM promoters, Donald Trump, over a 10-year span, documented on national television, multiple speaking engagements and online commercials. After almost 5-years of litigation, the evidence proved insufficient. The class action status was denied and then federal status was thrown out.

This follows the disastrous defeat of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) a few months earlier against an MLM notable not for being famous like Trump, but for being utterly ordinary, exhibiting all the typical traits of MLMs – snake oil, false income claims, recruiting-based proposition, and withholding relevant financial data. The judge in that case ruled that the MLM in question was no less legitimate than all the other MLMs the FTC treats as “legitimate.” The FTC’s game of pretending “some” MLMs, which it picks out arbitrarily, are pyramids, while declaring “MLM is legitimate” may be over, finally.

These events should close the door, once and for all, on consumer hopes or support for private lawsuits and “cases” brought by the FTC as useful remedies against MLM’s global fraud. The same types of cases have been filed repeatedly for over 40 years. None of them produced any significant change, reduced the spread of MLMs or curtailed the harm, even though the facts presented are valid and losses to millions of people are indisputably documented, and the suits and cases have been useful to some people immediately affected.

Big Lie and Legal Pretense

The reason such private lawsuits and government “cases” are ultimately futile and do not serve as remedies is they do not challenge the Big Lie that underpins and empowers all MLMs. The Big Lie, of course, is that MLM is a legitimate business, or a business at all, that it is direct selling, and that it offers a viable “income opportunity.” The Big Lie was effectively made “official truth” by the FTC in 1979 when it allowed an “endless chain” scheme to continue, calling it “direct selling.” The Lie has been maintained by the FTC ever since, fostering a scam of global proportions and developing into a worldwide economic-cult. Over time, a corrupt revolving-door developed between FTC officials and MLM companies and their lobbying group, the Direct Selling Association. The number of people harmed by maintaining the Lie is incalculable; direct financial losses alone are more than a trillion dollars.

The private lawsuits and the FTC “cases”, intentionally or not, can be seen, not only as futile, but as an integral part of the MLM phenomenon itself. The “cases” and lawsuits are part of what may be called MLM’s “legal pretense.” “Legal pretense” is as crucial to maintaining MLM’s Big Lie as the “income pretense” (financial disguise) and the “direct selling pretense” (business disguise) are. Believing in or going along with the “legal” pretense has the same consequence for consumers as believing the “income” and “direct selling” pretenses – loss, delusion, disappointment, self-blame.

MLM does not function in concealment, as Madoff’s Ponzi scheme did, for example. In MLM, the impossibility of the endless chain proposition and false “income opportunity”, and the absurdity of “direct selling” are all right out in the open, spelled out in the pyramid pay plan, pyramid organizational charts, absurd overpriced “products” used to transfer money and “disclosures” revealing (once decoded) that virtually everyone always loses. Unlike Madoff’s victims who were oblivious to their actual losses until the scam collapsed, MLM losers are everywhere and many try to warn others that MLMs are financial traps.

The Legal Pretense makes lack of prosecution appear as lawfulness and legitimacy, which makes the pyramid model and the losses somehow acceptable. This causes many people that otherwise would recognize the obvious ponzi scheme to not believe their own eyes, intuition or even their personal experience. How can MLM be the fraud it appears to be, if it is “legal”, they ask? If it were a scam, surely the government would stop it! Few understand that the lack of MLM prosecution is purchased with political influence-buying. Fraud is protected and normalized by corruption and official disregard.

The Legal Pretense is reinforced by private lawsuits and individual FTC “cases” where fraud has to be “proved”, affirming the official presumption of legitimacy for the MLM model. MLM wins even if it “settles” and makes small restitution payments or, as happened a few times in the past, an individual MLM might be “shut down” by the FTC, while all the other MLMs continue to operate exactly the same as the ones that were prosecuted.

How the Big Lie Endures

The MLM Big Lie is maintained by the FTC, politicians, universities, Chamber of Commerce and Wall Street, each of which respectively benefits from the Lie even as millions of ordinary citizens are harmed. Politicians take MLM “campaign contributions” and are happy to have MLMs tell voters that the American Dream is as strong as ever. If they happen to be financially struggling from low pay, inflation, debt or discrimination, it must be their own fault, not the government’s or elected officials’. Wall Street feasts on MLM “profits” and “growth”. Universities enjoy grants and endowments from the ill-gotten money.

Even many in the “anti-MLM” community have their own reasons to not challenge the Big Lie openly. For some, to do so puts them at odds with the FTC and other authorities. For some others, maintaining the legal pretense avoids confronting unsavory realities of political corruption and predatory business. Some want to avoid the disturbing conclusion that MLM is a gigantic, destructive cult, a frightening social reality with ramifications far beyond financial losses. For others, the pretense is maintained just because they don’t see any alternative for making a change.

Impossible Legal Hurdles

Since MLM’s Big Lie stands as “official truth”, all the individual “cases” must prove, somehow, that the targeted MLMs are “different” from “legitimate” MLM. The cases and lawsuits cannot just point to the “endless chain” (pyramid recruiting) model itself and explain in simple terms how it is designed to defraud. Rather, they are forced to parse the practices, one by one, of the targeted MLMs to “prove” intentional harm. The evidence that is cited turns out to be nothing more than standard practices of all MLMs, but years must be spent documenting policies and actions and depicting them as shocking, unusual or unique. Then, the cases must also show how these individual “acts” harm large numbers of people, not just the people bringing the lawsuit, and, further, that MLM’s broad “disclaimers”, complex contract terms, tiny-print warnings, or confusing “disclosures” are insufficient, as if MLM might only be “risky” business that millions of people foolishly invest their money in.

This has largely been impossible for plaintiffs in private suits, resulting, at best, in small “settlements” that balance meager restitution against further legal bills. Until recently, the FTC was able to prosecute and shut down a few individual MLMs by pitting the full power of the US government against smaller MLMs that could not put up much of a fight. FTC “victories” over inconsequential MLMs, less than one case a year or so, did not reduce MLM in size or impact. Even when court rulings seem to make certain practices, which are universal among MLMs, illegal, the FTC never argued the practices are endemic or widespread. To the contrary, it continues to proclaim that the MLM model is “legitimate”, though it will not name a single MLM as an example of this “legitimacy.” In the rare instances of MLMs being shut down by the FTC, the perpetrators melt into the ranks of hundreds of other MLMs to continue scamming or they start up new MLMs under new names.

Using MLM and Its Victims

The Donald Trump lawsuit illustrates not only MLM’s “legal pretense” but, worse, how lawsuits and other “anti-MLM” activity can serve purposes having nothing to do with protecting consumers. In the failed class action lawsuit against Donald Trump, MLM was central to claims of deception, but no MLM was named as a defendant! Only Trump himself and his family were defendants.

Trump did not own or operate an MLM. His alleged fraud, the suit claimed, was to endorse the MLMs. The main evidence that this is fraud, according to the suit, is that nearly all the people who paid money to the MLMs that he endorsed never made a profit – as if the percent of losers in all other MLMs were any less. He lent his name and reputation for pay, just as MLM “top guns”, motivation speakers, clergy, sports stars, and other celebrities do for MLMs all over the world. Effectively, the suit diminished the terrible truth of MLM fraud by portraying an endorser as more culpable than the endorsed MLM!

This Trump lawsuit was obviously a political maneuver, using MLM and MLM victims for partisan purposes. Its naked political goal was likely the reason the lawsuit never generated any news media interest in MLM. I was interviewed once and in-person by the late CNN correspondent Drew Griffin in 2020 about the role of MLM in the lawsuit. Though he traveled to where I lived and brought a camera crew for the half-day of interviewing about MLM, the story never aired. No other news stories about the lawsuit ever delved into the nature of MLM fraud, though MLM was at the core of the fraud claim.

*PONZINOMICS* *author Robert FitzPatrick interviewed by CNN on role of MLM in “anti-Trump” lawsuit*

That political lawsuit was in the same league with the financial short-sell maneuver that Wall Street gadfly, Bill Ackman tried to pull off, using the MLM, Herbalife and its victims in his bid to make billions on the stock market. News stories never looked beyond the one MLM, and even then were overshadowed by stock market antics and Wall Street egos. Ackman totally lost, making him the world’s biggest loser, financially, in MLM history. Neither Ackman’s MLM-financial scheme nor the MLM-political lawsuit gambit against Trump had anything to do with stopping “MLM.” Neither confronted the Big Lie. They reinforced it.

Where to Turn?

So, if lawyers and regulators and billionaire short-sellers will not save us, what to do and where to turn? That answer begins with self-reflection and self-empowerment. Effective remedy will begin when we in the anti-MLM community drop the legal pretense, as so many have already abandoned the business and financial pretenses, and directly confront MLM as a cultic fraud, corruptly protected by government. When the cheap disguises of “direct selling”, “income opportunity” and “legitimacy” are removed, the power of the truth itself will be unleashed. The shift occurs, first, by no longer accepting or using the language of disguise, e.g., business, industry, sales, income, legitimate, teams, network, etc.

Declaring the full truth of MLM as a cultic fraud will break the pattern of millions of consumers losing in one MLM only to join another, thinking it is one of the “legitimate” ones. It will hasten the time when “anti-MLM” moves from complaint, which is valid, to power, which is necessary. The process is already underway.