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

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.


Robert FitzPatrick (copyright 2024)


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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.

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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 recruitment and self-consumption), the hidden overall net-loss/churn rate for participation in so-called 'MLM income opportunities,' has always been effectively 100%.


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 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

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.


David Brear (copyright 2024)

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)



 David Brear (copyright 2024)

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)

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.

   Robert L. FitzPatrick
(copyright 2024)

Thursday 18 January 2024

UK Post Office/Fujitsu scandal - 'MLM' cultic rackets are not the only blame-the-victim fraud.


For decades, right under the noses of regulators, law enforcement agents, prosecutors, legislators, journalists, etc., the all-powerful bosses of an increasing-number of 'Amway' copy-cat so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing' companies have been allowed to get away with peddling a financially-suicidal, so-called 'Income/Business opportunity,' which has secretly had a (built-in) effectively 100% overall net-loss/churn rate of powerless participants. Currently, the number of ill-informed vulnerable persons being quietly churned each year through these highly-profitable, unoriginal, blame-the victim cultic rackets around the world, is counted in the tens of millions, and probably exceeds one billion per decade. Behind the kitsch facade of 'MLM/Direct Selling' have been secondary advanced fee frauds, in which victims have been peddled effectively-valueless 'step-by-step plans to achieve success in MLM.'

Decades of evidence, in the form of billions of constantly-churning losing 'MLM' contractors, proves that what has become commonly-referred to as 'MLM,' has actually been an ongoing criminogenic phenomenon of historic significance.

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 blame-the-victim cultic 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 cult 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.

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Recently, a cruel blame-the-victim fraud hidden behind corporate structures (albeit on a much smaller scale than the 'MLM' phenomenon), has again hit the headlines in the UK. Although this is not a cultic racket, there are aspects of the 'British Post Office Scandal' which can be compared to 'MLM' cultic racketeering; not least the chronic failure of law enforcement + the eyes, ears and mouths wide-shut complicity of politicians in positions of power.

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Post Office Ltd. is a UK registered company that offers products and services (including stamps and banking) to the public through a national network of around 11,500 post office branches. Almost all of these branch post offices are run by contractors known as sub-postmasters; the remaining 1% are directly managed by Post Office Ltd., these are known as Crown Post Offices.



Fujitsu Limited is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and based in Tokyo. It is the world's sixth-largest Information Technology services provider by annual revenue.

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The UK public has recently been horrified to watch a four-part television drama series, 'Mr. Bates vs The Post office.The series was an accurate internal depiction of what has become known as the 'Post Office scandal' (British Post Office scandal - Wikipedia- a miscarriage of justice in which more than 900 innocent sub-postmasters were prosecuted for theft, false accounting or fraud. However, this was due to a Fujitsu computer system called 'Horizon' (sold to the UK Post Office and installed at a cost of more than £ one billion), which made it appear that significant sums of cash were going missing, when this was not the case. The media has apparently made the assumption that the various faults in the Horizon system were the result of genuine errors in its design. However, this is not entirely clear; for the available, jargon-laced technical explanation of these matters is largely incomprehensible nonsense. What is clear, is that, for many years, persons in postions of authority in both the Post Office and Fujitsu, knew full-well that the 'Horizon' system was prone to widespread serious faults and was fundamentally unreliable, but both organizations pumped out the same lies about these matters - blaming everything on the innocent postmasters. In this way, the individual postmasters were deprived of key-information and deceived into believing that they were the only persons being accused of dishonesty and prosecuted. Obviously, the idea that hundreds of previously hard-working, law-abiding and trusted people would all suddenly begin committing exactly the same crime, could not possibly have been true. Indeed, in not one case was any independent evidence found that a postmaster had actually taken any money. Sadly, as a result of its historical origins, the UK Post Office has retained its own internal systems of investigation and prosecution.

The level of mental cruelty inflicted on the innocent postmasters was stomach-churning. Bear in mind that these were previously respected, and valued, members of their communities. Yet, they were publicly shamed as thieves and liars and forced to hand over the money that they were falsely-accused/convicted of stealing - leading many to lose their homes and their access to credit. Post Office investigators and prosecutors behaved like thugs - deceiving many of the innocent postmasters into believing that they should plead guilty to false accounting, and avoid prison sentences for theft. Families were torn apart and victims suffered from chronic physical, and psychological, deterioration symptoms. Some wound up in psychiatric hospitals (wrongly-diagnosed with being in denial) whilst a few committed suicide.

The television dramatization revealed what can happen when there is a chronic failure of law enforcement and justice, and when (in pursuit of money) the all-powerful bosses of corporate structures are permitted (by a series of complicit governments) to behave like totalitarian dictators - maintaining a monopoly of information as part of a criminal conspiracy designed to insulate them from liabilty, whilst simultaneously, making hundreds of ill-informed powerless contractors appear to be guilty of, and financially-liable for, crimes of which they were completely innocent.

Although, due to a resulting public outcry, all the surviving victims of this organized criminal enterprise are now suddenly going to be exonerated and compensated (at the command of the current UK government which is increasingly-desperate to hang on to power), it remains to be seen whether those who organized, hid and profited from it will be held fully to account. Tragically, more than 30 victims of the Post Office scandal have already died. According to London Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Mark Rowley, it's going to take several years to investigate these matters. A UK parliamentary committee, public enquiry is currently underway.

What Is the UK Post Office Scandal? (lawyer-monthly.com)


   


Fujitsu Japan remains tight-lipped on the Post Office scandal - BBC News



 David Brear (copyright 2024)

Saturday 9 December 2023

The Big 'MLM' Lie - Another chronic failure of law enforcement to face reality.





Recently, in the wake of the forthcoming well-informed criminal prosecution of 'Amway India Enterprises,' I have had a number of interesting conversations on the subject of the Big 'Multi-Level Marketing' Lie, with low-level employees of UK government/law enforcement agencies. It is, of course, effectively-impossible to get to speak to their superiors. As ever, these conversations fell into two distinct categories. Either the employee was completely disinterested, and/or easily offended, lamely reciting a script like a programmed robot, or the employee immediately dropped the script becoming personally friendly and supportive, whilst listening attentively to what I have to say. Indeed, it is surprising how it is now the majority of these people who are prepared to say that they too have personally-encountered 'MLM' adherents. They aready know that 'MLM' = pyramid scheme. Some know that 'MLM' also = cult. What I am actually telling them is that their superiors have not only been part of a chronic failure to challenge the Big 'MLM' Lie, they have also been, and remain, complicit with it.

Of course, this official eyes, ears and mouths wide-shut attitude towards an obvious Big Lie, is not without precedent.

In the tragi-comic era of Donald Trump and 'QAnon,' the 'totalitarian' information/mind control technique known as, the 'Big Lie,' has suddenly attracted the attention of a new generation of critical commentators. 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. Yet, it has been known for a long time that, even when the most-destructive of 'Big Lies' gets repeated enough times, eventually many people will come to accept it as the truth. The actual truth then becomes a threat to the self-esteem of those who have fallen for the 'Big Lie,' and in this way, the actual truth itself can become mistaken for a lie. Consequently, the 'Big Lie' can be described as a form of sustainable deception, because it can also prevent victims from facing reality and complaining.

'The most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor, is the mind of the oppressed.'




In the wake of his sudden 'shock horror' downfall in 2008, masses of critical material was suddenly produced on the subject of Bernie Madoff. Yet ironically, what was labelled by the media as, 'The Scam of the Century,' had actually been instigated in the previous century; for in the 20 years of its existence prior to 2008, no mainstream media outlet had begun to investigate, let alone expose, Madoff's obvious Big Lie. Furthermore, it was an open-secret on Wall St. that Madoff was a latter-day Charles Ponzi, who first preyed mainly on his own Jewish community with whom he socialised in New York and Florida. It was no coincidence that many Wall St. insiders had always avoided Madoff like the plague. Despite repeated warnings, senior US Securities and Exchange Commission agents not only failed to put an end to Madoff's Big Lie, they flatly refused to begin to inquire into his criminal activities. The useful idiots at the SEC whose willful-incompetence made them complicit with Madoff, were almost-exclusively lawyers with no practical experience of trading, or of Ponzi schemes for that matter. Since his downfall, there have been various documentaries and dramatised representations showing Madoff's pretence of affinity with both his prospective victims and certain 'regulators.' For obvious reasons, various victims and commentators have concluded that dark forces must also have been been at work, because what Madoff had been doing was so blatantly obvious.  

Perhaps an even more-disturbing explanation of these matters is that, completely contrary to what many people still prefer to believe, financial/trade regulators and specialist law enforcement agents, aren't employed to identify, and protect the public from, fraud. Far from it, for their suspiciously-vague remit has been concocted by legislators (and lobbyists), who evidently, have been far more interetested in maintaining confidence in the overall financial system. However, this short-sighted approach has actually had the reverse effect to that which was apparently intended. To illustrate the self-defeating, flawed logic at play here, a comparison can be made with the sports-bookmaking industry, which has generated huge revenues for governments via taxes on betting and on licensed bookmakers' profits. Consequently, if widespread cheating (event fixing) were to be publicly-revealed - resulting in the loss of public confidence in the honesty of popular sports - the revenues gathered by governments from licensed betting might collapse. Thus, the financial system and popular sports like horse racing have both come to rely on maintaining the reassuring belief that they are so tightly-regulated that extensive cheating cannot possibly thrive. For this dubious reason, those tasked with the regulation of both have felt obliged to turn a blind-eye to cheating. Cheats (above all people) understand this.

Thus, the more-extensive, and flagrant, cheating becomes in any confidence-based market: the more prone to ignoring it, the market's (supposed) regulators will become, whilst the more wealthy, and emboldened, the cheats will become. Of course, for centuries it has been observed that, 'if you pass any law, but then fail to enforce it, you effectively-authorise the very crime you were apparently seeking to prohibit.'




Thus, in 2007, the Big Lie was still alive, and growing, that Bernard L. Madoff was an admired and respected investor, popularly-known as 'The Wizard of Wall St.,' who for years had been successfully-managing the world's largest hedge fund - totalling $50+ billions. You could even find Madoff (and his company) on Wikipedia, where his grandiose comic-book fiction was falsely-presented as established fact supported by many reliable independent sources; whilst all accurate evidence-based analysis (no matter how obvious) would have been systematically purged from Wikipedia as, 'original thought/ research.' Until 2008, an army of highly-paid attorney's would have pounced on anyone prepared to risk public ridicule, and financial ruin, in an attempt to expose Madoff's 'Big Lie.'



However, as we all now know, Madoff was secretly just another sociopathic-charlatan (one in an ever-lengthening-line of such world-class liars). Yet unoriginal economic-alchemists like Madoff, should not be that difficult to detect; for they have all pretended moral and intellectual authority whilst peddling essentially the same ('far too good to be true') financial fairy story. 

The Madoffs of this world always claim that they have access to a secret knowledge which can enable you to earn money, but first you have to trust them with some of your own money. This enticing fiction can be made to seem like fact, so long as fresh victims can keep being found and the supply of stolen money keeps rolling in. Madoff's colossal and outrageous version of what is popularly-known as a 'Ponzi Scheme,' eventually attracted approximately 37000 bedazzled 'investors,' including certain A-list celebrities (or rather the financial advisers to certain A-list celebrities).

In truth, Madoff did have access to a secret knowledge, but this was the fact that his so-called 'hedge fund' was a complete fake. The impressive supply of stolen money that kept rolling into Madoff's control (and which falsely-placed him high on the list of America's richest citizens) had only come from his victims, because in all Ponzi and pyramid schemes (no matter how cunningly they have been disguised), the universal identifying characteristic is that victims have been tricked into buying (infinite) shares of their own (finite) money. 

Madoff's 'Big Lie' was only uncovered when the financial crisis hit in 2008. At that time, too many of his victims suddenly needed to cash-in what they believed to be their 'growing secure investment.' For a while Madoff managed to hide the truth by continuing to do what he had always done (pay out some of his 'investors'), but as his pile of stolen money rapidly-dwindled, he began to realize that the game was up. On paper his fake hedge fund was massively-profitable, but in reality it was insolvent to the tune of tens of billions of $.




Faced with exposure, public humiliation and jail, Madoff broke-down and tearfully confessed the truth to his two sons. Shocked and confused, they had little idea what to do, except seek qualified-advice from one of their father's own attorneys. However, the attorney himself initially found it difficult to believe the truth, because he too was one of Madoff's bedazzled victims. Indeed, he briefly preferred to believe that his financial genius celebrity-client must have lost his mind. However, reality soon dawned and the attorney instructed Madoff's sons to go to the relevant authorities and turn their father in. Ironically, the situation which they reported to FBI agents in New York, again initially seemed to be too fantastic to be true.

Prior to his arrest, Madoff was widely-reported to have failed in a suicide pact with his wife, but there is little independent evidence to confirm this. 

To be perfectly honest, it beggars belief that Madoff's crimes remained undetected for so long, because, once you fully-understand the absurd, underlying nature of a Ponzi/pyramid scheme, all that was required to determine reality, was simply to verify whether Madoff had actually been making the profitable trades that he claimed to have been making. Laughably, the briefest-examination of his company's actual bank records would have revealed that the size and source of Madoff's company revenue was not at all what he had been pretending on the thousands of comic-book 'account statements' he'd been busily churning out over the years. However, it seems that no one ever thought to make this most-basic of common-sense checks. The interested parties were so in awe of the 'Wizard of Wall St.,' that they were unable to demand that he produce independent quantifiable evidence proving that he was not a conman. Evidently, Madoff was under no common-sense (legal) obligation to declare such evidence.

Another major factor facilitating Madoff's crimes was that he was an international celebrity whose expert opinion on financial matters was regularly sought by journalists. He was also noted for his public gifts to charity. Indeed, Madoff operated in plain sight right under the noses of journalists, financial regulators and law enforcement agents. Yet, for two decades, although the 'too good to be true' aspect of Madoff's financial fairy story was questioned a couple of times in obscure press articles, officially, he never faced any investigation. The laws he was breaking on a daily basis, were never enforced. 




Even when a detailed evidence-based analysis was handed on a plate to senior agents of the Securities and Exchange Commission (revealing exactly what Madoff had been up to), no investigation was launched. The well-informed urgent warnings of an independent financial fraud investigator and analyst, Harry Markoplos (and his associates), were mysteriously buried for 9 years. During this time, Madoff's Big Lie was habitually presented as the truth by numerous unquestioning mainstream commentators. 

As previously-explained, all the apparently profitable stock market trades which Madoff kept telling the world he was making, never actually took place. However, the wise monkeys at J.P. Morgan Bank who handled Madoff's accounts and who, therefore, must have seen with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears, that their financial-genius client wasn't actually buying, or selling, the mountains of stock which he claimed, never once approached the authorities to say that there was something radically wrong. It is now a matter of public record that Madoff used J.P. Morgan Bank to launder almost all of the billions of dollars he stole by means of fraud. Subsequently, J.P. Morgan was merely accused (as a corporate structure) of not reporting any concerns about (what turned out to be) a criminal client. Without accepting any fault, in 2014, J.P. Morgan was absolved of all further liability, after agreeing to pay $2.6 billions to settle all outstanding claims (government and private) connected to the bank's previous participation in thousands of Madoff's crimes. J.P. Morgan also promised that, henceforth, its own staff will not to be so conveniently deaf, dumb and blind, when the bank is being used to facilitate fraud.



Whilst it was an undeniable fact that employees at the SEC hadn't actually been doing any regulating in the case of Madoff, the SEC's Chief Legal Counsel subsequently made the nonsensical claim that his agency was doing its job, but was obliged to follow procedures laid down by legislators. What this dunce with a law diploma was actually admitting (albeit indirectly), was that the SEC was worse than useless, because its agents chronic failure to stop Madoff had actually made it appear that his 'Big Lie' was the truth. Thus, when Madoff was finally forced to confess to his crimes, the leadership of the SEC still refused to admit that they were at fault.



Perhaps that most stomach-churning evidence perfectly-illustrating how chronic regulatory failure had been exploited by Madoff, came when he was filmed performing his reality-inverting act to an audience of wide-eyed believers (including some well-known financial journalists). The irony of what Madoff said was exquisite. In response to a suspiciously-convenient question, he assured his audience that the rules governing Wall St. had become effectively impossible to get away with breaking, because the stock market was so tightly regulated. Of course, Madoff understood the laughable reality of the situation better than anyone.

Thus, prior to 2008, to the average person, let alone to his victims, the full-truth about Madoff's criminal enterprise, would have been completely unthinkable.

  • How could all these apparently sophisticated observers be so willfully-blind, and/or lazy, and/or gullible, and/or incompetent, and/or corrupt? 
  • How could such an outrageous falsehood be allowed to exist officially-unchallenged for so long and, thus, attain such colossal proportions?

Bearing the above in mind, today it is still officially-accepted that:

'Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) is a perfectly legal form of commercial enterprise (part of the age old Direct Selling Industry) involving approximately 130 millions sellers around the world who are contractors of hundreds of MLM companies.'

In reality, each year for several decades, tens of millions of ill-informed temporary de facto slave recruiters have continued to be quietly churned through these 'Amway' copy-cat cultic rackets. Just as in the somewhat smaller Madoff scandal, the number of persons who have been, and who remain, sliently-complicit with the Big 'MLM Income Opportunity' Lie, is vast. Again the damage being caused here, has not just been financial. 


David Brear (copyright 2023)