Monday 21 January 2013

Spotlight on the 'Nu Skin' racket.


It is universally accepted that lying to, or withholding key-information from, people in order to take their money, is fraud which is a form of theft. Unfortunately, as numerous cult instigators have proved, the broad mass of people will more-easily fall for a big lie than a small one, and if you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to accept it as the truthFortunately, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time (with the notable exception of  the many lawyers at the US Federal Trade, and Securities and Exchange, Commissions).
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Bearing the above statements in mind, it doesn't seem fair that the poisonous chapter of the 'MLM income opportunity' lie, entitled 'Herbalife,' has been attracting all the attention of the mainstream media recently (due to the interest of Bill Ackman), whilst the effectively-identical, and equally toxic, chapter of the same fairy story, labelled 'Nu Skin,' has been largely-ignored. That said, there are plenty of people who now understand that 'Nu Skin' Shares are effectively valueless, because, exactly like those of 'Herbalife,' they are shares in a dissimulated criminal enterprise. I, therefore, think that it's about time that this injustice was corrected. 


A version of the following article was published on this Blog last April.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSV2fsTrisU


When you examine the absurd, self-gratifying fairy story entitled 'Nu Skin,' it's difficult to believe that any educated adult could swallow this up-dated hybrid of snake-oil, and pyramid scheme, quackery


In essence, the authors of the 'Nu Skin' fairy story have steadfastly pretended that: 

They have not only found the secret of halting the human ageing process, but they have also found the secret of transforming ordinary, powerless people into happy and beautiful, superhuman multi-millionaires. 

Furthermore, the creators of the 'Nu Skin' Utopia are willing to share their exclusive secret knowledge with anyone (for a price).

The following Orwellian statement has been taken from  'Nu Skin' propaganda:

'The success of Nuskin Enterprises which has allowed it to become a billion dollar company is due largely (to) their business model which allows any individual to have the opportunity to earn money by becoming distributors and resellers of their various top quality products. Today, Nuskin Enterprises is composed of a 750,000 distributors and the number is still growing. This growth in membership can be attributed to the fact that they offer highly sellable quality products...' 

http://mlmsponsoringnow.com/MLM-Business/mlm-companies/nuskin/nuskin-review/

It is very interesting to note exactly how the opening of this essentially-meaningless statement has been worded. Notice, it doesn't specifically claim that a significant number of non-salaried commission sales agents of 'NuSkin' have earned an overall net-income lawfully from regularly retailing 'NuSkin' products to the public for a profit, because that would be a direct lie. On the contrary, it specifically says that 'NuSkin has become a billion dollar company by allowing any individual to have the opportunity to earn money by reselling NuSkin products.' The final two phrases are a further, mystifying, 'Amway'-style inversion of reality: 'Today, Nuskin Enterprises is composed of 750,000 distributors and the number is still growing. This growth in membership can be attributed to the fact that they offer highly sellable quality products...'  It would be far more accurate to say that, the number of constantly-churning, losing investors around the world under contract to 'NuSkin' (but who have been arbitrarily defined in their take-it-or-leave-it contract as 'distributors'), is counted in the hundreds of thousands, but one of the reasons why 'NuSkin' has not been closed-down, and its bosses slapped in prison as racketeers (for running a dissimulated Ponzi scheme), is the fact that key- information has been maliciously withheld from both the public and from the regulators, by the beneficiaries of the 'NuSkin' fraud and by their de facto agents.

  
nedraroney, blake roney, sandie tillotson
'NuSkin' instigators (1984)

                       Nedra Roney                        Blake Roney                            Sandie Tillotson

Steve Lund               Sandie Tillotson          Blake Roney

In reality, since (the ironically-Orwellian year) of 1984, 'NuSkin' has been the label hung over the entrance to a typical, totalitarian labyrinth of corporate structures, which first appeared in the USA, then Canada (1990) and Hong Kong (1991) as a series of legally-registered, privately-controlled, limited-liability, commercial-companies comprising 'NuSkin International.' 




In 1992, 'NuSkin' reached settlements with 5 American States (Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan) over allegations of misleading marketing practises; admitting no wrongdoing, but paying the States' costs, refunding numerous losing participants and changing the wording of its literature. The Connecticut Attorney General sued 'Nu Skin,' charging the company with misleading its participants and running a pyramid scheme. Following a 1994, low-level civil investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission,'NuSkin' was allowed to continue in the USA after paying $1 million and signing a effectively-toothless consent decree prohibiting it from making 'deceptive or unsubstantiated claims about its products.' 







Despite the organization's reputation as an absurd scam, in 1996, 'NuSkin Enterprises' was allowed to be launched on the New York Stock Exchange, and  the criminal enterprise was exported around the globe. In 1997, the 'NuSkin' mob paid a derisory $1.5 million to the FTC to settle ongoing allegations of 'making unsubstantiated claims about its products.' At the same time, the Attorney general of Pennsylvania sued 'NuSkin,' again alleging that the company operated a pyramid scheme through a subsidiary corporate structure, 'QIQ Connections.' The Attorney General's office discovered that that 'QIQ' participants had paid for the right to market something which did not exist. 'NuSkin's' attorneys halted the suit by dissolving the subsidiary, obliging victims who had paid money to 'QIQ' to transfer to 'Big Planet' (a newly-created blind alley in the mystifying 'NuSkin' labyrinth) offering 'Internet technology.' Classically, the head of 'Big Planet' then dismissed the pyramid-scheme charge as 'a few distributors who, in their enthusiasm, have been overzealous in some of their marketing activities.'



a more recent photo

Blake Roney         Sandie Tillotson            Steve Lund

By the summer of 2010, 63 millions 'NuSkin shares' had been sold and these were illegally-trading at $27 a piece, making the counterfeit 'Direct Selling' company theoretically worth approximately $1.7 billions. At this time, 4.46 millions effectively-valueless 'NuSkin shares' owned by Blake Roney, Sandie Tillotson, Steve Lund and the 'Mormon Church' were unloaded for $114.3 millions. 


http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700039356/446-million-shares-of-Nu-Skin-sold-
for-114-million.html





The growing market-value of these bedazzling pieces of paper was based on the demonstrably-absurd lie that the constantly-expanding, and increasingly-profitable, NuSkin/MLM enterprise is perfectly lawful, that $1.74 billions of 'NuSkin' products were sold during 2011 and that this would steadily grow to $2.5 billions over the next two years.  


http://www.gcimagazine.com/marketstrends/segments/skincare/138588224.html


However, some very important, common-sense questions have evidently never been put to the corporate officers of 'NuSkin Enterprises Inc.,' by anyone from the mainstream media, the FTC, the SEC or the FBI; principally:


Where has the bulk of your alleged 'direct selling company's' alleged 'income opportunity's' alleged'lawful sales revenue' actually come from:

the regular retailing of goods, and/or services, directly to the general public by your alleged 'distributors' for a profit?

or 

from an endless-chain of recruits' regular, losing-investments laundered as 

'sales?'







Reed Elliot Slatkin

The following is essentially the same common sense question as above.  It was only put to Bernie Madoff, and to Reed Slatkin, after decades of increasingly-grandiose lies and mystifying distortions had been swallowed as the truth:

Has your company's alleged 'constantly-expanding, and increasingly-profitable, investment scheme' had any significant source of revenue other than its own alleged 'investors?'




In the end, it was discovered that the answer to the question was 'no,' and Madoff got 150 years prison for peddling his wealthy victims infinite shares of their own finite money and for going to extraordinary lengths to hide the truth; whilst Slatkin got  just 14 years for doing the same, but (as far as I am aware) neither Madoff nor Slatkin was accused of cheating millions of people or of obstructing justice via the covert bribing of a leading US Presidential candidate with, millions of stolen dollars.

In 2011, it was revealed that two Utah-registered corporate structures controlled by the bosses of 'NuSkin' had each given $1 million  to 'Restore Our Future,' a so-called 'Super PAC' (instigated by former aides to Mitt Romney), to 'support Mr. Romney's bid for the White House.'

Unfortunately, there was no one of a sufficiently high moral, and intellectual, calibre within the leadership of the Democratic party, or within the mainstream media, who had the gumption to put some blindingly-obvious questions directly to Mr. Romney in the lead up to 2012 US Presidential election?

Where does 'MLM' money actually come from, and why do you suppose 'MLM' bosses have given so much of it to you?

If the USA was a rational country ruled by law (which manifestly it has long-since ceased to be), it would be FBI agents putting the above questions to Mr. Romney, but then the ultimately-laughable, non-rational, criminogenic phenomenon of 'MLM Prosperity Gospel' cultism would never have been allowed to become established in the first place.

David Brear (copyright 2013)

15 comments:

  1. Nu Skin has Charlatan stamped all over it. But then it is run by Mormons.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, the author of the absurd 'Mormon' fiction was an illiterate farmer and convicted-charlatan, Joseph Smith. Prior to him starting his own 'religion,' Smith had pretended to have dug up buried treasure.

    The comic-book narrative known as the 'Book of Mormon' which Smith dictated in the 19th century, is written in the style of the 17th century King James Bible. Smith claimed to have found his 'divine' text on a collection of ancient golden tablets which, conveniently, only he was allowed to see and only he knew how to read.

    Smith sat behind a bed sheet in his farm house and pretended to read out the contents of the golden tablets to his literate neighbour (another farmer) who wrote down what he heard apparently believing it to be true.

    Interestingly, Smith's wife knew that her husband was a liar and she burned the first draft of his 'divine' text and challenged him to reproduce it word for word. A feat which he was not able to perform.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not only are you an idiot, but you are grossly misinformed about the origins of the Mormon religion.

      Delete
    2. Anonymous - Presumeably you are a self-righteous adherent of both the 'Mormon' and 'NuSkin' fairy stories, trained like a dog not to challenge their validity, but obediently to hand over a significant portion of your own time and property to the profit of your wealthy masters.

      Thus, your unquestioning loyalty to your wealthy masters, when confronted with the truth about the absurd origins of the related-comic-book yarns which control your thoughts and behaviour, only confirms the validity of my analysis of them.

      David Brear (copyright 2013)

      Delete
    3. I became a NuSkin distributor in Feb. 2018. After going to a sales seminar in Provo Utah. I started taking the Life Pak Nano and started getting real sick in March. I called NuSkin and spoke to a Doctor and then a nurse. They told me to stop the Life Pak Nano and go to The Life Pak I started taking that and In April I started getting sick again. I called Nu Skin, and they told me to go to a Doctor, and I did and he told me to stop the vitamins. I stopped and started getting bumps on my head and pimples prolonged on my chest. I was rushed to the Emergency room because I was going to pass out. They found nothing wrong except that I was having an adverse reaction to something. I went to an Allergist, and she found that several of the vitamins had chemicals and toxins in them that my body was rejecting. It is now July, and I am just getting better and getting this stuff out of my body. I quit the Distributorship and vitamins and have been called numerous times to come back and start over with the vitamins and Distributorship which was also a hoax.

      Delete
    4. Thanks Unknown - Might I ask, have you contacted any federal agency to complain about the 'NuSkin' racket?

      Delete
  3. An anonymous reader has commented that many MLM companies are privately-owned and, therefore, more difficult to complain about to regulators.

    I respectfully suggest that before this reader tries to make any further comment, he/she take a look at some of the other articles written by David Brear on this Blog; particularly, those which describe the 'MLM income opportunity' racket operated behind the privately-owned labyrinth of corporate structures known as 'Amway.'

    ReplyDelete
  4. This post has received various comments from anonymous persons insisting that they have suddenly begun to look many years younger after buying and using 'Nu Skin' products. Classically, these far-from-convincing commentators all claim to have been skeptical about 'Nu Skin' at first. Predictably, none of their wonderous fairy stories of discovering the fountain youth, can be quantified.

    All persons attempting to post comments in which they steadfastly pretend to be living-witnesses to the existence of the 'Nu Skin' Utopia, are reminded that this Blog is not a platform for 'MLM' propagandists to broadcast their group's reality-inverting bull-shit.

    ReplyDelete
  5. It might interest you to know that Mormons are allowed to tell "little white lies" as they term them to anyone who is not a mormon, which they consider to be apostate and be OK about it as far as sinning is concerned. So, a sales pitch that is not correct would generally fall into that category. A Mormon bishop told me this.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ben - The use of a fictitious, reality-inverting, two-dimensional narrative ('good vs evil', 'positive vs negative', 'us vs them', etc.) as the false justification for hidden criminal objectives, is a universal identifying characteristic of pernicious cults. In the past, various commentators have labelled this characteristic 'Heavenly Lying,' but this doesn't fully-explain what is going on in the intellectually-castrated minds of core-cult adherents.

    Sadly, what starts off as 'little white lies,' sometimes turn into a vast inversions of reality which can then be used as the false justification for all manner of heinous crimes.

    From 'The Universal Identifying Characteristics of a Cult' , David Brear, copyright 2005.

    In pernicious cults, a core-group of adherents can be gradually dissociated from external reality and reformed into deployable agents, and/or de facto slaves, and/or expendable combatants, etc., furthering the hidden criminal objectives of their leaders, completely dependent on a collective paranoid delusion of absolute moral and intellectual supremacy fundamental to the maintenance of their individual self-esteem/identity and related psychological function. It becomes impossible for such fanatics to see humour in their situation or to feel pity for, or to empathise with, non-adherents. Their minds are programmed to interpret the manipulation, and/or cheating, and/or dispossession, and/or destruction, of inferior outsiders (particularly, those who challenge their group’s controlling scenario) as perfectly justifiable.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Despite some mistakes about your factual narrative on the origin of the Bullshit Book of Mormon, mormonism is one HUGE fable. It is so much a hoax that it takes a lot of brainwashing for even a a child of average intelligence to instantly sense it is nonsense. Using "Seer Stones" Urim and Thumimm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urim_and_Thummim
    Even Mormon insiders lied about the appearance of these stones, describing them as "diamonds" when in fact they look like average pebbles. The same methods of brainwashing they use to advance their silly cult is applied to grow their MLM's. One recruit at a time. But now, after the introduction of the Internet, it becomes harder and harder for these idiots to keep recruiting their sheep.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anonymous - Thank -you, but I think you will find that the factual detail of how the American fairy story entitled, 'The Book of Mormon,' was created, is still open to debate.

      The late Christopher Hitchens' published account, and analysis, of the aburd origins of 'Mormonism,' probably comes closest to the truth, and it was Hitchens' version which I was briefly citing from memory (possibly, inaccurately) .

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9UzbucqHCc

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcTBhQW175M

      As you have rightly observed, it is possible to get human beings to believe almost any bullshit, provided they are exposed (without their fully-informed consent) to co-ordinated devious techniques of social, psychological and physical persuasion (commonly-referred to as brainwashing).

      Currently, in the USA, although there are laws which clearly define and prohibit fraud, there is no common-sense law to stop charlatans, and would-be demagogues, from instigating non-rational ritual belief systems for the clandestine purpose of human exploitation, dressed up as 'religions,' because the guardians of the US Constitution have never seen fit to explain exactly what is meant by the word, 'religion.'

      Essentially, the same dangerous situation exists in democracies all around the world; for as soon as the word 'religion' is mentioned, many people's critical and evaluative faculties cease to function.

      Sadly, as 'MLM income opportunity' racketeers have proved, the words, 'capitalism' and 'business,' now have exactly the same thought-stopping effect on many people's minds.

      David Brear (copyright 2014)



      Delete
  8. Craig from Dallas
    One big problem with all MLM is that they promote recruiting and not selling. And you run out of people to recruit. And the people you recruit become your competition. They also tell you how you should interact with your friends and family. Insurance industry does this too. Recruiting people, sell to friends and family, then person runs out of friends and family, leaves the company. Then the manager gets all the business that the person that left generated. Snakes.
    I did a MLM business plan that eliminates most of the problems. Maybe I will start it one day.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Craig from Dallas - What you describe as 'problems,' are actually some of the identifying characteristics of a type of theft commonly referred to as a pyramid scam. Any so called 'MLM direct selling business plan' which offers its participants incentives to be their own best customers, and to recruit others to be their own best customers, etc. ad infinitum, is a dissimulated pyramid scam.



    ReplyDelete
  10. Nuskin products have the ability to destroy your life....i gave up and was sick of being hounded so tried the g3 juice however after a week i got extremely unwell developing bartholins cysts which were very painful, severe headaches, body aches, stiff neck and nausea....all due to the toxins in the juice!!! I also found out from my Doctor that some of the ingredients interfered with my heart medication which could have been potentially disastrous. I was told that it was completely safe to take and that their boss had a heart attack and was on the same medication and he took g3, which now i think was a lie. After researching for several days i found the ingredients in the g3 blended together make a toxic blend therefore filling your body full of toxins!!!! Please BEWARE of this pyramid scheme, it is NOT safe

    ReplyDelete